Why the Big Book Is the Only Instruction Manual – Tom I.

I'll have the microphone here, but are you ready? We're getting ready to head for the home stretch. It seemed like there was one other area of that, but one we want to get into and make sure we spend a little bit of time on is that whole business of sponsorship. uh i'll kick this off and then get don to uh to pick up in the whole area of sponsorship two things that that that are pretty clear that that need to be talked about a little bit uh and probably more than that but one is just that whole general thing about effective sponsorship uh you know how we do it and then and then how you start start knowing when to move away how to move away, that kind of stuff. And then the thing about the medication, which is an increasingly troubling kind of thing in this whole business of how we deal with people. I sometimes think that depression has become an attachment to alcoholism. These days you almost don't have it without some depression being hooked to it. Of course, it does have a little something to do with getting insurance payment for going into treatment. But nonetheless, it is a very, very common kind of a problem to deal with. Let me just sort of make some general remarks to start with about sponsorship. I believe it is vital thing. I've never been without one except for that first little period when I came in to the program and didn't even know how to spell it, but let's find one. And then I got one, and I've ever been without a book. I've always never been with that one since. And I've had three and still got my third one. And I'm very, very grateful. I'm a really lucky guy in a lot of ways. I don't know how you weigh it but I've got to have one of the longest and strongest sponsorship lines I know anything about I'm 45 years sober and I've gotta sponsor sober longer than me and he has a sponsor longer than him and that's unbelievable of having that kind and what a great feeling to know that I got two old relics like that above me And I tell you, an interesting thing happens that you can look forward to if you're not already there. As you get older in the program, finding sponsorship becomes more and more of a challenge. You know, like right now, as I mentioned earlier, I'm the oldest male member in North Carolina. and I sort of have a, not a job description, but I kind of have criteria for what I look for in a sponsor. This is just me. But I want a sponsor that's senior than me, for one thing. It's not absolutely vital, but it's vital to me. I want one that's Senior just because it just feels good, just feels right. I want one that's active in all legacies of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm somebody who believes that you can get locked up in the steps so tightly that you get almost as isolated in recovery as you were in the alcoholism, and so I think you can really get into that kind of staring at your navel, checking your emotional pulse every 30 minutes, And so I want somebody that's active in all legacies, you know, that certainly recoveries the heart and soul. But if I don't learn unity so that I can connect with my fellow members and with the world around me, you Know, I'm still in a heap of trouble. And then service, you Now, I believe any recovery that does not involve a healthy, vigorous service life is a recovery that's shortchanged and misses a lot of where the real joy comes from. So I want somebody who embodies that kind of stuff in the way they function. I want nobody that I like. I've never had a sponsor I didn't like. Some people say if you don't hate him, you got the wrong one. I couldn't disagree more. I've ever had a sponsors that I didn' like, that I did'nt like to hang out with, that I didn''t respect. He used the term heroes. My sponsors have always been kind of heroes to me. Folk that I really look up to. And so I've sort of got that general criteria for what I'm looking for in one. I've got a way, and I'll give you this just sort of background so that it goes into this thing of how you function in sponsorship. If it isn't a well-developed marriage, so to speak, it's not going to have a lot of value. And so I've got a certain thing that I work out with. I don't have much experience, but I make this standard when I set up sponsorship with somebody, either somebody I'm sponsoring or with my sponsor. There's three things that I want understood with my sponsor, and I've gotten it understood with the fellow who has that job today. One, my sponsor is the only person on this planet, the only one who's invited into my life unannounced. Nobody else has that permission. But he's somebody, it's his job. I've asked him to step into my live any time about anything. Absolutely no hold barred. and he's the person that I will listen to no matter what he's got to say. I won't interrupt him. Now, I might argue with him later, but I'm going to hear him first. And I won' t always do what he says, but I will hear what he said. That's what I want him to tell me. And he's the only one I've got He's the person I'll call when the chips are down I may talk to a thousand other people But when the ships are down There is no question where I'm going And so that's sort of a fix I have on a job description For a sponsor I sometimes think That we Do a disservice To the sponsor By making a too great expectation on what it ought to be. It sounds sometimes like we get to thinking that the sponsor ought to me a combination of Adolf Hitler and Sigmund Freud, you know, that they've got to be a real kind of rock'em, sock'em jump-on-you guy, and then have tremendous insight and understanding and be able to respond to any problem no matter what. And that's a little unrealistic. A sponsor to me is a fairly practical thing. It's somebody that fits that description that I trust who is somebody I can talk with about where I'm going, can share their experience with me. And so I don't put those kind of real glaring kinds of expectations on a guy. I want it to be that kind of a sound, solid, functioning relationship. when I set up sponsorship and I do this with people I sponsor as well as when I sponsor I always make it a very serious transaction I always have a private meeting scheduled meeting so that we go in usually meet for an hour, hour and a half two hours and basically what we want to do is solidify that relationship agree on what it is that we're looking for what the expectations are you know so that there is no surprise in how we do business if we're going to meet with uh with regularity or like that six o'clock in the morning cruelty that he imposes on people whatever it is we make an agreement and then that's the agreement and they become the terms under which we operate. And so I like for sponsorship to have a real kind of a sound, business-like thing. You know, what I'm dealing with is my life, and I don't want to be frivolous and casual about something that may be my lifeline at times, and I want it to be sound. I want It to be solid. I don' t want It To Be Up For Grabs. so the way I look at it is I need to keep it with that realistic expectations based somewhat on that stuff I was talking about earlier when I was trying to help start AA in our town my job as a sponsor is to help the new person that I'm working with know that there's a solution clearly know that there'sa solution and just as clearly know that I'm not it, that I am not it. And that came somewhat from watching people drop like flies when I left the town. See, I had not let them know that there was a solution. All they knew is that I was a wonderful person. And that's not enough. That's not enought. This illness is far too deadly for that kind of a little lightweight approach. And so it sounds real simple to say that, but knowing that there's a solution doesn't mean just throwing some words at them. It means having them to have enough understanding that they know how to put that in motion. Sometimes it takes a short time. Sometimes it take a long time. I'll just say one more thing generally about this thing of discontinuing sponsorship. I don't like the term fired. That's just not a good term for disrupting a spiritual relationship. It just doesn't fit. Because we're not employing somebody. We agree in good faith to try to carry out. And sometimes it just doesn'T work. I don'T commonly make it a practice to discontinue until I'm absolutely convinced that it no longer has utility. And sometimes the kind of thing that I look at in discontinuing is, well, I'll give you one example of a guy I had that, he's a wonderful fellow, he's sober 20 years. Well, he's dry 20 years And he was a guy that, he was one of the first people that I stopped for therapeutic reasons. Lack of therapy, I think, was part of it. I worked with this guy, and he's a real verbal kind of guy who really believes that he can make a living doing nothing. I mean, he just thinks he can skim the world forever. and horrendous background. Loves to do fourth and fifth steps. If you ever want to do a seminar on fourth and fifth steps, I'll be glad to send him up here and do it. That guy is absolutely fabulous and just loves to talk about his last operation. He'll beat you to death with that. And loves to do fifth steps but when it comes to sixth and seventh where you start thinking about change, it becomes a different issue and I worked with this dude for nine years and I listened to more fifth steps than I had patience to endure and never saw one ounce of any effort at recovery at trying to do anything about it he came to me one day I'd been beating on him about amends came to him one day he said man you're going to be proud of me I said thank God what happened he said I made some amends well I knew every amend he owed from all those I said for God's sake tell me what he did and so he told me it was about something he jumped on to college and so I said well tell me how it came about literally what happened two policemen armed came to his door to get the money And I said, man, that ain't even close, you know. And he aggravated that with one thing that I try not to be a terribly arbitrary guy and to set up just harsh judgments, but there's one thing that I will not sponsor, and that's somebody who jumps newcomers. I'm just not going to do it because I, honest to God, don't know of anything more cruel, excuse me, than taking a wounded newcomer and depriving them of the right to recover. He said, I just won't deal with that. And so this guy aggravated the case. I was going to stop anyway, but that made it a lot easier. And I stopped sponsoring that guy. I gave him several months notice because he's not a handsome beast. I knew he was going to have a hard time. I said, buddy, you're going to have to find you somebody. Gave him a date certain and on the date certain he still hadn't found anybody but I was out of here. Now he's 11 years later he's 20 years sober he still calls me once in a while and he tells me a lot of wonderful stuff and I pay absolutely no attention to it because none of it has any connection to reality and so I listen to it like the wind blow it and I'm cordial with him and I hang up and wait for him to call me again. And so sometimes, in a case like that, that was because I saw the lack of... You know, the guy's just not willing to do the stuff. And in a place like that I have no... I mean, I don't like doing that but it was... What I'm doing is perpetuating a myth when I continue to allow sponsorship to be used to describe a relationship. That's a myth. There is no sponsorship. And so I'm not willing to condone something where there's nothing going on. There are other times when the relationship just becomes dysfunctional, where people just won't follow the agreements and get more and more lax and slack about maintaining contact and maintaining viable dialogue. And so in a case like that, when there's no response to repeated warnings, I'll just say, you know, I think it's gone far enough. I'm not mad at you. I'll be your friend, but I'm now going to call it sponsorship because I think there is a viable dialogue that has to occur for that to have meaning. And so those kinds of things I put on their standards. Again, Don talked about this a little bit, and then we'll come back on the thing about dealing with it in the heading of that medication stuff. But that is a big issue, and it's one that is well worth talking about a little bit. But let me get Don to talk about that a little better. And don't want to work past quitting time, even though we stole 45 minutes on breaks. I've been sorting through this one of late. because I've come to dislike the word sponsor. Because it doesn't mean anything anymore, it means too much. And I had an experience that set it off and then I'll tell you what I think about sponsorship. It's part of my battle with ritual, by the way. I was at a little conference in Ohio last year. My host was a young fellow, about a year. from a sponsorship line that says call me before you go to the bathroom in the morning total taking over your life and nice enough people but that was where he came from i was 33 years sober and as we began to interact during the weekend it became clear to him that I would do something a little different. And so he asked me, because part of the ritual that this group goes through is I have a sponsor whose name is, whose name isn't, whose name and all the scalps are taken off the wall and put out there for you to look at and the implication of the way it's done if you're not doing it this way or you're doing it right get away from me. I hate to say it but that goes on every day. So he asked my do I have a sponsor and I had to honestly and say, please describe to me what you mean by that so I can answer the question. And when he was finished describing it, I said, by what you described, no, I don't. And I watched his face. It truly disturbed me because I was a living lie. You can't stay sober this long unless you do it this way. But I had. And I don' t want to ever be put in that spot again. So I started investigating, what the hell does that really mean? All I know about it is the way I was sponsored. My experience is a little different because we only had one meeting a week, and we weren't even allowed to go to that one until we'd been through the steps. We weren't fit for that meeting. They had real people come in from the outside. Until we had something to say, which goes back to where sponsorship came from. You know, it's not in this book. It's described, but it's not mentioned as a word. A sponsor in any organization is the guy who says guys who are already members, old Tom here would like to become a member. And the guys say, well, we're not too sure about him. Tell you what we'll do. If you will be responsible for him for a little while until he learns how we operate so when he shows up in the meeting, he don't screw it all up. You teach him what it is we do. And then we'll all get together and let him do it and see if he got it, and you're off the hook. That's kind of the way it is in the Elks and the Moose and the way it was here too. So that's one piece of sponsorship that I looked at as a word, one description of it. I am responsible to the new person to show them what it ist we do here. Now, I'm having difficulty these days because instead of showing them what we do, we're teaching them our lingo instead. So in three or four weeks, they've got the lingo, and when you talk to them, they sound all right, and they're dying. But they sound right. We've got their lingo. We didn't show them what at all we did. I came from a group that showed me. Let me describe sponsorship in here, and then I'll get on with it because it is described here pretty clearly. in the foreword of the first edition is described we have Alcoholics Anonymous and more than a hundred men and women who have recovered from the seemingly hopeless state of mind and body to show other alcoholics precisely how they've recovered is the main purpose of this book that describes it my job as a sponsor has been done with me they showed me precisely how they have recovered didn't lie to me it was a strange thing that I saw my life was more important to them than anything else but they didn't care if I died it's one of the first apparent conflicts in the CNA your life matters more to me than mine well I don't care if you die show me precisely what they had done Now, we were in a limited environment. They couldn't do a whole lot. There were restrictions on your time and your movement. But part of what they did do was begin immediately working with others. Immediately. As I go through this book, I see the same thing. Everything about AA is immediate. As soon as you have some information that may save her life, go tell her. You don't have to wait until you've done everything by the number. She might die between now and then. In fact, quite often, the person with three weeks of sobriety is more effective on a call than I am because they can't believe me. They can't even hear me. Besides, I talk kind of fluffy. Except on a 12-step call. Talk loud, buddy. Talk loud? Yeah, talk loud. Bill uses the word protégé in the book, and that's my understanding of the sponsorship relationship. A mentor and a protégée. A protégèe is somebody new who wants to do what this person is doing, and the mentor takes time out of their otherwise busy life to walk gently with the new person and show them what it is we do and how we do it. To befriend them. But it's a relationship of equals. From the very beginning, it's a relationship to be equals. Now taking that background, the way I sponsored today and have for years in the free world is very simple. There are instructions in here about what to do when somebody asks you if you work with them. There's some hoops to jump through First of all, let's say you've heard me and decided you want what I have. So you come to me after the meeting and say, will you be my sponsor? My response is, my home group meets on Friday morning at 6 o'clock at St. Joseph's Hospital in the Aspen room right next to the cafeteria. Why don't you meet me there and we'll talk about it. I want to know first of all if you really mean business. and if you show up at my group at 6 in the morning on Friday you mean business I don't have to question you or interrogate you if you don't we can't talk about it so I just wait now when we talk about I'm like Tom there are certain things we need to know what's going to go on here well I'm going to show you precisely how I recovered through this book which means we have to find a time and a place that we both agree on, and it has to be regular. The first lesson that I got was be regular Now you can come once a week You can come every day I don't care as long as we establish that As long as you understand what we're going to do here is go through this We're also going to go through other things But during this period of time Be quiet If you knew anything, you wouldn't be here okay I'm going to read this to you and then share with you how it is that I was brought to this and then we'll talk about it and then you'll get assignments like I did and they're not other people's assignments, they come right out of here this damn thing understands us completely, we're too dumb to even know when to pray so it tells us when and it tells us how and it tell us when not to pray when you get off your ass and go do something. It tells you what question to ask and when to ask it. They're really very clear. Left them all in the glasses. I'll screw it up. So we will do that. Now, I believe that I'm responsible for exposing you to the wholeness of a I have been influenced deeply by people that I could not put the word sponsor on that have had effect on my life so profound it changed me. Bob White was one. He was one Old West Parish There were some old timers in this operation when I got here that were giants We don't need giants anymore by the way. Any social movement that's getting started needs giants to break down the barriers but we just need leaders now but anyway I'm going to expose you at the proper time to my mentors I have them all on tape you'll get to hear their voices I love reading Chuck's book but I'd much rather listen to the talk he gave that the book came from there's something about Chuck's hee hee just get to me so I will expose you to that And at the proper time, and you don't know when it is. I do because I've been practicing this a while. One of my favorite things, because I get asked to talk locally from time to time, in the fist step one time, a fellow and I were fist stepping and I had to talk at a treatment center and he was ultra sick so it took a long time. And we went through when it was time to go and he didn't know how I operate. we fist stepped all the way out and I informed him then that he was the 10 minute speaker right in the middle of the fist step the time you got involved what better time than when you're all cranked up you're temporarily telling the truth as a sponsor I am to be not only a mentor but a guide I've been over this trail I know the difference between a snake and a stick and on this path there really are no snakes, there's only sticks But some of them have thorns in them. Example, I got a kid that's been in and out and finally got him through some inventory and a good part of the inventory, because he's young, was the way he mistreated women. And we got some very specific amends to make, but the biggest one is he's got to change how he treats women. And when we went into the inventory he had spotted a little filly that intrigued him and I said well perhaps you ought to leave that alone until we're through here and he took that direction and as soon as we finished the fist up he says can I call her now I said well if you think you can have a date with her and not hurt her yeah but you got to ask yourself can you call her and have a date and not hurt her? Called me back just before I came down here and says, I'm having difficulty. How in the world am I going to have a day if I have to worry all the time about whether I'm hurting or not? I said, well, it isn't time then, is it? I don't tell them you can't. I suggest until you're straight with the thing because if you continue to harm people you're surely going to wreck again. A change has to take place. A man doesn't mean I'm sorry. It means change. I changed what I did here, and I changed what I do from here on. I want you to meet and interact with my family. I don't know whether you're going to have a family or not, but you might as well find out what they're about. I get the psychopaths, by the way. Well, I do, because I know who they are. They're just frightening. And my children, because we communicate in my house, No, that's who's sitting on the couch. They also know they're perfectly safe because I'm there. There's no question about it. I cannot psycho anybody that comes into my house. Don't pull your bluff on me. Mainly, I absolutely adore them. I just love them like sick babies. And they respect my home. never have I had any trouble and I've had some bad people in that house never any trouble we start and again it's because of the way I was I've got a special room some of you have been in it it's a very private place and this is where we're going to do our work but first we're gonna start on the couch near the front door and the stairs that come down for a couple reasons you're not bringing your shitty attitude into my room first of all it's a spiritual place you haven't earned the right to go into my room yet sorry but that's the truth more importantly I want you to see how me and my family get ready for the day this one particular time was wonderful I've got two daughters that then were in their early teens. And if you think it's hard getting out of bed when you're alone, try to get out of bedtime and get ready when you've got two teenage girls and a wife in the house getting ready for work. Just sit down and wait. Might as well have somebody come over because I can't get in the bathroom until after 7. Anyhow, the lunatic and I are sitting there. This is one who later threatened in my own driveway to kill me. He got distressed because it's all in the truth. He didn't, obviously, but we're sitting there and my 13-year-old comes tipping down the stairs and I've raised a mouthy one. One who has attitude and writes letters to the editor and gets right in your face. And I encourage that. Her sister's a wimp, but I love her anyway. She comes tripping down the stairs and she said, excuse me with attitude. I'm reading the book. We're involved in life and death here. And it shocked me. I said, what do you want? I was surprised she would interrupt this meaningful thing going on here. She says, you know, I live here too, and you haven't introduced me to this person. We both got a lesson in human behavior, and I didn't read this. So I introduced her, and she says, okay, bye-bye. I want to expose you. If you have come to me to ask me to sponsor you, I wantto expose you to the things that made me what I am. Every now and then, one of the guys that come with me on one of these deals or to a conference, I never ask them to. If they ever ask me, I'll see to it they get to go. I try to get them to pay for their own ticket. They should be self-supporting through their own contributions. If they can't do that, I've got plenty of frequent flyer miles. They don't belong to me. They belong to my family and they're part of the family so off we go. They get their own room. I'm not sleeping with no lunatics. unless the conference is paying for it put us where you want just make sure there's two beds now that's the regimented part I believe this firmly when new people come to me they're incapable of surrendering to God they either hate him don't believe in him confused about it But surrender is the absolute bottom line requirement for moving forward. You've got to surrender the old way entirely. So I let them surrender to me, 6 o'clock at my house, make it a sacrifice, this isn't me, until the first time we meet. Then they surrender to process. And in the process, they're able then, in time, to surrender to God, and now that's when I let him go. We still continue on with my exposing, but from here on, you can't count on me. And the way that works out, because that may happen at the third step, it may not be until the fifth or sixth step. I watch for it. We have had a rigid schedule. You must be there every Tuesday at six. That's the deal. Once we finish the fifth, sixth, and seventh step, you no longer have an appointment. In fact, back at the fourth step, you no longer have an appointment. You go home and you make a list. As soon as your list is done, call me, and I will make time for you. But I'm not putting any restraints on this thing because this has to come from within, not from me. And if it takes you a long time making your list, when you call, I will remind you that you've accessed spiritual power here because everything from the third step to the seventh step is all part of one prayer. It's one spiritual activity. Don't wait too long. So that's kind of how I do that. And then once that's all done, take this inventory list, make a new list. I'm a listing person. All the people here are you old men students. Make that list. Then add anybody you can think of because if you met with them, you messed with them. That's what my sponsor told me. Then I was given an exercise that I will give you. Go back to your private place. Take this list and look at it. Close your eyes and picture each one of these people in your mind. See if you can feel a willingness in your heart to look them right in the eye and say to them, I've been wrong and I've harmed you. would you please tell me what I have to do to get the books to balance I got free locked up in a penitentiary cell doing that literally lifted from my chair and set free willingness is the demonstrable sign of the presence of God it is so powerful at the very instant I'm willing to be changed I have already been changed it's just instant then I kind of go over that list with him, my sponsor did with me. He had me, because I couldn't get out and make amends. They wouldn't let me out and they wouldn't have you in. He said well some of them we can deal with by mail and some of em you're going to have to go see. And I learned a very important thing. I get to live with what I did. Sometimes for a long period of time. And there's nothing wrong with that. I'm not guilty or ashamed about it. But I have some pain in my heart over some of the things that I did and I should have it keeps me from getting arrogant it helps me to understand I made a guy so mad the other day he said what do I get at the end of this I said compassion I said you son of a bitch you want to get something better than that no compassion but bring me your list whether you do it on cards or yellow paper or toilet paper. I don't care. Bring me who you harmed, how you harmed them, and what you think you can do to make that right. Because part of this process now that I'm free is to help the people that I harmed get free too. If I harmed you, I put you in a bad emotional state. I need to give you the opportunity to smack me down or forgive me or whatever you need to do. And all most people ever want for me to come and say, I was wrong. You've been waiting for years to hear me just say that. Then you're pretty much on your own. Get on about it. If you wish, I will show you how I do the tenth step, but so does this. Tenth and eleventh and twelfth step can overlap, particularly the tenth and eleventh. I do not spend a whole lot of time showing people how to meditate. You really don't want to try what I do today. It's different than what I did last month. it's been different all along the way i will share that with you if you wish but you're kind of on your own now as far as this program goes now you and i together will go out seeking i take one of the guys i sponsored to a prison meeting that i'm committed to third tuesday of every month we drive for two hours talk with the lunatics for an hour drive two hours back home he's getting exposed to that i take them to assemblies i talk to we have a traditions and concepts meeting at my house every wednesday night 5 30 when we're going to go through that they need to see the whole scope of the deal i've become what's known as an elder statesman in service i think i'm just a cranky overstatesman my voice is heard through the people that i sponsor the very nature of the fact that i became a trustee and did all this public stuff whether i didn't get any prestige from it but you all think i did and the people at the assembly think i'm all knowing so we got a problem when i show up in assembly there's a group of people who believe if i say it it's gospel there's another group the people who believe what I said. It's got to be bullshit. So, I found out how to be really effective is to send 10 people that I've been working with there and my voice has heard 10 times and nobody knows I said it. Not that I don't go to assemblies, but not much anymore. I'm still very active in general service, and if I sponsor you, you must know that. I will expose you to it. You may not fit in general service. You might fit in some other kind of service. I don't like Tom. Service is where the rich part of recovery comes. I know what I'm supposed to do here now today with you guys. My real responsibility, my real job is to make sure that after I'm dead and gone 50 years from now, whoever comes through that door gets the same shot I did. That means I have to stay actively involved in serving the fellowship as a whole beyond anything that I want. I just finished taking on general service. People I love dearly. Some of them really mad at me, and I don't care. This fourth edition big book has a statement in it that's so outrageous I could not sit home and not say something about it. In the foreword to the fourth edition big look is a statement that says fundamentally the only difference between an electronic meeting and a home group around the corner is on a format. How many people are going get killed by that one. So, don't worry about it. It's been taken out. Five people. That's all it took was five people to write a letter saying this is outrageous. Put this on the agenda and let's let the conference see this. I don't think they're going to like it and they didn't. Right or wrong, as a sponsor and as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, I don't care how it goes. The end result really truly doesn't matter to me. What matters is that we keep talking about things. This fellowship will survive only as long as we're all talking about things and the longer we talk, the better chance we have of surviving. If you need to vote, you haven't talked long enough. Okay. And the stuff we did in the 80s that solved all the problems are brand new problems again. We're trying to solve them all over again. That's as it should be. Each new group of people needs to re-solve the problems. We don't want solutions, we want resolutions. Constantly bring them in. Our group inventory covers that. The group I belong to had a closed meeting. I frankly think it should be an open meeting. So at every group inventory, I brought up, let's open it up, and one of the guys as sponsor said no, let keep it closed. And we engaged in the battle Because the new people who would come during that period of time weren't part of the decision. They need to be part of a decision. You become part of my family if you wish. You know my wife, you know my children. We get together in my backyard. You don't have to clean up dog crap because we don't' have a dog. But we get together and we become part of Alcoholics Anonymous in our respective occupations, homes, and affairs. This is where it really happens. Gathering in the backyard. Some of you know about our Fellowship of the Spirit conference every year. It's held up right around 10,000 feet. It starts on Thursdays. So on Wednesday night, we hold a potluck. both so you can all get together and mainly so you could stay at 5,000 feet for a while so when you get to 10,000 you're not going to get oxygen. Depletion is sick and we get the benefit. The main thing sponsorship does is for me I'm constantly addressing my own alcoholism and I'm never very far away from it. I'm explaining to you what happened to me back in 1953 and then 66 and then 67 and it's fresh to me. I challenge, every week I challenge maybe I'm not an alcoholic because that's one of those rocks that there's a worm under in everybody's head. It's wonderful because I get to go through this thing over and over and I've made a host of friends. It's an embarrassment where I go. when we take a vacation we can't tell people where we're going everybody gets hurt because they want us to come stay at their house I love you but I don't want to stay at your house that's why I bought that van I'm going to go camping except for Broussard's, I like BrousSard's got a lake out back and we go fishing in the morning at 6 catch Sock-A-Lake perch and have them for breakfast I'll stay with Bobby mentor and protege more defines it now if we can understand that's what i mean by sponsorship then we can use the word and it's that way with many things in alcoholics anonymous today the words that have no meanings because they have too many meetings i was at a meeting probably 15 years ago when it first hit me and i started my little personal thing about not becoming ritualized. A lady was sharing in a meeting and it was a good sharing. She came to the place she said, I had this particular problem, I did a quick tenth and it's over. It's gone. Moved on. I said, whoa, wait a minute, what'd she just say? She did a click tenth. What the hell is a clickenth? Now, I've been around a while. I know she meant she had done a tenth step inventory. What the hill does that mean? Does she do it the way the big book shows, the way Hazleton shows, some weird way? And if I'm a new person, what the hell is a quick tenth? And I began to try not to get into the lingo but to describe the experience. Because you had to convince me. I didn't trust anybody. I stayed here because I watched these three guys after the school that talked so good and sounded so good. I watched him on the yard, and I watched him on The Tears. And I watched them as they moved through that penitentiary. I watched unselfish courage demonstrated by my sponsor. They were messing with our school one time. And this was a shocker. This guy was cool. He was spiritual and never got upset by anything when he was doing life. And all of a sudden the administration decides they're going to mess with our study school. and he freaked out. He got mad, that's what he did. He said, I'm going to go see Wilson who was the associate warden of treatment. And he stomped down the stairs and headed for the warden's office and I know he's headed for The Hole is where he's heading. You don't go stomping into the wardens office raised in hell when you've got a number on your chest he's going to The Hole. Some period of time passed and he came back and he was happy and they quit messing with us. Somehow I understood I had just seen true courage in action. It would have been so much easier for him to just say, let it go. Then he wouldn't have to tie up Saturday and Sunday anymore. He didn't need that thing for himself. He did this for us. He became a spokesman for those who had no voice and risked going to the hole and having all his privileges taken away from us. that's the kind of courage I want that's the kind of courage that I must have because I'm going to be asked along the way to go places that are really scary like church basements and masonic halls safest place I've ever been Tom was at Harnett I was in the middle of a it's kind of a maximum minimum maximum security prison. The fences are all over the damn place. They don't want anybody out. And I'm in the center of it at night. My mother and I have been talking. My mother gets nervous because I do a lot of prison work and I had to remind her, Mom, the time to get nervous is when I was one, not now. And I was standing surrounded by the bad guys in the middle of the night and a feeling came over me that I was in the safest place I've ever been in the world. Nothing could happen to me there. So I want people to experience what I've experienced. I don't want you to have my experience, but I want to expose you to my experience. Well, that kind of covers it. As you are where you are, so I'll take you and whatever you want to do, do it. I actually have people come to me after I've shown them how to write inventory and they didn't write it that way. And I listen to them anyway. How do I care? This is the best way. They'll get back to this eventually. The big thing is they made an effort. And who the hell am I to diminish that effort? So I'll listen. I'll just have nothing else to do. I'm retired. The reason that I've been able to do what I've been able the do is because of sponsorship. When I was trustee, I was gone 50 weekends a month many times during the week. 50 weekends and months? Or 50 weekends in a year. That's what it felt like, Tom. No, I've never been so busy in my life. And at that time all of a sudden, I have no less than five people I'm taking through the big book. I'm thinking, this is an overload, God. What the hell are you doing to me? Until I realized the reason I was able to do this other stuff was because I did this every morning. I shared my experience with a new person and helped them along the way. And that's why this other job could be done. Without that, it's nothing. I get very disturbed when I hear service people say, well, I'm getting ready to rotate, so I think I'll go back to my group and make coffee. if you have to go back to your group, you're in trouble. They don't let me make coffee. I make Navy coffee. Even spoons won't stand up. You want to see the hair just spurt out of your head. Anyhow, I don't want to just wander on. This is important. What did you mean by what you just said? If you have a group back to work? If you're service and you leave your group to do service, if you let service replace your group activity you're in trouble you need to be a member of your group and then serve from there not the other way around I've seen people who let service become their recovery they're really hard to be around I've been working that way since about 10 months ago for me it depends on which long distance sponsorship this sponsor lives in Pennsylvania how do I look on that rather than one-to-one. It's very difficult, for one thing. If the piece of sponsorship is me taking you through the step work, we have to do that one-on-one, that can't be done long distance effectively. If the sponsorship relationship with one of two peers who are needing a mentor or, I mean I've gone some places, you haven't gone, you're ready to go, we can do that on the telephone. I can sponsor people when we're talking about principles on the telephone but the step work has to be done face to face for me it just doesn't work any other way the rest of you, yeah, there's no problem with that I have mentors too by the way a lot of different kinds of sponsors I've had when I came out of the penitentiary a little guy named Harry I asked him to sponsor me for one reason Harry was elegant Harry knew how to behave in one society and I'm not stupid and I wasn't raised in a hut somewhere but in addition to his program, Harry took me to plays to the symphony he took me to the Broadmoor where there's more silverware than anybody could ever use taught me how to behave in that environment gave me that really simple thing How do you know which one to use? Well, you start from here and then work your way in. Jeez, that's fun. Harry died of an overdose because Harry didn't like to use the program. But he was very good for me. He taught me some things. One of my other sponsors, he and I became such close friends within two weeks that I fired him as my sponsor. And we've been co-sponsoring each other for years. Let me mention one thing about the geographic thing. I mentioned earlier that as you get older in the program, finding somebody that fits the criteria becomes a real challenge. And the last time I needed a sponsor was when my guy developed Alzheimer's and I had a little bit of lead time. I just started drawing circles about who was in catchment areas. I hit pay dirt 3,000 miles away and I would prefer having somebody in my home group but it's a matter of what are you gonna compromise and so in those cases you know certainly there are times when I sponsor people in many parts of the country. I make it a point to avoid people in early recovery like I was talking about because it is tremendously important to have immediate access to have that accountable relationship the tight thing i wouldn't begin to take on somebody in early recovery but it's one of those things that becomes a necessity like right now my sponsor is probably going to outlive me but he may not and i already know who my next one will be if i have to now he doesn't know it nobody knows it but i know it because I don't want to be that one. It's not because I'm hanging off a cliff. It's just a part of what makes me a whole member. And so when you get to this point, you have to think that way. Otherwise, you're going to be compromising yourself and it's not compromised. Let me mention one other thing for what is worth. The thing Don just described is a wonderful, ideal way to work with somebody going through the program. For a long time, I was really frustrated with the revolving door in AA, which was just watching people come through here and not even get touched much and just going back out. And so I was realmente hunting for some ways to more effectively grab folk and work with them. I was looking for anything. And I've done taking people through steps a lot of ways, one-on-one, do it 14 weeks, you name it. And I tried it. All of them work to some extent. And then one day, in fact, Don and I, he kept telling me about something he was doing that made sense. But I'm a kind of a visual person. I said, why don't you show me what you're talking about? And we sat down, literally sat down in the corridor of a hotel and grabbed four or five other outstanding alcoholics and pulled them in. And I know you remember, he just opened the book and he said, well, here's what we do. And opened the books, read a sentence, and I had to break up the meeting because we just got going with the thing. It was that simple. and at that point that made sense to me that you could take a group of people and do what he's talking about and you could do it in a group setting and so I started he was my mentor then and so I didn't have a clue about what you did other than hotel quarter and so when I had something I wanted to discuss I'd get on the phone and say now what do you know about this and he'd tell me and we'd do it well I've been doing that for several years now I'm not a magic bullet thinker. I know better than that. But in all the years that we've been doing that, we've never had a single person who's gone through the whole experience who's drunk again. Now, I'm no longer a drinker. I'm still not a Magic Bullet guy. But I do believe that it's almost impossible to get drunk if I follow this thing the way it's laid out and practice it. So I think it's a powerful kind of a thing. One reason, two reasons I just mentioned that I really like about that. One is that I'm a pretty heavily committed guy too. I've got an awful lot of things that I've involved in, all of which are important. And so I have to fight for how to deal with the people I want to deal with and so this group approach really makes something realistic for me that otherwise wouldn't be. I just can't afford the time at this point to do the one-on-one. And in all honesty, if I had the luxury of time, I would not do it the one on one. I'd do it in a group. Because what I find is that the group magnifies the power and that you never know whose experience is going to be really meaningful. So periodically, I just finished one, lasted a year and a half, and so I just periodically do it with people I'm sponsoring and others that might want to join in the last one a year and a half we finished with 30 people and that's just incredible to me you couldn't think drunk could stand still that long much less make that kind of commitment so there are a lot of ways to do stuff and I'll always be grateful for that because they've made a tremendous difference with a lot of people uh we know where that came from where max here oh yeah yeah who was sponsored by his sponsor yeah it's all it's a small family let's spend just a yeah go ahead i'll just make a real brief comment i don't dismiss anything And that sponsorship, like Don was saying, covers a multitude of sins. And it doesn't mean, you know, they're all variations of sponsorship. Certainly the kind we've been talking about, classic sponsorship, where it's that one-on-one with Mr. Wonderful, that's the Cadillac. But in this day and time, we get an awful lot of people that almost overwhelm the resource. And so I think temporary sponsorship can serve a purpose. In our group, we do it. We make it available. What we encourage is that we do it for a set period of time, 60 days. And the function during that 60 days is to help the person get prepared to engage in sponsorship sooner the better. And at the end of 60 days, it concludes either with permanent sponsorship or movement toward that. And in the course of it, what we do is just the obvious stuff. We show them how to get to meetings, give them access to somebody they can comfortably call. So I think there's utility for we changed the words on a mic because we looked at that as an area coming out of prisons and treatment and the sponsorship relationship is almost a holy thing it's a spiritual thing it does not fit temporary so we change the word to temporary contact and the function is the same you get a contact then you get exposed to the fellowship in your area then you find a sponsor let me read a couple quick things here and then back to Tom these are descriptions of sponsored shifted will you get through it go into that medication okay we search our acquaintance for a closed mouth understanding friend I'm on page 74 but I'm skipping you know you keep up with me it is important that you be able to keep a confidence they fully understand and approve of what we're driving at and he will not try to change our plan there are some of the descriptive elements sponsorship closed mouth keep a confidence. I lost a sponsor once because I came to him in the midst of a genuine crisis, told him some things. He saved my life because after telling me about it he said that's insane. Go back and rescue your children. So I did. In absolute confidence. It's something I talk about from the podium today but at that time it was necessary that it not be. Anyway I got back to town I heard all about it what he has done has made it impossible for me to ever tell him anything that I think needs to be kept in confidence and that changes but at the moment I must be very careful not to pass on what you tell me in confidence and it may seem silly to me that you need to have that quiet but I but I don't care. I'm not going to talk about it. The medication thing is, oh God. Some people need certain kinds of medication. True manic depressive people, from my own experience in the field and knowing some of it, some of them are helped by lithium, which is something that your body produces. And if it doesn't, then you need to take it. We've got a lot of old-time members who need that. It's chemical imbalance. The doctor I learned about it from said if you need it, it works. If you don't, you get toxic within days. And that's how they find out whether you need or not. In fact, that's why doctors find out whether you're going to need it or not or whether you'll need anything or not Today's new medications need adjusted on a regular basis my only I'll put it this way my problem with people taking medication particularly for depression is that I can't work with them not that I won't but I can my experience is they can't show up even if they show up in the room they can's show up feelings are deadened that's what the stuff is all about so we don't go anywhere and I'm more than willing I have dear close friends who have to take certain kinds of medication It almost always comes back to lithium. I personally believe, and this is just my belief from watching over the years and from listening to my wife who is a 30-year nurse, Prozac is one of the most dangerous drugs any alcoholic could take, period. I've watched nothing but devastation with that. I won't say get off of it. I think we're in bad shape if we tell people to get off the medication. We've killed some people here doing that. They need it, they need it. But if you're taking it, I will tell you this. The day is going to come, if you are here, where you will need to make that decision. The one case that I love the most about it, God works nicely with me. He softens me and gives me views. A little Monica up in Minnesota took on a little 18-year-old girl as a newcomer and it wasn't very long until we discovered that this girl had 102 personalities. She had been raised in a satanic cult and fragmented. She was on some really heavy duty psychotropics and antidepressants and all kinds of stuff and we just worked. One of the things Monica did was teach her how to have good conscience. I'm serious, it helped. The psychiatrist was trying to get her integrated and Monica just told her how to do it. Let everybody talk. This is so real that one of the 14-year-olds who comes out burns himself with cigarettes when he's out. When he goes back in, the burn goes away. This is some real stuff. Anyway, this girl came to God is either everything or nothing. In a long process it took. Eight of the personalities are alcoholic, by the way. So far. Came to God as everything or Nothing. Did her own praying, her own inner searching. Went to her psychiatrist and said, I'm through. No more psychiatry. No more medication. Scared all of us because no withdrawal either. She functions and is a very fine member of her community today. She's in her 20s. Does really well. Is fully, the personality shifts are still there, but she's not distressed by them anymore. She knows who she is and she knows who each of them are, and slowly she's getting better and better and bigger. But she got off her medication because it came from inside. Whatever that process was, I don't know, but it worked. The scariest time of all was when one of the personalities didn't know for sure whether they were alcoholic and wanted to take the test. We know she's alcoholic and we know seven of the others are too. So what are you going to do there? Okay. She had group conscience. All eight of the alcoholics said, we understand. We're going away while you take the test. It wouldn't be good for us if you take it. And I don't understand any of this. I'm just reporting to you what happened. This particular personality did some controlled drinking and it worked just fine. And when it was all over, the rest of them came home. and I don't know how that works but all I can tell you is regarding the medication she survived it we had a kid on methadone one time 100 milligram methadrone this is an 8 or 10 week withdrawal if you're lucky he made the same choice this is all or nothing I'll take whatever heat there is we had a friend out on a farm a dog farm out in the country. We figured that's a good place because when he screams and yells, the dogs won't care. Three days of mild discomfort is all we had. And it was over. Had another kid on the same dosage that took 10 years. Could not get past that fifth and sixth day. Couldn't have. So I'm watching this and I want to be careful not to diagnose, but I'm very, very suspicious. I worked with a psychiatrist, and he said the main problem that he sees, and he's an alcoholic. Any competent psychiatrist dealing with alcoholics in their first six months of sobriety would have to necessarily label them as manic-depressive. In our meetings, we just call it mood swings. And if they're competent, that's all they'd have to do. He said the problem is we as psychiatrists immediately begin to throw drugs at them so they don't get to finish it up. So he's working hard now in the field to say let's let this stretch a little bit before we put him on medication. They may need it later. Some people do. But let's just don't automatically medicate him. The ones I have trouble with are the ones who are self-medicating. I don't feel good, so I'm going to find a doctor and he'll tell me what I want to hear and start taking these things. And the only trouble I have with that is I can't work with them. They don't show up. That's my own experience with it, Tom. We've dealt with a lot of it. We're finding a new thing you might want to watch. We found in corrections particularly a large increase of amphetamine abusers. And in tracking their histories back, we found that they were once children on Ritalin. And then it took them off of Ritaline and now these kids are self-medicated because Ritalin is an upper. It takes hyperactive kids and slows them down. These guys don't get screamy, goofy on amphetamines. It calms them down, watch for them. You're going to run into them. Let me just mention a couple of things that, well, one, if you really want to get hold of some information that I think is sound and solid from the professional field but fits an AA perspective. There's a guy by the name of Stanley Gitlow, G-I-T-L-O-W, and he's an internist from New York, and Ross probably, I don't know if he has some tapes by him. He has a number of tapes that are out. Stanley Gitlaw, do you have anything by him? If you know how to get in touch with Dicoby, he can tell you how to get in contact with Dikoby. They've got Gitlo tapes. And this guy does as fine a job as anybody I've ever seen of discerning that thing Don was talking about about the sort of false diagnosis stuff. One thing he says in his talk about that is that he will not make a secondary diagnosis like it's so common now when somebody goes and treatment, they get a barrel full of diagnoses when they walk in. He says he wouldn't even consider a second diagnosis until two years of sobriety because the false effects of what's happening are so misleading that you get these diagnoses that a guy has to live with for a long time. So Gitlo is a really good source if you want some outside objective information, best I've seen from an AA standpoint. The other thing that to me is awfully important is for us to remember who we are. And there is a lot of tricky ground in this whole business of dealing with folks with medication. And just as Don said, it can be tremendously dangerous to start yanking around something in an area where it may be life-threatening to a person. I think it's awfully important to remember Who We Are. There are two things that I would point out that are kind of important for me to think about. When I'm working with somebody, I want to know from my layman standpoint about the level of disability. If I'mworking with somebody what I wantto see is whether they can actually trackwhat we're doing. And if they can't track what we'redoing, what's the point? and if you were there last night at the meeting and I told that kind of wild story very true story about the guy who came in and was so wild and nervous and I put him to painting a painting wall because if I had tried to talk with that guy or sit him down and get into any kind of stuff what a waste of time so I started with him where he was and let him work out his sort of wild and crazy gyrations. And then he settled in and became a solid AA member. Twenty-five years later, the guy's still sober. So it doesn't mean that he was a hopeless case just because he came in zonked out of his mind. Sort of helping him work through that thing, get rid of that, and then he could go to work. And I think that's kind of important to keep in mind. If somebody is clearly out to lunch, I need to wait until there's somebody home before I start beating on the door. That's just plain old common sense. And the other thing is how to deal with it. What I do with my guys that I'm working with, when I know that they've got a prescribed medication, I set up a deal with them to negotiate with their doc about how to come off of it if they can. Some people can't. But if they can, that's between the patient and the doc. And if I start messing around in it, what I'll do is mess it up big time. And it's an extremely, extremely dangerous ground. One reason I think that's such an important issue, there are places, like he's talking about, we get around a little bit, and there areplaces in this country where there's a kind of local ethic in place that if somebody's on medication, the sponsor tells them that they have to get a new sobriety date. Well, that may not be mandating what to do about the thing, but think what pressure that puts on somebody. If you've got somebody that's hanging on by an eyelash and you give them something like that, that's a dangerous place to be. I think there's some real, real reason for concern, some real reason for being realistic about who we are. We're fellow alcoholics and what we can help somebody do better than anybody in the world is to find recovery when they're in shape to be able to engage in the process and sometimes we have to step back and let them get through with whatever critical care they're undergoing before we can really start working with them doesn't mean that we can't do the best we can with them but we just don't need to start trying to get down to some nitty gritty work and doing four steps and all that. You know, you've got to wait a while for that. So it is a tremendously, tremendously important area that can, I have personally, didn't observe the suicide, but I have persönlich been associated with cases where this kind of stuff got out of hand and there were actual suicides because of some kind of a sloppy intrusion in something where we had no business. so it's not nickel and dime stuff it's about people's lives and I think we have to take it very seriously sometimes all we can do for long periods of time Chuck, just love them and accept them I'm going to set a standard one last story about medication last October I had some surgery and I know for a fact that when you go into the hospital you're at the mercy of well-meaning doctors I didn't pray to be protected because I know I am protected went in, the surgery went fine it was pretty weird I had a spinal block and I was awake and then I was asleep and then when I was away and I went to sleep with my legs like this and I'm back in recovery and my legs are like this I know they're there because I can see them but in my head they're like this and the doc says that's because the last time you were in touch with them And that's where they were. Until you feel them again, that's where they're going to stay. Went home. It was so successful. I went on home. 2.30 in the morning, they had to rush me back. I'm in bad shape. I started clotting and bleeding. We're back in the ER. And they're doing extraordinary procedures. And all of a sudden, my head went, I said what did you do she said well I just gave you a shot of morphine so I threw up that's appropriate they go back to extraordinary procedures and about 20 minutes later I said did you just give me another shot of morphine she said yes I said well you can stop it isn't going to do any good all it's doing is I'm not a drug addict it's not going to have any effect quit the nurse is apologizing the one I remember most they were all lovely people I learned about kindness the one who was hurting me the worst saying sweetie I'm sorry I'm torturing you I want her to say sweetie shit call me sweetie what I remember the most the thing that did me the most good was this people are in crisis and people who are taking