Why Your Plan for Living Sucks – Sandy B.

Well, good morning everybody and welcome to the Saturday Morning Live group of Alcoholics Anonymous. My name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing this morning? We'd like to start off by wishing everybody a Happy New Year and I am sure that if you canvassed the Washington area of large groups of people that this audience has fewer hangovers per 100 people than most audiences. So we're getting off to a good start. Those of you with a hangover, better check with your sponsor. If you're new to AA, why, we want to extend a very special welcome here. We have this meeting every week and we hope you'll come back. and this is an absolutely wonderful fellowship and everybody in here really wants to get to know you. They know exactly how you feel if you're just starting in AA. All those feelings about being frightened and angry and I don't want to be here and this doesn't work and I'm not an alcoholic, whatever all those feelings that are inside if you can just put them off to the side and actually come to these meetings and let the people that you meet help you you're going to find a whole new way of life that you never even dreamed of. This could be the best year you've ever had, bar none. So please, if you're new, stick around. It's customary to start our meetings with our preamble, Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership. We're self-supporting for our own contributions. AEA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution. Does not wish to engage in any controversy. Neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. And for those of you that are new, you'll hear this read at just about every meeting you go to. And it's a wonderful little entrance to AA because it's just week after day after month. It'll serve as a reminder of exactly what we're doing here this morning and about 250 other AA meetings every day in the Washington, D.C. area. So there's a lot of people doing what we'RE doing here THIS morning. And as we say, it won't take you too long to figure out what's going on. what happens is we're able to do something as a group that none of us would be able to do on our own. Somehow that's the miracle of AA that you take a bunch of people who were out there trying to survive as alcoholics on their own and fail totally we put them all together in one room and we get success and that's what happens in AA somehow we have the power to help each other in the group stay sober And when you become part of a group and the group succeeds, then you succeed right along with it. And it's one of the great miracles of this fellowship. Now we've got a couple of announcements to get out of the way. Charlie, you've got the first one about this. Thanks, Charlie. If you haven't been here before, why let me welcome you and point out that this meeting is a little bit different than most of our AA meetings in that it's run in a classroom setting. We have four or five of these in the Washington, D.C. area. where somebody in AA who's got five or ten years will come and you know ahead of time that they're going to talk the whole time on the steps. And I think all the other groups go through the steps three at a time each week and finish all 12 in a month. We did that for about eight years, and then for variety we shifted over to our present system of one step every week. New Year's Day, coincidentally, we're on step one, so we're right at the very beginning of this whole program. and on Saturday morning we go through them one at a time so it takes 12 weeks to get through the 12 steps then we have one week on our traditions which are very, very important and then two weeks on the history of AA and then we start all over again. So today is fun just getting started into this thing if there's anybody new to AA maybe you'll find this particularly useful and our first step which we talk about in our program simply says that we admitted that we're powerless over alcohol and our lives became unmanageable. And this is the doorway in to Alcoholics Anonymous, is through that first step. But before I get to that first steps, let me just make some general observations about AA and our steps to sort of start this thing out. Alcoholics Anonymous is now in probably 120 countries with 60,000 to 70,000 AA groups and 2 million miracles of sobriety where hopeless alcoholics are now living very happy and productive lives. And so the reason for mentioning all this is that it works. It's not a theory. When you look at these 12 steps, you don't look at them and go, God, I wonder if this would be any good. You know what I mean? Which is how a lot of us read this stuff. Well, I don't know. That doesn't seem to apply to me. The point is, this has been working for a number of years. AA was started in 1935 with just two people, and we talked about that in our history. And now, in this relatively short period of time, there's hardly a town in this country that you will go to that there is an AA group. And around here, there's meetings morning, noon, night, midnight meetings, men's meetings, women's meetings. You name it. There's meetings just everywhere that you go. And society has pretty well accepted AA and it's just a remarkable phenomenon. And so we have the meetings and we have sponsors and wehave the literature and wehave conventions and wehaveretreats. We have all kinds of activities. But let me tell you something. The heart of Alcoholics Anonymous are the 12 steps. That's the deal. All the rest of it is just the atmosphere, the AA world that we're in that pushes us back to the 12th step. If there's anything that happens in sobriety, you will find if you've been around a while, is that we just go to meetings to keep reminding each other what the answer is. because our own brains are out there during the week making up a new answer, which is how we used to be. And we found the world was too intimidating and I better move to California. I better leave my family and go get a new one. I better quit this job. I better punch this top in the nose and I'm out of here. Those were all the old answers that we come up with and our brains still think that way sometimes. And so we come here to constantly remind each other, no, this is the answer. In spite of what you think, this Is what the answer is. And the answer Is these 12 steps. And so when we think about them, if you're new, what do we mean when we say these 12 Steps? Well, I like to think about Them as a game plan for living. That's what it Is. If you just joined some team, they would show you the game plan. This is how it works. And that's what these 12 steps are. And the main thing that happens when you try the 12 steps, it's like jumping ahead 15 miles all on the first step. The biggest thing that happened when you tried the 12 Steps is you stopped doing it your way. And that causes an immediate reversal of direction for most of us and all kinds of wonderful things to happen because think about it. Most of us don't want to change. We come in here and we have our own plan, right? No, this is me. This is the real me and this is how I live and this Is my style. This is how i operate. And you put it together so it's yours. And our pride doesn't want us to let go of our game plan. When we come to AA no one goes through the theory of your game plan but they will be very abrupt about a few things. They'll look at you and they'll say, You know, as I look at you, I draw the conclusion that your plan for living sucks. That's just sort of my inference as I Look At You. Because let's face it, when you arrive here you're not on a roll. There aren't too many people who come into AA on a role, you know what I mean? like, wow, my life is so good, I think I'll add AA to it. Put on my resume, you know, and show that I'm a humanitarian. People come in here when their ass is on fire. And so you come in there, you're wearing a wristband, family won't talk to you, car won't run, clothes don't fit, you have no friends, you can't stand your job, you're thinking of committing suicide or murder or both. and you want people to follow you. You know what I'm saying? You want to hear my ideas about how to live? No, I don't want to heard your ideas. Well, I want to here your ideas so I could end up like you. So what I am saying is AA is very result oriented. We don't discuss theory. We simply say, see these 12 steps? There's no theory to discuss here. We're just going to tell you how they work and show you how to do them. We're not going to discuss the logic behind them or prove them in any fashion. We're simply going to do this. We're going to say, now your plan for living has produced you. So we've got to abandon that plan. Okay, that's out. We've gotto get rid of that. Right? Wouldn't you agree with that? and then you've got to look in the mirror a couple more times and go, okay. Now, what we're going to do is we're gonna take you to AA meetings all over the place and at AA meetings we're gunna have drunks stand up and they're guna talk and some of them are guna be tall and some are gunan be short they're guan be old they're guna be men they're gumana be black they're gimana be white they're gamana be oriental they're gymana be hispanic and theyre guna get up and talk and you're gunana get to look at the results of the 12 steps and then we're guana ask you to just do one thing Go look in the mirror, look at the results of your plan, and then look at what you see here and make a decision. Which do you want? And that's what happens. And we have that in our chapter 5. If you want what we have, what we Have is what you See at the Meeting. You see people with happy sobriety who seem confident, who are looking forward to every day, who talk in a way that is appealing to you, who has a sense of humor about life and you just go, I like that. We don't get up here and go, you know, I'm a big shot. I have this job and I have to screw that. Big shots with jobs commit suicide and they're alcoholics. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking abut how people feel on the inside. There's no resumes getting into AA. As a matter of fact, if you're new to AA, you're going to find we brag in the other direction. Before you come to AA you talk about, well, I went to school here and I am this and I got money in the bank and I'm very important. You come in here and it's like you were arrested 12 times, I was arrested 13 times. And my drinking took me way down, way further than your drinking took you. So, in here you find people exaggerating in the other direction. It's the strangest thing you've ever seen. Oh, I'm much worse than you. because we notice that discussion meeting the guy says, well I've been arrested 12 times everybody listens it sounds like one of those stockbrokers you know well my broker is Charlie B and Charlie B says oh, it's just the New Year's we're going to settle down next week I promise so what we're saying is Because we know it's very difficult to let go of your control of your life. And we're not going to try to analyze it. We're just trying to very humorously go directly to the point that it's stupid to continue the plan you've been using because you are the result of it. And if you're so happy, write a book. I mean, when we come here, we're miserable. And yet we cling to these old ideas. And so this plan, and it's a spiritual plan. It's not an intellectual plan, so you've got to get used to some changes here. And you'll find that there's a lot of paradoxes in a spiritual plane. It is things don't look the way they really are. You take certain actions and it doesn't look like they would do anything. It doesn't work like it should work. When you study, and you will in spite of yourself, You will study the 12 steps. You will come up to them, if you're new, skeptically. Well, now what is this? Now they've convinced me I'm an alcoholic and I ought to stick around. Maybe I will do this. And then your intellect will take over and you'll go, Okay, I'm going to admit I'm powerless. I'm gonna come to believe in a higher power. Yawn. I'm Gonna Make Amends To People. I'm Going To Do This. And I'm Gone To Do That. And you're going to go through all the 12 Steps. And you are going to conclude that it's not going to really do much of anything. because that's what your brain is going to tell you. Your brain is gonna tell you, disregard the information you have by looking at all those happy people in AA. Forget that. You're smarter than that. You can read this and it just isn't gonna work for you. That's what our brain will tell us because it doesn't look like it should work. I'm gonna tell ya that ahead of time so that you don't get faked out. AA doesn't looks like it could work. It doesn't looked like it would work. You explain AA to the social scientists of the country and they still are very skeptical about it because it doesn't look like it should work. You take a bunch of drunks, you stick them in a basement from 8.30 to 9.30, they talk about resentments, hold hands, say the Lord's Prayer and go home and it works? That's it? That's the whole deal? Uh-huh. Except we smoke a lot too and drink a lot of coffee. that's what happens there and it works yes it does work so it doesn't look like it works because it's a spiritual solution drinking didn't look like it should work did you ever try and analyze drinking somebody come out suppose you were 16 years old you're afraid to go out on the dance floor and someone said to you Fred come over here see this glass chug a nugget you will know how to dance now if you were sort of the doubting teenager you would go what i drink that and i will know how to dance what the hell you smell it it smells like motor oil you know what i mean it's some kind of rot gut whiskey and you say it doesn't make sense i drink dat i know how to danc no prove to me ahead of time that if i drink tat i'll know how ta danc how could you do dat you couldn't this guy could be 70 years old and never have a drink and still claiming that if he drank it nothing would happen because it's one of these things you can't understand you have to experience and the same thing with this program and these steps they won't make sense until after you do them and then you'll go whoa now I see now it is revealed to me what happens just like when you poured that whiskey down and you got like Steve Martin those happy feet Woo! And you were out there doing the dances people never saw before. But it came to you. In other words, something happened. This alcohol contained the power when it got inside of you to literally transform you and the way you looked at things. And that's why we drank. Alcohol had a very definite parallel to a spiritual program. It was certainly not an intellectual way of life. alcohol alcohol was a power and we relied on it to change us so that the world looked good the world actually stayed the same when we drank world didn't change but when the way we looked at the world changed and we liked it it's like it changed the world into technicolor and so drinking was my game plan for living and it was for most of us alcoholics what was your plan for living. It wasn't a very complicated one if you're a typical alcoholic. Your plan for living was step one, get a drink. Right? The problem occurs. You're trying to make a decision. You are tired. You need energy. Whatever it is, what was step 1 in your plan for living? Go get a dream and then more will be revealed. You remember that? You didn't really see the whole thing you just knew if you did certain things you would come up with the answer and you would know how to function in life perfectly and so that was alcohol was a very sort of a chemically spiritual path because it just did the same sort of thing that the program does only much quicker and sort of an instant conversion you just got three drinks down and you became serene. It was a marvelous transformation. And it all takes place in the privacy of your own body and mind. And nobody sees it coming. They see you all uptight and then 15 minutes later they say, Hi! You're buying everybody a drink and you don't have any money. And you have a day at a time philosophy. Each one can be married. Tomorrow we could be dead. Who needs to rent money? It's not due for a week. I may be dead at the end of the month and I won't owe the rent you know it's that wonderful freedom to be stupid so anyway there's a marvelous parallel between that so all of this requires no intellect that's the point if you can check your brain at the door when you're beginning this program and simply follow it like you did when you went to kindergarten You know, you just become like a little child. Because what you're going to be done if you're new, you're just going to being led out of the darkness by the people who are coming before you. And it's just that's how it works. The longer people have been in AA, the closer they're getting to this wonderful answer and they're pulling their pigeons and they'll pull in the next crowd and we're all just going. And so when you're knew, you just stick your hand out and you get a sponsor, you get home group and just allow them to lead you right along. Now, if you did that, you'd have the most wonderful sobriety you can imagine. The problem is our brain and our ego, me being led, that doesn't look good. I've got to start interjecting my own thinking into this thing. Besides, at discussion meetings they want to hear what I have to say because they call on me and I certainly want to look good when it comes around to my turn. So we're always trying to come up with something intelligent to say at meetings so that people will like us. Well, they already love you. We don't have to do that. You just have to share from your heart how you're feeling that day. You don't need to come out with the answer to the universe. And so the program is a very simple thing, but I'll guarantee you, you will complicate it. You will complate it by resisting. That's all that will happen. You will resist every damn step along the way. And Bill writes about this in our literature. But the first step is the one that we cannot compromise on. The rest of them are things that we work towards, and they are perfect goals that we're trying to achieve. But the third step, we can't screw up on. We cannot fail to do it 100%. and that's what we're going to emphasize for the next 10 or 15 minutes, is what does this mean in this first step? When it says we admitted we're powerless over alcohol and that our lives have become unmanageable. It's basically saying my game plan for living has to be thrown out the window. I am going to do a lot of changing here. And you know what you have to change? And this is almost insurmountable when you first come to AA. You have to change your mind. This is, you know, like an alcoholic changing his or her mind is like the Queen Elizabeth turning around in the Potomac. You know what I'm talking about? It's like 15 million tugboats are pushing on this end and that end. And finally the alcoholic goes, okay, I'm an alcoholic. You remember the decision that you weren't an alcoholic? No, not an alcoholic, the denial and all of that went on for years and then finally whatever it was bye, bye so I am an alcoholic and have been for 31 years and that's an amazing transformation yesterday you're not an alcoholic and today you've been one for 31 years just think about the mental turnaround on that particular one right there and well the rest of sobriety is going to consist of hundreds more of changing our mind. And in the beginning, most of us want to call a press conference. Hi, I'd like to announce to the world I'm about to change my mind. I've never done this before and I'll probably never do it again so I thought I'd call everyone together. We hold on to our old ideas. You know why? Because you put them together. You're the author of all those old ideas even though they suck, you hold on through them. I know they're terrible, but I thought them up. It's that wonderful ego that if you're in jail, you know that song, If I Was Still Drinking, that would be my theme song. I did it my way. I know I'm in deep shit, but I got here. I mean, there's some value there, right? And it's almost like they're going to write a folk song about me. The ultimate loser. And everybody will go, What a guy! What a man! What a good guy! You know, look at that. He's in jail, and he's puking, and he's dying, and He refuses to ask for help. Boy, He's hanging right in there pukin', and oh, He just went down the toilet. Let's write a song about Him. And I sort of have this, you know, as you're going down the toilet, you sort of imagine everybody just going what a guy! Wow! What a guy!! And they're not. They're going what an asshole! That's what they're saying. But we don't see it that way. We just sort of glorify, wow, I'm hanging in here with these stupid ideas when a Weak guy would have caved in and followed some good advice a long time ago and straightened his whole life out. Oh, no, not us. Not our arrogant pride. No, no. I'm not straightening out and asking for help and, you know, chickening out. I'm either going to do it myself or fail. And, of course, if you're up against alcohol, you're going to fail because it's the power greater than all of us that makes us alcoholic. So it's this marvelous thing of either go down the tubes or ask for help, and you're stuck there. How far down the tube is down the two? So the first step is saying we're going to have to give up totally, totally surrender. So what do we mean when we say we're powerless over alcohol? This is a very important thing, and I always like to probably emphasize it at every meeting, but especially here today where I know we have lots of new people. most people think when we say what do you mean when you're powerless over alcohol this is what most people will say when they're new they'll say oh that means that whenever you drink you get all screwed up that when you walk up and you take alcohol and you pour it in all kinds of bad things happen you never know what's going to happen and that's what being powerless over alcoholic once you pour alcohol into your system It's Russian roulette. That's what it means. And we say, no, that's not what it means. That that, what I just described, is not a very big problem. What I just prescribed is not a very Big Problem. If your only problem, now listen to this closely, if your only problem is, whenever you drink, you get all screwed up, then you don't have a very big problem because you are exactly the same as someone who has discovered their body is all getting covered with rashes and they lose their breath and they don't know what it is and they go to the doctor and he says, oh I've done some tests and you are allergic to lobsters. And so whenever you're out eating seafood if you eat lobster you're going to have this happen to So now we know exactly what this person's problem is. Whenever they eat lobsters, they get all screwed up. They don't need to go to meetings with other lobster eaters and say to one another, how did you not eat lobster at that seafood place last night? Oh, it was awful. They brought some claws around and waved them in front of my face and I carry these claw crackers around in my pocket just in case and I got a bib ready if there's none of that you just find out that you're allergic to this kind of seafood and all by yourself for the rest of your life you just don't eat it people go want some lobster no that's the end of the problem so do you see the difference between that and the drinking problem if we said hey we found out what your problem is it's alcohol just don't drink anymore are you as happy as the person who was told don't eat lobster anymore not quite not quite because there's really a much bigger problem isn't there you know what happens if you don't think if you drink alcohol for the rest of your life you're going to be sober for the resto of your lives all the time 24 hours a day 365 days a year you will be sober remember that I forget that comedian used to drink a lot and he said when I get out of bed in the morning when the guy who doesn't drink and I get off and I don't get out of bed in the morning that's as good as he's going to feel all day long you know what I mean and that's how I thought about being sober when somebody said you're going to be sober all the time, I suddenly blurted out, well, wait a minute. That's my problem. Every time I'm sober, I don't like it. We really ought to call this sober anonymous. Why do you think I went into a bar? A bartender, come over here a minute, you're not going believe this. I'm sober again. Have you got something that could fix this horrible situation that I'm in? Yes, have three of these. You will not be sober after. Thank you. One, two, three. Ah, there I am. Thank God. Relief from sobriety one more time. So we had a different problems. Us alcoholics have a problem that alcohol fixes. Everybody focuses in on the problems that alcohol cause, and that doesn't help you understand alcoholism at all. I mean, if you could get non-alcoholics to put a funnel in their mouth, hold them still long enough, and pour enough of that stuff in there, they would have a lot of the problems that we have. they would throw up a lot and they would get liver damage and they could have high blood pressure they would have a lot of things that we associate with alcoholics but it wouldn't help us understand alcoholism at all so when we say that we're powerless over alcohol what we really mean is yes there's some bad things that happen whenever we drink but the real problem is even after Remember, alcohol, its damage, the illness, everything is explained to you in excruciating detail about you personally. You still go out and drink. That's the problem. There is no way that you on your own can avoid taking the first drink which sets up all the rest of the problem this is the real problem it occurs when we're sober and our brain is working 100% and we walk in we may not do it exactly this way but we walk into a bar and we say I'm an alcoholic Mr. Bartender if I drink again I'm going to lose my family I'll probably be in jail again and the doctor says a lot more health problems are going to happen to me can I have a beer I'm gonna get arrested again probably have to go through make that two beers and go through DWI thank you and it's like we understand the problem but we're going to do it anyway we're gonna do it anyway it is insanity what that is involved there that's what powerlessness over alcohol is it is a situation where we have no defense against the first drink we may last a month we may lasts a year but there's going to come a situation where we decide to take that drink and it'll start the whole rat race all over again and if you haven't had it in your own life you can talk to the people in here who've gone out and flipped and slide and let them explain to you what it's like after some little period of sobriety to go pick up a drink, just one and then BAM! It's off to the races and the beating and all of that is just horrible and this progression that alcohol takes us on this downward slide is devastating. If you think you've had trouble, if you've just gotten here and you think you've got a problem or you think you've had trouble from drinking, that's just the beginning if you don't stick around here. What's left is just five times worse. It just gets worse and worse and there is no way that you can learn anything that will help you not take a drink. If there's anything you pick up here this morning is this is a spiritual program where we don't learn anything. We surrender into it. We say, I am powerless. When you say you're powerless, you shut off your intellect because your intellect keeps wanting to figure out your alcoholism. Even as I'm talking right now, part of your brain is saying, yes, but maybe I can figure it out. Maybe up in Canada they will develop some new powder that alcoholic rats are taking and they seem to be improving and you find yourself in a health food store getting some powdered carrots may be because your brain doesn't want to accept that there isn't some way you can drink again. It just doesn't wanna do that. So we have to totally surrender and get involved in this program so that our brain doesn'T keep taking over. And that's what surrender is in this first step, admitting that we're powerless over alcohol and that our lives became totally unmanageable as a result, that we really weren't in charge. A lot of people are reluctant to turn their lives over to AA, to their sponsor, to their higher power, whatever we talk about in the spiritual program and you're going to find that that's our second paradox that if you want to be totally independent the way you do it is to become totally dependent on a higher power. Then you can be independent because we may think that you are free. You may think you're independent but you have no control over your life at all as an alcoholic or as an immature, sober alcoholic because your emotions are totally in charge of you. You get up in the morning and you say, well, I think I'll go out on a job interview because you need a job and fear says don't leave the house so you don't leave the home. See what I'm saying? And something else, you get an idea, you're free now, Go do anything you want. You're free. You're not drinking. And you have the idea and then some other emotion, maybe jealousy. No, don't go make the amends. Don't be nice to her. Don't do this. And so your emotions are just jerking you all over the place. And what the program, by becoming dependent on the program and a higher power, you are given the power to put all those emotions in place so that you are now free to make your own decisions at last. And so, that's the second paradox. The first one that we're talking about is in the first step. How do you beat alcohol? How doyou beat it? And here's the paradox. You beat it by surrendering. You see, it's just the opposite. How doyou win anything? By giving up. That's exactly what happens here. It's like a person that's drowning sometimes, they're struggling so hard, the lifeguard has to knock them out in order to save them, in order for them to be able to survive. In order to live, in order of saving their lives, and in order or to save an alcoholic's life, they have to totally give up. They must abandon the old way of living and stop struggling against this new plan or you won't make it. And that's why we have sponsors and meetings to just keep going, wrong! I mean, I can't remember my sponsor how many times he'd just come right up in my face and just go, wrong! Wrong again! And I didn't want to hear that. But all I knew was my old way of living. So when they'd say, well, what do you think about that? I think we ought to punch them. Wrong! Wrong! And so that's what happens in here is that we get people who are willing and what we basically do if you're new and we're at the end of time we'll stop in a couple minutes what we basically do whether we realize it or not we give other people in AA permission to interfere in our lives to come over and talk to us at a level that you don't normally do in other words I walk into a meeting and if I'm not doing too well people walk over and go what's the matter? you know what I mean and I go nothing don't tell me nothing what's to matter? they have my permission to go beyond that normal social thing where you don't cross that line and go right in there and go, what is it? What is it force it out of me and then we help and then they get me back on the path. And so we do that to each other and we make sure we don't see somebody for a while we call them up. Normally you wouldn't do that. You say, well you can't stick your nose in their business. We've got to stick our nose in each other's business. I mean that's what we do to each other when we come here is give everybody has permission and stick their nose in my business, see me not looking good, come up and ask me, what's going on? Because that is concern. And so this is why this succeeds in here. It's because of that. And that's all part of the surrender. So if you're new, think about this step and really work on it. You must take this 100%. If there's any must in the program, I think it's around this first step. You just have to abandon any thoughts that there's some way that you can manage being an alcoholic and not surrender into this spiritual path because I'm sure it doesn't take people long. They look ahead and all of a sudden step two and three and four, eleven and so on down you start seeing God and you go well I don't want anything with this God or higher power stuff so I'm not out of here I'm going to do this seriously well let's save that for when we get to those steps But we understand that resistance. So if you're new, start the new year out by just picking up a handkerchief. You know what I mean? And just go, this is it. I totally give up. But this is what you're in charge of. You don't give up everything. This is your job. Totally give up, just follow what the damn sponsors in the meeting tell you to do. Go to this meeting, go to that, yeah, yeah. you and then your job is evaluate the results compare the results of this new stupid plan which you know can't work with the way your life was going that'll be your job over the rest of your sobriety and we do that at meetings where we stand up and we tell our story and we just go let me give you an evaluation of what it's been like to follow this stupid plan for 29 years fantastic you see what I'm saying and you hear our evaluation of this plan so if you're new give it up totally give it up and then report to us how well it's going we got a great way to wrap this thing up with the Lord's prayer for anybody who would care to join in hey Pasha heart in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen. Keep coming back. It works if you work it. This is the end.