The topic

You guys, see my little Iceland t shirt? Ain't that groovy? I was I don't know I don't know whether I was happier this morning just to get warm or to get a shower. Finally, my, you know, my luggage got lost and I saw I come walking in so I actually have clothes to change into so I can hug you guys again and I was so nervous last night. People said, here, let me hug you and I was going, 38 hours of traveling with no shower and no brush teeth, and I was going, oh, this is not good.

For you guys I haven't met, my name is Myers Raymer, and I'm an alcoholic. And I'm a member of the primary purpose group of Dallas, Texas, and, my sobriety date is January 15th 88. And, I I can't tell you. I can't I I can hardly wait till in the morning to talk because, I can't I'm blown away by how many of you guys I remember from the last time I was here a couple of years ago. And, it's not that you're all great guys.

It it's it's but what it is is that you're here still. I I mean, it's just anytime people stay in AA, NACA, any of our in our 12 step fellowships, I'm always just delighted. It's just it's the it's the, because you can see the thing working. You know? And and it's always my great fear to know that there would be some of us out there, like, as cold as it was last night.

And this thought that there were people out there on the street doing what we do on the street, it just breaks my heart. And, the fact that you're here this morning and warm is, is is real comforting to me. The stuff that we're talking about this morning, I wanna do a little little clerical work here and make sure that we're all gathered up here. We're talking about unity and 12 step work these kind of things, and I'm gonna talk for about 30 minutes and then 25 minutes or so, and then we're gonna take a fast smoke break, smoke a butt real quick. Everybody can come back in again.

Brian's gonna share for a few minutes, and then, we're gonna do a q and a deal. And so if you've got questions this guy was talking in Icelandic a minute ago and he may have been saying exactly what I just said. So He was talking about you. It just it just dawned on me. He may have said all that.

I don't know. The, you know, God didn't didn't just tap me on the shoulder weeks ago and say, Myers, I want you to go to Iceland and straighten some bitches out. He he didn't say that, but no matter where I go, no matter what country we're in, no matter where I am around AA stuff, I am often terrifically caught off guard by how our fellowship as a whole has slid sideways around certain issues. I used to hear these old timers we'll talk about this a little bit in the morning, but I used to hear these old timers all the time talk about, well, you know, wherever that circle and triangle on the door, God's there too. And I used to believe that lock, stock, and barrel for a bunch of years, but you know, I'd I'm not sure I do anymore.

I'm not sure I do. What I believe is that God would like to be there, would dearly love to be there in those rooms. But the arrogance and the and the the, the sickness, we call them toxic meetings. These things some of our meetings have just gotten so sick that I think God would rather be fishing someplace. God says, see you guys.

I think God comes to Iceland. Because he's so sick of the United States, he could scream, you know. It's just like, don't get me started. Here's the deal. Kip was hitting on it dead on a minute ago.

There there's this there's this assumption that we must be kind and gentle to the guys that got here. The the new guys, we gotta scoop them up, hug them, love on them, tell them everything's gonna be groovy. Well, we could tell them that, and it may be. But we also have at the same time, we have to start beginning to teach these guys what it's like to be sober members of Alcoholics Anonymous and quit leaving it to chance, because the chance may come where they they may not get it because they're so sick and they're so headstrong and they're so full of what? Selfishness and self centeredness that we think is the root of our problem.

They're so full of themselves that they can't get well. And there's where we run into the problem. And collectively, as a fellowship, we allow this stuff to go. People people brand new are allowed to sit in meetings and spew all kinds of bizarre nonsense, and we just we just ignore them. We just sit back.

Well, the new guy that's sitting in the meeting here detoxing, he's listening to this stuff. Day 1 in the meeting, what have we got? We got we got guys that don't know the solution, teaching new guys that are detoxing our meeting what they think the solution is. And it's no wonder we get so sick. It's no wonder things get so convoluted and bizarre, and people, you know, a week into the deal, they're not doing anything and it you guys have seen this.

Every one of you in here has experienced exactly what I'm talking about. The 2 areas that get abused the most in this deal are around the areas of 12 step work. Oh, oh, I I couldn't do any of that. I'm I'm not well enough. Oh.

Okay. You selfish jerk. It that area and the area of sponsorship. You see? Now I'll tell you a common thread.

We'll talk about this stuff this morning. We'll talk about it again in the morning for sure. I've never done a talk that we didn't talk about this thing. What is the common thread that keeps every drunk and every addict clear of working with others and sponsorship? Because those two things are sort of joined at the hip.

They're different, and their and their responsibilities are different, but they're basically the same kind of deal. They're joined, but what's the common thread, in the reason why we don't do this stuff? When you guys got here, what is the one thing you didn't wanna do? I don't wanna do 12 step work, and I don't wanna be a sponsor because I am afraid. Deep down inside, I know some of you arrogant little piss ants ants don't think that you are, but I'm telling you, the common thread is the common thread is I'm afraid.

I don't want to, I don't wanna do this because I don't know for sure what there's this there's this huge dose of anxiety around the whole deal. Do I really know how to sponsor somebody? Do I really know how to sponsor somebody? Do I really know how to and if you'll take that thread of thought and carry it back, it always goes back to the same thing. Do I really think and know that I have worked that work and have had that spiritual experience?

In our book, it's on 50, on page 60, wherever the steps look it's step 12. And I'm going to read this to you, and then I want to bust this one little piece down. 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. We read it a 1000000 times, right? But look at this.

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, pretend that comma there is a period, message that we're trying to carry, guys, That we had had a spiritual experience as a result of these steps. So the next common thread is, have I had this spiritual experience? There's what we don't wanna talk about, you see. Yeah. I understand that, guys.

Listen. I'm telling you. You you guys that know me and have heard me talk before know that I come from a background of middle of the road solution. I was 7 years in this deal trying to to to recover and not being able to, I'm 7 years in this thing thing and I'm suicidal and I'm batshit crazy and I'm, you know, I'm just I'm just a fruitcake, because nobody would hold me accountable to do the work. Nobody this crusty old guy, and he starts taking me through the work.

Now, the very first question that he implied when we started talking was, have you had a spiritual experience as a result of doing this work? And I remember it like it was yesterday. I went, well, Cliff, you know, there are many times of types of spiritual experiences. And he's just looking at me, you know, like this. And he just I mean, this guy God.

On one level, this man loves me a great deal. And on the other level, he's going I'd rather be taking a crap right now than listening to you run your mouth. You know? I mean, he he doesn't and I'm trying to play hip slicking cool AA guy. And his his patience is wearing real thin because I keep trying to give him my cycle crap that I picked up in all these goofy discussion meetings.

I'm just trying to to dazzle this guy, and he's sitting here scratching his head and finally he says, Mars, stop. Let's let's see if we understand something here. For 7 years, you've been trying to do this and you've not been successful. You haven't had a drink or done any drugs, but you're suicidal. You can't hold a job, your wife's getting ready to leave you, all areas of your life are crumbling at your feet, and yet in your arrogance, you want to tell me all of this crap.

And I'm going about sums it up. And so what I had to do was do what he suggested, which was shut up and listen and begin to ask hard questions. And Cliff Bishop and I'll bust his anonymity and and I'm never sorry when I do it. And I guess what? I'll bust it again in the morning when we talk.

As as as members of this deal I'll make sure I don't don't go long. The very first thing we need to do on this deal is to get some get some cojones, get some some balls. We need to we need to get some strength about us, about what we're doing, and quit being so afraid that we're gonna offend some busted up drunk that comes in here. We're not. Guys, I'm telling you right now, there's a common thread and collectively it is this.

Everybody that comes to this deal that has not worked the work has no clue what a spiritual experience is. They don't know, and they need somebody to tell them what it is. And you're the guy or you're the woman. Tell them what they need to do. This crap of letting people twist and turn and bounce around in our fellowships and all of us are praying that they're gonna make it, and yet, why should they make it?

Why should they? Most of our meetings have gotten toxic and there's no solution there anymore because we're too busy talking about Sally's divorce or Joe's lack of being able to get a job, or or what we're we're just talking crap all day long, and the why should they recover? Let's get some let's let's let's ask ourselves the question first. Have I as an individual had a spiritual experience as a result of doing that work? If I have, then what are my responsibilities to AA?

To go scoop some cats up and go work with these guys. Let's go help somebody. On page 1 on page 132, there's a little paragraph down at the very bottom and it says, we have recovered and been given the power to help others. The illusion with every one of us is I'll never be good enough to help anybody. I'll never be smart enough.

I'll never be bright enough. I'll never be quick enough on my feet. I'll never be blah blah blah. You just fill in the blank. Listen.

If if if my buddy over here can do it, I'm telling you, we can all do that. Most of you guys have heard stories. I'm not busting him, man. I know him. I love the guy for you know, I've known him for years.

It is it's the truth. We've been given the power to help other people and we need to stop making excuses why we're not out there on the firing line helping somebody. Well, I gotta wait till I get all this stuff done. Listen, guys. We have this illusion that what we need to do is is we need to get all we we call them in my group, we call it the trinity, the job, the girl, and the car.

I gotta get I gotta get all these three things set up first, and once I get these three things done, then I can go help a drunk. Don't do this. Don't do this. Any of you guys ever work with a guy coming out of treatment? In the states, our treatment stuff is generally 27 days.

And so and and it's usually expensive. The guys are dropping 20, $25,000 on a on a 27 day stay in a hospital. And, and it's funny when you when you go talk to the treatment center guys and you you got them in a room collectively and you're going through this stuff, and they're you got this guy that's, this guy right here. Well, I'll pick on him. Tomorrow, I'll pick on somebody else.

Tonight, I'll pick on you. He's he's in treatment, and he's been there for 5 days. He's all busted up. He's just come off the Thorazine and stuff, and and he's and now he's just in full reality of where he is and what he's doing, man. So he knows he's got 20 days to cool his 25 days or so left to cool his jets in treatment.

Right? And so he's reeling he's he's Mount Myers, I'll do anything, man. I'll do anything I can to stay sober. Great. We're gonna work through this work as bad as best we can while you're in here.

We're gonna do what what we can to see if we can't get you on the straight I'm ready, man. I'm ready. And he is. And he just blows and goes for about 2 weeks. Now we're 5 days from him getting out of treatment and you go back in and you see him.

He's a completely different guy. It's like doctor Jekyll and mister Hyde. Because guess what? During the night, you know what he started thinking about? Was it God?

Was it service of others? Was it AA? Was it nuh-uh. What he got to thinking about was the trinity, the job the girl in the car. And I'm telling you guys, this is classic stuff here.

Else except the job the girl in the car. That's it. All he's thinking about was, I gotta get out of here and I gotta get this job. And then when I get the job, then I can get the car thing and then when I got the car thing here, then I can get the car then I get the girl back cause I can't get the girl without the car. See, in Texas, you can't do crap without a car.

It's it's too it's too spread out. It's too spread out. So you gotta have a car. And then we may convoluted a little bit. I gotta throw the house in there.

I gotta get the house back, and I gotta get this thing. And then we're all focused on this stuff. I got things. I gotta make up for all this lost time. I spent all these years drinking and drugging and acting a fool and I gotta get it all collected up.

Oh, don't do this. Don't what I had so what I had to do is a is a is a good solid sponsor and a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous, I'm gonna take that knucklehead and we're gonna stand outside and I'm gonna grab him around the head just like this and I'm gonna give him a little noogie thing and I'm gonna go stop it. Don't do this. You're getting ready to screw up 20 days of hard work on this thing because of your own fear and anxiety. Stop doing this.

God's got everything under control. The job, the girl, and the car, everything that you wanted plus some. And what makes you think at 20 years, 20 days of being sober that you know what you need anyway? Which is true. You know?

Most of us know so very little and we limit our whole lives down to these little minute things and we want everything all clean and boxed up when God's got these grand plans, and he's just saying, buddy, get out of the damn way. If you'll just move, I'll deal with this stuff, man. I'm gonna bring you a killer woman and a great job and a great bitching car and all this stuff. It's all right there, but you gotta get out of the way, man. You see?

And so my job as a sponsor here's the Reader's Digest condensed version of sponsorship. My job as a sponsor is to make sure that he does get out of the way, that he does stay clear of his own self and his own selfish interest in this in this deal. Chapter 7, working with others in the book, goes into great detail about how to 12 step somebody. And there's all kinds of information gleaned there about what our responsibilities are in helping a new guy get into this work and then get through this work. We've taken on a great deal.

I think a lot of the fear for about sponsorship and 12 step work comes on on the stuff that we've added to excuse me. The things that we've added to this process. We we we've brought all these other deals in here. I've got to play junior therapist, so I'm sponsoring a guy and he's got bipolar issues. Who am I to give this guy information on bipolar disease and and manic depressive stuff?

I well, I'm no doctor. Why should I think that God gave me the wisdom to know how to deal with this cat's meds? Isn't that stupid? And yet, every one of us seems to wanna do that. We gravitate in there.

I know some of you are going, I've never done that. Oh, okay. How about when he when he had legal problems? How much time did you spend trying to give him advice on his legal problems? Yeah.

I know. I've been there too. And the guy walks out of the room at the end of the conversation, and I'm sitting here in a room all by myself going, the hell do I know about the law? What am I doing giving this guy legal advice and giving him, you know, same thing with relationships, same thing with money, same thing with finances, same thing with you guys get the drill. What I want you to do is, sometime when you don't have anything else to do, get your big book out and you go back in and you look at everything from let's say page 85 over to page 164.

Go through the rest of the book and see if you can show me where it tells me in black and white that I'm supposed to show to those responsibilities. It ain't in there. I'm a save you a bunch of time and effort. Okay? It's not in there.

It is not our job. It's not our responsibility in any form or fashion. That's God's biz. We are not bankers. We are not lawyers.

We are not doctors. We are not psychiatrists. We're not, please stop trying to play junior therapist with these guys. Let God do what God's supposed to be doing. Let's go ahead and and get these guys ganged up.

We have one responsibility. My responsibility to that man is to make sure that he gets through that work, so that he gets to God as quickly as he can. That he gets to God as quickly as he can. There's where my responsibility begins and ends. Because once he's plugged into God remember the book tells us in like 3 places in the first 25 pages of the book that we've placed ourselves beyond human aid, sober, my group's not keeping me sober, my preacher's not keeping me sober, my wife's not.

You know the drill. No external circumstance is going to keep me sober. My sobriety is going to come from a god of my understanding that I'm going to reach and reaffirm and connect with through the process of working the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. So that's what I gotta do. When he starts crawfish and says he doesn't work wanna work the steps, my job is to make damn sure he does or dust his ass and send him on.

See you. Nothing personal, You know? But you see, when you do that, when you take all this other stuff and you scrape it off out of the way and you get it all back here like this and you look at the clear cut message of what my responsibilities are as a sponsor, it becomes fairly easy to see and do. And a lot of the anxiety and the responsibility goes away. If I know I don't have to deal with this guy's bipolar issues, it makes it real simple.

You see? What I can suggest you do is it does is go call a physician. If his meds are screwed up, let's go see if we can get you hooked up with somebody else, but it's not my responsibility to to give you all this advice. We're all clear on that. Right?

We come into the contact with this so often that it's just it's just mind boggling. There's nothing wrong with with, let me mention this real quick and then I'll I'll I'll I'll slow this thing down. We'll we'll take a smoke break. This deal of qualifying a drunk, why is this stuff so so, offensive? I I run across this so often in in in Texas and in the groups that I've that I I get to go see.

We get all goofy around this idea of qualifying the drunk. Those statistics that Kip gave just a minute ago, 80, 90% of people used to that that came stayed sober up to about 1955. After 1955, things started kinda going down the toilet. 12 and 12 was written, which kinda watered things down a little bit. We thought it was gonna help, but it really, it really got things a little bit convoluted.

And then, by the sixties, things got pretty bizarre. By the seventies eighties in in the United States, AA had become a cesspool of bizarre ideas, that were guaranteed. They used to call it second stage recovery and all this other crap. And it was just it was just horse crap is what it was. It was just it was work guaranteed to, to confuse and befuddle.

And the quality of the sobriety was not what it should have been. And there's a lot of people that for any length of time and the quality of the sobriety was not what it should have been. And there were people getting sober, guys. I'm not saying that. But there were people still, you know, staying plugged into the steps too during that period of time.

But the vast majority of us stopped doing that and things got pretty convoluted. And that's why, see, AA, alcoholism has not changed any in 70 years. It hadn't changed any in 1000 of years. But I mean, since the since the beginning in 1939 of this thing, when the big book was written, we'll we'll use that as our starting point. Drunks have not changed any, nor of drug addicts or anything else, but it's just, but our program has.

We're not giving the this clear cut message anymore like what we used to. But a lot of what happens is is that we stop qualifying guys. When they come in, in the old day, you used to be qualified immediately. Somebody would say, why are you here? And we could talk ask those 2 questions in page on page 44 and qualify this guy and find out, are you a real drunk or not?

We're gonna find out if this cat's a recreational if we're in NA or CA. We're gonna find out if this guy's a recreational drug user or if he's a real deal addict. Guys, I gotta ask you from a purely selfish standpoint. If you we're all busy people and and and if you have a recreational drug user and you're in NA or CA, why do you want to spend a bunch of time carrying this cat through the work if he's not an addict? By the same token, if you're an alcoholic and you're a busy alcoholic, why would you want to spend weeks of your time working with and carrying a guy through the work that's not a real drunk?

Statistically, the vast majority of people that come to AAA today are not alcoholic. They are not. They are heavy drinkers and problem drinkers that have a blowtorch right on their butt. They're in trouble. The wifey poo says, I'm not I'm gonna I'm gonna break it off in you if you come home drunk again.

I mean, it is it's just or the law, the legal system has said, you're going to jail if you get drunk again. Or the medical guys say, man, you're in trouble medically if you keep drinking. That's what sends so many people to our fellowship. But because we don't qualify anymore, we have fellowships, rooms full of, we did this as a it was a kind of fun. You'll get a kick out of this story.

The I didn't get a kick out of it. I wept for 2 days when I when we did it. There was a small group in our area, and we had taken that group collectively like this. I got to know a bunch of these guys that started that group. They had probably there was no solution there was no solution.

They never talked to any big book and they never and so one night, I was doing it. They asked me to come over and do a little workshop deal, and we did the deal, and then at the end of it, I said, look, guys, I want to do something. And I'm not doing this to embarrass anybody. But, what I want to do is is just for the sake of this example, I want to qualify each and every one of you on an individual basis and find out what we find out. They said groovy.

No sweat. Let's do that. And so I took each individual guys there. There were 42 people there that night and I went I took each one of those guys into a side room. I just stepped in.

I had my book my big book out. I turned to page 44, and I read those 2 paragraphs right there. If when you honestly want to, can you stop? We're talking about the power of choice and control. We'll talk about it some in the morning.

And I asked them the 2 questions. Next, next, next. The whole thing didn't take me 20 minutes. They drank coffee while I did it. We get done with the deal, come back out like this.

Guess what? 42 core members of that group, 10 alcoholics. That's it. That's it. The rest of them were just heavy drinkers that were there because they got in trouble.

They weren't real alcoholics. Now listen. You think they were surprised? Yeah. The guys that I qualified that we talked to, goddamn.

I mean, they're going like, man. I said, well, how did you get here? Well, how do you know you're an alcoholic? The judge said I was. My wife said I was a drunk, so I had to come.

Guys, remember the problem drinker, the heavy drinker, and the alcoholic drink exactly alike. The differences only materialize when we try to stop. If you can quit drinking on a non spiritual basis, you're not an alcoholic. This is the facts of the deal, guys. I didn't make this stuff up.

People always want to jam me up after a talk and you know, take exception with this, that. I didn't make it up. I'm just explaining to you what I've learned as a result of going through this stuff. So if we have collectively a fellowship that followed those same, deals there, you're looking at like what? 50% of the people that are in AA are not real drunks.

They're just guys that got in trouble. Why is that an issue? It's a real issue on the second generation. You can come in here. I don't care if you're drunk or not.

You can come in here and say all you want to. It's not affecting me in the least. Let me tell you when it starts affecting me though. When this man and this man start working together as sponsors, he says, would you help me with the work? And he starts carrying him through it.

At some point in time in this, the non alcoholic will go, you know, the reality is I didn't work any of these steps and I've stayed sober all this time. Or he goes, hey, look man, dude. I don't I don't care if you take 6 months to work this work. It's okay. Fuck.

Hell, take a year. It's okay. Because he didn't need to. See, he's not a chronic. The disease is not chronic in his life.

There is no desperation of a drowning man. Right? And so and so that's how it gets all convoluted. So now you've got a nonalcoholic sponsoring a guy who is a real drunk. There is no fellowship, there's no contact, there's no no no connection there And so we wonder why this man is struggling so bad to stay sober, why he's slipping and sliding like a big dog and he can't do what he's just chronically relapsing.

The solution was never there, man. He didn't get the solution, didn't get the message from the guy that was working with him. I gotta clarify this, Did this man love him any less? No. I'm telling you what guys, our fellowship is full of men and women who love each other dramatically.

The first 7 years I was in this deal, those men and women loved me like nothing you've ever seen in your whole life, but the reality is the first two sponsors I had weren't broncs. They were heavy drinkers hiding out in AA. They came. They liked the coffee. They liked the women.

They liked the they liked the fellowship. They stayed. But buddy, they never held me accountable to do anything. And if I wanted to share some horse crap I'd picked up someplace, they let me. They let me.

If I didn't want to do that inventory, I don't worry about it. It's okay. You're here aren't you? You're sober today aren't you? I wanna weep, not for me, but for the men and women that are the men that I tried to sponsor the first 7 years that I was sober, because we're just like parrots.

Aren't we? We we just transmit what we've been taught. And so I'm taught a bunch of middle of the road stuff. I'm a card carrying member of that club. I'm the poster boy of middle of the road solution.

And that's what I teach my guys. And so to tie it all up, that's what the whole thing is about. What we need to do is change AA one man at a time. We need to take in 1 woman at a time. You women who are struggling mightily in this deal because there's no strong women, find you a strong woman.

Pray for it. God will bring that woman into your life. You hang on to her for dear life. And as you get strong, you go out and start sponsoring some and what we'll do is we'll end up with these guys, these little groups building within other groups of strong men and women doing this stuff. And you will be so excited.

You will once you begin to experience AA on that level, nothing in your life will be unchanged. Everything will be affected by the by the the the, this deal of being surrounded by men and women who have the same common solution that you do and want the same thing that you do. And as God moves into your life and begins to move through your friends and family, you'll begin to see things that you've never seen before. The jobs will begin to straighten out, the car begins to straighten out, all this other stuff comes in. You guys are walking testaments to that.

Some of you guys I've known for years, and I know how strong you are in this work, and I know what you've been able to accomplish. I I got news for you whether you know it or not, Iceland is, besides being my personal heroes, worldwide people use Iceland as an example of where Iceland was in AA and where Iceland is today in AA. And it's an amazing thing to see. When we were in Denmark, last fall, I'm blown away by how many people I talked to who go, yeah. We want our AA here to be like Iceland's AA.

This is cool. Yeah. Go ahead. This is cool. I tell you what let's do.

Why don't it's a good time to do that. Why don't we go smoke a butt and then, I don't know, 10 or 15 minutes, whatever, and we'll come back and we'll let Brian talk and then we'll, do some questions and answers.