The Traditions Are More Important Than the Steps – Bob D.

A real joy to have Bob as part of this, and he's going to give on our second legacy. It's going be a spiritual journey through the traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now let's give him a big Florida welcome. My name is Bob Darrell, and I am certainly alcoholic. It's good to be here. Good to meet some new members of Alcoholics Anonymous I haven't met before, and I'm surprised at how many people I know here that I've met on some of the sober cruises in Sacramento, some of different parts of the country. It's good to be here. If you're new, I want to report that I have seen some of these people having more fun than they really should be having sober, and that's what we do here. I'm going to try to share as honestly as I can some stuff from our literature, and probably more important from my own personal experience with our legacy of unity and the Twelve Traditions. Something that oddly enough, back in the 70s, if I would have gone to a weekend somewhere and there would have been a workshop or a talk on the traditions, I probably wouldn't have even gone to the meeting. and I tell you for a while my own closed-mindedness robbed me of an experience with a set of principles that I've over the years at some at times I feel probably are more important than the steps well get into that the reason I believe that I know that without the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous as they were outlined in the big book of Alcoholic synonymous I would have died of alcoholism there is no doubt about that but without the 12 traditions alcoholics of my type we would all die see from the very very beginning of recorded history in every little village town Hamlet on the face of the earth for some strange reason there's been a minority small portion of every population that has been kind of a misfit. These people that don't feel like other people look and they hide it behind facades and they try to go on and they never really feel a part of and some of them are prone to deep depressions and someof them are in trouble all the time and invariably some of those people find that once they've encountered fermented spirits It does something to their spirit that they needed to have done and didn't know they needed to have it done until it was done. And those people throughout history, invariably, as was my experience once they found that regular everyday living paled by comparison and they couldn't put it down and most of them would drink to their incarceration or death. And for centuries, literally thousands of years, medicine society families religion has been trying to deal with people like us without much success there's a great book if you if you want to read some interesting reading it's called the slaying of the dragon it's a history of of the bizarre treatments that have been tried throughout our history of alcoholism like when they used to drill holes in our skulls to try to let the demons out I'll tell you, I've had some hangover mornings where I might have signed up for that. I mean, you know, it felt like there were demons in there. Lobotomies, pillars where they'd lock in those things and it hasn't been good. And in 1935, an alcoholic who'd had a spiritual experience and a vision that he could keep that experience alive tried desperately to help other people, and he didn't have much success. and in may of 1935 on a business trip that turn went sideways on him and it dashed all his hopes of ever getting back on his feet financially and he lived under the burden of of the of having to be supported by his wife and the low self-esteem that comes with that territory and his hope of And turning that around was Dash. And in the Mayflower Hotel, he paced a lobby. I've gone there many times and I've paced that same lobby looking at a bar. And he remembered that maybe if he could try to help another alcoholic, maybe he'd have a shot. He wouldn't have to drink himself. And it was on him. and he went to the phone in that lobby and I called my sponsor from that phone and started calling this church directory and through a weird set of circumstances was hooked up to one of the first untreated members of Al-Anon Henrietta Seiberling who was trying to fix her at one of her doctor friends and hooked her up with Dr. Bob Smith and I became very close friends with his son who died not too long ago. It was a great loss. He was the last person alive that was present when these two gentlemen came together and Smitty said that he said that his dad was dragging his feet. He didn't want to go but he owed, you know how we are when we're guilty, right? You got to do stuff when you're guilty you don't want to do. And Ann had had the hammer on him and he, all right, I'm going to go 15 minutes. Get me out of there. I don't listen to this Yankee. Talk to me about my drink in 15 minutes, that's it. And he went into that room and the gatehouse of the Siberling mansion didn't come out for several hours. He was so enthralled with what he heard. He said it was the first time in his life that anyone had talked about themselves in such away. He knew he wasn't alone, and that was Mother's Day weekend, Mother's Day 1935. Dr. Bob never did stay sober at that point because he refused to do step nine. Drank again, came off that, went to a medical convention in Atlantic City, trying to continue, you know, maintain his life. He was a doctor. Came off of that train back from Atlantic City drunk. They laid him on the platform. He couldn't even stand up and they called the conductor or someone at the station called his office gal and she came down and they took him, put him in bed and Bill was still living at the house and Bill and Ann took care of him and he came to June 10th, 1935 and he didn't know what had happened where he was. He knew he was in trouble again as we all know that feeling of coming to and you don't remember everything that happened but you know it's not good. He says what day is it? They said June 10. He says oh my God not June 10 I have a surgery to perform this morning. I got this surgery, and Dr. Bob was a proctologist, so you can kind of imagine what kind of surgery it was. And he was shaking like this, vibrating, flying apart. Bill Wilson gave him his last couple drinks and set him into the surgery to form this surgery. And I just often wondered, God, imagine being that patient and watching your doctor come in hungover. We should build a statue to that guy, whoever he was. And the surgery was successful, I suppose. I know some archivists that have researched the Akron hospital records. They don't know exactly the details. All that we know from AA literature is that the guy lived. I mean, yeah, he might have whistled when he walked. We don't know. But he lived, and Dr. Bob came out of that surgery and spent the rest of the day, all the rest of that morning, all that afternoon and early evening out seeking the people that he owed he didn't want to face. And that was really the founding of Alcoholics Anonymous. In a weird sense, AA was founded on step eight, really, when you think about it. Something that I was not big on doing because I owed a lot. And these two guys set out and they started doing, they believed in a principle that if they helped other drunks that they might be able to stay sober themselves and they affiliated themselves with the Oxford group because it was a spiritual, a like-minded spiritual movement and AA started growing slowly, slowly, slowy and then something peculiar started happening. We started getting some notoriety There was a baseball player in Cleveland who they did an article about him and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He mentioned Alcoholics Anonymous changing his life, and the Brooklyn group of AA was inundated overnight with just amazing amounts of requests for help. There was Liberty Magazine article and didn't get quite as strong response because it really stressed, overly stressed the sort of a religious aspect of AA, which to some, the people that were really ready were okay, but some of the people didn't get as big a response. And then something happened that I think changed Alcoholics Anonymous. There was a guy named Jack Alexander, and Jack Alexander had an impeccable reputation as a troubleshooter, is a no-nonsense guy, a guy who could not be bought off. He was an investigative reporter. He had done some work in a church and he exposed a bunch of corruption there. He'd done some, some work exposing corruption in one of the big unions on the East Coast. He had a tremendous reputation of no-noncence and somebody said to Jack, you know, look at this Alcoholics Anonymous thing. What could that be about? That's got to be some kind of front, some kindof scam, some kindoff something and Jack Alexander took it on, went into Alcoholics Anonymous to investigate us and he found, I am sure to his delight in his line of business that we were exactly what we said we were. There was nobody in AA that was going to get a toaster for helping anybody. I mean there was no profit motive. Nobody had an axe to grind. Nobody was trying to sell nothing. We were simply what we say we were we were people who had been dying of alcoholism that found if they tried to help other people with similar problems that they themselves could survive and he wrote this stellar article in the saturday evening post which in in no time at all the new york office was inundated by stacks and stacks of letters and requests for help from people all over the all over the country I was good friends with a gal named Sybil and Sybil was the first woman west of the Rocky Mountains to ever get sober and she got sober in the early 40s in California right after the Jack Alexander article and not too long after that and they by the time the letters had filtered down to the California group there was a stack of letters from women asking for help and there was no woman sober. So Sybil is sober like two days. She's still vibrating and they sent her out to talk to these women. And she never drank again. She spent her whole life doing exactly that. Tremendous member of Alcoholics Anonymous helped thousands and thousands of women. But as a result of this huge growth spurt, there were problems occurring all over the country in Alcoholics synonymous problems of disunity there was uh the group in Akron was kind of they didn't like the group in New York they thought the groupin New York was too too psychologically oriented and the group and and and the groupIn New York thought the Akron group was to Christian into Oxford group and and they didn t trust each other even though Bob and Bill were lifelong friends some of their followers bickered about each other and judged each other i know down in florida nobody judges other people in aa but it was a bad problem then and uh alcoholics anonymous is like having a lot of problems uh there were groups taking on all kinds of bizarre things there was a i have a letter i didn't i wanted to bring it with me i didn'T bring it WITH ME IT'S DATED DECEMBER 1941 it was from the executive committee of Alcoholics Anonymous for the state of California and it was written to a gal named Irma Livoni and in the letter uh it what did it told it revoked Irma's membership in Alcoholics Onimus and told her she's no longer welcome here and I found out through Sybil's daughter the reason was is that Irma liked men and they developed they had a committee meeting decide decided they didn't want that kind of person, an alcoholics anonymous, sent her this letter, told her she wasn't welcome, revoked her membership rights. She couldn't come here no more. Well, I'll tell you something. I know thousands of women I've met around the country and alcoholics anonymists that have been helped by loose women. But they had no traditions. They didn't have the third tradition. So groups were taking it on themselves to do whatever they wanted to do. There was a lot of people getting drunk. There were people getting resentments, judging other groups and other members of Alcoholics Anonymous, and it was chaos. And Bill is getting inundated by letters from people around the country that are afraid because they know that their life is on the line. These are low-bottom alcoholics that have tried everything, and now they finally for the first time in their life they got a shot and they're watching the thing that has saved their life fall apart around them and Bill's getting these letters and letters and letters and he doesn't know what to do and a gentleman from North Carolina sent him a letter and he said in the letter he said Bill, the same thing's happening to us that happened to the Washingtonians and Bill Wilson didn't even know never heard of the Washingtonian but he was a very studious guy and he did some research, and he found that in the mid-1800s, there was a group that started in Baltimore, Maryland. And it was a couple drunkards who had met in a bar, and they were hope-to-die alcoholics, guys that had endless temperance pledges, guys that Had been in sanitariums, had been in jail, that had sworn they would never drink. And for some peculiar reason, they could not stick to it, and they Were dying. And they kept going back to the bottle in face of overwhelming information that it's destroying them. They couldn't stop. And these guys met in this bar room and they're talking about this hopeless condition. And they came up with an idea that none of these people, these people in our churches and our family members and our doctors, they've been trying to help us and they can't. Maybe we could help each other. And they started to do that and they got each other sober and they started to form this little fellowship and go out and help other drunkards. And within just a few years, without telephone, without public transportation, without all the things that are in place in the early days of Alcoholics Anonymous, this couple drunkards in a bar in Baltimore, Maryland grew to a fellowship that the low estimates are 100,000 and I've seen high estimates where people have estimated that there may have been as close to half a million people involved in the Washingtonians in just a few years. And Alcoholics Anonymous, in just a few year, had only a couple hundred people. But they didn't have any traditions. And they started infighting. They started judging each other. They started affiliating themselves with other groups. They started filling themselves with the temperance movement. They started taking political positions on things that I'm sure made sense to them, as it would make sense to a lot of people trying to reform their life and live a spiritual way of life. And they aligned themselves with abolition of slavery and some political things in the Mexico deal. And they wanted to help laudanomatics, which is a form of opium and all that kind of stuff. And with, they'd never made the decade. And within less than 10 years from their inception, they no longer existed. And we don't know for sure, there's no way of knowing, but I suspect that most of those people, if they were like me, they died horrible deaths on the streets of big cities in this country from a disease called alcoholism. A disease that by the time it, It's such a tedious process, dying this disease. And I do a lot of work in the trenches down at Skid Row Detoxes and stuff, and I watch guys that have died of this disease, and I want to tell you something. By the time it kills you, you've wished you were dead for a long time. By the Time It Kills You, everyone you've ever loved or wanted their approval hates you and is going to be glad you're dead. I can't imagine a worse way to die, really. I can't imagine a worse way to die of the spirit in here where the pain really is and Bill saw this account this he found out about the Washingtonians he thought my god that's exactly what's happening to Alcoholics Anonymous and Bill Wilson was a visionary and Bill Wilson had an ability to see beyond and he which is obvious from the big book of Alcoholics synonymous bill wrote about things that were beyond his experience some of the promises in there hadn't come through it haven't come true for him and yet he could see he had a vision of what what could happen and he and out of this i think i believe he was just as divinely inspired to write the 12 traditions as he was to write the big book of alcoholic synonymous and he put those together in the long form, which first appeared in the mid-1940s as the tenants. They weren't called the long-form because they weren't called the Long Form until we got the short form, right? Which makes sense, really, right? They were called the tenants to ensure AA's future. I have a copy of one of the early publishing, typed thing of it at home. And Bill really strongly believed that this was going to help. This is going to say this is the only thing that's going to save us of these principles and he went on a campaign to get the groups in Alcoholics Anonymous to accept these traditions as they existed in the long form. And nobody would accept them. Matter of fact, they didn't even want to hear about them. Matter of effect, they wouldn't even read them in the meeting. My home group reads the long form once a month. And if you've ever been in a meeting where they read the long from it's long. I mean And I know how I am, self-centered. I get sober. It's all about me. And it's like, well, yeah, you're taking away time. We can talk about me, you know, me, me. Right? And they don't want to hear the rules. You know, it's not about me at all. It's like rules. We don't need no stinking rules, you know, traditions. And they didn't want to hear about it. Matter of fact, if Bill was asked, Bill, who's one of the co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, probably one of those guys that was asked to speak and share his experience the most in Alcoholics Anonymous. There's letters in our archives inviting Bill to come and speak at different groups, providing he promises not to mention the traditions. And Bill, they started publishing him in the grapevine, in the newly formed grapevine and he's getting nowhere and AA is falling apart. And he was under some pressure to do something and he didn't know what to do and he consented from what I've been able to find out from Bob Pearson and a couple of the archivists and historians in AA that Bill was under a lot of pressure to have something done and some members of the newly formed Grapevine staff encouraged him to do an abbreviated version of the 12 traditions which later became the short form, which has been universally adopted by the groups of Alcoholics Anonymous to such an extent that a vast amount of our fellowship doesn't even know the long form as it was originally written even exists. And I'll tell you this is an opinion, which I'm going to get later into as we get into one of the traditions, the reason why you're not supposed to have them, but my opinion is I think we shortchanged ourselves as a fellowship when we walked away from the long term and I'll get into why a little bit as we is we go through the basic differences and how it's affected the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous between the long form and the short form. There's some tremendous differences. Differences that I don't think, when Bill reluctantly agreed to the publishing of the short-form, differences I don' t think he ever imagined would be, would have the effect that they've had on Alcoholics Anonymous. And the 12 traditions, just like the 12 steps are a set of spiritual principles that when practiced as a way of life by a group, by a family, by business, by anywhere that people interact will ensure something that is desperately needed and define the basic problem which is defined in tradition number one is a lack of unity. Alcoholics Anonymous was coming apart at the seams and And over the years, I've tried to incorporate those principles. I sold a corporation last year that I ran on the 12 traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous and all my management staff, they didn't know anything about AA really but they knew about the principles or the spirit of those principles because we would talk about them in staff meetings regular basis, regular basis and we tried to run that company by it and as As a result, it was healthy because it kept the egos and the personalities out of it. The problem with Alcoholics Anonymous is that it's got a lot of alcoholics in it. And you know how we are. I mean, you know, it's not that there's anything wrong with us. we just all seem to really get what's wrong with everybody else. And we want to tell them and straighten them out. And we wanna tell them because we know they need to know. And it's easy to watch a group that doesn't have the spirit of the traditions forget their primary purpose and become self-serving and start to be dominated by alcoholic personalities and fall apart. Every area I've ever been to in the United States is stories abundant about groups that were real strong at one time that no longer exist. Not an old story. And in the first tradition, it's in the short form. It says our common welfare should come first. Personal recovery depends upon a unity. Lack of unity really is the problem. and not only is it the problem in a group level or it was the problem in my business when I started implementing these principles it was a problem in relationships that I've tried to implement these principles. It had been the problem personally primarily in my alcoholism I don't know about you guys but I'll tell you what was really true for me, I drank because of a lack of unity. I drank because I felt at times like I was dying of loneliness. I drank because I'm the guy that could sit in a group of people that cared about me and feel that separation like it's all of them. And then there's me. I drink because I suffered as Bill talks about in the 12 by 12, the pains of anxious apartness and in the good days when alcohol was really a treatment for the disease of alcoholism five shots of jack daniels and i could come out and play five shots at jack daniel's and i could integrate myself with a group of people and feel like i was a part of seven shots and i loved everybody remember that feeling that he just just you feel so close to these guys almost brings tears to your eyes where you just go i love you man remember you want to hug people you right remember that remember that now that's spiritual that's a feeling of unity and then i would sober up and it's just me back again on me isolated and alone and i'm the guy once again that don't fit too good i'mtheguythatdontfeellikeyoulook i drank primarily for a lack of unity because i wanted I might tell you, I'd tell you with a bravado, I don't need nobody. I don' t like people. I don''t need nobody, but secretly inside myself, I yearned to be a part of. I yearn to love and be loved. I wanted to be connected to people, and the only time I'd ever found that was in the very early days of my drinking when alcohol worked, when spirits was the solution for the spiritual malady, but as the disease of alcoholism progressed that alcohol no longer integrated me and I entered into an area of bleak, bleak loneliness where I could drink with a bunch of people that cared about me and I didn't fit and I drank and I still couldn't get me off of me and I'd go on crying jags and be full of self-pity and lack of unity was my problem when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous the last time in 1978 and i had i had observed something in a treatment center in pennsylvania i had a run-in partner who uh we used to go to meetings together and and we were on we knew we couldn't drink it was killing us but we were in the marijuana maintenance kind of deal right and we'd sit we'd sit in the back of the meeting stoned and judge everybody and you if you really want to judge you got to have a good, you got to have a partner. You got to really get that, you can't get enough torque on the personalities in the room by yourself. Really feed each other is a good it's great and we do that and naturally I drank again right of course I mean some of you are surprised but I drank again and I end up living in an abandoned building and I'm really in bad shape and this guy sees me after about 10 days on this run with the sores and the dirt and the wet pants and the whole deal. And it shocked him. And he went and quit that, changed his sobriety date, went and got one of those fanatical big book sponsors, the guys we really used to judge and make fun of. Went and got 1 of those guys. And almost a year later, I'm in another institution and I'm waiting for the AA do-gooders to bring the meeting in, right? And here comes the guy that was my running partner, and the lights are on, and he's laughing, and he'S having a good time, and he drove up there in a car that he bought. And he's engaged to be married, and He's got a good job. And more than anything, he had these newer guys with him that he was sponsoring, and the light's were on. See, I could have sat in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous for 20 years and discounted your story as a recovery because you're not like me. My case is different, but I knew this guy. I knew that guy, and I knew that the answer was that somehow he did something I didn't want to do. He became part of Alcoholics Anonymous. Somehow in this thing that he talked about called The Steps, he was able to dismantle his judgment machine, the thing that kept him separate and apart from and integrate himself sober into this fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I wanted that because I'm dying here. See, if I could have drank successfully, if I would have been a man if I couldn't have killed myself as I tried to do on my last run and failed, if I should have stopped on my own, I wouldn't have needed you and I wouldn' have needed to be a part of. So on a subconscious level, I got it that my life depends upon me being a part of here. Which is bad news for a guy like me. One of my big problems with Alcoholics Anonymous is I don't like people. And that's a real handicap in AA. I've never met a guy I couldn't figure out what was wrong with him in about three minutes. You know what I mean? which keeps you separate and apart from. But yet I knew I had to be a part of, here I was going to die. In the long form of the tradition one, it says each member of Alcoholics Anonymous is but a small part of a great whole. AA must continue to live or most of us will surely die. Hence our common welfare comes first but individual welfare follows close afterward. I have a daughter who's 16 years old Who I love More than life itself We just came back From a trip to Europe With Charlie and a bunch of guys And I don't know if she's alcoholic As if there's no symptoms of it As of yet And I don'T know if She ever will be And I DON'T know If her children Ever will be But I'll tell you something If they get to a place that I was in in 1978 where they're standing on a bridge with a bottle of cheap wine trying to get up enough courage to jump and just stop it. I want them to be able to come to a place called Alcoholics Anonymous and without the 12 traditions of AA, our children's children's children will die on the streets. They don't have this. You know, why would I think that this is going to we can trash AA and then have it's going to come up again. It didn't in thousands of years. I tell you, those of us that have alcoholism in this small, minute period of time in the big scope of human history are so fortunate. Really. When you look at the millions and millions and millions of alcoholics that just had to take their own life or drink themselves to death or end up locked up in institutions. We're very fortunate. And we are but a small, each member is but a little bit of a small part of a great whole. I heard a guy back in the 70s, a guy that became one of my mentors, a guy named Chuck Chamberlain say something that really got my attention. He said, he said if we, he said he believed if we could see how, if we could see the magnificence of Alcoholics Anonymous and the light that it has brought into the world it would be so intense it would burn our eyes out. And I've gone to meetings in prisons where there's lifers in there that are alive. I'll tell you something through this 12 steps of Alcoholic Anonymous these guys doing life imprisonment are freer than a lot of guys I know sit in meetings of Alcoholical Anonymous on the outside. They're freer. The only thing a guy like me ever really has to be free of, the bondage of self. And these guys are helping the newer people and they're on fire and the lights are on. I'm just a small, small part of a big, huge, magnificent whole called Alcoholics Anonymous. And I owe AA and I want to be a servant here. how could you not how could you not wish to serve and how could you not fall in love with something that does for me what AA had done for me once I got really what it did for me tradition number two which is the only tradition that's longer in the short form than it is in the long form which makes us makes the traditions very alcoholic it says for our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority a loving god as he may express himself in our group conscience that's the long form and the short form they added our leaders are but trusted servants they do not govern and i think by the time i think i have i wish i could find this out i always had the sense that bill added that line that that was his deal because I think maybe by the time the short form came out, he'd watched some of us rule the universe in AA and realized that the best we're ever going to do here is be a servant. It's the only organization that I know of where you come in a big shot and end up where you grow to be a servent. It's like the opposite of every company or industry in the world. You go in as a servant and cleaning floors and you end up being a bigshot if you're lucky. Here it's the opposite. If you're really lucky, you'll get to be one day be a servant here. And one of my favorite pieces of ancient literature is a book called Paradise Lost by Milton. And there's a part in there that where Lucifer shakes his fist as he's casting by his own self will, casting himself out of heaven, shakes his fists at God and the angels in heaven. and he says, I would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven. And you know what's true for me always, always, always, is when I'm reigning, it feels like hell. And when I am serving, I feel connected and free and a part of and it feels likes heaven. And our leaders, it's a constant reminder that the best we are ever going to get here is serving. How can I help? Is there something I've got that can help you? You got it. I'm a servant. Hard thing to remember when you have the basic personality trait that wants to run the universe. And, you know, this principle... of an ultimate authority is remarkable to watch. If you've ever, I spent, a guy wanted me to say this, I spent over, I think it was over 10 years in general service everything I did, a couple terms as a GSR, couple terms as a DCM area officer I was on committees I did a lot of that stuff and what it was I loved being a part of the general service structure just as I love being a part of my is a one voice in my group conscience in my home group I love to watch the spirit of God work in the group conscience and it's so it's annoying sometimes the way it works because in a group conscience, you'll have people off the wall to this side and you think, what are they even saying? That has nothing to do with what we're trying to talk about here. Then you have people on the other side so far off, it's just ridiculous. And you sit there, you want to pull your hair out and don't realize this is Tolerance 101, right? And out of all of that, out of it's all necessary, I'm telling you, it' s all necessary. out of all of it materializes this thing called a group conscience and it's a what a wonderful thing once you when you're in the middle of it trying to express your opinion with with 50 other people all expressing their opinions it's it's often a caustic situation but then later i would step back and i'd look at what happened in that assembly and i would think man god did it again It was exactly, it was right. It was not the way I wanted to vote. They didn't vote the way I wanted them to vote, but they voted the way they were supposed to. The hand of God was right in there. Right in there It's the only organization where people want to, you know, on a regular basis, people wantto call up and complain to the leaders of AA. We don't got any. Or newcomers want to come in and they want to find out who's in charge. You ever have somebody in your home group come up to you and say, who's on charge here? See the guy cleaning the bathroom? Well, right now he's probably at the top of the food chain. Weird organization. Tradition number three, and I really want to talk about this. This is one of the traditions where I think I think we took a hit. I think if we would have stuck with the long form, the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous would be different than it is today. Now this is just my opinion, but I want to talk a little bit about the differences between the short form and the long from. The short form, which everyone's familiar with, is the only requirement for AA membership as a desire to stop drinking. The long form's a little different. The long form says our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Hence, we may refuse none who wish to recover from suffering from alcohol. Nor ought AA membership ever depend upon money or conformity. Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an AA group, provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation. And in one of the other traditions, it really goes into affiliation And let me tell you something. There is a world of difference between having a desire not to drink and suffering from alcoholism. Today, there's probably 10 million people in this country on the Atkins diet that have a desire not to drink because they don't want the carbohydrates. Everybody, any, you could take mother, when Mother Teresa was alive, you could give her a few drinks and put her behind the wheel of an automobile and she could get a DUI and be sent to Alcoholics Anonymous and go, well, I don't really want to drink anymore. This is a great, let me be a MA member. I think there's a lot of people coming to Alcoholics Anonymous and entrench themselves in AA that don't have alcoholism as it's discussed and talked about in the big book of AlcoholicsAnonymous. As a matter of fact, there's an article or a section in there that talks about the two different types of people. On page 20 and 21, at the bottom of page 20 it talks about hard drinkers and the way it talks about a hard drinker. The hard drinkers sound from, if you were a doctor and you looked at this guy, you'd think he had alcoholism. It says these hard drinkors I'll just read it. That's even better. This sounds like an alcoholic. Bottom of page 20. We have a certain type of hard drinkor. He may have the habit badly enough to gradually impair him physically and mentally he drinks habitually to the point where it's screwing him up and he's paying a price mentally and you drink the you drink beverage alcohol every day heavily for a period of time it'll make you a little weird and physically you drink leverage alcohol every day for a sustained period of times as guys do I went to high school with a guy that went joined a drinking fraternity in college and they just drank every single day. He had to be detoxed at the end of the semester. But he didn't have alcoholism. He has never gotten himself in that shape again. Never. Gradually and perimentally and physically, it says it may cause him to die a few years before his time. That's not good. And then here's the primary difference. It says if a sufficiently strong reason, ill health, falling in love, change of environment, or the warning of a doctor becomes operative, this man can also stop or moderate even though he may find it difficult and troublesome and may even need medical attention. He may even needs to be detoxed. but he gets he one day he wakes up and he gets it this is not good this is the doctor i just came from the doctor he said that i got pancreas signs of early pancreatitis my liver panels off the chart he says if i keep drinking i'm gonna die in a couple years man i ain't gonna do that no more he puts the plug in the jug and after a little period of shakiness coming off of bed the drug alcohol he is restored to normal living well i'm the guy i go to the doctor as i have and the doctor says your liver panel's not good you get you're gonna end up with pancreatitis not gonna be good this is gonna be bad it's gonna kill you i'm probably gonna go get a bottle of whiskey to think about what he just said or it says falling in love i i went to i used to drink with a guy who I tell you by observation I would have thought he was an alcoholic he drank so habitually and he I mean he every time I ever he picked he started drinking he got drunk he was off the charts and he'd get crazy and fights and just whacked stuff he looked like an alcoholic and he met this girl and fell madly in love with her and she wouldn't put up with a party and she gave him an ultimatum and he was so in love with her he said you know sweetheart I don't want to live like that either anymore I want to have a family and he put the plug in the jug and he got involved in some civic groups and stuff in the community and he's never looked back and he never ever looked back I'm the same guy and I remember being in a relationship I remember being in love well it's kind of like being in love She had a job and a place to live And I'm pathetic and alone It was as close to love as a guy like me will ever get I couldn't imagine life without her Because I had nobody And she gave me an ultimatum I would get a little out of line once in a while Didn't mean to, but I would And she just got tired of changing the sheets and stuff. I mean, you know what I mean? And she gave me an ultimatum. And when she gave Me an ultimative, man, she is my life. Without her, I don't know. I have no self-esteem. I secretly believe if I lose her, I will never find anybody that would ever love me again. I believe that with every fiber of my being. I swore to myself I'm never going to touch that stuff again. And I meant it. And I went into a place and they weaned me off of alcohol with Valium and some other stuff and I got sober and I'm not drinking day in and day out and week in and week out and month in and the longer I'm sober the more I realize what's wrong with her. Right? Till one day I can't take it anymore and I gotta go drink cause I'm the real alcoholic. I am not, I can have a tremendous desire not to drink as I have had on many occasion. But I don't have the power to carry it out. I have a malady of the spirit in here that demands treatment. And without the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and a power greater than myself, It's like an itch I am going to scratch one day, one way or another. And I know that because I had seven and a half years from 1970, almost 71 to 78, of trying and swearing to myself I'll never touch that stuff again and drinking again and wondering how could I do that? How could I doing that? After all that's happened. The most powerful desire not to drink is of no avail to me and yet we have people charlie i was just i would charlie and i and joe and i did a thing last year and a couple years ago and charlie said to me i said what do you think about that he says he thought he said i think over 40 percent of the fellowship of alcohol exonymous are not the type of drinkers that the big book was written for and what has happened because we went from the long form to the short form and now the only requirement for membership is a desire not to drink, anyone who gets a DUI and is a little neurotic and lonely come to the fellowship because they get sent here. They see this and they think well this is a good deal. It's better than the elk. They're more walkworm than the elks. And they stop drinking and they don't suffer from alcoholism. Really I know guys in AA and I love them. They are great guys and they are welcome to be here because we changed the bar. they have a right to be here just like anybody else but they don't suffer from alcoholism and because that they're never forced to the table with God in the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous as I was simply because of my failure to not drink on my own. That's really what brought me to AA. My powerlessness did not extend to just what happened to me once I started drinking. I was powerless from the first drink. I could push it off and push it off and put distractions but eventually it ate me alive. Eventually it was an itch I must scratch and there wasn't enough medications, there wasn'T enough sex, enough money enough change in towns enough of anything to keep it continually at bay. I am the guy who suffers from alcoholism and I am an everyday member of Alcoholics Anonymous, within the fellowship and in this action of the fellowship in the steps today because I suffer from alcoholism. And if I tell you something, if I stop doing certain actions in my life, I start to suffer from alcoolism again. And the insidious thing in my experience about that, when I'm suffering from alcoolsim, I don't know I'm sufrring from alcoulism. I think you are. And you need to be straightened out. I thnk you're real self-centered. I think you're real resentful I think you have an attitude and it's me awful it's insidious disease tradition number four with respect to its own affairs each a group this is a long form each a a group should be responsible to no other authority than its own conscience but when its plans concern the welfare of neighboring groups also those groups ought to be consulted and no group regional committee or individual check this out or individual should ever take any action that might greatly affect a as a whole without conferring with the trustees of the General Service Board on that issue our common welfare is paramount in the short form it says each Which group should be autonomous, except in matters affecting other groups or AA as a whole? One of the things we talk about in Alcoholics Anonymous is the number one promise of the 12 steps. And it's talked about in step 12. It says, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps. And this spiritual awakening within my own experience has been incremental. It's not a flash in the pan. I'm awake to things today that I wasn't awake to when I was 10 years sober. And one of the things I eventually awoke to here is that my actions and what I say at times is the only view of AA other people will ever see, that I may be the only example of Alcoholics Anonymous they ever, ever see. And I'll tell you, when I started to get that, there were times, there were things in my sobriety that I was ashamed of because I didn't want to be that kind of example. When I started awakening to the fact that my actions, I only get one vote here, that my actions are my only vote. And if I want to come into a meeting late and talk while other people are talking and just be wrapped up in myself, then that's pretty much my vote. I think everybody should do that in AA. Because one of the things I awoke to, and it took a lot of years here, probably 20 years, I awoked to the fact that as a result whether I intended to be in this position or not, I ended up sponsoring people, I endedup being sober long enough to be looked at, even though I never felt like it, to be look at by some people as an old timer, and to some people in my home group and the guys I sponsor, I'm the primary example of AA that they will ever see. And my actions is my vote for them of how I think they should conduct their life and what kind of AA members they should be. And when I started awakening to that, I realized I was very selfish because I would sit in the meeting and crosstalk with my buddies because I don't really care about anybody except me. I realized that I'd come late. I don' t want you to come late, but I had important things to do. There's secretly I was above the rule. I've been that way all my life. I'm the guy that I think 55 speed limit's great for everybody except, you know, hey, I'm in a hurry here. I got important stuff. I think the handicapped parking is a big deal. Everybody should stick to that, but I'm only gonna be a minute, right? And when I started realizing and wakening to the fact that my actions are really the only expression of what I, of what my vote here, tell you something, that really brought me to the table in step six with some stuff that I may not have been entirely ready to come to the Table with, with God left alone to me without that awakening and without the guys I sponsored. Tradition number five. Short form. Each group has but one primary purpose to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers. In the long form, Each Alcoholics Anonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity having but one primary purpose, that of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers. My home group, we meet 15 times a week all over the place. We don't have one location. Of those 15 meetings, there's one speaker meeting, five big book workshops put on by different members of the group kind of like this thing joe and charlie do and the rest of the meetings are all in hospitals and institutions county jails the detox state prison a couple of halfway houses we really understand that the survival of our group and its vibrancy and vitality rests on this primary purpose. And we, that we are a fellowship in action. And it's great for the new guys. We get a new guy in the book and it comes to our meetings and he's so, you know, he's overwhelmed with his own problems. What do I do? Well, come with us. Next thing you know he's got a hundred dollar car and he'S got three or four new guys in it and he forgot what his problems were. You know, He's on fire and he gets relieved of the bondage of self and I've watched my old home group died because it forgot its primary purpose and it was a great group of guys and some of those guys I'd been bonded to for a lot of years and it wasn't a good old boy thing and we'd sit around and laugh and cut up but it became about us and it became very self-grandizing and we were concerned with ourself and our security and our AA and our friends. And we stopped reaching out and trying to help new guys, and the group started to die. And I'll tell you something else. Personally, I've watched, I've seen in the last three or four years, oh, I can't even tell you how many, dozens and dozens of members of Alcoholics Anonymous over 10 years. As a matter of fact, when I go to detox, there's rarely a week that goes by and I don't see somebody that had been sober over 10 hours and drank again. Guys that would have bet you they'd never drink again. And most of the ones that I've seen that have drank again with long-term sobriety or killed themselves, and we have had a rash of suicides the last four or five years in Alcoholics Anonymous. Guys with 32 years, 23 years, 17 years, 12 years. And they didn't kill themselves over problems. As a matter of fact, every one of those guys that killed themselves, they killed themselves at a time when their life was materially, socially better than it has ever been. Isn't that crazy? It's not crazy to me today. I get it. And the one common thread is that all those people, they had really good lives, but their life was all about them. they hadn't reached out to a new guy or taken a guy through the steps or done any service in Alcoholics Anonymous in years yet they still went to a meeting almost every day and I think that's what did it and I'll tell you the reason I think thats what did when I was 19 years sober I was materially in a better place than I could have ever imagined and I I sunk into a deadly, deep depression. And I sunk into a depression having, I had enough money in my checking account to live the rest of my life. I had probably $300,000 worth of vehicles in my garages. I had everything. I had respect in Alcoholics Amish. I was sponsoring a whole bunch of guys. I was in a position of respect, not only in AA but in the community. I owned a corporation that was well respected in Las Vegas. Everybody knew my name. I had everything. If you would have asked me as a homeless guy in the detox, what would you have to have in your life to be ultimately happy? I would have fulfilled the checklist and I sunk into a dangerous, dangerous depression. And I went to my sponsor. I was trying to talk my, I can't, my sponsor is so one way. He believes in AA. He doesn't believe in anything else. He just goes, AA. Because he has one answer to everything. Turn the volume up on your spiritual program. Turn your volume up on helping other people. And I'm still, I'm getting into this depression. I'm making myself go to a meeting every day. And I don't know what's wrong with me. And I went to a meet-up and a guy that was sober about the same length of time to me said something. It was a throwaway line and it blew my mind. I am convinced to this day that god put those words in his mouth he said to me he said well yeah you still go to a lot of meetings and sponsor a lot of guys and run your mouth a lot in aa and you got a great life but i don't think your primary purpose is helping anybody anymore i think your primary purpose you and when he said that to me i thought oh man and it over it was like a slap in the face and i thought my god that's right i am the focus i amthe primary concern in my life my toys my image my me me me and i'm dying i'm lying in the middle i'm like a starving man at a banquet dying in the middle of an abundant life that AA gave me and I'm in a lot of trouble and I'll tell you within a week I got it I resurrendered to this thing to my purpose I resurrented to going back through the steps within a weak I got two or three new guys in my car now I'm going to detox not to show off to the guys I sponsor but I'm gone there because I really looking for somebody I can help and I've never been in that spot again and i learned i hope i god i hope to god i learned the lesson that my primary purpose is more than a than an altruistic thing it is this it is the the foundation of my life i was so egotistical that i imagined god saved me from the abyss so i'll be wonderful look at me he saved me for the abyss and it gave me a purpose and i you know when you think of it really doesn't it make everything make sense then all the horrible things i went through and the terrible things i did and even the people i've hurt drunk and sober everything in that light has reason and significance because it all becomes tools in my toolbox to talk into a guy who feels like he's the only one that's ever been in the spot he's in. And I can say, yeah, you think so? Let me tell you about what happened to me. My primary purpose. Tradition number six, long form, very long. It says problems of money, property, and authority. Notice in the short form it says in the short form it says money, property, and prestige. In the long form it says authority. We'll get into that in a minute if we can try it. Problems of money property and authority may easily divert us from our primary spiritual aim which is helping other guys that suffer from alcoholism. That's my primary spiritual lane my primary purpose and that's really what isn't it that those three things are what divert us primary uh from our primary purpose i don't know about in the groups you go to but i watch this on a regular basis a guy will come off a skid row off the streets being homeless he'll do anything he just wants to get sober and make amends and help people and then he starts to get seduced by the fruits of his own recovery into his life being about the job and the finances and the relationships and all that other stuff. And incrementally, as I did probably from the time I was 16 years sober to 19 years sober, incrementally move away. And those are the three things that divert me. Money, property, and authority may easily divert us from our primary spiritual aim. We think therefore that any considerable property of genuine use to AA should be separately incorporated and managed thus dividing the material from the spiritual. An AA group as such should never go into business we had a big dispute about that we wanted to do a fundraiser into my home group and people wanted to do we had a big deal, we just went through that in our group and my business meeting not too long ago. And the group conscience prevailed rightly that that's like what you guys, what you're proposing is... And I was actually one of the proposers until my head popped out of my butt and I realized what we were doing. We were trying to actually do something that could be construed as an AA group going into business to produce money for what we thought was a great AA purpose. Well, of course we would think that. We thought of it. I mean, secondary aides to AA such as clubs or hospitals which require much property administration ought to be incorporated and so set apart. If necessary, they can be freely discarded by the groups. Hence, such facilities ought not to use the AA name. Well, I've been in a lot of towns where you can't see the difference between the AA club and the groups. We had a group in Las Vegas. It was called the Kiss Club. And it wasn't a group. It was a club. And it was run by a guy who for profit, he supported himself and his gambling habit off of that club. and when that place went financially went south i'm telling this is sad there was there was a couple dozen people that thought aa had closed that was aa to them when the when that club closed they thought and that that's not aa do you ever sit in a meeting a meeting room after everybody's left and you realize that the spirit's gone the spirit is in the group it's in the consciousness of like-minded people who suffer from the same condition bringing something that is our group conscience together that's where the power is it comes we leave the rooms the power's gone it's an empty room has nothing to do with and this i try to hammer the guys i sponsor know that this that we have a lot of clubs in las vegas we're club heavy i think we must have close to 20 of them and bill wilson in a letter one time he wrote he said he thought they were a necessary evil and what they do they do good because they provide easy meeting space for alcoholics anonymous meetings and that's a good thing i know that there's a lot of guys in las vegas because it's a 24-hour town would not have survived their first year of sobriety if it wouldn't have been for 24- hour aa clubs they wouldn't have survived it and that's the good stuff it's easy access to meetings that go on all day long it's good stuff but also in that you can get lost in the cribbage games in the in the meat market and all that stuff and as I know I could take you to some of the clubs around Las Vegas where you'll see guys sit in that club room all day You can't get them to go into a meeting. They think that's AA. They think that's AAA. While an AA group may cooperate with anyone, such cooperation ought never go so far as affiliation or endorsement actual or implied. I'll tell you, that line has made me think a lot about some of my actions in Alcoholics Anonymous, am I implying any type of affiliation here? We had a big, in my home group, we had a Big Thing about four years ago. Well-intentioned members of the group and me being one of them and one of the idiots decided that we were going to do a fundraiser for these almost homeless people at Christmas and take them down like Christmas dinners. And in spirit, it was a great thing to do. But the minute we did it under the guise of the group, it was out of line. And it became a source of disunity because people were saying, well, how did you pick the people? Well, we got a list from Catholic Charities. So you're affiliating yourself with Catholic Charity? Well, not really. Well, and I thought, you know, they're right. It could be implied. Was that our intention? No. Was it out of the line? the group conscience eventually said yes it was and I believe it was. We could have done it as individual members of AA outside the group, no harm no foul but as an AA group to put our name on that was a bad deal. Tradition number seven short form every AA group ought to be fully self-supporting declining outside contributions. this is really where a lot of our autonomy financial autonomy and integrity comes from this is the only organization i know of in the world where we will spend money with attorney's fees to avoid taking money people on a regular basis will die and leave five hundred thousand dollars a million dollars because they the alcoholics anonymous because look what it did for my boy, or whatever the deal is. And we've got to go out and hire attorneys not to take the money. You know another organization will do that? I don't know any of them. Matter of fact, when you say that, when people... In my home group, there was a guy who's... One of his relatives got sober in AA, and he knew we were moving halls, and he thought we might need money for the down payment on the new hall or whatever, and he wanted to give us some money. A very nice little sum of money. We wouldn't take it. He said, you mean you won't take the money? No, no, we won't Take it. Well, it's a gift. No, sorry. He's looking at me like I, like, you know, I imagine he thought, yeah, you probably need AA. You drank a little too much. I can see that. But we won' t do it. We will not take the Money. And because of that, there's no strings to anything we do here. We are free. we answer to our own group conscience and the power of the AA purse strings is the ultimate as it talks about in the concepts one of the ultimate checks and balances in our fellowship you don't believe that what your group's doing is right according to your view of the traditions and the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous part of your vote is you don' t have to put the dollar in now I don't recommend that I think you should put the $1.00 in and then go to the group conscience and raise hell. But that is part of your vote in Alcoholics Anonymous, is the power of the AA purse strings. Tradition number seven is really where we get our freedom. Nobody tells us what to do here except ourselves. We're responsible to this loving God as he may express himself in our group conscience. We don't owe nobody. No strings. Tradition no. 8, And here's another one of the traditions I think we took the big hit in between the long form and the short form. In the short from, it says, Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever non-professional, but our service centers may employ special workers. Long form is very specific. Check this out. It says, Alcoholics Anonymous, long form tradition eight, AA should remain for ever non- professional. We define professionalism as the occupation of counseling alcoholics for fees or higher. But we may employ alcoholics where they are going to perform those services for which we might otherwise have to engage non-alcoholics. And for the most part, that is managerial, clerical work, secretaries, et cetera, et center, who run central offices that send out mailings, et cetera. The General Service Office employs special workers to do clerical work. But special services may be well-reconcensed, but our usual AA 12-step work is never, and it uses the word never, is never to be paid for. boy i'll tell you i have i have watched a lot of people over the years try to make money off of trying to help drunks and some people get away with it but i'll tell you in the big picture i never see much good coming from it when i first got sober against my first sponsor's wishes and he wasn't very strong if he had been stronger about it maybe i'd have taken a following but he just kind of suggested i i get sober i'm unemployed and they're telling me i gotta do help alcoholics so my self-centered mind works like a computer how can i help alcoholcs and profit for me because it's really all about me and i'll be an alcoholism counselor made perfect sense to me i get i get to slam dunk i getto do both things and get paid it's great i mean don't get any better than that being self-centred wrapped up myself. And I went to work in this treatment center and I started getting sick. My sponsor was all over me about getting out of that line of work. And some people can do it and really be two hatters and separate the one from the other. But I'll tell you what happened to me, and I've watched this in a lot of people. First of all, my helping, I should never ever have a taker's position towards helping alcoholics. My survival depends upon it flowing this way. Never gimme, gimme. And I started working as a counselor and I got certified as a professional and I was a substance abuse counselor and from one trip back in the early 70s through a treatment center and going to school, I had some credentials from back then and I started working in the field and from the moment i started working in the field i became less sponsorable because i'm a because i'm becoming the i know guy you know i'm a professional right so i'm without ever realizing it i am diminishing god's voice in my life that comes through my sponsor because i am becoming incrementally slowly less and less sponsorable and now I work 10 hours a day dealing with these idiots I don't want to do 12 step work I do it all day my sponsors it's not the same when you get paid well yes it is what do you mean it's nicht the same I did it all I did for 10 I do more 12 step working hey buddy and I started getting really sick in here because I was cutting off the flow of power at both ends. I was up in the Rocky Mountains about 20 years ago, 15-20 years ago. This guy took me up to this lake and this is the most amazing lake I've ever seen. The water was so pure and clean you could see the rocks on the bottom. It's amazing. And I looked around and the reason it was so clear and clean and pure is on one side of the lake there was a stream, a rapidly moving stream with water coming in. And on the other side ofthe lake was a rapidly moving stream with water going out and it never got stagnant. I started becoming a professional and I'm not doing it for fun and for free helping people and I am becoming less responsible and I become stagnant because I am cutting it off on both ends. And it's becoming all about me. And yet isn't that, when you interview new people who are unemployed and have no profession and no idea what they want to do for a living, that's the number one occupation they come up with. What would you like to be? alcoholism counselor. I read an article in a magazine that is put out for people who work in that field, and they said statistically for recovering alcoholics, the highest relapse rate of any occupation is alcoholism counseling. You have a better shot at being a drug dealer and staying sober than you do statistically at being in a counselor. And yet, doesn't that make perfect sense. The first thing I want to do when I get sober, of course I'm going to pick that. It's just another in an endless series of bad choices I've made for years, right? If I would have picked something good for me, it would have been a miracle. That's why I had a sponsor who I didn't listen to. And God got me out of that and saved my life. If I don't think I've, at the end of my first year there, I lost that job, could not get another job in that field and the hand of God moved me where I wouldn't have chosen to go on my own. Saved me, I think I'd have died if I'd continued to be there. And some people, and this is not an indictment to anyone who works in that fields. Some people, certain alcoholics are able to do that very successfully. One of my best friends, Keith L., he just moved from North Carolina down to Florida in he's runs a treatment center he has done that very effectively for over 30 years and he's good at it and i'll tell you he has a strong sponsor and he is sponsorable and he'll get off work and he'll go out and help a guy he has never compromised his own program he's but he's one i'll tell you for every guy like keith from what i've observed there's probably 10 guys that will compromise their own program in that field because it's our nature we're self-centered people really when you think about it. I don't mean to be, but in the last analysis, isn't it really all about me? It's all about you. If it's all about you, you're taking away from the all about me. Don't do that. Tradition number nine. AA as such ought never be organized. I'm telling you something from my experience. I don't think there's a group on the face of the earth that's in danger of breaking this tradition. Matter of fact, I think I don't, my home group is in no danger of breakin' this one. Did you ever try to get a bunch of AAs together and do something? It's like trying to herd cats. I mean, you know, we're the only way you can get over-organized and the only way AA could ever get over organized as it does on some committees is some Al-Anon slips in there and takes charge that's the only thing that ever happens we do my group does some we put on a retreat we do some get togethers that are kind of fellowship things and you should see the planning committee meetings for those things they're crazy and yet and yet it all comes together it all comes together. It's amazing. When you think of all the oh it's just nuts. Tradition number 10 Alcoholics Anonymous has this is the one I tell you of all the 12 traditions this is the one that I personally struggle with the most it's the one i i really i really aspire to do better at personally i i don't do too bad in in the fellowship arena but it personally man i'll tell you as a spiritual principle i fall really short on this one and here it is it says alcoholics anonymous has no opinion on outside issues hence the aa name ought never be drawn into public controversy the long form it gets very specific and i'm glad i one day after i was sober a number of years read this in it because i when i read it i was breaking the tradition as a may a member according to the description in the long from in the wrong form it says No AA group or member should ever, in such a way as to implicate AA, express any opinion on outside controversial issues, particularly those of politics, alcohol reform, which really could also be included in treatment, or sectarian religion. Does anybody in here not have an opinion about any politics, treatment, or sectarian religion? Oh good, I'm home. And the one guy that raised his hand, how did the lobotomy work for you? The Alcoholics Anonymous groups oppose no one. Concerning such matters, we can express no views, whatever. When I first read that, I was expressing a lot of views about different treatment centers in my community. Opinions, I tell you, some of those opinions I still have to this day. But you know the big difference? I keep my mouth shut, right? Because what happens to a guy like me who goes into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in a panel or at a group that carries a message into an institution, expresses openly their opinion of how they're doing it in there. How does AA look as a result of that? I have watched, now not my group, but I've watched, as a matter of fact, my old home group, we started doing H&I meetings as a group because the H&I panels that were going into one of the big treatment centers got kicked out of there because they were coming in there trying to tell everybody about their view of treatment and everything else, and they were this self... You know how... And this is common. This is what happens to some of us. About two, three years sober, we get through that evangelical type of deal where we know everything and we're out there pounding and preaching and all that other stuff. and this finally this institution says get out of here let's stop that we don't want that nonsense in here no more and if I was running that place and not a member of AA I can see why they said that what a bad example that that was to them of AA but luckily the director of treatment knew myself and another member of my home group and they knew that we weren't like that and they came to us and they said you know we want to have AA we just don't Want to have that Would you bring a book study in here? Would you start bringing a recovery meeting in here, and we stepped up to the plate, and now my home group does lots of those meetings every week. So as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, I can do pretty good. I tell you, I go to this one, I do a meeting two, three times a week at this detox when I'm home. And this detox is affiliated with a long-term treatment center that has no AA, it's all behavior modification, right? I wish I didn't have opinions about that, but boy, I do. You know, I got not only opinions, I got observations that I'd like to share with it, but it's a bad deal. And these guys that are in there, they come up to me and they said, my counselor thinks I should go up to the mountain and go up there for six months. What do you think? Oh, man. And I try to sidestep, and I say, well, have you ever been in one of those places before? And if they say yes, I'll say, so how did it work for you? And they'll say. Well, I drank again two months later. Oh. Well, you know, there's an old saying that when you're doing something and it ain't working, do something different. And I might say something like that, but I can't tell them. If I tell them, and then they go to their counselor and say, you know, they say that place is a bunch of crap. I shouldn't go up there. Man, what have I done to AA? Right? What have I been doing? What have we done to alcoholics? And I tell you, I have opinions. I wish I wasn't so opinionated. God, it's the biggest handicap I have. I don't know why I get this kind of mind that just thinks it knows stuff. I get opinions about stuff I don'T even know anything about. it's you're laughing I'll tell you it's hideous being me sometimes really I got I got opinions about medications and so forth and I keep my mouth shut guys come up now if it's a guy sponsor if I'm sponsoring him and I'm asking him to give me some you know I might express a little bit of I'm encouraged I won't know I'll encourage him to see if it possible with his doctors help and approval to try to live free of everything but I also understand that some people need yeah I'm not a doctor but I always try to encourage guys let's find out maybe you're the guy maybe what maybe what you think that you need something maybe you need because I went through the the 70s when I tell you you'd look in the old PDRs and they tell you about you look up Valium it say non-addictive it was like common procedure. Guys like me would go into a doctor and I'd be two weeks sober and just full of anxiety and depressed and I was screwed up. They'd say, well you need Valium. You know something? The minute they'd say that, I'd just feel better. That doctor had reached for that prescription pad and sometimes I'd almost want to cry. Finally somebody understands me. I'd feel better right away. but I always drank again. But that's just my experience, and that's not true for everybody. There, I have two members of, and friends of mine that have been sober a lot of years that need medication. And, you know, I'll tell you, this is a little, see, I'm talking about a tradition where I'm not supposed to express my opinion, and I'm expressing, I can't even do it in a workshop on the traditions! I can'T even! Oh, man, I caught myself. Jesus Christ. You should listen to the tape player. Yeah, I better. Tradition 11. Oh, man. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films. I, as you heard me in the beginning if you noticed, I gave my last name and I do that within the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and I didn't, I want to tell you I didnít always do that I got sober at a club where you just, first name and thatís it thereíd be old guys there, sober a long time if you gave your last name theyíd look at you like you were expecting the tradition police to run in and take you off in handcuffs or something But when I started getting involved in general service, I started going to some process, which is a multi-state AA service conference on the West Coast. And I started Going to forums and I started Go to area assemblies. And I Started really getting into the literature and going to workshops and panels on the traditions and the concepts. and what I started to realize is that all these old timers that are really involved with that, a funny thing is they all give their last name and I went to this workshop on anonymity and this guy read this passage from Dr. Bob, I think it's either from something Dr. Rob written, wrote and it was in a whole big passage and then I think part of it is reprinted in the book Dr. Bob and the Good Old Timers and what it says essentially is that and when the guy said it i got it i thought that's right he said he said that the the level of anonymity is set exactly at the level of press radio films and tv and dr bob was one to say that he thought it was just as much a breach of the tradition to move the level down into personal stuff within the fellowship as it was to go public and tell the whole world you're a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous, that it's exactly at that level. And then in that workshop, people used experiences of giving their name in meetings and then they'd be talking about their divorce and how they stayed sober from it. And there was some guy in the room going through a divorce who was going to drink and he could find the guy's name in the phone book and call him up and got some help because he was the one guy that the guy knew he could talk to because he went through the same thing. And if my primary purpose really is my primary purpose, I want to be available. I want to be the guy who steps up to the plate and makes myself available. If God's hand wants in some reason wants to use me, I want to be available and you can come to Las Vegas and find yourself on the streets of Las Vegas and you'll think maybe you just started gambling and you blew all your money and you're thinking about drinking and that cocktail lounge looks pretty good to you and you'll think, what about that Bob? And you go to the phone book and look for Bob with blonde hair. You're not going to find me. But I gave my name. My name's Bob Darrell and I am an alcoholic and I'm in the phonebook. And I have guys that find my number in the foam book and they call me sometimes. But yet I never will break it at a public level. And I've had, I've been come at by people in the media on several occasions. There was some reporter in Las Vegas years ago who some, I don't know who told him. I think somebody in AA told him part of my story or something. But they found it fascinating that this Skid Row homeless guy ends up being the top of his industry for the state and owns this huge corporation. It was like one of those rags to riches. They wanted to do a big deal about it, right? and they came to me i said man absolutely not and they said yeah we can do it and we'll just we'll mention the business we won't you know with no i don't need i don'T want to have anything to do with it and they were trying to shoot angles well how can we make it how can we do it AND NOT BREACH YOUR TRADITIONS I DON'T EVEN WANT ANYTHING TO DO WITH IT AND I'LL TELL YOU FOR A COUPLE REASONS IS THERE A WAY TO DO IT AND NOT BRAKE THE TRADITIONS POSSIBLY DO I WANT TO PUT MYSELF IN THAT POSITION ABSOLUTELY NOT My survival here, my unity to you depends upon me just being another member. If I become the special member that was on TV, if I become the special number, that's a bad deal. I don't know about you guys, that kind of stuff is a bad deal for me. I will not do anything on a public level that announces my alcoholism or my membership in Alcoholics Anonymous. And it technically is not a breach of the tradition to tell everybody I'm a recovering alcoholic. It's only a breach of the traditional tradition technically to say I'm member of AlcoholicsAnonymous. But I'll tell you, personally for me, it's too close. You know what I'm saying? It's too closed for me. And I don't want special distinction. It's bad enough in AA to get asked to get to podiums and talk. And that's a dangerous, dangerous thing. That's why I have the sponsor I have who beats me up about it and I have commitments on Skid Row and I do the stuff in the trenches and I doing all that stuff because this is nice. Don't get me wrong, I like doing this but my AA life is come to my home group. That's my AA Life. This is... I don't know what this is. My ego likes it, I guess. I don't know. Sometimes it likes it. I don' t know. Sometimes I'm afraid of it. I am afraid of it and I think I should be afraid. If I never stopped being afraid of this, I think I'd be in a lot of trouble, really. Really. And tradition number 12. Alcoholics Tradition number 12, anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities. I'm almost embarrassed to tell you that for somewhere between over 15 years, 17, I don't even know how many years, but a long time in Alcoholics Anonymous, I thought that what they meant was that I had to put the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous ahead of your personalities. Let me tell you something. There's only one personality in this room that's in danger of edging me out of AA, and it's me. I've got to put these principles ahead of my personality. I'm the guy that can incrementally judge myself out of Alcoholics Anonymous one person at a time. I'm not the guy who's going to judge me for what I do. I'm in the guy that can back myself out of here by creating so much conflict because I'm trying to control things in here. I'm the guy that can come here and become a source of confusion rather than harmony by not putting the principles of Alcoholic Anonymous that allow a guy like me to try sometimes imperfectly to carrying out the decision I made in step three it is my surrendering of my own personality and self-centeredness and continual surrendering that allows me to keep a seat in AA that allows me to stay here I've watched guys over the years literally judge themselves right out of AA and they didn't know they were leaving and they did it one person you know it's and I've caught myself it's easy to do go to your home group it's just one of the discussion meetings maybe they're talking about some book part of the book or something you sit there and go oh don't call on her she's just looking for a husband don't don't don't fall on him he lies he's so oh not not him oh he sounds like a Hallmark Cardinal recovery bookstore I can't take it and i'm leaving i'm leaving because what is the essence of unsurrenderedness as i become the i know guy i become the guy that's full of judgments and opinions when i in step three when i turn my will thank god it says will first end life over to the care of god i went to an attorney 15 years ago and I'm making a will up. And he said, you know what your last will is? I said, no, what? He says, it's your last judgment. He said, you're going to judge these people to be cool. They get something. You can judge these people to be idiots. They don't get nothing. It's your last judgment and if you, when you think about it, I can turn and I see people that read the Bible and pray and they believe their life is in God's hands and yet they know what's wrong with everybody and are constantly in conflict with the people around them. they have turned in the universe itself they've turned their their life over to god but they've kept their judgment their will and if you do that and i know i've done this in sobriety i didn't know it i've given my life to god continually but i still got my will so it's like god here's my life and there's a list coming of how it better go you know what i'm saying right because i still gotta because if it doesn't go this way it's awful i got a judgment if it goes that way this is good i have Right? See, I am the seat of all my separation. I am the seat all my judgment. I'm the seat of all of my conflict. It is the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous that I must for my own survival because if I will die without a chair here but I must put before my personality. I am only personality that ever wants me out, that will ever edge me out of here and i'm going to close with reading the tradition in the long form which i think is one of the most beautiful pieces of a literature it's just it's it's wonderful it says and finally we read this in my home group that the longform i think some of the new people think that that's the reader injecting that it's actually in here but after you've read all the long for him. And then it goes, and finally everybody goes, oh good. Tradition 12. And finally we have Alcoholics Anonymous believe that the principle of anonymity has an immense spiritual significance. It reminds us that we are to place principles before personalities. That we are actually to practice a genuine humility. This to the end that our great blessings may never spoil us, that we shall forever live in thankful contemplation of him who presides over us all. Thank you for allowing me to be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Thank you.