Steps 1, 2 and 3 in Richmond, VA

Hi, everybody. My name's Johnny, and I'm an alcoholic. Well, I want to, let you know, right out of the gate that by no wild stretch of the imagination am I a consultant, a counselor, or an authority on a program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm an example, good, bad, or indifferent, that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous works. It has been necessary for me to drink anything or swallow anything or stick anything in my arm since sometime before the 4th day in November 1959.

And from that day to this day, the only therapy that's been introduced in my life is a program called Alcoholics Anonymous. And the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, as I understand it, is outlined within the first 164 pages of our book called Alcoholics Anonymous. And what I've come to learn in the last 36 years plus of my life, by attending meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, and having a a kind and generous and firm sponsor who leads me through life, is that what Alcoholics Anonymous is not. And there seems to be some confusion about that today, with all the influx of all the intellectuals who are floating through here with their 30 day wonder programs and their validation of their insurance policies. What Alcoholics Anonymous is not, it's not group therapy.

What Alcoholics Anonymous is not, it's not a self help program. What Alcoholics Anonymous is not is not a place to entertain people between dances. And what Alcoholics Anonymous is not, it's not a panacea for every bent fender who walks down the road. Alcoholics Anonymous has one purpose and one purpose only, and that is to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers, because there seems to be something going on, Many, many, many years ago, Many many many years ago before Alcoholics Anonymous was even dreamed about, or there was no thought about Alcoholics Anonymous. There was a program where 5 people got together and called themselves the Washingtonians, and they found out, these 5 people who were bad drunkards, that if they talked to one another, they could stay sober.

And they got such a great idea that they they started doing this, and the first thing you knew, up and down the East Coast from Baltimore, up and down, a movement of sober people emerged, and they got so carried away with themselves that they said, like you hear in a lot of places today, God this is a wonderful thing. Maybe we should just let everybody in on this secret. And so they open up the doors of their little program and allowed everybody to come in and the first thing you know they got involved in politics and they got in involved in all these other kind of things. And in 3 short years, this thing who was grower and bigger and faster than alcoholics and I must ever thought about, Groom, was completely and totally disappeared from the face of this earth. And for the next 100 years, there was no answer for the alcoholic, and his recovery from this seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.

Until a series of events started to happen in the early thirties. There was a guy from a very wealthy family in the Eastern part of the United States, who was a bad bad bad drinker. And, they sent him over to Switzerland to be counseled, Time and time and time again by this leading psychiatrist in the field at that time, a guy by the name of Carl Jung. And so they, his family sent him over there and he'd go over there and get sober and next thing you know he got drunk again, they sent him back and he made a statement to this guy. The guy's name was Roland.

He said, I have misdiagnosed your case. He said, I thought maybe you had just a drinking problem, but I have come to understand that you're an alcoholic of a very serious nature. And in my experience, this was the leading man of in this field of his day. In my experience, there's no hope for you. That you will either die, or go insane, or drink yourself, or have to be confined in an institution for the rest of your life.

And this is not very good news, for if you're, you know, in your early thirties. I mean that's kind of bleak. You know, when you got all this money and all this other kind of stuff. And he said, Well there's no hope for me, there's nothing. And he said, Well, and he said, Every once in a while, down through history there had been cases of people of Erie Oak who have had some type of profound spiritual experience, which seems to be the only type of a deal that can help people like you.

And so this guy took off and went back and I guess he found some type of a spiritual experience because, he was carrying the message of whatever he'd found one day in a courtroom to a guy by the name of Ebby Thatcher. And Ebby is the guy that carried the message to Bill Wilson. And Bill Wilson, as most of you know, finally got sober and had some type of a profound spiritual experience in a hospital. But what a lot of people don't seem to understand is, that before Bill Wilson had this profound spiritual experience, there were some some various actions that Bill Wilson took. And they're outlined in his story, the book Alcoholics Anonymous, and I had one and I was going to read it but it seemed like somebody stole my book.

Oh, take yours, I autographed yours, that would be really good. But I I would like to show you what I'm talking about by reading you out of Bill's story. It said, at the hospital, I was separated from alcohol for the last time treatment seemed wise, for I showed signs of delirium tremblems. That means whiskey fits. There I humbly offered myself to God as I then understood him to do with me as he would.

I placed my self unreservedly on his care and direction. I admitted for the first time of myself I was nothing, that without him I was lost. I was rusally faced by sins and became willing to have my newfound friend take them away, root and branch. I have not had a drink since. It's it's amazing to me the number of people who come to Alcoholics Anonymous today, who think by some strange hook or crook that they have discovered the cure for alcoholism by not drinking.

Nothing could be more profoundly insane than to think that I have some type of an alcohol problem because I don't drink. Alcohol has never ever been my problem. It's not my problem today, it was my problem before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, and it never will be my problem. Sobriety seems to be my problem. If I could stay sober on my own, I sure as hell wouldn't be in wherever I'm at today.

I would, I'd be in Long Beach, it's 80 degrees in Long Beach for Christ sakes. And I'd probably be in my shirt sleeves playing golf. But but you see what I've come to understand is of myself I can't keep from drinking. And what I was, when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous in November 1959, I had just, left a cell in solitary confinement where I'd been confined for a period of time because of my insanity. I had gone completely and totally insane.

I've been die I have been diagnosed as clinically insane. I have been diagnosed that I can never live outside of an institution without some type of medication in my system. And yet from my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous to this one, I haven't had anything in my system stronger than an aspirin. So something basically has happened to me. Something profoundly has happened to me because from the time I was 9 years old until that day in November 1959, I couldn't keep from drinking.

I didn't have a slightest idea of what was wrong with me, and I didn't know what was wrong with me. And I stumbled into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I get no credit for coming to Alcoholics Anonymous because if I had known where I was coming today, I wouldn't have come. I was not alcoholic. If you'd put me in a doorway that day and put a lie detector test in my arm and said are you alcoholic?

I'd have said no, I'm not. And the needle wouldn't have moved. Which seems to be a great dilemma in Alcoholics Anonymous. I've always had some, like a little sick idea what I would like to do. I would like to sit in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous somebody at the doorway with a lie detector and ask everybody who comes in the door, are you alcoholic?

You would get some of the most profound answers a clue what's wrong with them. They don't have a clue. Somebody told them that they have a drinking problem, or somebody told them that they were alcoholic, but they don't have a clue. And they'll say, oh, yeah. I'm alcoholic.

But this book, Alcoholics Anonymous, tells me I had a guy said one night, he says, I don't know where the first step is in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I do. It's in the 3rd chapter of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. It said we had to learn to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholic. That's the first step in recovery.

Now that's the first step in in a program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I admitted that I'm powerless over alcohol, dash means there's another thought coming there and my life has become unmanageable. I can't manage my own life. I can't run it. I couldn't run it before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous.

I can't run it right now. But to admit that there's a twofold nature to my disease, and that's a double admission of defeat is a big chunk of things for an alcoholic of my type to swallow. What do you mean I'm powerless over alcohol? I can't I can't handle it? What do you mean I'm powerless over alcohol?

A little simple drink like that? Something seemed to happen to me when I drink alcohol, it doesn't happen control and enjoy my drinking. And I heard a guy talk about it the other night. He says in chapter 3 more about alcohol, they said, try all these various things. We try to control and enjoy our drinking.

Now the sad part about it with alcoholics like me, if I'm controlling my drinking I'm not enjoying it. But by the same token if I'm enjoying it I can't control it. And that's the type of a 2 headed dilemma that I'm in. And it also says in this book, Alcoholics Anonymous, and this is the thing that I'm really amazed by that so many people seem to think that Alcoholics Anonymous is something other than what's in this book. This is a program of recovery, not about drinking.

And I know that, almost sounds like heresy, but it's a program of recovery about how to live without drinking. And that's what it says here. It says in this book, rarely have we seen a person failed who has thoroughly followed our path. Now that's a pretty deep statement. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed this path.

It says those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program. This simple program, period. And in that one word, this simple program is a dilemma that kills a lot of alcoholics today. It's just too damn simple. I mean, that's what it said.

It says here, if you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, then you're ready to take certain steps. And it's my opinion that the majority people come to Alcoholics in the House today don't want a damn thing we got. Not a thing, they don't want anything we got. I mean, they got all these other therapeutic crap that they take, and all this other stuff that they do. But it says here, if you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, then you're ready to take certain steps.

And you hear all kinds of stuff like, well, when do you think I ought to get into the steps? When do you want to start getting well for Christ's sake? I mean, that's very simple. That's that's all it is. If you admit that you're powerless over something and that your life is unmanageable, that says to me very simply that I have to find another manager, that I'm not doing a very good job.

If my life is unmanageable, what makes them think that just because I quit drinking, I can manage things again? That's an amazing egotistical thought process that seemed to run through the mind of alcoholics of my type. Oh, everything just fine now. I don't drink anymore. It's just wonderful here, isn't it?

I have to find some type of a way to live with the unresolved nightmares of my past if I wanna have any type of an opportunity not to drink. See, I did not drink after I was sober because I was affected with the phenomena of craving all the time and I run around craving a drink. There's no craving of alcohol in my system today because I don't have any alcohol in my system so there is no craving there. Once I ingest alcohol into my system, I am Phenomenal with the craving that's beyond all human help and human understanding. Once I ingest alcohol into my system, if there's no alcohol in my system, there is no craving.

None whatsoever. My body is physically as normal as anybody else's if there's no alcohol in my system. Nobody knows why that is, nobody's ever been able to figure it out, and I hope they never do get so smart that they figure all this stuff out. Once I take that drink, I'm powerless not to take the next one. And so what I've come to understand, that the whole program of Alcoholics Anonymous is designed to do one very simple thing.

It's to keep me from taking a drink of alcohol. Because once I take the drink of alcohol, I am doomed not to take the next one, a drink of alcohol. Now how do I do that? I can't manage my own life and I'm powerless over this thing, so I have to get a new power. It says, I came to believe that a power greater than myself, which ain't me, could restore me to sanity.

Isn't it amazing? You don't have to restore sane people to sanity. I know that's a little bit deep, but that's a that's a left handed saying that we're not eating fruitcakes. I mean, really. I mean, you don't think insanity.

I tell you the best definition of insanity I ever heard in my life, it's it's it's repeating the same actions over and over and over again and expecting different results. And there ain't an alcoholic walking around on the face of the earth who can't buy that 100%. I don't know how you define sanity or insane or all this other kind of nonsense. I really don't know. I don't know when you do this.

I do know that, somewhere along the line, the desperation and the pain has become so great in people like me that I had to surrender to something. And, I don't know what it is half the time I was surrendering. And when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I did not have the ability to believe anything at all. So I put my faith in a power greater myself, which I saw was the people of Alcoholics Anonymous. And not in all of them because I never had been any one of those people who could believe everybody and everything that came about.

But I came to believe there's a power greater than ourselves. Most of this stuff that happened to me in Alcoholics Anonymous when I first came here, I couldn't buy it at all. When I first came to Alcoholics Anonymous, there was no way in the world I could admit that I was an alcoholic because I didn't know what an alcoholic was. When I came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore me to sanity, I could not, for a simple belief in my life, believe that I was insane. Now I have a piece of paper in my pocket at that time that says I was clinically insane but I couldn't buy that.

Now that's how far gone I was when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I just could not buy this thing. I couldn't buy the idea that I was insane, I didn't know what sanity could talk to. I didn't have the slightest idea what sane and insanity and normality was, what people did, I didn't know anything about any of that type of operation of living when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous. The third thing in Alcoholics Anonymous that I was asked to do in this book, it says something that's very hard for alcoholics of my type to do.

He said, I have to make a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand him. I think that it's probably one of the most misunderstood things that go on here. Because you hear all the time and I'll call it synonymous and kind of a, a I don't pay much attention to it. I just let it go in one ear and not just I just talk to God all the time. God is my sponsor.

Good. Good. Good. God, that's just wonderful. This step does not say I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to God as I understand it.

It says I placed my will and my care into the care of God as I understand him. That means I put my life into the care of God. Now when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I didn't have a God. I didn't believe in a God. If there was a God, I didn't wanna know where I was at.

I'll tell you that. It does not say in this book, Alcoholics Anonymous or anywhere that I've read in this thing, that I made a decision to turn my, to place my will and my life in over to God. If we could do that, if I could turn my life over to God, then you'd have to explain to me what these other 9 steps are all about. You would have to explain to me very simply why these 9 steps, why it's necessary for me to have a sponsor, why it's necessary for me to go to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, why it's necessary for me to carry the message that the alcoholic who still suffered, if I could turn my will and my life over to God. There'd be no necessity for nothing.

I mean I mean God you'd have to, you know, you'd have to go to meetings anymore. I mean, you wouldn't have anything, it doesn't say that. It says, I made a decision to turn my will and my life over to the care of God as I understand him. That's all. If I could turn my life over to God, and leave it there, I would never have anything else.

I would just probably wander around and glow somewhere. You just, I mean it you would. I mean it would be absolutely awe inspiring to see somebody who actually could do that. It doesn't say that in this program and I don't know any alcoholic who can do it. I know we're a lot of egotists who think they have, but it's really not possible.

It says the care of God. That's like, I heard it described one time, a guy said he went somewhere and he took, he had a little dog, I don't know people have little dogs they take them down and put them in the kennels. It doesn't say that they take that dog down there and turn them over to the kennel, and just go away and leave them for the rest of time. They place him into the care of that kennel and when they go back to get the little dog, the little dog comes over there and they got the little dog back again. It doesn't say anything like that.

Over on page 60 3 of our book Alcoholics Anonymous. It's amazing to me that most of the people think that Alcoholics Anonymous ends when you say the ABCs in the 5th chapter. If we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives, there's probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism, that God could and would if he were son. On page 60 of the book Alcoholics Anonymous, it says, Being convinced, we were at step 3. Which is that we decided to turn our will and our life over to God as we understood him.

Just what do we mean by that, and just what do we do? Now, over here, on page 30, we learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholic. This is the first step in recovery. The delusion that we are like other people or presently maybe has to be smashed. Now from page 30 to page 60, it must be obvious that we're working on that step that says, we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore its insanity.

There's 30 pages in there that must be about step 2 because when you get over to page 60, it says being convinced we were at step 3. All the way over there, step 3. So we just got through 60 pages and we just got to step 3. And step 3, to me, is very simple. I read it every day of my life.

It's the first thing I do every morning. It's, God, I offer myself to thee. Do build with me and do with me as thy will. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will. Take away my difficulties that victory over them may be a witness to those I would help of thy power, thy love, and thy way of life.

May I do thy will always. It said very simply, we thought well before taking this step, making sure that we were ready that we could at last abandon ourselves utterly to him. Now I don't know what that prayer says to anybody else, but what it says to me is this, that it's not up to me to better myself through my own efforts. It is not up to me to better myself through my own thought press process, to learn anything, to be entitled to anything, to do anything. It says here, that what I do is that I turn my will and my life over to care of God as I understood him.

And I offer myself to him to do with me whatever he will. Somewhere, someplace in this book, one of the things that Bill Wilson, one of our cofounders, loved very much was the prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi. And the prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi says, very simply the same thing that the third step prayer says to us. That what I become is a servant in my father's house. I don't become the house.

I'm just a servant. I'm not I am not the music that's played from the instrument. I am the instrument. That's the simple. I'm supposed to be used to portray the music of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous to the alcoholic who still suffer.

That's my only purpose and direction in life. I'm to be used in any way shape or form that this program or this God as I've come to understand him wants to use me to better benefit him, which does the thing that relieves me from the bondage of self. It gets rid of me. That's what it's all about. That's what this step is all about.

This step is to free me from me, to turn me over to something else, to use with me as I will. All you do is just wander around and try to be some type of an example that no matter what's going on in the world out there or in my life personally, It has no bearing on what my actions are. It has no bearing on what I do in Alcoholics Anonymous. That Alcoholics Anonymous and my participation in Alcoholics Anonymous is the cornerstone for everything that happens in my life. Everything flows from this.

Everything flows from this magnificent power that I have discovered here by just sitting down and doing what I'm asked to do, not complicating with a bunch of therapeutic nonsense that has nothing to do at all with what's wrong with me. That's all. Not to become so egotistical to believe that I am some type of a special chosen one that God has anointed to do his bidding here on earth. We just celebrated that cat's birthday last month. I'm not that.

What has happened to me is something I do not understand. Something what has happened to me in Alcoholics Anonymous and what put me into such a state that I would be willing to accept this large chunk of myself was nothing that I had done to my personally to prepare myself for. I had driven me into an absolute state of nothingness. I had beat me and used me and tried every single thing in the world that I could possibly find to find this answer to what the problem was that was killing me that I didn't know that I had. Because when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I didn't have a clue what was wrong with me.

And if you don't know what's wrong with you, you cannot find a solution or an answer to it. I didn't know. I didn't know that I was alcoholic. I didn't know that I suffered from this seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. I had no way of knowing that.

I had all the symptoms. I was restless, irritable, and discontent, and I had this craving once I took a drink. But I could not look back on that drink and say that's what got me. It was always the last thing. I always ended up in jail somewhere or strapped down.

So I didn't know what was going on. And now I got to this point here. I had driven me literally into the gates of insanity and death and beyond through my own actions and through my own interpretations of what I thought. I had all the therapeutic and psychiatric help that the world has ever known. They threw him in a tub of ice.

And then when he got nice and cool, they put him on a gurney and wheeled him down there and wired him for sound. It's called better living through electricity. Just, well, I had all that too. Even today, sometime when I hear that funeral music, I break out into a cold sweat, but But I didn't have a clue what was wrong with me. It comes something that you have to discover it, but I tell you once I discovered, once I discovered what had a hold of me, what type of a killer element I had, Somewhere in the 12 and 12, I don't know where it's at.

I can't point it out. I read it one time. Sometime it says, to realize the very nature of my dilemma, to realize that I am caught in this grip of this terrible debilitating killer disease that I have that nobody understands Why we got it, where it come from, or how come it's limited to alcoholics of my type, why certain people have this ungodly reaction to this alcohol. Once I realize that I am in a grip of this deadly killer thing, I will do anything to keep this merciless off thing off of me. Now, now you ain't gonna do anything if you don't know what you got.

I mean, if you think all I got is a little alcohol problem, you ain't drinking, why the hell would you have to do anything else? That's like saying, I had a cold last week. I took the antibiotics and I don't have the cold anymore. So I'm healthy and I'm gonna go on about Trebiddin. Alcoholism is not like that.

The only thing that sobriety does for the alcoholic of my type is make life so damned unbearable that sooner or later I have to drink or go nuts. That's all. Unless I can find some way to live comfortably enough, where I do not have to take a drink. And the only chance I have, is what I just read you. I offer myself to thee to build with me and do with me as I will.

That's a big chunk right there. That is preparing me for the things that are to come. To relieve me of the bondage of self, that says self, the bondage of self, which is the most profound statement in this book, I believe. I used to think that being locked up in a penitentiary, or in cell and solitary confinement, or strapped down in restraints in one of them nuthouses, or in straight jackets with bondage. No, I'll guarantee you, there's people sitting in this room, who are in deeper bondage than I've ever been before in my life.

Because bondage is not a place, bondage is a thing. The bondage of self is the most debilitating, destroying thing that we have. The book Alcoholics Anonymous says selfishness and self centeredness seems to be the root of my problem and I must rid myself of it or it kills me. So how am I gonna do that? How does a self centered, self seeking, egotistical idiot like me ever get rid of myself?

I am full of myself. I am always, constantly, I'll guarantee you, that whenever I think about anything, I'm the first person in my thought. Really. I mean we just passed the most selfish area of life, I mean it's called Christmas. Once a year, people get together and try to celebrate what we're supposed to be doing every day.

Where we're supposed to live every day, people think we're only supposed to do it one day of the year, Christmas. And what has happened over that period of time, we seem to forget what that's all about. Now it's about getting and giving. I wanna get more than I give. That's Christmas.

Wondering what I'm gonna get. Do you ever stare sit around at the Christmas tree and look at the Christmas tree in the house and see all the presents? I just had a very neat experience. Christmas with 2 little children, 16 and 19, 2 little girls. And I watched them.

They're the most remarkable self centered things I've ever seen in my life. I mean, they ain't nothing but little egos with arms and legs hanging on. That's all they are. I'm I'm sorry. Really.

I mean, you know, and that's the way most of us are when we get here. Just little egos with big egos with arms and legs hanging on them. And they just, you know, they get underneath the tree and find out this is mine. This is mine. This is yours.

No. No. You know, they're not they haven't even started to tear the presents open yet. They're just, yeah. They just got them all separated in piles.

So when Christmas comes, boom, right to my pile. Yeah. Look at this. Look at this. Yeah.

Yeah. Jesus, I I sit there. Children are such a a tremendous, tremendous, tremendous classroom for me to watch children at play. And to watch them because all they do is what they feel. All they do is what they want.

I mean there's nothing in their world but them. You ever watch them? Their mind never focused on anything more than 3 seconds. Then it's over here again, Then it's back here again. It's almost like a newcomer in AA.

You know what I mean? Just, I mean that's really true. I I mean we come in here, yeah, oh yeah, is this good? No, That's better. Just just just over here.

I said, oh, yes. Over here. You know? Just watch. Yeah.

Yeah. That's what I need. Relationship. Yes. We haven't we haven't got a clue.

So somehow or other, what this doctor Young told Roland in Switzerland in the early thirties has to happen to people like me. I have to have some type of a spiritual upheaval within myself, within myself. Not the world doesn't have to change, the world doesn't have to have some type of spiritual experience, I have to have some type of a spiritual upheaval within myself. Now how am I gonna get that? The chances of me having one of these profound spiritual experiences, or the chances of most of people like you, if you're here with me, is this.

The chances of you having a profound spiritual experiences with no action whatsoever, is about as profound as the opportunity you have of hitting the lottery in all the 50 states at the same time. Which is slim and none. Some of you may. I mean, I've heard people say, I had a spiritual experience. I said, it might be DTEs, but you can call it anything you want.

A spiritual upheaval to me, a spiritual is I believe that there's always a spirit within me. It was the thing that drove me crazy when I was sober for the actions that I did the last time. The people I harm, the things I've done, the nightmares that are mine, the spirit of whatever that guilt and remorse that permeates itself into people like me, and I suppose people like you if you're here, is this nightmare that I live with when I was sober that I had to get rid of and a drink made it okay for a period of time. Little did I know that I was triggering something that would drive me into the gates of insanity and death and the only way I was gonna stop this thing was to get locked up somewhere, strapped away where I couldn't do it. I didn't know that, I had to discover that.

But once a discovery was made, once a discovery was made and realized I was in a grip of this chiller, chiller thing that was destroying me, and the only opportunity I had was to do these things. An old man that I love a great deal, we talk about him for, a guy by the name of Chuck Chamberlain, told me what I'm supposed to do in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm supposed to get sober in Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm supposed to the best of my ability try to clear up the wreckage of my past. And the way I do that is what he used to say is, I spend the rest of my life just wiping out my record.

That's all. Just wipin' out the record. That's what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to wipe out the record. And I'm not the record ain't wiped out just because I walked into Alcoholics Anonymous and God found God, or her, whichever came first.

It just, I just not, it's just not that way. I mean, you know, basically what it what you see before you today is a very fallible, weak human being. That's all. Who has found a way to live in a world without having to take a drink to make the world better. It's all.

I don't drink alcohol because I have found what I thought I found when I took my first drink, which is exactly what Alcoholics Anonymous is all about in the big picture. Alcoholics Anonymous is supposed to do for alcoholics of my type, this book said, exactly what alcohol did for me. Only it does it very much slower and over a long period of time. How many times have you been sitting in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous? You've heard people talk, man, I spent all day long just having a ball, man.

I just, everything was fine, man. I was with my kids, I was I was at the ball game, right, with people from AA, I was out, it was out to dinner last night. We just had a ball out there. And there were people sitting around in the restaurant having drinks, trying to get feel the way we were feeling. Just enjoying one another's cup, you know, talking about AA and stuff.

You know what I mean? Sponsorship and all that other nonsense that AA people get together and talk about, you know, making fun of the waiter. That's always a great deal, yeah. But it was an amazing thing. And, as far as I can perceive, the first three steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are basically taken in the first, maybe first week or 2 that you're in alcoholics now, if you really wanna know the truth.

Because you hear all people all the time, you see. These these steps are, not hard to take in your mind. Oh, yeah. I'm powerless over alcohol and, you know, I don't drink and, you know, I'm ready for God to restore me to sanity, man. And, yeah.

Turn my will and my life over to God. Yeah, man. That's it. That's great. But that's all, we're gonna talk about that and, when we come back, what am I supposed to do now, Al?

I have to look at Al, he's my cue cards. You have to go back to the right. Oh. Well, that's all I got to say about the first three steps. Now I got to turn these over.

Oh, God, you would ask this one. I gotta run out of San Jose for answering this question last week. Is there anybody got any questions about the first three steps before I go into this? Good. Rise and walk, pick up your bed.

Okay. How do you sponsor someone in therapy or on antidepressants? I don't. Nothing against therapy or nothing against antidepressants. I'm not in therapy, and I don't take pills.

So what have I got to offer anybody? People who sponsor those people probably are people who taking pills or in therapy. I personally don't believe in it, but that's my belief. But I don't do dare not, I dare not take somebody who's involved in all that crap and tell them, no, you can't do that. Because they may die over it.

So I try to tell them, they come to me and say, I have a rule, and this is my own little rule, and I do not compete Alcoholics Anonymous or bounce Alcoholics Anonymous off against anything. I do not have to defend Alcoholics Anonymous against any other type of therapeutic, self help, nonsensical bullshit that you hear around here. Alcoholics Anonymous speaks for itself. I'm sober. Alcoholics Anonymous is the only thing that I've done the last 36 years, and I don't know anybody who lives any better than I do.

And I do not have to defend that against somebody who don't know anything about anything. It's not my business. I'm not God. I can't tell you what to take and what not to take. You know what I mean?

I just can't do that. I can't get you sober, I can't get you drunk. Nothing I can do all I can do to stay sober myself one day at a time. It's just sometimes it's all I do. Mutically correct or not, I don't care.

That's the way I feel. So I don't feel that it's necessary to take an anti depression from self centered depression. I believe if you get out of self, you don't need to take an anti depressant. You won't be depressed anymore. I'm not depressed.

I've had 45 cups of coffee. Why should I be depressed? Yeah. Yeah. But I, I I was asked this question in Auckland, New Zealand.

And, and I stated my opinion on it, that I then I'm not in favor of it. I believe that all alcoholic, when they first get sober, are depressed. That's a natural state of an alcoholic when he quit drinking is to be depressed. And I answer that question this way. I think it's, I've been sober a long time.

There's Earl sitting there, 41 years sober, he's been sober a long time. If you talk to anybody that's been sober a long time, you will find out that over a period of time, all kinds of what the world calls tragedies and upheavals in this area of life, You know, kids on drugs, you know, people dying, business going bad, money problems, fresh all these things happen to people when they get sober, believe it or not. I mean, really, God just doesn't pull the blanket over and say, oh, you wonderful folks. You don't do that. All these things happen to you.

All these things. I mean, it happened to me. You know what I mean? I you know, I've been through divorce. I've been through business failures.

I've been my children are on drugs, my mother died drunk after 30 years of in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous. All this stuff, all this stuff goes on. My oldest daughter won't talk to me because she thinks I like my youngest daughter better. Just all kinds of crap. You know what I mean?

And one of the real big things, relationships. Oh, Jesus. Now, this this is just a hypothetical situation. Suppose this. Suppose that every time I got in a funk, I went My higher power just came out of my pocket.

This book says I have to turn my will and my life over the care of God as I understand him, not a pill. It doesn't say in this book, I turned my will and my life over the care of God, and the pill, and the therapist. None of that. And that's what I'm talking about. And I'm not talking about any of that other crap because I don't know anything about it.

I'm not in the debating society about it. I don't wanna hear about it. I don't wanna hear about it to break. That's your business. You keep on doing it.

I'm telling you about me. I'm alcoholic. I turn my will and my life over to the care of God. Now when I get through one of these upheavals of life that I have seemingly ran into or run myself into, when I get on the other side of it and I'm out there skipping down the road again, I'm not gonna look back and say, Yep, my therapist and my Prozac got me through that, baby. I'm gonna walk there and say, Yep, there really is a power greater than myself.

Because of myself and by myself, I could not pass through that turmoil alone. So there has to be a power. So my faith in God has become stronger through my conflicts, and my appeal is a lot, not weaker. Because God hasn't picked on me to be some type of a scapegoat. I knew you was gonna do this, Al, if you'd go.

You're just gonna get me run out of town on a rail too. Is it not hinting or misleading for an alcoholic to introduce themselves as an alcoholic and something else? Well, it's a declaration of differences, probably. You don't really understand my case is different. If anybody that I know of says, you know, I'm an alcoholic.

If I was just quakin' to me saying I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict, I've automatically said in my own mind, maybe not to you. My case is a little bit different. I really don't have to do all that crap that you do. You know what I mean? I mean, because my case is different.

And according to my sponsor, and I have no way of not believing what he says, because he's been sober longer than I have, and has worked with many more alcoholics than I have. The thing that's gonna kill most of people in this room who die drunk is that very little thing right there. My case is different. I read to you where it says, rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. If you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it, then you're ready to take certain steps.