Big Book Study on Page 23 to 45 in Prescott, AZ

Nice thing. And I can't remember that I have this thing, this phenomenon called craving. The reason I know that, going through your experience. If 10 years before coming to a, I knew this happened and I drink for another 10 years, this information, although it was nice to have, has never kept me from drinking nor has it kept any of you from drinking. But it doesn't explain to me why I'm physically powerless.

Having worked a lot with chronic relapsers and some of those were older men and women and some of them had a long time, People who have long term sobriety to pick up a drink or start doing drugs again, very few of them ever make it back to a a. Most die and die quickly. Why? Because this physical part of our illness seems like the older we get, gets worse whether we're drinking or not drinking. Meaning, if I was to pick up a drink, I strongly suspect I would drink 247.

Recently, a man I've done some work with, one time he had 18 years. He was a medical doctor, addictionologist, worked in the field for a while, picked up a drink at 18 years, took him 6 years to come back to AA. I did some work with him when I lived in Austin, Texas. Boy, did he teach me how deadly self pity is, and he also taught me how deadly it is to analyze God. And he also taught me how deadly it is to have these old belief systems about a judgmental God.

But he he got about 2 years, picked up another drink, sent him to a longer term treatment facility. He was there 4 or 5 months, got back on his feet, went back up to Canada. Back practicing medicine again. I was supposed to go up to Canada. I went up to Canada 6 weeks ago to speak at a convention.

I talked to him probably 3 months ago. He was excited about me coming up. I've done a bunch of work. Wonderful man. I get a call 2 weeks before I'm supposed to get on the plane from a friend of mine that said Ed is dead.

I don't know how. I get to a lot. I get up to, Canada. I hadn't been there 10, 15 minutes. This guy comes up.

He introduced himself. He's a doctor. He said, I want to talk to you for a minute. I know that you did some work with Ed. I know that you knew him.

He said, what I wanna tell you is Ed picked up a drink and he drank himself to dead death in 4 days. 52 years old. Brilliant man. Brilliant man. One time was medical director of 2 treatment centers for chemical addiction.

Deadly thing we got here. But this explains what happens to me when I take a drink. And your age, by the way, has nothing to do with this. See, I tell you one of the things that the big book will do. Every reason why you think you're not one of us, the big book will strip you.

And, it'll pull away and it'll say, it doesn't matter. Do when you take a drink, did you lose control? Is this you? But this is so expertly covered in the doctor's opinion. I always thought that this process, this recovery process that I started at 6 months sober, dying, of a part of the disease I didn't know I had.

I always thought this process began for me with step 1. This is this is this process began with the 12th step in somebody else's heart who still cared to be there and still carried the message that could save an alcoholic like me. It begins with the 12 step in somebody else's heart. If you're new and they've told you you're the most important person in the room, finally, they've recognized your true importance. But please don't forget, you might be the lifeblood, but blood needs a heart to flow through.

And those are the men and women that have a solution for you. Because if you were sitting in a room with all new people who have no solution, the county jail would have worked for a lot of us. We don't need to be with people with the same problem. We need to be in rooms with a magical combination of people who have the same problem and have a common solution. In jail, penitentiary, they paraded people by me who I said in my heart, this man has been where I've been, but they never had a solution.

And they paraded people by me that had a solution, but the first thing I would say was, he doesn't know where I've been. And I think the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous happened for me when I heard a man that I knew in my heart was like me, felt like me, been where I'd been, lived with that question, what's wrong with me? Didn't know if he was an addict or an alcoholic or both. He'd been where I'd been, but I also knew at the same time he had been changed. But you know what I thought that took me 6 months to ask him?

I thought he had changed himself. So when your ego has rebuilt or you're someone who really believes you've changed yourself and smashed your ego and brought about your surrender and chose not to drink, don't be surprised if here and there, once in a while, you meet an alcoholic or a drug addict who looks at you and you scare him because he knows he doesn't have a choice. One of the main slogans in Los Angeles is, we don't drink no matter what. And you know what? If I could drink no matter what, if I could just not drink no matter what, I wouldn't be here.

I wouldn't be here this weekend. I'd be home in Los Angeles not drinking no matter what, smashing my ego, working on my defects, bringing about another surrender. I needed to meet men and women who drink no matter what. So this process did not begin for me at step 1, nor was I in step 1 when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. I believe if there is a step that if there is a step 1, there must be a step 0.

They talk about it in my home group in Santa Monica a lot. Step 0 step 0 is that wonderfully horrible period of time from your last drink until you give yourself to the first step of recovery. That could be 6 months. I was ready to kill myself, but I had a great 6 months until I was given the grace to see the nature of my condition further away from my last drink than I'd ever been. That's baffling if you still think alcohol or drugs or both were your problem.

Alcohol and drugs were my solution that I poured on the problem for a long time, and for a long time it worked. Step 0 is that period of time where you're round and around and around. And you know what you're doing in step 0? Whether it's 4 months or 4 days or 4 years or 20 years before you give yourself to the first step. You know what you're doing in that circle, in that zero step?

You're eliminating alternatives till you get down to 2, the big book says, then you're ready for the program. And what are those 2 alternatives? Die an alcoholic death or live on a spiritual basis. Mine was like die an alcoholic death, live on a spiritual basis, or do the best I could, and just not drink. And I made it 6 months with that in the grace of God, but I was taking the credit.

I believe there's a form of denial stronger than the denial some of us came here with, and it's a form of denial that you can be in 5 years sober, 10 years sober, 15 years sober, 20, 30. And it's not talked about that much, and I know I'm not the only one. Mark's had it, other friends. I know people in this room that have had it, and it's not the denial of the disease. It's the denial of the grace of god, and that's when you're taking the credit.

Look at the great job I've done. Thank God that God doesn't care whether he gets the credit or not. He doesn't need any more credit, But sometimes I can be in that denial. And once again, see, I'm not in step 0 just once. You can be in step 9.0, and all of a sudden those amends don't have nothing to do with being powerless over alcohol anymore, and you're eliminated in alternatives.

Die an alcoholic death, live on a spiritual basis, make amends, or pursue a life. I have to get a life. My God. God's given me a new life. Some people say I got my old life back.

I don't want my old life or my old mind. My sponsor said, restore to sanity. We're gonna assume you went sober, you went crazy 4 seconds after you were born. You don't need to be restored to your old mind. You need a new mind.

So step 0 is that wonderful place that can be wonderfully horrible until you're ready for the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. You're eliminating alternatives. Die an alcoholic death, live on a spiritual basis, or get the right girlfriend. Die an alcoholic death, live on a spiritual basis, or just go to meetings. Die an alcoholic death, live on a spiritual basis, or get the right job.

And you run all those things into the ground because those things will not bring a they will not treat your spirit. Another thing I wanted to mention was questions. The mechanics that I wish that was shared with me on how to use the doctor's opinion was was turn every statement into a question. I was also told you should look at questions like a coin. There's 2 sides to every question.

Those of you that have been around for a while, you will get a lot more that from taking the question let's say the question is like, does my experience abundantly confirm top of page 23. Does my experience abundantly confirm that once I put alcohol in my system something happens which makes it virtually impossible for me to control the amount? If you've been around for a while and you're going through the steps again, it might be good to look at the other side of the coin. Maybe that's not true, or maybe after this long period of sobriety that wouldn't happen again. Questions are like coins.

They have two sides. The prayer was very important. I had worked in treatment. I had a degree. I'd been a therapist drinking, and now I'm here.

And I'm sober, and I'm 6 months, and I'm dying, and it's confused. It's confusing because I think the problem, whatever it is I suffer from, should be better after not drinking longer than I ever didn't drink, and I was worse. And I'm wondering what's wrong with me. And I finally went out to this man's house I'd heard in my first meeting, Don. And I said, can you help me?

He said, I only know one way to do it. We gonna start on the title page, and we're gonna go through the first 164 pages, and we're gonna stop at every statement. We're gonna make it a question for you, and at every direction, we're gonna stop until you finish that direction. I told him a little bit about my my experience. He said, my God, you know enough about yourself, how you feel, and alcoholism to be dangerous to yourself and everybody around you.

Why don't you just say a prayer for an open mind and a new experience? Now he doesn't like it that we have sort of ritualized that, that some people call it the set aside prayer. He he pulled a joke on me not too long ago. We were on the phone, and he said to me, you know, you stuck me with something that I've been blamed for for a long time, and I wondered what did I do now? And I said, what?

He said, that set aside prayer. But it was very helpful, and it's been very helpful with people I've worked with and very helpful every time I've started to work in your own words, in your own way. I'm not really into it, but be careful when you're working with someone or you're doing it yourself that you don't turn the prayer into, dear God, please help me set aside what I think I know about whatever it is you want an open mind and a new experience with. Everyone I've seen that changes that prayer has first step reservations, and it's it's interesting. I ask God to set aside what I think I know just long enough for me to have an open mind and a new experience, and there's information in the doctor's opinion and the rest of those chapters that I wasn't debating based on what I knew working or being in treatment.

A set aside prayer is very important. I would also like to talk about one other thing. I do not believe that we work the steps to stay sober. I believe if you're working the steps, you're probably already sober. I haven't seen too many people work the steps drunk.

And I learned this from a man who did the work in the big book for the first time when he was 20 something years sober. And he started this prayer, and he called me a few weeks later and he said, I have a real problem. I said, I know you do. What do you think it is? He said, for 23 years, I've experienced the grace of God.

I've seen it in every area of my life. I've sat with it. I've realized it. I've been in the grace of God. Why do I need to do this work?

I said, I don't know. I made it 6 months. I was ready to blow my head off. He said, I'll pray about that. He called me a few weeks later.

He said, I know why I need to do this work. I'm an alcoholic, and I would like to have a conscious contact with that which has been giving me this grace for all these years. And about a year and a half, two years later, he said to me that the difference between being in the grace of God, and I believe if you're an alcoholic or an addict or both, and you're in this room tonight, you don't have any drugs or alcohol in your system, I believe you're in the grace of God whether you take the credit for it or not. And he said about 2 years later, he said, the difference between being in the grace of God and having a conscious contact with that which has been giving you this grace is like night and day. So I bring myself to this prayer.

I say it now in my own words, in my own way. You should too. It doesn't need to be memorized or written down. You say it from your heart. There might be things on your mind different days.

Let me have an open mind and a new experience with this appointment I have at 10 o'clock, with this meeting I have, with where I am in the work, with the craving. And I know from my own experience, you can have a first step experience. Gut level, sober. So as far as the mechanics, if you're going through the doctor's opinion, turn every statement you can into a question. Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect.

Some of us became so good at our drinking, we knew what to drink for the certain effect. Didn't you have that one thing that if you were gonna fight, was the right thing to drink? Didn't you have that right thing if you felt romantic really enhanced it? Didn't you have that drink that on a hot day was the right thing to drink? We drink for the effect.

And when I talk to people and when I listen to new people talk about when alcohol started working it doesn't happen for all of us right away. For me, it did. But you listen to a real addict or a real alcoholic talk about when it started working, they're going to describe a spiritual awakening. They're not gonna just describe a substance that felt good and it was fun to party. You want to know what what what what what alcohol was like for me when it started working?

Huge emotional displacements and rearrangements, ideas, emotions, and attitudes were cast aside and a new set of conceptions and motives began to dominate me. A personality change sufficient to not be suffering from the spiritual malady. Sudden and spectacular upheaval. Sometimes it was an immediate and overwhelming consciousness, a vast change in feeling and outlook. Profound alteration in my reaction to life.

Here's another myth. How many in this room have been victim of the belief there's only 12 promises in our book when they read the promises halfway through the 9th step? Good. There's promises at every step, and you know what? Every one of those promises, except for one set of promises that we don't hear about very much, every one of those promises came true when alcohol was working.

Take the 9 step promises and put just before it. When alcohol was working, fear of economic insecurity would leave. Right? Buy everyone a bar. Buy everyone a drink.

Right? Buy everyone a bar. Right? No matter how far down the scale you had gone, you're Right? All those promises happened except the ones when you've entered the world of the spirit.

The 10th and 11th step promises that we don't hear about much in AA because not very many people get past the 8th and 9th step. They never become willing to make amends to them all, and they never do. Imagine our book says imagine saying this in some meetings that we all know. The problem will be removed. Sanity will return.

The big book promises a 6th sense besides the 5 that you've depended on your whole life. You'll be taken to a 4th dimension beyond body, mind, and emotions. That's all I had to be dominated by before I found the great reality deep down within. So it started for me with the doctor's opinion and I found out the beginning of that answer. What's wrong with me?

Why did I do what I did the day of my dad's funeral when my mother begged me not to drink and I said to her with all my heart, was it that I didn't love her? Was it that I didn't want that I wanted to show up drunk? I didn't want to. But I found out that I have a physical reaction to alcohol. Why did I drink 28 days out of the penitentiary?

I don't have any booze in my system. The insanity of alcohol returned, and the insanity of alcoholism is not what you do when you're drunk. It's the insanity of picking up that first drink. The best way I've ever heard it was in Australia. And the guy said, I never took the first drink drunk.

I never took the first drink drunk. That's the insanity of alcoholism. I wish we had more time tonight to have spent some more time with the preface and the forwards. There's a lot of stuff in there about our history, how the book changed, how they added stories, but I think one of the most important, and back to one of our original questions, is the foreword to the 1st edition. My home group uses it as part of our format.

We of Alcoholics Anonymous are more than 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. You see, I don't suffer from a hopeless state of mind and body because I'm not craving booze, and I'm not obsessed about it. To show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book. My. How that's been forgotten.

And it's not popular anymore, is it? I use Bill's story, get through the doc's opinion. I read the first eight pages of Bill's story and I work with 3 words. When did I think, drink, or feel like Bill? That's to follow an instruction they gave me in the forwards.

Did this happen to me? Am I like this? And I highlight anywhere where I think, drink, or feel like Bill and regardless of your age, if you're a real alcoholic, you're gonna find yourself all over those pages. I do not read pages 9 through 16 in Bill's story until I'm up to the 8th step, and the reason is because pages 9 through 16 will discuss Bill as he moves through the process of the steps. And I'm going through to have a new experience, and I'm not there.

So I'm not gonna read it till I get to the 8th step, then I'm gonna go back and compare my experience to the one he describes to see if I had the same experience. But at the same time, it can be very beneficial to use 9 to 16 with somebody doing it the first time or doing it again yourself to ask yourself, is there anything in 9 to 16 that Bill did that I'm not willing to do? When I start to work with somebody, I give them some questions. Is this work what you want to do? Are you willing to go to any length?

Why do you want to do this work? And why with me? Because most of the idiots I get, that's exactly what I'm asking myself by the time they leave my house. Why? Why me?

Right? And I find out why. And those I believe sometimes sponsors don't know that it's as much I believe it's as much of a commitment for me as it is for the person who's asked me to take them through this work or to be a sponsor. And you know what? If you ask me to to be your sponsor or to go through the steps, if you want to do this work to get a wife back or straighten out your life, I'm not your guy if it has something to do with life and death.

So as much as I agree with Mark, I think it can also be beneficial as a guide to the rest of what's coming to see and ask them to mark anything in 9 to 16 they're not willing to do that Bill did. So as Mark said, with 1 through 8 you're examining your drunkard log, not Bill's. I read Bill's story. I was never married. I wasn't in war, and I'm not a stockbroker.

And this old boy in Denver told me, why don't you put aside the differences and look for the similarities? And as far as, like Mark said, drink how he drank, how he thought, how he felt. I've seen women go through Bill's story and mark 3 fourths of it. When you look at your it brings you to your own drunkologue. And in 9 and 16, you can I get an idea of what you're gonna be asked to do in the rest of the steps?

Page 20. There's, some important things in this page I work with. You may already have asked yourself why is it we became so very ill from drinking? Doubtless, you may be curious to discover how and why in the face of expert opinion to the contrary, we have recovered from a hopeless condition of mind and body. So if you're an alcoholic who wants to get over it, you may be already be asking, what do I have to do?

Is the purpose of this book to answer such questions specifically? And then they spend a paragraph describing all the things that people have said to us over the over the years and actually we could add to that some of the one liners that, that I hear in the in the meetings. You know, the here I can take it or leave it alone. Why can't he? Just don't drink and go to meetings.

Right? Put the plug in the jug. All of those one liners may as well be in this part here and the book says that these are observations on drinkers we hear all the time, but back to them is a world of ignorance and misunderstanding. These expressions are all of these these statements refer to people whose reactions, alcohol and drugs are different from ours. I will never say those kinds of things and here's why.

I went to a bunch of AA meetings about 2 years before I got struck sober and I got struck sober. And I heard some of that cute stuff. So I'm sitting there and I hear a guy that says he doesn't drink between meetings and I drink. And I hear a guy that says just don't drink and go to meetings or don't pull a bowl out of the jug. And I do all that and you know what my head starts saying?

AA will not work for me because those people can do some things I can't do which is why we probably have no business saying that baloney in our meeting. If you got the power to do all that stuff, you're not an alcoholic. I am powerless over alcohol. I don't decide whether the plug stays in the jug or comes off of it or not. But now the book's gonna talk about 2 kinds of drinkers and then a real alcoholic.

And so if you're sitting here and you're you had any questions about alcohol, drugs, whatever, this this part can help you. First of all, it's gonna talk about this moderate drinker and they define this person. They have little trouble in giving up liquor entirely if they have good reason. So I asked myself, did you ever have good reason to give up liquor entirely? Yes.

How about cocaine? Yes. Could you do that? Says they could take it or leave it alone. Could you?

And I go into my experience and I go, no. I could not take it or leave it alone. I seem to always take it. So that means I I'm not that guy. So we'll go on to the next one.

We got a we got a hard drinker. This person has a habit bad enough to impair me physically and mentally. That was true of me. This habit may cause me to die a few years before my time. This is true.

If a sufficiently strong reason they give some, Ill health, falling in love, change of environment, warning of a doctrine. You could add to that. Parents, wife's gonna leave, criminal justice system, you name it. Here's what this person does. This person can stop or moderate.

And so, I asked myself, did you ever have sufficient reason, Mark, to stop, stay stopped, and moderate? Oh, yeah. Long list of them. Based on your experience, could you pull that off on your power? No.

Then I'm not this guy either. And what I'm left with is the real alcoholic. The real alcoholic may start off as a moderate drinker, he may not be even become a hard drinker, but at some stage of his drinking career, he begins to lose all control of his liquor consumption or drugs once he starts to drink. Is this you, Mark? Yes.

Now I got my truth. I'm a real alcoholic based on fitting this criteria. I don't fit the criteria of being a moderate or a hard. Now I want to tell you something else that I've seen happen in in our fellowship. If you're a real alcoholic and get a hard drinker as a sponsor, how you think that's gonna work?

There's hard drinkers sitting in the rooms of AA who had something happen, came to AA. They liked the fellowship and stayed. You know how I can tell them? They don't need to do step work. They can just not drink and go to meetings.

They absolutely can. They got power. They don't have to make all their amends. They don't have to work with a strict distance of 10 and 11. They don't have to sponsor people.

I know. I've helped people in the in the rooms of AA find out their truth, that they're not alcoholic. And there isn't a single one of them that's ever had to do with this book asked me to do. The reason is the books is because they got power. But this is me.

I'm the real alcoholic. I'm the guy that lost control. Now I'm starting to find out a lot more about me and who I am using the big book as as as we're outlining here. Then if you turn over to page 23. And I want to talk briefly about pages 23 to 43.

Top of page 23, looking at the body stops. From page 23 to 164, the big book will no longer talk to you and I about drinking. About having alcohol in our body. Why? Because it says, because Mark, all of this information would be academic and pointless.

You never took the first drink. And I see the truth of that. Therefore, the main problem of the alcoholic or addict centers in my mind rather than in my body. What in God's name are they saying? Now I told you earlier this is based on experience.

I believe 23 to 43 to be the least understood pages of the book by anyone I've ever known with relapse history. So let's cover some key points in these pages, and I want you to remember something. When we talk about pages 23 to 43, we are talking about the times in your life in which you were sober and your mind took you back to a drink. And did you choose that? Or is it possible that sober at certain times, you have lost the power of choice, you have no effective mental defense, and it doesn't matter what the reason is.

There's a part of you that's gonna take you back. Is that possible that you're one of those kind of people? In the bottom of page 23, it talks about the tragic truth. If the man be a real alcoholic, this happy day may not arrive. He's lost control.

See, I've lost control when it's in my body and I've lost control over staying stopped. And it talks about at a certain point in my drinking I passed into a state where the most powerful desire to stop drinking was of no avail. And then you have this paragraph in squiggly lines. And this is not good news, by the way, if you're sitting in this room, and this is you. This is not a good news paragraph.

I'm gonna tell you that right up front. I think that's why they put it in squiggly lines. They want me to make sure it caught my attention. And here's why, it's in this paragraph they explained very clearly to me that why sober I'll commit the most insane act I've ever done. Because the fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, we don't know.

We've lost the power of choice in drink. Period. They are not talking to me about having taken a drink. They're talking to me about prior to taking a drink. I have lost the power of choice and drink and they're they're kind enough to elaborate on why.

Because choice comes from will. They go on to say, here's why you've lost the power of choice and drink because your so called willpower, which is where choice comes from, becomes practically non existent. You're going to be unable at certain times to bring into your consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of a week or a month ago. You are without defense against the first drink. That paragraph changed my life in this program.

Why do you think it did that? Because it showed me I needed something between me and my mind sober taking me back. I needed power. I saw the truth of this. I saw the number of times that I was sober and I was unable at certain times to bring into my mind that consciousness of the suffering of a week or a month ago.

And I took a drink and I'm stone cold sober and I didn't want to drink. And I drank. And what do we hear? Just think it through. Think the drink through.

Or remember your last drunk. I can tell from some of the faces in this room there are probably some men and women in this room who can't remember the last several months. So what are they? In big trouble. Right?

Yeah. I love when blackout drinkers get up and tell you detail after detail after detail. I think blackout drinkers are I think blackout is by the grace of God. I think that's an act of grace. If remembering the pain of your last drunk is enough to keep you sober, then the memory of the pain you had the last time you had gave birth to a child would be a great birth control method.

I can't bring to my mind, but yet I'll suffer from the delusion in Alcoholics Anonymous. Today I have a choice, and if the thought comes, I'm either gonna remember the pain of my last drunk or where it's going to take me. It's crazy. There will come a time there will be no effective mental defense. And and they go on and they and they talk more about that, and and I wanna I just wanna get some of some of the main sentences because I I this part is just so important.

It talks about see sometimes people have this idea that consequences would keep me from taking a drink. Gentleman we just read about in the Phoenix paper, he suffered some consequences prior to what he just did. You could pick up the paper every day and read about somebody who suffered severe consequences, had a period of time with no alcohol in him, and picked up a drink. Go into your own experience. Consequences had never prevented me from picking up a drink.

I don't care what they were. Divorce, job, physical health, they had no power to keep me away from a drink. And some people make it sound like they drink a lot or they start drinking again because of an emotional state or circumstance. If you honestly look back through your experience, it probably didn't matter, the circumstance. I drink when she stays.

I drink when she leaves. I drink when the team wins. I drink when the team loses. I drink when I'm feeling bad. I drink when I'm feeling good, and I love to drink when I'm not feeling much at all because that's the place I hate.

Right? And I'm gonna tie that in later when we get to the question, why do you believe God's working in your life today? I believe if your first step, you can get free of circumstance or emotional state having anything to do with it. You can get free of some stuff down the road that plagues people too. Emotional state and circumstance doesn't have nothing to do with the craving or the obsession.

I can be feeling good, the obsession. They give you examples. The car salesman, the other guy after many years, out come the carpet slippers and he drinks again, The guy that has no cloud on the horizon. They give you examples, especially in More About Alcoholism, of different circumstances and different emotional states that have nothing to do with the obsession returning. Yes.

The obsession returns because of an untreated spirit, but it'll come at any time. And the funny thing is and about that summary and I love that the book at the end of 23, when you're not gonna talk about the craving anymore, ends with a summary question. Don't go past the top of 23 until your experience abundantly confirms that once you put alcohol in your system something happens which makes it virtually impossible for you to stop. And don't go past the bottom of 43 until your experience abundantly confirms that at a certain time there'll be no effective mental defense against the first drink. Neither me nor any other human power is going to be able to provide that defense and that it must come from a higher power.

You think the group keeps you sober? You think your sponsor keeps you sober? Move 1500 miles away from your sponsor and have some time when you're not at meetings. And slowly, slowly, you get brought back out of that denial of the grace of God to what's already there. It's already there.

Some other things you back on 24, you you hear this in meetings about thinking through the drink. Says the alcoholic may say to himself in the most casual way, it won't burn me this time so he hears out. Or look at the next sentence or perhaps he doesn't think at all. How can you think through the drink if you get taken to a state where you don't think at all? And some of you that have been around for a while probably think that it would be the lie that would take you out of here.

1 of our heroes told us a long time ago to look at our experience and see that the ego will use the very best of you. At your very best, some of you have been further away from your last drink than you've ever been, in good shape, things going well, and bam, you drink again. What about this idea? I think most of us in this room would be taken out by an idea that would be the truth. You're sitting on a plane, you watch somebody serve a drink, your mind says, oh, it's really pretty.

Is that a lie? It is pretty. Red wine? Whiskey? Gee, I bet that would taste good.

Is that a lie? Not if you love the taste of whatever it is you're looking at. A couple of those would be nice. Is that a lie? See, my sponsor told me when I was new, and it's true to this day, the truth doesn't work for me.

If there's no power behind the truth, I could know the truth all day long. I knew enough about myself and alcoholism, like I said, to kill myself and people around me. There's got to be some power behind the truth. The truth would take me out. My sponsor said the truth doesn't work for you.

You have the unique ability to take the truth in here, find the edge, think of how you're gonna use it, and by the time it comes back out, it's no longer the truth. Doctor Silkworth said, alcoholics can't differentiate the true from the false. Back then, that meant to me, I couldn't tell the difference between what it was doing to me and what it was doing for me. Even when all you got left is oblivion and all you ever get is just out, It's not even hardly working anymore. That is still gonna overwhelm what it's doing to you.

You can't differentiate the true from the false. The line that I think is important, whether you're new or old or in between, is also on the first page of more about alcoholism. And this, I would say, could sum up every problem that I've ever had in sobriety. And you know what that is? The delusion that I am like other people presently has to be smashed over and over and over.

I thought when they said that in that first paragraph, I thought they meant that when I was drinking. But the way it were it's worded here to me now in that second paragraph on page 30, these people saw that they had to fully concede to their innermost self that they were alcoholic. That's a gut level experience. That's not just reading on the wall we admitted we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives are unmanageable. I thought powerless over alcohol meant I don't like where it takes me.

No one had ever talked to me about the physical craving or the mental obsession. These people saw they had to fully concede to their innermost selves that they were alcoholic. This is the first step in recovery. And then the one that sums it up, the delusion that we are like other people or presently, maybe like other people has to be smashed. A lot of people go out with big time behind that because they think they're like normal people now.

We're not like normal people sober. We need power. We're not just someone who can walk into a church, hear a great sermon, go home, and start to practice that. We would like to. You do it for about a week or so, and then the needed power isn't there.

We're people that suffer from a disease that's rooted whether you're talking about the craving, the obsession, or the spiritual malady. We suffer from a disease that's rooted in lack of power. I don't have the power to control the amount once I start. I don't have the power to keep myself stopped once I stop. No one in this room probably had a trouble stopping.

Staying stopped is the problem. And I don't have the power to heal the spiritual malady. I suffer from lack of power no matter which part of the 3 part disease you're talking about. I can't keep myself sober. Yeah.

You're talking about in terms of the time? Yes. There was a schedule change. I mean, if you have to go go, we're gonna go another 14 minutes. Yeah.

Sorry. I forgot we forgot to announce that. I've had a change of heart and ideas about a page that we used to take. Sometimes it was helpful, sometimes it was not. And that is the bottom of page 31 where it says, we don't like to pronounce any individual as alcoholic, but you can quickly diagnose yourself.

Step over to the nearest bar room and try some controlled drinking. Try to drink and stop abruptly. Try it more than once. It will not take long for you to decide if you are honest with yourself about it, and it might even be worth a bad case of the jitters to get a full knowledge of your condition. I had to go back, and I had to read Marty Mann's primer on alcoholism.

She was the 1st woman to stay sober in AA. The 1st woman in AA blew her head off, killed herself. The second woman the the first woman to stay sober in AA was Marty Mann. Her story's in the older editions. Marty Mann's story was, a story called, women suffer too in the first section of the first, pioneers of AA.

She founded the National Council on Alcoholism. She wrote a book, and people in Denver used to say that in that book, she suggested a test that if you're not convinced, you try 2 drinks a day for 30 days. No more, no less. I had to go back and read that because I found this out. That might not happen to an alcoholic that's in the grace of God.

So I went back and I read, and she was talking about time, try to stop that pattern of drinking and control it. I don't give the drinking test to people. I don't even suggest it to people that are sober, because how would you know? What if they passed and all it was was a period of time of grace? They might find out they aren't.

It might kill them. I think that test should be tried for somebody who's still in their drinking experiencing the craving. My experience with the first step the first time was this. I had a huge drug history, and you know we had to talk about it, and we talked about it earlier. I've been addicted to drugs, But does that mean that I'm a drug addict?