Saturday morning at the Primary Purpose Weekend in Camp Hill, PA

Peter's gonna talk first this morning. I just wanted to give you kind of rundown how we're gonna do this. For everybody that complimented me on my shirt today, thank you very much. I had I had one of the female patients at work. I wore it to work one day, and then one of the female patients just, you know, she's coming out of detox.

She said, you must be very secure in your sexuality to wear that shirt. Knucklehead. She ain't gonna make it either. What we're gonna do we we kinda got it divided up into, like, 3 little sections. We wanna talk about primary purpose stuff, and we'll let Myers talk this morning and give give a little pitch on that.

And then we'll take a little break and smoke, drink coffee, and come back. We could be short on the breaks and just go out and do what we gotta do and come back, and then Peter and I will jump in there and we'll flesh it out a little bit and give some comments on it. And then we wanna open it up for some questions maybe from you guys if if you wanna talk about kind of what we talked about. And then, a primary purpose specifically this morning and then right after lunch, I'm gonna I'm gonna do a little talk on, kinda working with others and meeting formats and some stuff that we could do to help get you guys, heading in a different direction so that you're not what we don't wanna do this weekend is get you guys all lathered up thinking that you're gonna go out and do battle with Alcoholics Anonymous because that's not what we don't wanna do that. We're a part of Alcoholics Anonymous, and we wanna there's some changes I think we need to make, but we don't wanna, we have enough trouble out there battling alcoholism and drug addiction out there, you know, in our in our fellowships.

We don't wanna we're not here to fight anybody. And so we I wanna talk a little bit about that, and then, same story. We'll take a little break, and then the guys will come back and flesh it out a little bit, talk about that topic, and then we'll open up for some questions. And then we'll do, when when we come back for the 3rd and last little section, we'll, Peter can talk about, we're doing some sponsorship stuff, and, we'll get a chance to do that and get you guys to to to talk ask some questions if you want to. I've got some handouts up here, and I I bought a bag of Issue Man pins and Issue Woman pins and, some little primary purpose pins.

And you guys are welcome to those. If if I know you, if you're a buddy of mine and you've got in my email, I've got cards up here, and if you'd like some of those, I'll send you some. So don't come up here and take a handful of those pins. I mean, I it's like, don't be greedy is what I'm trying to say. If you want a couple, take them.

If the handouts I didn't I didn't wanna haul a 150 handouts of each. I've got a bunch of them laid out up here. If you're with a group, y'all might decide who wants to snag them, and then y'all can get get a section of them and make copies and give them out to whoever you want to. You know, go into your meetings and drop them quietly and leave. That's always good.

Don't let anybody see you passing it out, because you'll be some of it's a little a little eracy, but, y'all are more than welcome to this stuff and, and glad that we could, could bring it. So I'll, I'll give you whoever the hell is gonna talk. I don't know how to put it. Yeah, buddy. My kind introduction.

Golly. So much for getting the big head. Chris talked about handing out giving these handouts. I did this talk in Dallas, for the this last month. I did the steps at this place and 1 week I left a bunch of stuff and the following week some girl walked up and got right right here in my nose.

I mean, she was like this far from my face and she said, did you leave this? And I went, no. What is it? I didn't I lied like a kid. I mean, I just I ain't I ain't owning up to nothing, man.

I'm telling you. Especially if they're that stirred up. I'm too scrawny to to own up to any of that crap. In meditation this morning, I was thinking about you think you guys are thinking I'm having some kind of big epiphany this morning, but you know what came to me this morning was this this deal. We had done a talk one time, Chris and I had done a talk one time in Phoenix, and this they said, this guy said, we need to build this thing, your talk, as the good seed, bad seed talk, because Chris was there and I was there.

And Chris has always been the bad seed and I was the good seed. That's kinda how it went down. And after hearing Peter last night, I I figured we would do this as the good seed, bad seed, bad seed talk. I know you're expecting something big and heady, but that's it, but ain't it? An hour and 20 minutes of meditation, that's the only shit I came up with.

I don't know. Okay. Imagine, if you will, your scrawny friend here, Myers Raymer, at Primary Purpose Group, 7 years sober. We're studying the book. I'm picking up where I left off last night.

We're studying the book and I'm getting healthier. I'm getting better by the day. Weeks drift into months, months drift into years. I'm still studying. I am immeasurably better.

I've stopped looking at other women, I've stopped writing hot checks, and I'm and I'm and I'm okay in my own skin. But we were sitting around 1 night in a meeting, and and there's, like, a 100 people in this room, and I'm looking around from face to face to face just looking at people's eyes, and I'm going, I'm still different. You know? I'm here, but I'm still different. We got we're done with the meeting and I pulled Cliff aside, I said, Cliff, can I talk to you a second?

We need to And I said, Cliff, I'm still different from these guys, aren't I? And he goes, yeah, you are. And I said, well, why is that? Cliff, I'm doing everything that you want me to do. And he says, everything except 12 step work.

And I went, well, Cliff, you know, I you know, see, I got a 1,000 excuses why I can't do 12 Step work. Now I'm telling you, I I went with Cliff, but he'd be talking at Salvation Army. I'd go to Salvation Army and sit with him. I'd be in the back of the room. He'd be up here doing this and blah blah blah, and I'd go someplace else with him.

I mean, I was going on a fairly regular basis, but I have no commitment to go anywhere. And I'm sort of holding it at a distance, that stuff that we talked about last night. And I'll never forget it. It was like it yesterday. Cliff got, like, this far from my face and he says, Myers, I love you, but I'm gonna tell you that you probably need to leave here.

I mean I mean, I've had enemies say that, but I never had my sponsor say that before. And he says, you're you're not gonna get any better than you are right now, and you will probably die of this disease if you don't do what we've asked you to do. And I'm going, well, what do you want me to do? And he said, I want you tomorrow night to go to Salvation Army, and I want you to find a commitment, and I want you to make it a part of your deal. I said, yes, sir.

Now keep your keep your finger on that thought for just a minute. If you wanna make a meeting real quiet, sit there at the beginning of the meeting and say, can somebody tell me what our primary purpose is? I know what my primary purpose is today. But let me tell you something, 8 years into the program, I did not know what our primary purpose was. If you look in the traditions at tradition 5, each group has but one primary purpose, to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers Has but one primary purpose.

Turn over to the 12th step. If you look on page 60 of of this of the of the step and read this, we're gonna tie this stuff together so we can sort of see this deal. If you want we always joke about the secret handshake in AA. We need I want you guys to be here tonight because we're gonna show you the secret handshake. If there is a secret handshake in Alcoholics Anonymous, it's the 2 things I just read, this and this step.

Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs. And yet we trivialize this stuff and ignore it and ignore it and ignore it until it simply goes away. And we talked to guys that have been sober for 20 years, 30 years, whatever, and they absolutely have they have have structured their recovery to a point that it may or may not include any 12 step work at all. You see? Bill Wilson, those guys, when they put this book together, they wrote us a whole chapter, chapter 7, working with others.

Their address this whole chapter around around step 12 and how it is and what we're supposed to do. If you went to the beginning, the title of the book, all the way back through the book, and you started picking out reoccurring themes, what's the first and foremost one that's gonna slap you up the side of the face? That we are gonna be in trouble here if we don't carry the message of recovery to somebody else. That's it. And yet we're sold this bill of good by a loving fellowship that says that just sitting in the meeting is your 12 step work.

Just the fact that you're there is your 12 step work. You buy it. Go ahead. I won't anymore. I won't.

I I'm all too familiar with it. I wanna bust this little piece down real quick. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps let's pretend there's a period there because I wanna talk about that. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message. What was the message we were trying to carry to these guys?

That we'd had this spiritual awakening as a result of these steps. So the very first question is a recovered alcoholic that you need to ask yourself is, have I recovered? Am I sitting in the meeting just taking up space or I've had have I indeed worked through the work, had the spiritual experience, and have a message to carry to Mike, this sick, you know what, when he comes into the to our meeting. You see? The illusion is that if we if we come and we hang around long enough, we'll be recovered, that we'll be okay.

It's like this osmosis thing. I'll just hang stick with the winners long enough, and I'll be okay. Or you got these guys that go to thousands of conferences and they do the steps and they excuse me. They think that working the work is sitting in the conference going through it with a guy from the podium. That's not working the steps, guys.

It's not. Working the steps is one alcoholic with another alcoholic going through the work. That's the way it's done, you see. That's what Bill was real clear on on here. But before we can do anything on this stuff, we have to ask ourselves the question.

Do I have a spiritual awakening as part of my experience or not? And I know for some of you guys, that's a question you simply do not wanna ask, And I can empathize. I know exactly what you feel like because I was exactly there. That's the dead last thing I wanted to face. I didn't want to look at myself in the mirror and say, am I there?

Do I have the message I need to carry? But once you understand that you do, you're good to go. Once you understand that you don't, you're good to go. Go find a sponsor. Do the work.

You see? We'll talk about that some more in sponsorship because it's a huge part of sponsorship in this in this accountability type thing. But, Tyler, if you got your books, and I'm sure every one of you do, turn over to the bottom of page 14. I wanna read you 2 quick things that should be a, a standard by which we base everything we do in 12 step work. We'll read 2 2 paragraphs, 2 little short pieces, one here and 1 on page 60 and 61.

And I want what I want you to do is is don't look for the similarities so much as look for the differences. I want you to look at how far we've drifted from these two paragraphs and see what see what I'm talking about. My friend had emphasized the absolute necessity of demonstrating these principles in all my affairs. This isn't Bill's story. He's in the hospital.

Dig. Particularly was it imperative to work with others as he had worked with me. Faith without works was dead, he said. And how appallingly true for the alcoholic. For if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self sacrifice for others, he could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead.

If he did not work, he would surely drink again. And if he drank, he would surely die. Then faith would be dead indeed. With us, it is just like that. Now here it is.

Some people read that and they stop. The next three lines are the key to this thing. My wife and I abandon ourselves with enthusiasm for the idea of helping other alcoholics to a solution of their problems. You see guys, because of the selfishness and self centeredness that that is the root of our problem, this selfishness and self centeredness that kicks our collective rears, we put a distance between working with others because I have to I have to get healthy first. Well, I'm working on my own issues first.

Well, I'm blah blah blah. Well, I'm blah blah blah. And this this this goes on ad nauseam until all of a sudden we wake up one day 10 years sober and we are still not working with anybody. We're still not doing anything. We are still the center of our pathetic universe because we're selfish and self centered to the core.

This is where we get into trouble. You see? Let me ask you this. I just wanna get ahead of myself. Let's let's go back over to 160 and read this one real quick.

At the very bottom of 160, in a vision for you, it starts off, he and his wife would leave elated by the thought of what they could now do for some stricken acquaintance in his family. They would leave elated. They knew that they had a host of new friends. It seemed that they had known these strangers always. They had seen miracles and one was to come to them.

They had visioned the great reality, their loving and all powerful creator. Guys, could there be a more powerful statement in the big book? These guys knew immediately what their position, what their purpose was. My purpose is to get off my rear and go carry a message of recovery to the drunk who still suffers. That's it.

And in doing that see, let me ask you a question. If if the mantra in AA is 90 meetings in 90 days, meeting makers make it, blah blah blah blah blah, you guys know the drill. If that is our our our our if that's our baseline of recovery, it's just going to a bunch of meetings, why don't you think Bill and those cats wrote this in the book? Why didn't they put it in there? Step 13.

Go to meetings. I'm not there is no place in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous where it says that your recovery is based on the meetings you make. It's not in there. I thought it was. You should have seen that conversation with me and Ol' Clippo because I assured him that it was.

It is not. And it took me 6 months to go through the book to see if I could find it. And I every day, I was so excited. Today is the day I'll find it. I can show that crusty old son of bitch exactly where it is.

He knew it wasn't in there. No. Please, don't go back and tell your sponsors that I said don't go to meetings. I did not say that. What I'm saying is though is that we need to put all this this whole package into perspective of what it is.

The meetings are important. I'm telling you, collectively, we need them. Our our unity is hugely important to our success. And yet, if you're going to the meeting expecting to recover because you're in the meeting, you're mistaken. You're mistaken.

And you middle of the road guys, you guys that are not real alcoholics, you guys that are peripherally attached to this deal, you may make it okay. But you real deal alcoholics and you real deal guys with other outside issues that we won't talk about today, I guarantee you, you will get so sick and twisted, you will die right in front of us. It is the most painful thing in the world to watch. At 7 years sober, sitting in that meeting and I'm absolutely unraveling, I am so sick. The mental obsessions coming back, the spirituality, the subtleness of that thing has turned me into the absolute desperate kinda guy.

And, you know, I'm in a meeting and I go, you know, I gotta share this thing and I'm saying what it what's going on in my mind. And guess what? The thing that I always hate to hear, but I got the solution to your problem. You just need to go to more meetings. I remember sitting in that meeting and I went, thank you for sharing and, thanks for your help.

And I remember walking out walking out of that club and it was a hot hot hot day and as the sun hit me in the face, I remember it just like it was yesterday, and I walked out and I swung up in the seat of my old Toyota Land Cruiser and and I just sat there and I just wept. I just I I can't go to any more meetings than I'm going to. I can't do any more in that vein than what I'm already doing. And I'm dying here. I must kill myself or I must I must drink.

I gotta get clear of this stuff. And there wasn't one man in that core group of 400 people, there was not one man that stepped up to a plate and said, Myers, I know the solution to your problem. The solution to your problem is get out of self and go be of service to somebody else. The solution is to go carry the message of recovery to somebody else. Is there any rationale to that statement?

No. Hell, no. There's no way you can justify that. There's no way that you can say, Oh, yeah, I understand that. Yeah, I'll go do that.

It makes no sense. And yet if you've experienced it, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Why is it that Bill, at the beginning of chapter 7, wrote that paragraph when they did this thing? I wish I had my other book. I can't find anything in this book.

Working with others. Practical experience shows that nothing will so much ensure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. It works when other activities fail. This is our 12th suggestion. Carry this message to other alcoholics.

You can help when no one else can. You can secure their confidence when others fail. Remember, they are very ill. Tell you a quick story. There's a girl in Dallas named Susan that I love dearly.

Without getting into a bunch of details, I'm gonna tell you, this woman was abused more than any individual man or woman I have ever come across in my entire life. She was sexually abused. She was ritually abused. She was I can't begin to describe the pain and suffering that this girl went through. Years years of therapy, years years of treatment centers, years years and handfuls of pills trying to fix what ailed this kid.

She goes to a treatment deal where she hears a message of recovery for the very first time. She walks out free and clear. She comes in, she does what she's supposed to do, she gets plugged in and she walks out healthy as she's ever been in her whole life. She does this stuff for a couple years and then she decides that the work is more important, the boyfriend's more important, and the rest of the stuff collectively is more important. And so she distances herself from the things that she knows are saving her bacon.

That's the old alcoholic mind, guys. We'll do it, every one of us, man. And she begins to get sick and she gets sick quickly. And within a month or 2, she's back being catatonic again. And I'm not talking depressed, like, oh, I'm having a blue kind of day.

I'm talking about hide under the bed, I'm devastated, I'm afraid I'll kill myself kind of stuff. You know the drill. And for days, she sat in bed. And I went over and saw her and, she's laying there in her pajamas and she's just a mess and she just stinks and it's just she's just a mess. And she she just she said, Myers, what am I gonna do?

I said, Susan, you know what you're gonna have to do. And she said, don't please, I'm begging you. Don't tell me to go work with another alcoholic. Okay. I won't tell you.

But Susan, you know that's what you need to do. It's the only solution that you're gonna have. And she says, she's got a couple of master's degrees, and she said, I just can't justify what you're telling me intellectually. I'm saying no shit. I know that.

We've been talking about this stuff for years. You're never gonna be able to connect the dots through that. Logically, it doesn't work. Finally, it got so bad for her that she she couldn't eat and and, finally, she said, alright, I'm willing to do this stuff. So I scooped her up, we put a bathrobe on her, got her all cleaned up a little bit like this, and she went with us and we went out and and, and she carried a message.

I went to the men's side and she went to the girl's side at this little wind up joint, and she got through it. I'm not gonna sit here and blow smoke up your rear and say she walked out all, you know, pray the Lord kind of thing. It wasn't like that. But But let me tell you something. When she walked out, she looked me right in the eye and she said, I'm gonna be okay.

I know I'm gonna be okay. And within a couple of days, she was. You see? Bill Wilson, when they told us that all of our problems would be solved if we would if we would submit to this process, knew exactly what he was talking about. That talking there that that that he's talking about with his wife, with Anne, and later on when they were talking about leaving that house in that old Oxford group meeting in in a vision for you.

Notice the differences in the way we are then and the way we are now. We've got an entire fellowship telling us that we have issues to deal with, and we have all these other things that we need to deal with, and blah blah blah blah blah. And we do not get a clear cut set of instruction from the guys that are sponsoring us and working with us how important it is. We do not there was a guy I gotta tell you, some of you guys have heard me talk about this before, but it's somewhere at 6 months sober. I said in a meeting in this group that I sobered up in in North North Texas, and this guy said from the podium, we have good 12 steppers and we have bad 12 steppers.

And if you're not a good 12 stepper, you have no business 12 stepping somebody. Cool. I could have hugged that man that night. I would have put him on my Christmas card list forever. This guy was my savior because he took away every piece of responsibility I had to carry a message of recovery to the new guy.

I was taken off the hook. And what I what did I buy into instead? I bought into the deal. Well, making coffee is my 12 step work. Listen guys, I love you to death, and I'm telling you I'm not here to step on anybody.

12 step work is service work that makes 12 step work possible, but making coffee is not 12 step work. It is service work. I'm not bill I'm not belittling it. I'm not making light of it. I'm telling you right now, it's a cop out.

If that's what you're hung up in and that's all you're doing, stop it. Go find you a drunk to work with face to face, 1 on 1, and see what happens. You're missing the best part of this whole show. Now listen, let me tell you something, guys. I've been a member of Primary Purpose Group for 10 years.

And in those 10 years, guess who makes the coffee every Tuesday night? I make a 160 cups of coffee and set up tables and chairs for a 170 men and women. Every Tuesday night, it's my service deal to that group. I also chair that meeting on Tuesday night. But But I'm telling you, some guys come in and say, well, we wanna make the coffee tonight.

Stop. That's my deal and it will be until the day I die. But I will not confuse that with my commitment to 12 step work. I know some of you guys get grindy about that kind of stuff, but for years, that's what I did. I said, well, because I drove a bus for a treatment center on a Wednesday night, once a month.

That's my service stuff. That's my 12 step work. I'm gonna tell I'll I'll I'm gonna I'll tell you what. I'll take it all back. I'm gonna rephrase that whole statement.

If that's what you're doing and that's okay with you and you're happy doing that, rock and roll. But it's kinda like walking in and eating a a package of crackers by the front door knowing that there's a goddamn buffet back here, you know. If that's satisfying and it's good enough for you, do it. But the gift, the best part of the whole thing was back here. But you gotta walk through the fire to get it.

You gotta go through the process of doing the 12 step work. Let me clarify something real quick. There's a line on page 132 that says we have recovered and been given the power to help others. Remember it. Remember it.

Why do we wanna remember it? Because I'm gonna submit to you one thing. I think the biggest single reason, if right now I took Mike in the back room and asked him why he doesn't do 12 step work and then I took Kathy, And then I go down the line and I just asked everybody, why is it you don't do 12 step work? What's the common thread that will run through every one of them? Fear and ego.

I'm not gonna be good at it, so I'm not gonna do it. I might hurt somebody. I might say the wrong thing. I might blah blah blah blah. It all just goes on down the road like this.

But fear is the main motivator. I don't wanna do it because it makes me fearful. When Cliff Bishop says, I want you to go to Salvation Army. Great. Salvation Army, I know immediately is 230 black men sitting in a room just about like this, stretched as far as you can see.

And I'm this little scrawny white guy standing up front, not really sure about what's going on in the whole deal anyway. Intellectually, I kinda know what's going on. But emotionally, Let me tell you this quick story. It'll take 5 minutes to tell you this story. I walked to the podium that night and we had this conversation with these guys at Salvation Army.

And we get done, and we're in a big old circle. 2 230 of us in a big old circle. It looks more like an amoeba. We're all just kinda like this. We're all holding hands at the end of this deal.

Guys got my hand like this, and and this before we're finished with the with the prayer before we start the prayer, this guy in the back that that looks like a freaking mountain. He's, like, this tall and his shoulders are, like, this broad. I've never seen a man that big. And he goes, can I say something? And I went, oh, shit.

This is where he hits me. I just, like, see, I'm carrying all my old baggage into this deal. I was I was I was beat up a couple of times in Houston by in some black bars trying to buy those other outside issues. And and so I so black guys scare me. Okay?

They don't now, honest. They don't now, but I'm just telling you, like, but but it it was just so I'm I'm carrying all this crap in there with me. Right? And so I'm thinking, okay. Alright.

And he says, what was your name? And I said, my name is Myers. And he goes, Myers, thanks for coming out here. I said, you're welcome. And he said, and and I just wanted to tell you that I've never ever heard the big book like that.

Could you come back tomorrow? Yeah. Yeah. I'll be back. And I and I walked outside and I'm reaching around from my cell phone like this.

I got to call Cliff. I'm going, Cliff. Cliff. Cliff. Here's what happened.

And, oh, by the way, they want me to come back tomorrow. Is that okay? He said, dude, I don't care if I ever see you again. Do what you're doing. Do what you're doing because that's the reason you sobered up.

You see? I stayed out there for a couple of months and then they opened up this thing out at Homer Bound and we were out there for I was out there every Wednesday and every Friday night for 6 years, and we our group alone, just our little core group, sponsored over 600 men and women out of that treatment place in the in that 6 years. Guys, everything about who Myers was shifted position that night. Everything about what I thought AA was about shifted. Because for an hour, I wasn't self absorbed in Myers' little universe.

The world didn't revolve around my scrawny little rear. I was in the room to carry a message of recovery that these cats said would save a life. I'm not convinced of it yet, but I'm telling you, it did it worked okay with me so far. But these guys, this message of depth and weight that came right out of the book, affected those men. The following night when I was out there, I walked in the door and this this big black guy walked up right up to me and grabbed me like this and put his arms around me and hugged me, and I ain't never been hugged like that before.

Never. My head was right on his chest just like this. And it was like one of those old Popeye con, things like this where somebody's squeezing olive oil and their little legs are sticking straight out like that. Well, that's kind but the weirdest deal is I feel like it was I can still smell the way that guy smelled and feel, that it was like I'm I'm real tense. I kinda went like this and then he just held on to me for a second and I just kinda went and I just relaxed.

And pretty soon I realized he was holding most of me, you see? He wouldn't have known that. Guys' fingers were that big around. When I shook hands with him like this, it was like I was shaking hands with somebody with a baseball mitt on. I've never seen anybody like that.

But I've never felt so protected and so loved in my whole life. And, buddy, I'm telling you what, this man ushered me into that room and these guys were there and it was the coolest thing to it's my hair on the back of my neck still stands up today because for the first time I realized these men had been telling me for 2 solid years of primary purpose. You got the message. Go carry the message. 15132 said that you had recovered and been given the power.

I didn't have to I didn't have to have somebody sign me off and say, okay, you got the power, dude. All I had to do is submit to the work, have the experience, and then go carry the message. That's it. And every one of us has exactly the same option. What we gotta do is is just do what I did.

Take a deep breath, say, okay, God, here I am. You ain't gonna drop me, are you dude? Or dudette? Well, I don't know sure what he is. I'm not gonna get in that conversation.

But you see what I'm saying? The absolute coolest experience that you've ever had in your whole life. We were talking earlier. One more thing before I get down from here. If you've not experienced 12 step work on a 1 on 1 basis oh, let me clarify something real quick, because not every one of you guys are gonna be standing at a podium talking to a bunch of people.

It may not be that way. For a while, I thought that's the way it had to be. And then I realized that I'm sponsored a bunch of guys that will never ever talk from the podium ever. And yet they are hugely successful, hugely effective at sponsorship and at taking care of people on a 1 on 1 basis and in dealing with that stuff. Guys, there'll be 30 men that I work with sitting in a meeting with me on Tuesday night, and somebody will come in obviously sick.

Somebody's all busted up and beat up. You you can see them a mile away. Right? And they walk in and I'll look up and JK will be sitting there or Rick McGraw will be sitting there or somebody, and I'll just look up and look at them, and then look over like this, and they're up. 2 or 3 guys off their feet to go see if this guy's okay.

And they are 12 stepping this guy before I have a chance to get my thought back in order. They're already there with that cat, 12 stepping him and scooping him up. You see? Hugely effective. They may never ever talk from a podium.

So don't buy yourself into saying, well, I'm too shy to talk from the podium. Well, I was too. I'm the shyest guy in this room, Scout's honor. Maybe Chris is. That's all I wanna say on the thing.

The, what I do wanna, if you've not experienced this thing, go try this thing. On a group level, if you're uncomfortable in your group, if you have no 12 step stuff worked out, I've been talking to people some this weekend that have groups that are not doing any 12 step work. Find you some buckaroos in your group that wanna go with you to do this thing and make it a group function. Make it a deal. That way you don't have to shoulder the responsibility of being someplace all the time, every Wednesday night or every Friday night or blah blah.

You'll have some other guys there with you to take take up the slack. You know, on the nights that you feel kinda cold and detached and you're having a tough time getting, focused, there'll be 3 or 4 other guys there ready to do that. The new guys that you're bringing up, the absolute perfect place for them to be to see how this thing works is with you when you go do this 12 step work, when you go from from a podium. Most of the new groups that we've helped set up over the years, which I spend the vast majority of my time these days is spent talking to guys and setting up study groups all over the place. And we're we're in communicate with 100 of places who have started brand new study groups.

They're getting away from the discussion stuff and more into the study deal, and it's the coolest thing to see. But the common thread through every one of those groups is is that they, they go, well, what do we do now? I'm going, go find you a project. Go find you a wind up joint someplace, a hospital, a Salvation Army, a detox place. Go find you someplace, and that's your group, the triangle group.

They got a little triangle group. They got a little gig out at out at the Brown House, and they're gonna go do that deal and make that your thing. And I guarantee you, when you're in the middle of it, you will not see the difference that you make. But with some distance on it, some years removed from it, and look and see how many thousands of people you have affected because of your willingness to get off your rear end and go out there and be of service to somebody else. It's the most amazing thing you will ever experience.

And in doing so, everything in your life will shift, everything will change. And the primary thing that will change is your perceptions of things. The black men that used to scare the crap out of me, guess what? I sponsor more black men today than anything in the whole wide world. I got I mean, I got I got this whole little army of these guys that I'm dealing with, and I love them to death.

Love them to death. You'd have to know where I was to know how goofy that whole thing is and how how far I've come through that deal. Did I do it on my own? No. My perceptions changed.

Those men didn't change. I changed. My wife, that beast of a woman that I could not stand to be in the same room with. You who know me know how much I adore my wife today. Did she change?

No. My perceptions of my wife changed. My kids that used to drive me crazy, you know the drill, we talked about this some last night. As your perceptions change, all that that horrible job that I could not stand to go to one more day, I can't wait to be there at 6:30 in the morning. I can't wait to be there.

My job has not changed in 30 years. I've been doing the same thing, you know, but my perceptions changed. And the only thing I did different was submit and then go carry that message of recovery to somebody else, And then stand back and watch their lives change. Thanks guys. I appreciate it.