Chris R. from Ingram, TX, Peter M. from Union, NJ & Myers R. from Dallas, TX answering questions on saturday morning at the Primary Purpose Weekend in Camp Hill, PA

Real quick before we go to question and answers. If you guys got your books, look at the traditions real quick. I wanna show you something. Look at look at tradition 5. Go to 3 first.

I I don't know, because I've got a little book. It's in the tradition's in the very back of your book. There's a short form and a long form. 56 3 and the 4th edition. It's page 560.

What the hell? Got it? Real quick. Everybody wants to read the you you know, when we read in our meetings, we read the short forms of the traditions, the 12 steps and the 12 traditions. You're down with that?

We read them. You with us? Look across the page to the long form, tradition 3. Our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. That's that's 2 different things.

And everybody wants to just go to the short form, but the long form that the short form was taken from says quite clearly, our membership is for alcoholics, people who are suffering from the disease of alcoholism. The desire to stay sober is not the requirement for membership in this fellowship. You you with me? Looks some of you just look like you've just been slapped. Look at tradition 5.

Each group has but one primary purpose, to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers. Myers read it this morning. Read the long form, they just add a little bit to it. I think a very important piece. Each Alcoholics Anonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity having but one primary purpose, that of carrying its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.

You with us? Not a therapy group, a spiritual group. I I gotta tell you, folks, we're gonna hit it so hard this afternoon about this this refusal to talk about God in meetings. It it'll it'll make your head swim. Alright.

We're gonna open this up for questions. We're talking specifically about primary purpose this morning. This afternoon, we're gonna hit working with others and some sponsorship stuff, meeting formats. In here right now, if any of y'all have questions about our primary purpose, we're if you because of we're we're taping this, if you'd like to come up to this podium and ask the questions, and then we'll sit here like little crows on the edge of our seats and attempt to answer that question from based on our experience in in this deal. And, hopefully, we'll get some some question and answer out of this.

Alright. Who who'd like to be first? Maybe I'll make that a little clearer. If you'd like to ask a question, you could come Or we could go smoke. What what you got a question?

Would you wanna come up here and ask the question? That way it'll be taped. Otherwise, we just have to repeat it. And if you just come up and ask the question, then we can You wanna do that? I'll do what you want.

Well, that's that's what was requested. So I I don't just wanted to ask you what sentence in the book do you think is the most important? Not your favorite, the most important sentence. Great question. Chris Raymer, alcoholic.

Iman? We just read it when I was talking earlier. Selfish and self centeredness, that we think is the root of our troubles. To to me, there there's can y'all hear it? There's for me, there's there's 2 there's 2 places in the book.

The the place on place 24 where it talks about being powerless over. We've lost the power of choice, but the the the selfish and self centeredness, that's what changed everything for me. Because I mean, guys, I spent years believing that alcohol was my problem. And if I just didn't drink, everything was gonna be okay. And the truth is, if we just don't drink and we're alcoholic, everything is not gonna be okay.

It's going to be very, very bad very, very quick because the internal condition will become so uncomfortable. We we won't be able to stand ourselves. And that's where we end up coming out sideways. How many of y'all have noticed in periods of dry time when you weren't working the steps that you started coming out sideways in other areas? You know, you start acting out sexually, start having affairs, or or overeating, or over shopping or or picking up other addictions.

That's where the treatment centers bought into this addictive personality. No. No. These are these are just character defects that start surfacing that we try to medicate the spiritual malady with. You you down with that?

And I never understood that until I read page, 62 that said selfish and self centeredness. That's the problem. I think the world revolves around me. How do how do how do I know that? How do y'all know that?

Because all I wanna talk about is me. Down with that? That's mine. How about yours? Mine was lack of power, that was my dilemma.

Oh. And that that was with me for a long time. Recently, it is now on page 68 that God will demonstrate to me what he can do. Move. That stuff on page 64, where it talks about spirituality, 99% of the guys that I work with are seeking, to connect a bunch of dots around why they do the goofy things that they do.

And I'm so baffled by how many people come into this deal, spend years years years, and never ever that little piece that little piece on the bottom of page 64 where it says, resentment is the number one offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stem all forms of spiritual disease. I thought we were talking about booze here. Now they're talking about a spiritual disease where we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we've been spiritually sick.

And then here's our marching orders. When the spirituality is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically. What does that mean? What it means? It means what it said.

If I'll focus on the spiritual nature of my disease, I'll straighten out mentally and physically. The mental obsession that kicked my ass is gonna be dealt with. The physical allergy which kicks my rear is gonna be dealt with. But I gotta deal with it through a spiritual deal, an internal it's an internal solution to what's been kicking me, you see? But nobody ever read that stuff.

I'll never forget at 6 and 7 years old, reading that in a meeting one night at primary purpose group, and I went, what is that? There were all of a sudden, all the dots got kinking connected. And I went, no kidding. No kidding. I have finally an understanding of what it is I need to do to get clear of this stuff, but nobody ever read it to me.

We were too busy talking about Sally Sue's divorce and those other tradition 10 busters as outside issues. Yeah. Thanks. Hi, Greg. Thanks, man.

Good question. Hello. I'm Daniel. I'm alcoholic. Hey, Daniel.

Frank, I've heard many people say, of course, people carrying a good message to talk about, AA is your life. And I want a little clarification on that. I hate fanatics of any kind. You know, when I walked here, the the church sign has is advertising for Christian aerobics. And I wonder how Christian aerobics is any different from any other kind of aerobics.

And I'll read here from page 125, last paragraph. Many alcoholics are enthusiasts. They run to extremes. At the beginning of recovery, a man will take, as a rule, one of 2 directions. He may either plunge into frantic attempt to get on his feet in business, or he may be so enthralled with his new life that he talks or thinks of little else.

In either case, certain family problems arise. And, it sounds like the guy who's talking about it is is like, maybe, fanatic. And I'm just wondering, what's a when you say it's your life, what is what does that exactly mean? I mean, are you always talking about it? I mean, is it AA to to make us normal in the world that we're not always revolved around everything?

Or really, is it your life? I mean, is it like, you know, religion? It is my life. It's what God God allows me to do. I have been one of those people who were out every night of the week, making 2 meetings a day.

And if I miss one night to spend time with the family, I felt like I was selling myself short. And what I've been moved to do is learn how to spend time with family, and I'm still out a few nights a week and taking these principles into my home occupation and affairs. And I think I'm unthinking when I think that if I make 7 meetings a week and neglect family and friends, that I'm sober and spiritual. But it is my life, it's who I be, it's what a god allows me to do. And what I mean by that is it it's it because of what I've been given here and experienced the glory of God, it allows me to do other things.

Without this, you're looking at someone else here this weekend. I wake up upon awakening, I make time with my God, who I love and adore. Throughout my day, I walk with the spirit of God, with all falling short in thought, word, and deed. When I'm interacting with others, I go with my God. My vision for you, my vision for me is to go with God into all my affairs.

That sounds like it's my life. I don't live in alcoholics anonymous. I don't think God wants me to do that either. But AA isn't I hear AA is a bridge back to life. I don't I don't wanna do that deal because that means, for me, I interpret that as AA got me sober, now I go live life and forget about AA.

I got to keep on the firing line. And so I have a life because of Alcoholics Anonymous and because of a loving God, but this is home for me. It allows me to incorporate other things into my life. This is what I'm about, and I really have no problem sharing that from any podium. Anything less would be a lie.

That's it. Let me that's a that's a great that's a great question. And it gets asked often, because some people view what we would do today as an extreme set of circumstances. Being the poster boy of middle of the road solution, that's me, okay, for so many years. And so I come from a fairly unique position, I think, anyway, of being able to see the devastation of middle of the road solution and what it can create to over here, where I'm able to daily see through email and through talking to people personally, the effects of a more focused and a more, text based recovery, it's an amazing thing to see the difference.

Not only the fact that people are staying sober, but the fact that people are are walking free and clear of this deadly disease and are, for the very first time in their life, experiencing things that they never experienced before. Like being creative, being a a part of a whole. That stuff on 19 about being, you know, demonstrating how you can change in your life and this sort of thing. You know, 17 years removed, almost 17 years removed from booze and those other outside issues, my wife doesn't really relate to that stuff anymore. What she does relate to on a day to day basis is that I'm where I'm saying I'm gonna be, and that I'm there for her, and that I'm doing the things.

You understand what I'm saying? Like this. And, yes, I think that sometimes we get really ecstatic and we get really enthusiastic about this stuff, and we may turn some people off by our enthusiasm. There was a point when I made the comment to Chris on one morning after I had been brutally beat up in a group over in Fort Worth, brutally beat up, physically manhandled. It was not a fun experience.

And I remember calling Chris and I'm saying, screw this. I don't need it. I'm not doing it anymore. I'm gonna go back into a middle of the road deal and sit there, You know? And after some talking and and a day or 2, I began to realize the absurdity of that statement.

And yet the only thing that what I was being attacked for was enthusiasm in that deal. But what I had to understand was all it took was one email from one member of that group that said, do you know what? Our group needed to hear what you said so dramatically, and it will affect some. Thank you for coming. Period.

End of deal. You see? And I'm going okay. So I'll take the heat. Some people wanna slap me around for being enthusiastic about a gift from God that changed my life and had the ability to change your life.

Mhmm. It it always amazes me. I'll be in a group, and and people come up after and Chris, you thanks, thanks, thanks, thanks, thanks, and then you'll have one person that will come up after and say, you know buddy, you really offended me what you said. And it's like I spend the rest of the night grinding my teeth, you know, about that one person, you know, and I forget all the great question that you that you ask, and I can't really add any more than what these guys have. Alcoholics Anonymous is such a central part of my life.

It's, it is not who I am. I am a multifaceted individual. But my life started November 13, 1987. And that's when, my awakened spirit started noticing plants again, and I started riding a bicycle again, and started doing so many cool things. That's what life's about.

There was a guy that came up here last night after we spoke, and he was shared with a minute and thanked us, and and he said, I'm not gonna be be able to be here tomorrow. I've got my my kids soccer games tomorrow, and I'm gonna coach, and I'm gonna have to go. And he and he was kind of apologetic because he wasn't gonna be. And I said, buddy, that's what this is about. We we didn't get sober so we could come hide out in Alcoholics Anonymous.

We got we got sober, we had our awakened spirit so that we could go out there and do life to the fullest. I want to do y'all hear me I I get on these tears about people sitting around one of the reading People Magazine. You know, I mean, I I spent years reading People Magazine, watching how other people were living cool lives. And somebody finally leaned over as as Mark says, when are you gonna start leading your life? You know, instead of looking at everybody else's life, when are you gonna start doing some And it's like, he wasn't I thanked him later.

I cursed him immediately, but but I thanked him later because the truth was that's what I get a chance to do today. Not hiding out in AA. I don't hide out in AA. And I see a lot of people do that. It's it's There's a lot of concern that we're a cult, that we're just gonna hide out, and only time I can be happy is when I'm in a meeting.

That is not my experience. It's not my experience. I, I love coming to do these things. Folks, y'all need to come see my garden. It is impressive, to say the least.

And, I would love to show it to you sometime. That's all I got. Yeah. My name is John. I'm a very grateful recovered alcoholic.

And, my home group is the depth and weight group. And we got that, I don't know if it particularly from you guys, but it was a message that you guys shared. And, and what I wanna say was that, from the bottom of my heart, you three men saved my life. And, I'm eternally grateful. And I love you all very much.

One one of the things I've become an Alcoholics Anonymous for a long, long time and been given the grace, to recover from this disease. But what I'm experiencing in Alcoholics Anonymous, which is is frightening to me, and I would just really like to get feedback on it and your and your spiritual guidance on it. This thing with love and tolerance. We have brought this love and tolerance to such insanity. This big book was written back in 1939 when they talked about love and tolerance.

And if anyone has studied history, or studied this big book, or studied the transformation of our society, tolerance had a completely different meaning back in 1939, down in the year 2004. But the most important part, it says love and tolerance. And I have always experienced the true love of Alcoholics Anonymous, is the message and truth. When I had my sponsor who loved me enough to tell me the truth about about what was going on in my life, that's when I began the process of recovery. And this thing that goes around love and tolerance, I see this people hurting other people in this fellowship through their sickness, and their selfishness, and their disgust.

And innocent people are coming to this fellowship and dying because of sick people coming in here and acting out in sick ways and hurting others. And I'm frightened for it, and I have children, and God forbid my children were to have this disease, what would this place be like 20 years from now? John, John. Stir it up, brother. How do you how do you comment about something you just said?

Because you said it. I mean, you said that the whole deal, the baseline of love and tolerance is is is terrific. There would be nobody. There's not a man alive that I've ever come across that would have anything to say against love and tolerance. I mean, it's it's true.

The trick here is, is that somewhere in the process, we've allowed love intolerance to slide over into things like apathy and, and and just this absolute sickness that allows people to sit in meetings and hurt, but we're not gonna we're gonna love them, and we're not gonna help them. Sometimes you have to be let me ask you a question real quick. I mean, this is real simple stuff. In your experience in AA, do you remember the love, or do you remember the time that the old crusty guy got in your face and said, why don't you stop taking the hits on these girls and this kind of stuff? Why don't you it was the actual direction from the big book that affected your life.

You see? I mean, the we we sort of trivialized the whole love type deal, but somewhere in there, we've allowed this thing to get so convoluted. We let people come into our meetings and stir crap up and say all kinds of bizarre things and and and react in all kinds of bizarre ways, and we don't do anything to stop them. Why? We say it's out of love and tolerance.

Tolerance does not dictate that I'm supposed to stand back and watch someone harm somebody else in our meeting. It does not do that. We must, in love when Cliff Bishop passed me that note and said, why don't you shut up until you know what's in the big book? He loved me to death. He loved me enough to feel uncomfortable enough to bring me that note and set it down there.

He would have just soon not done that. I know Cliff. I know him today, like I know my dad. You see? But he loved me enough to walk out of the line and just set it down.

Good deal. Page 98, my book tells me, it's not a matter of giving that is in question, but when and how to give. That often makes a difference between failure and success. Mhmm. So is it possible that loving tolerance means telling a drunk no?

It's unacceptable. Or have an experience like Myers did with his sponsor. What does love and talents mean? I take on an attitude of apathy or it's a good time to practice acceptance? Do I take a stand for what I believe in and what my experience is?

Isn't that love intolerance towards a drunk rather than, walking them back to the next drink because I wanna be loving and tolerant, and I have a different different perception of what that means now than when I first walked in the door. So again, it's another call to what am I how am I watering down information in the big book or using it conveniently, to cosign my delusional attitude. Here here's a real neat deal. I'm I'm sitting in a meeting one time, and, this guy was just sharing from the floor about a lot of his, experiences with women, and a lot of ugly words. And in the middle, he's talking about his crack runs.

There's an AA meeting. And, I'm visiting this group, and a woman got up and walked out and says, this is not gonna affect my serenity, and left. Alright. What's wrong with that picture? That was her home group.

She allowed this guy to go on like that and walked out because her serenity was gonna be affected. Well, shame on her. And not one group member said anything, but yours truly, who was a visitor, did. I did speak to the drunk, to this to this guy afterwards, rather, after the meeting, and he really didn't wanna hear me because that was my way of being loving and tolerant to him. I took a stand and shared something from the floor, and I caught hell from the group.

They all looked at me like I was completely out of my mind. I felt like an outsider. But I did have it within me to grab that guy afterwards and tell him about cocaine anonymous and listen to him, but he wouldn't he didn't wanna hear it. So there's a huge responsibility as to what I'm doing and how am I interpreting the information in the book. Am I using it for my own for my own use or am I using the information to help another alcoholic?

Okay. Thanks, John. Nothing I concur. That love and tolerance is is, it's got nothing to do with with apathy, folks. It there's some responsibility that comes along with it.

Bill? Do you know Bill? Hi, Bill. I'm a barefoot alcoholic. I wanna thank you, gentlemen.

I do have a question, but I really love that gentleman asking that question about the fanaticism because, it's it's definitely an important question. And and for me, what's interesting in regard to fanaticism is that I've actually looked up the word because I'm a fanatic. And, the definition the definition that I found was that, it was in the dictionary, it says that a fanatic, can't stop talking about something and doesn't wanna hear about anything else. And under that definition, I am a fanatic. And but what I've seen in your gentleman's example and what I've seen in so many people who have had a spiritual experience as the result of the steps, not as a result, but as the result, is that an immense amount of compassion gets tapped into, an immense amount of freedom from suffering gets tapped into.

And because of this immense amount of compassion and because of this immense amount of freedom and freedom from suffering that we've experienced within ourselves, because of this spiritual awakening, we see this suffering all around us. And we have this immense compassion to try to do something about it. And that's viewed as fanaticism. And for me, these three men here are are incredible examples of the compassion and incredible examples of the freedom from the inner suffering and wanting to help others to not suffer anymore. And if that's fanaticism, then so be it.

But I do have a question. As you know, so many of us here are are in the trenches and on the firing lines and are dealing with a lot of the stuff directly that you're talking about and you're speaking to, so well this weekend. And one of the new things that has been stated to me and us is that the big book isn't everything. That's new to me. That's a new response to me to the kind of message that you're carrying and the kind of message that we carry.

And, the fact that the big book isn't everything, there's other literature that contradicts the big book, and that's also a approved literature, and and that's these are the kind of things that some of us are getting in response to people that we speak to and that are carrying this kind of a message. I was wondering if you guys could maybe respond to that. Let me let me get I'll get this over real fast, short and sweet. If success rates in AA are better today than they were 60 years ago, I'm gonna say we may be on the wrong track here, and we may need to pay attention to what that man just said. In in light of, there may be other literature out there that's important in this kind of look, I'm not gonna discount that there's other literature that's important.

I'm not gonna do that. But our our our enthusiasm in getting back to the basic text of Alcoholics Anonymous as the solution to our problem was based almost 100% on the fact that they were so damn successful. They just they just they got sober, stayed sober, and walked free and clear as a direct result of taking and adhering to those basic pieces of text there. So we drift week by week, month by month, year by year, we drift out into the ozone, and we bring in all this other literature, all of of it meaning well, and all of it some of it is hugely fascinating. There's some great stuff out there.

And yet I we watch the statistical data disprove the success of it. And so now worldwide, some statistics say that we're less than 5% of us that are coming are staying. Less than 2% of us make it 5 years. 2%. Guys, I'm not a mathematical wiz.

But you know what? That means out of this room right here, me and Peter are gonna make it, and the rest of you guys are just screwed. And I know some of you are gonna stay and dispute that. You you bet. You bet.

So so it's it's it sort of reminds me of the deal of of of if if Mike walked in tonight and said, buddy, I got cancer. And I said, god dang, Mike. That's horrible, man. What are we gonna do about this stuff? And he said, well, I don't know.

I'm not really sure. And I said, well, you know, there's this fellowship thing, you could go hang out in a fellowship, and they read, and they talk a lot, and they talk about their problems, and it's pretty it's pretty, you know, cool. And and and Mike would go, well, how many people are getting getting well doing that? Oh, I don't know. Maybe 5%.

Mike could look what do you think Mike would say? Mike would look at me and say, are you nuts? I gotta have something with more depth and weight than that. You see? Let me go to something that's got more more meat to it.

But we trivialize the alcoholism like it's no big deal, and we would just walk away from it. Anyway, the the that's why we wanna stay back in that in that stuff. Let's go back and try it the old way. 1 of my guys that I sponsored called old school AA. Well, he can call it whatever he wants to.

I like old school AA. AA. I like the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous as a solution to my problem because it works so effectively well once I did. If if that's going on, and I'm not sure what literature, those referring to, I do know lots of things are coming into AA. I guess my question is then why does our book still have to be watered down, and why do we have to allow our book to be watered down?

And if those, members are in such need of starting up something new, then great. But start up something new, and leave Alcoholics Anonymous to where what has worked for so long. Here's the problem. There's only us here today, let's say every one of us are having experiences So So it's like drawing a line in the sand and passing this message on, and we're gonna talk about this afternoon. The neat deal is, if I wake up because of my experience in the information in the big book Alcoholics Anonymous, well then I'm gonna be moved to be on the firing line to go help somebody else.

Right? So now I get a prospect, they wake up and they're gonna go into their backyard and grab someone. Now we have 3. And that's all we can do. And then they'll get someone and pull them through the archway, now we have 4.

And little by slowly, we'll show up at different home groups, and we'll have these pockets of enthusiasm, and maybe some of us will draw a line in the sand and say, you know what? That's an outside issue, we don't belong here. Why it's AA approved literature, shame on the people who are voting on this stuff. Which is a wake up call to me personally, and to a lot of us, what kind of service am I giving on that level to allow certain things in? That's all I got.

Thanks. I was just telling, buddy, if if you got something that you think might work, try it. I mean, the only thing that ever worked for me was the message out of the big book about caught synonymous. And that's that's all the experience that I can share with you. If if reading that meditation book has changed your life, read it.

Bop to you drop. Have have a great. But in these meetings in our fellowship, we need to be talking about the one thing we're talking about. What you got? My name's Jim, and I'm an alcoholic.

Hi, Jim. And I appreciate the fact that you told us we're not here to bash AA. And and I agree with you 100%. I've experienced all the horrible things and more that we've been talking about here today. But you see, I belong to a home group, and and sometimes I go to area meetings and they talk they they kinda brag there.

Sometimes DCM will get up and say, I'm so and so, and my home group is the best home group in the world. And everybody claps. And I belong to a home group that, I'm making the best home group in the world, because I'm making the difference. And I'm not a special alcoholic, I'm doing what you guys are telling us to do. And and there are pockets of enthusiasm and pockets of true AA all over, and we're it.

And the active alcoholic, active in service, the recovered alcoholic who's doing something has 10 to 20 times more power than the alcoholic who's sitting there saying, well, just keep coming back. Because they don't even go to the meetings where it counts and it votes. My home group has about a 100 and 50 to 200 people on a Friday night at a speaker's meeting. We just did a group conscience, A business meeting. We had 8.

My vote was important. You bet. I did something. Is it a perfect group? Of course not.

I began about 4 years as an individual standing up at the front door greeting people. We finally got it into the, service part, where now we're we're getting teams of people up there to greet people. Yeah. You see, it's what you do. It's what you show them.

They saw the results, they like it. Now they wanna do more of it. Same way with doing the phone service. My group was not involved in any message carrying of any kind. If you want what we got, you're gonna have to come here and get it.

Well, today, we take a phone service commitment once a month. It's not a whole lot, but it's more than we were doing. Mhmm. Because I took the action. You can too.

These men here are telling us the truth. Mhmm. And it works in Texas. It works in Pennsylvania, it works in New Jersey, it works in Ohio. You're right.

It only works when we work it. Thanks, James. Thank you. Good, great. Yeah.

David. Hi, I am an alcoholic. My name is Debbie Temple. Hi Debbie. It's so good to be here and Thank you so much.

Thank you so much. Besides the fact that I love you guys and you're my heroes, I I just wanna personally thank you for being out here and getting people inspired and fired up. Every time I come to one of these deals, I'm just ready to go out there and just really wake people up, you know? But I just I want to share that, I'm a member of a home group that I'm very I'm an active, proud member of that home group. It's available Thursday night group.

We have an open speaker meeting on Thursday night, a warm, welcoming, tradition based open speaker meeting. We also have a Monday night literature study meeting. And it's a closed meeting and we work very hard in the traditions and the twelve concepts. We also have another set of principles called the 12 concepts. They're incredible.

I'm very heavily involved in general service work and, I'm I've been given the privilege and the honor to serve in Alcoholics Anonymous and I got involved in the traditions first. It's just my story and that's a whole different story. But I got involved through the 12 steps, through the 12 traditions first, having had a service sponsor to take me through the process, of GSR, DCM, and those of you who are not familiar with that part of Alcohol, it's synonymous. And through my service sponsor came my sponsor who took me through the 12 steps for the first time. In our literature study meeting, it's a closed meeting and we are always looking to more strengthen and unify the group and keep our primary purpose to our recovery from alcoholism.

And last Monday night, because this is all about the traditions, everything that we're talking about here is all about the traditions, because without the traditions, we're dead. We're dead. I'm dead as an individual, I'm dead as an alcoholic and I'm dead as a member of this fellowship and so is this fellowship. We had someone come in our meeting and we go around the room and we introduce ourselves at this closed meeting and 1 gal introduced herself and she said, I'm an addict. And the chairperson looked at me, got terrified and I mouthed to him, ask, ask.

He was afraid. I mean this is, we're afraid to ask people that are coming to our closed meetings if you're an alcoholic. And so what he said was what the 3rd tradition and Chris, thank you so much for bringing up the difference between the short form and long form of the tradition. Thank you and God bless you for that. The chairperson asked because we this is what we're taught, do you have a desire to stop drinking?

I mean this is a slippery slope that we went down. Do you have a desire to stop drinking? She just told us she was an addict and she said she hesitated and she said, Yes. And he said, oh good, great. He was scared to death and he wasn't going any further than that.

And she didn't share at the meeting. I know if she had shared, something different other than what we were talking about would have come out. But we are reading right now one of our history books. We are reading Doctor. Bob and the Good Alzheimer's.

If any of you haven't studied our history books, please do. Read AA Comes of Age and Doctor. Bob and the Good Alzheimer's and pass it on because that's our history And that will tell you better than anything that we could ever say what we're supposed to be doing here. My sponsor and my service sponsor will not let me use the short form and the tradition. Because and the reason why I'm up here is because I've been inspired now today, as a result of what you shared and what we're talking about, there's something more that we can do at our Monday night meeting.

Because we're using the short form of the tradition, which my sponsor, my service sponsor won't let me use. And instead of asking, do you have a desire to stop drinking? I'm going to suggest at our next business meeting that we ask, do you suffer from alcoholism? If we ask and they might say, I don't know. I don't know if I'm alcoholic.

Okay, well after the meeting we'll talk to you and we'll give you somebody to work with and you'll find out. But that's the key right here. If we're asking people to comply to the long form of this if we're asking a group to be a spiritual entity having one purpose, that's a whole different thing than just being a bunch of alcoholics helping people to overcome a desire to stop drinking. And so the whole thing is about that and I just wanted to share what it says in the back of the book with a, under AA tradition. It says oh, and also by the way, the long form of the traditions came out first.

It's not a question, it's a comment and I'm just about done. The long form of the traditions came out first and they were for us, for the fellowship, for us to live by. The short form of the traditions came out later for the outside world, for the professionals to shorten it so that they could better understand who we are and what we're doing. But this is what gives us what we have to do to stay together. Otherwise, like it says, most of us will finally die alone.

So thank you so much. Thank you. Good stuff, dad. My name is Bob and I'm an alcoholic. Hey, Bob.

Page 25, it says, when therefore we were approached by those who in whom the problem had been solved, there was nothing left for us to but pick up a simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet. I know you're gonna probably talk about this, in a little bit here, but as far as sponsorship and finding the people that have found the solution. You know, how you I'm gonna pass on that till this afternoon. I'm hoping you're gonna be here because that's what we're gonna talk about all afternoon. Okay.

It's exactly what you're talking about. Right. Yeah. Good questions. Hi everybody, I'm out calling for Steve Judge.

Steve. One thing I want to say, the question was about more literature being brought in the AA. Something my sponsor had always told out to me is, it says here, to show other alcohols precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book. For them, we hope these pages will prove so convincing that no further authentication will be necessary. And this was written before all the other literature had come out.

And those the people who wrote the book, they didn't have our history books. They didn't have, as as, you know, as Bill sees it and doctor Bob and the good old timers. Well, well. But what happened is they were able to stay sober, you know, and forward to the 2nd edition at the end of it, it says, we would like to hear from those who are getting results from this book, particularly those who have commenced work with other alcoholics, you know. And what he'd always told to me is that working with another alcoholic and doing what this book says to do, you will get results.

It doesn't say you may get results or who could be getting results, it says you are getting results. In in my group, what we hide behind or what the members of the group hide behind is the blue card. Open meeting, closed meeting. Open meeting, you can talk about anything you wanna talk about. Closed meeting, you have to talk about alcohol in a bottle, you know, and that's what they call it, put it in a bottle.

So what's your what's your see on the blue card? 4 tradition says each group is autonomous, self governing and independent. Get rid of it. Set up a new group conscience. That's a bit The the blue card is is actually pretty specific.

Even with an open meeting, they ask us to to confine our discussions as they relate to alcoholism. And the babysitter has got nothing to do with alcoholism. So it's it's telling us still, even an open the the definition between an open meeting and a closed meeting is that open meetings are for for anybody. Anybody. Closed meetings are specifically for those who suffer from the disease of alcoholism, and they're asking us in a closed meeting to focus our topics on on the But in the open on the blue card on the open meeting, it also says the same thing.

We want you to confine your discussion to those problems with alcohol. So it's it's not a way out, I can assure you. They're just folks have a tendency to misinterpret what that what that says. Open and close just tells us who can come and who and who can't come. In a closed meeting, just like Deb alluded to, buddy, you better be an alcoholic in a closed meeting.

If you're not, you're not welcome. It's just that simple. It You can I'll I'll pass. The reason why I say, if you want, be rid of it and and have your own group conscience, is my old group we had to. Because peep they were reading it during the notes and it wasn't even being paid attention to, but they paid attention to different information about restricting, our our our comments to alcohol and alcohol only.

And we came up with something that the some of the group members voted on, Eventually got turned back anyway, that's why the group is one of the reasons why the group is not around, but, the blue card was not working for us. Need to be very clear cut, precise, exact, specific. Okay. I won't cover that stuff this afternoon too because we're gonna talk about group structure stuff and we'll cover some of that too. We got time for a couple more real quick and then we gotta go to lunch.

Hi, I'm Kathy and I'm an alcoholic. Hi Kathy. And I'd like to thank you all for being here. This has really been great for me because you know, coming up on 8 years, some people have talked about being around there, I thought I was working a pretty good program till yesterday. And I have to be honest about that, you know.

And and I've heard people talk about what people say in meetings and I've said those things with the best of intentions. And but I've learned at least in this program that it's not the easy stuff that keeps me sober that I know about myself. It's the hard truths that I have to face about myself that, you know, keeps me work work in this path. One of the the questions that I have, is the God question. Because, you know, I go to meetings when people do talk about God and I hear other people who say, oh, they're bringing up the g word again.