Step workshop in Slidell, LA

Tomorrow morning. So I'll introduce Karen, chairperson. I'm Karen. I'm an alcoholic. And the only thing that I wanna do is say the serenity prayer and turn it over to Don.

And so if we could do that, let's, let's do. God, God, graciously rubs you to accept things I cannot change, I like this chair. Don't y'all wish you had 1? I don't like this room, though, the way it's set up. I'm out here all by myself, and that is not what I'm here for.

I'll get used to this thing. Right now, it's a distraction. What I'd like to do there's no no way to do a circle here, but you suppose we could rearrange this in some way so that we're more of a group rather than an audience? I'd sure appreciate it. Oh, lord.

They're gangin' up. You must have been planning this move. We warned them. As with real life, we do things and then we break up and go do other things then get back together and do things together. The spiritual experience is 1 is a unifying experience.

K. So throughout this deal, if we're doing this right, when we take a break, y'all are gonna break up and go talk to each other. And, when you come back in, half of you are gonna keep talking to each other. We have a common purpose in this route. I need to refocus on that each time, and I'm gonna give you just a childish image that has helped me.

Please don't ritualize what I'm about to say. This image has just helped me get centered, and it's a simplistic view of pottery. Any of you potters or no potters? It's a very simple thing they do, and it's very spiritual. To cast a good pot, all you need to do is get the clay centered on the wheel.

If the clay is properly centered, when the potter begins to spin the wheel, the natural forces of centrifugal force and gravity tend to throw it right straight up. And all the potter has to do is kind of form it and encourage it a little bit. If it's the slightest little bit off and the more off center it is, the more it tends to throw it out this way. You gotta drag it back in, and it's a lot of hard work. So Don?

Yes. Let's swap chairs. Every time you move in that chair, we're getting a. Sounds like static. There goes that bitch here.

Sorry. Oh. Hang out right over here, man. That's all. We're not.

We're just going like. We'll take a vote. Who gets the chair? There are several places in my experience that I can center. Right dead center in my head is a centering place.

There's another one right here in my diaphragm. The one the Chinese call the, which is a power center, is right down in here. My spiritual center, when I close my eyes and think about going within and centering, it's just right here. I don't know where yours is. But I'm gonna suggest each time we get together, we just get quiet for a minute, get centered, empty our minds, and then we'll know what we're gonna do next.

Does that suit everybody? However it is you do that. K. We're doing a retreat in Santa Barbara in a monastery. It's a really good place to do a retreat, by the way, with a group out of Los Angeles, and, it was really hard to get them quieted down again after each break.

And we had some singers with us. It was their profession. So one of them just went, and her partner caught it and did a harmonic counterpoint to it. It. It was pretty it just split the room and got it quiet.

So after the next break, she did the same thing he did it, and pretty soon the group started doing it. And I got this horrible image of what was gonna happen. They're gonna go back to AA in the LA Basin and say, Dom taught us to start meetings by going I see a lot of you brought your guidebooks. Would you turn to page 1, please, and read along with me? You on page 1?

K. We of Alcoholics Anonymous believe that the reader will be interested in the medical estimate of the plan I thought you were at page 1. This is the book Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm on page 1. Oh, Mine's a first edition.

Okay? Now there's a couple reasons it did this. A lot of people don't know of the massive change that took place in 1955 in our book. The doctor's opinion is page 1 in all editions of the first edition. It's a part of the body of the recovery process.

Good morning, Danny. I was hoping you here where's that chair? That was for Danny. So I have to consider when I tell someone go read the big book, which one? Are we on the same page?

Are we carrying the same message? The message that got carried to me, and the reason I'm here is because someone carried me through the doctor's opinion, and it was so important because otherwise I could not have identified as an alcoholic. And there's a thing runs through a way that I hear drives me crazy that the recovery process is in the first 164 pages that lays out the doctor's opinion and the forwards and the preface, but particularly the doctor's opinion. Now I don't care why it happened. I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and part of my job as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous by concept and by tradition and by the force of spirit is to pass on the entire AA message.

And the reason I'm making a point of it is we've started working with a lot of people who had come to us and they drink again and then come back and they drink again. Y'all call them slippers. I just don't think they ever quit drinking. And the common thread was that they started on page 1 like we had told them to do and read the first 164 pages and missed this piece. Alright.

We don't miss it. I know you all don't. When you read with somebody, you read it. But I've been guilty at one time of saying the first 164 pages till I thought about what I was saying. There's all kinds of stuff.

I don't wanna make an editorial out of this. But currently, at the next general service conference, at the last one, they asked the literature committee to bring back the possibility for a 4th edition big book. There's some changes in stories and all because nobody's gonna change the body of of the text. And I don't have any problem with that. I don't see any need for it, but I don't have any problem with it either.

But what a grand time it would be to restore the big book to its original condition. We now have a reason for a 4th edition, I think. At least one to consider. Just put it back the way it was. Now that'll really cause some confusion.

You need to understand that. It means that I will have to, at every time I do big book work, explain the difference. I have to start at the right place. I will have to become a better 12 step and a better sponsor. Because if they get a 3rd edition or, in my case, a second edition, we're not gonna start on the same page unless we agree to.

We don't wanna confuse Danny. We already have him baffled. It's not what the hell have I fallen into here. Okay? It's that important.

Couple other other wonderful changes in this thing too. I work out of a second edition simply because when I when I came for the 1st 5 weeks, we weren't allowed to talk. We went through a 12 step study school. And at the first meeting, they informed us that, for 5 weeks, we had nothing to say. If we knew anything at all, we wouldn't be where we were, that we should just shut up and, listen.

And they then they read the big book to us and shared their experience of the big book with us. I'm doing what I was shown how to do 29 years ago. This is how it was brought to me, and I just keep doing it. And if there's 1 person in the room with 50, it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference. Just what I do.

If this is all I do, I'm causing you a grave disservice. We gotta take what happens here to the street. Well, that's what this weekend is about, is talking about how that Viewpoint attitude is critical in this deal. Here's a book. Now I would suggest to you let me tell you how important this book is to me.

I had to I've had some visions along the way without the peyote. I see some things. I had them too. We're in Greenwich, Connecticut 1 night for a meeting. And why it came over, man, I don't know, but it came over there was about a a 100, a 150 people in this room, and it struck me that there were more people in that room that night than there were in all of Alcoholics Anonymous the night they decided to put this book together.

They were about 40 that night, and it transformed my mind. And I would suggest you there are more people in this room in Slidell, Louisiana this morning than were at all of Alcoholics Anonymous. And like Bill and Bob and the few that were there realized that what they had was so important that it rated a book, not a bestseller, but a book where the integrity of this message could be carried forth when they were dead and gone, when I'm dead and gone, when all the interpretation is over, the message is intact. That can either be great ego or great spiritual insight. 40 people, you wanna write a book?

And y'all know the story of the book. We almost didn't get it. Selling bonds at $25 in the bars, $5 crack. If you don't have 25, we'll take whatever you got. It has been in the hands of millions of us, literally millions of us over the years.

And we haven't really changed the word. We change how the words are presented sometimes. There are places that are now in italics that used to be in big bold print, but the integrity of our message has been kept intact. That must be a pretty important book because we're good at changing things. I have some minor concerns today because I've seen some changes that are taking place in our book that caused me a great concern.

And it's not from the outside people who are now publishing our book, which they have every right to do. We don't have a copyright on this. Did you know that? We lost the copyright to the big book in 19 67. It went into the public domain by a fluke.

When we put out the second edition in 1955, we assumed that it renewed the copyright to the 1st edition, which it did in Canada. But by a strange twist of United States law, it didn't. So in 1967, the 1st edition big book went into the public domain. We didn't even know it until 1985 when somebody came up with a well, actually, in late 84, came up with a mock up of our first edition for $25 to sell in Montreal, which by the way still has our copyright, so we couldn't sell it in Montreal. But it woke us up.

It hasn't hurt us any. But what I'm concerned about is the changes we're making in our book. I may be nitpicking, but I ask you to consider. We will read at least twice in this this book. We will make references to a group of stories in the back of this book, and they'll tell us how really, really important these stories are.

And we now publish a version of our book that doesn't have any stories in it. It's about that big. I don't care about the size. I'm concerned with the integrity of the message, and it's my view. Here's the bomb, Quint.

At least you need to put the stories back in or take those references out of the text. I love it. Nobody wants that piece of it. You and I are responsible for that, not they. I'm personally responsible for that having happened.

I wasn't paying attention. It was a knee jerk reaction to somebody else putting out a little book without stories in it? You know why they couldn't put out the stories? We still have the copyright on the stories. This one.

It's just Alcoholics Anonymous, but it's not intact. Now I don't know about you, and I don't start campaigns or go to war. I've quit fighting anybody or anything, but I talk about that. You just heard me talk about that. I talk about that with my delegate and my DCM, my GSR, and anybody who will listen to me.

And I'm just saying, okay. Don't you think we ought to do something? We're responsible. It happened while I was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I didn't mean to start it that way.

Well, I guess I did too. Because we're gathered here. If I'm gonna use this as a guide for my life, and if I'm going to to say to Danny, Danny, all of the answers to all of the life's problems that you will ever have can be found in this book, I better be sure that I'm giving him the right one, and it's it's intact. I don't wanna lie to him. If you lied to me or given me anything less than the whole message, I would not be here.

See, when I came to you, I was certified as a sociopath type 2, a psychopath, and a manic depressive drug addict. And the whole idea of AA wasn't in my mind because nobody knew I was alcoholic. My alcoholism was hidden behind madness. You know? It was such an integral part of my life.

It was part of my life. Nobody ever saw that. They saw the other high drama that I created. So by that surrender that I had made and by the way, the elements of surrender, not the definition of surrender, the elements of surrender for me was I got tired, bone weary, absolutely so tired. I could no longer stand even breathing.

One more second. It couldn't be me. That's how tired I got. I died. I woke up.

And when I woke up, it was a new attitude. I was willing to go anywhere anyone said, Do anything anyone said. Didn't make any difference as long as it didn't have to be me again, ever. That that me that had died. I was in a wonderful state, a complete failure at living, and now a complete failure at dying.

Makes you really willing to listen to what they have ever anybody says. K? You're stuck in a body that won't die carrying around with it a mind that won't work and still breathing. I told you last night that's my definition of doomed. So when you talk to me, I listen to every single thing that the members of Alcoholics Anonymous have said to me from day 1 till now.

The first thing you gave me was a bullshit sister. It's a book called Alcoholics Anonymous. Whatever else is heard in AA, I think is wonderful. But if I can't check it here, I either don't I'm either too stupid or it just isn't so, and so I don't do anything about it. And that includes my best ideas.

This is my bullshit sifter. When I get charged with a really good idea, there's a couple things I do. I talk to my wife first. Because when I get charged, I do things. I don't know about you, but I'm a doer of things.

And everything I do affects your life. And one of the guides here is when I'm gonna affect people's lives, I had to console them anyway. Then I read this book out loud to somebody The richness of my life is not because I read the big book. It's because I read the big book out loud to somebody so I can hear what I'm saying. This is a a journey of discovery for me in this book.

My god. I was reading with 1 of my guys Tuesday morning and read something and got so excited. I've read it thousands of times, and all of a sudden I saw what it really said, and he thought I was brilliant. I had just discovered it. Of course, I was brilliant.

The lights went on. And I told him what I just found. He's 20 years sober. He said, my god. I didn't see that.

We both got a little different experience out of the deal. It was talking about this vital 6th sense. Remember that piece? Just before that, the sentence says, this is god consciousness. And I've known that, but all of a sudden was clear to me, god consciousness is the vital 6th sense that we're gonna develop here.

Woah. I should have known that. Anyway, viewpoint. This is the message that made it possible for me to continue. We, of Alcoholics Anonymous, are more than a 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body.

I was 100% sick. I need 100% recovery. If you tell me I'm gonna have to stay sick the rest of my life, I would rather die. I really would. I'm not even interested in whatever you have in mind.

You tell me you have a way I can learn to cope with alcoholism or whatever's wrong with me, I would rather die. I coped for 34 years. The word cope means, from the big dictionary, to fight the good fight. I'm tired. I won't fight anymore.

We, Danny of Alcoholics Anonymous, are more than a 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. What the hell does that mean? Alcoholism has definable, recognizable symptoms. I do not suffer from any of those symptoms anymore. That's all recovered means.

It doesn't mean elevated, special. It means I don't suffer from the symptoms of alcoholism anymore. And what are those? One of them is an allergy to alcohol that causes me to need another drink if I take 1. Well, I don't drink.

So I don't suffer from that one. The other is an obsession with alcohol that causes me to take the first drink. There hasn't been a thought of alcohol in my mind for 29 years. I don't know how it is with you, but it has been removed from me. It's gone.

Thank god. I've lost the power of choice in drink. It's gone. I have no more choice today than I did when I quit. Every time I had a choice, I made the wrong one.

Thank god I don't have I did not get up this morning and choose to stay sober. It didn't occur to me that I wouldn't be sober today. My life's in God's hands. Okay? There's no work to this.

I can't cope with alcoholism. I can't cope with anything. God. I certainly can't cope with this world. I don't know about you, but that's too much for me.

I'm barely able to cope with the room clerk of the motel I wanted to. So there's a message that got to me. You don't ever have to drink again. You don't ever have to feel the way you've been feeling ever again. That's a promise.

We don't promise a trouble free or pain free life, but you don't ever have to feel the way you've been feeling ever again. The shame and the mystification of why did I do that? What's wrong with me? You don't ever have to feel that again. That's what I needed to hear.

That's that's all it says. Let me give you another viewpoint because I'm gonna do some exploring this weekend too, and there's some new things that happened for me. For years, I used this book to validate my experience. Ain't nothing wrong with that. Today, I must tell you, my experience validates this book.

I am one of we of Alcoholics Anonymous. Everything that I have done that they did the way they said they did it, I've gotten exactly the same result, And there's only one result here. When I hear people say it's either working or not working, I don't know what the hell to talk about. I heard somebody say the other day, I've learned to live life on life's terms. That's interesting.

I didn't know life made turns. Only people makes turns. I checked it. I don't find it anywhere in here, so I just gonna ignore it. I'm one of we, and I'm sure you are too.

I feel the warmth in the room. We of Alcoholics Anonymous. What a great deal. I'm on. I can't do it.

We can. To show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book. That's all I need to do with for the rest of my life when I'm useful. Remember I died because I was useless? All I have to do is show you precisely how I recovered, and that's a broad broad scope.

How I recovered is different than how you recovered because I recovered in a penitentiary. So I didn't have the luxury of being able to call my sponsor when I felt bad. He didn't have a phone. I didn't either. In fact, quite often, we were sequestered.

And I use that word because that was one of the changes that took place for me. I started out in a prison cell. And as I awakened spiritually, it occurred to me one day sitting in that place, this 8 by 10 room with a bunk and a toilet and a sink, that this is how monks live. In fact, they call themselves. They are sequestered in a safe place where they had time and place for solitude.

Same kind of room. And my cell changed from a punitive place to a place of solitude and safety. That play that took place in here. They didn't do a single damn thing to change it and neither did I. Didn't move the pillow.

It changed in here. In the first edition to show other alcoholics or the foreword precisely how we recovered some big bold black type. It was a little more important than it is now, apparently. I don't know. Ain't that nice?

I can be useful at my worst. One of my dearest friends was old Jack Brennan. I don't know if any of you ever heard Jack. He's long dead now. Old wheel man for the New York mob.

Got fired from that job, by the way. Jack was a good driver, but he was a bad drunk. And, he'd call him the next morning after a big holdup and whatever else they did and say, what did we do last night? And the boys got a little nervous and thought maybe Jack, despite being a good driver, they probably couldn't use him because they didn't know for sure where he was gonna take him during the ride. Jack got thrown out of his apartment one time by the police and spent a number of years every time he got drunk doing battle with the police.

By the time he got sober, it was an eye gone, and his tongue was chewed. He, he talked funny. Jack Jack always talked a little funny because his tongue was all battered up, and he, he was in bad shape when he got here. Couldn't tie his own shoes, couldn't use fork and knife. For about 6 months, they just kinda nursed him.

He used to laugh because he's a staunch Irish Irish Catholic, and god sent a little Jewish fellow out to 12 step him. Come be sponsored. And he used to tell him, Jack, you're really important to this group. You really are important. And he said he was 6 months sober tying his shoe when it hit him that he was tying his own shoe, and it pissed him off.

Because this little Jewish fellow has told him how important he was, and he's aware for 6 months, I haven't even been able to tie my shoes. How important can I be? And he went and complained. And his little sponsor says, oh, Jack, you have no idea the number of people you've helped. You're so important.

When new people come here, we sit them next to you and tell them, you keep drinking. That's what you're gonna be like. There is a place for everyone in Alcoholics Anonymous to be useful. My little friend Chuck was so useful to me because I had become big book bound. If you weren't doing it precisely this way and the timing, and you've been there.

Everybody who has a big book gets there. Chuck had been sober 8 years and had actually become a counselor at Hazleton and was doing fine when he drank. And he had 2 or 3 other times when they did that, and he drank. And when he got to me, he hated everybody. When I asked him what he thought about God, I said, I hate the son of a bitch.

So I understand that we each get a couple seconds with him somewhere down the road, and I can't wait for my turn. I'm gonna tell him what I think of this deal, and I'm gonna go on to hell whistling and happy. And because of the way my mind works, my whole thought was, well, that's nice. He believes. We we have an attitude problem.

Okay. Chuck can look me right in the eye and tell me, get that thing away from me. I tried the big book. It didn't work. So and that was the truth.

He had, and it didn't work. What am I gonna tell him? Hated a reserved the right to drink one last time. That was the deal when he asked me to sponsor. But he didn't ask me to sponsor it.

He hated sponsors. Wouldn't call me sponsor, but he's willing to work with me. For a year and a half, I carried Chuck around in my truck every day while he vented this venom and healed. How useful to me. Everything I knew, all this grandiosity, this stuff you make me do here, like you think I know something, had caught me.

I thought I did. And with Chuck, there was nothing except riding around the van. One day we came home and Jackie made some chocolate chip cookies, And, we gave him 1, and he made the mistake of saying, well, that was good, which to a cookie baker means here, Chuck, have a bag. Gave him a whole sack of cookies. And we got to the car, and he said, why would she do that?

Why don't she give me cookies? And I was able to say to Chuck, well, Chuck, it's because she thinks you're a member of the family. And that's the day and that's the time his life changed. Nothing we had done to that point except he had been allowed to come and go in my house for a little over a year. And when I identified that as being a member of the family, it was true.

And when you belong to anything, you're no longer alone. The healing begins to take place. So our first job isn't to slam people with a big book. The first job is to touch them and say we're really glad you're here, you 4 6 on a bench. I really understand that you need a cookie.

So new people are really, really useful because they keep me there. They keep me from getting smart. Bring me back to just why we're here. I might as well I've got I've got 6 more 5 more hours. I might as well tell you the rest of Chuck's story.

Aw. What do you know? We finally got through the steps the way they are in the big book. Chuck is a big book fanatic these days. Clinton over there.

He's about 5 foot 2 and mean as a snake and doesn't mind telling you. He really still has a bad attitude problem. I love him dearly. He won't hurt you anymore, but, he's very picky as to who he likes and very opinionated about a a on the steps and not altogether well. But we got through the steps.

Chuck awakened. There was a time he would not use the word god. He hated it. Now he'll he's in touch with god. You did not dare touch Chuck.

Been around those kind. You touch him and they will bite you. This was a wounded animal. So we messed with him all the time, and he claimed to be dyslexic, so we'd make him read the 5th chapter. And he loved AA so much that he memorized it so he could do it right.

And then I caught him one day. I said, if you memorized it, you had to read it to do that. Now give me that shit, and he quit being dyslexic. K? Vonoy Shaw was in town for our convention.

Vonoy's a big out of Texas, and she just loves everybody and hugs everybody. And I couldn't go to the convention, but I Chuck was at the time where we were not touching him, and he he jumped and all. He'd tell you right up front. I don't hug. Don't do that.

So I said, you be sure to hear the noise talk because she gives the best AA talk I've heard in a long time. Because she's out, I don't know. Don't mean nothing. And when you're through, you'll be sure you go up and thank her. And he follows directions.

He does do that. And I and she told me later, this nasty little person comes up to her to thank her. And when I just threw a big bear hug on him, that's what she does. When he looked up at her and said, lady, I don't hug. She said, tough, Sonny.

I do. His dad died. Chuck got a little money. We got his financial amends taken care of, and he still had couple grand and a new car. And he came to me in, in tears.

God gave him back that gift. He said, I got one last thing to tell you. I've never I haven't told anybody for years because everybody I ever told us laughed at me. But I have a dream, and I'm afraid to tell you. I said, well, tell me, chuh.

He said, I wanna be an actor. He was a good actor from the day I met him, but no question about that. And I believe that people ought to chase their dreams. So I said, look. You also wanna go to Disneyland because Chuck didn't know how to play.

And part of my sponsorship is you will learn how to play if you're on me. It's a suggestion in the big book. Each family play as much or as little. Newcomers could see no fun about this. They wouldn't wanna stay, so we played.

He wanted to go to Disneyland, so he said, look. You got 2 grand left. You got the car. Disneyland's open. You just got fired from another job, so you're not working.

Why don't you go on out to Disneyland? And while you're there, I'll make a couple calls because I know some people in the business and you can talk to a successful actor and he will be able to tell you what the price you have to pay will be to be an actor. See, there's a price for everything. So he went, and I've made the contact for him. And my friend took him out to Warner's and was showing him around Warner's and just talking with him.

Took him on to the Murphy Brown set, and they were fooling around. And the producer of the Murphy Brown stopped and talked to my friend. And in the introduction, he says, and this is Chuck, and Chuck would like to be an actor. And the producer says, oh, good. We can use him.

And he became an extra on the Murphy Brown show that day. Less than 2 weeks out there, he's already on television. Got into acting school. Was doing fine. His car was hit by a truck on the freeway, and the next 3 years were not good.

He was badly hurt. Went through his I hate God business, why is God doing this to me business, and all that anyway. In 8 years, he drank again. Thank god. Because he was off into pain pills and self pity and hate, and he was divorcing himself from everybody.

And he drank again. Thank God. He had one last reservation. He had told me early on he reserved the right to drink one more time because if this didn't work, he was going to drink himself to death. Well, 8 years and I screwed that up.

He tried. He lasted 3 days. He just didn't have the heart for it. Came back, and he's been sober ever since. We worry way too much about people drinking.

I hate to see it. It hurts me every time it happens, but sometimes if they don't drink, they'll kill themselves. Sometimes if they do drink, they'll kill themselves too. But who am I to make that judgment? Heard from Chuck last week.

He got married. Please pray for him. But after the hospital stuff was all over and he got a little settlement, not enough to do much, but enough that he got back on his feet back into acting school. He just closed in one play and is open on another one. He's on live stage in Los Angeles.

Tell him what he wanted to do. Sober, back hanging around with the people he hates the most, and sounding pretty good. And he was so useful to me because I got to watch this and be part of it. And, no, we are on a shadow of a doubt. Nothing I did had anything to do except the one thing that this is all about.

I let god demonstrate through me what sobriety is. And when the time came, I showed him what I did. Well, I suggest this to you. Sobriety by itself is the most impossible condition of all for any alcoholic to live with. And to recommend sobriety by itself is almost criminal.

The reason we drink is because we can't stand living sober. It hurts too much. It's too confusing. When when I'm filled with self, there's nothing but pain. When I was going through that business with the interferon and the hepatitis and all that stuff, I got furious with the pain.

In fact, I inventoried the pain because I was so mad at it. Because when you're in pain, it forces you to be self aware, self centered. There's no way out. You just but by the grace of God, I found a way. I'm still in pain.

Always will be. That's part of the human condition, by the way. But I no longer suffer from the pain. There's a difference. We have an an incurable disease, but we don't have to suffer from it.

I'm not cured of alcoholism. I'm recovered from it. I don't have the symptoms anymore. One of the symptoms is self centeredness. And if I start getting self centered, I'll start suffering.

And when I'm suffering from self centeredness, I try to fix it. If I'm suffering from loneliness, I can go find another girlfriend. The reason I'm not lonely is because the last one couldn't stand me left because I was too self centered. Yeah. Yeah.

Let's go back to the big book. I need to not comprehend that the alcoholic is a very sick person. As a sponsor, I need to continually be aware of that. That the people I'm working with, like myself, but protecting the new ones coming in are very sick people, and I need to treat them that way. I have never yet heard a nurse yell at a patient.

Have you? That's all we are, nurses for sick people. We got nursing along for a while. What you say, Clint? Bed, pan, Harry.

Bed, pan, Harry. And I need to remember that. Because after I've been through the big book several times and gotten this goddamn smart, I started instructing instead of nursing. What do you mean you haven't got your 4 step done, you big? I I don't do it that way.

I've got one right now in in inventory, and we'll go over how I do that. There's a step by step method, and we're we meet every Wednesday morning at 7:30. She called Tuesday evening and said I haven't finished. Is there any reason to meet reason to meet? I said no.

There isn't. We have nothing to talk about. We're in a process now where everything goes on the paper. But if you haven't finished that, we have nothing to talk about. Finish it.

That may go on for a while because not more than 8 weeks. The chair is empty, and someone else will fill the chair. That's all. It's just unable to do it. I don't know why.

I will continue to encourage, but I never try to force. How would you like to have been forced by that? I wouldn't. It was imperative that I do it, but they didn't force me. Then it says, and besides, we're sure our way of living has its advantages for all.

Now in my self centered arrogance, I used to think that means that you ought to live the same way I do. It'd be good for you. What it means is that my being sober has its advantages for everybody around me. K? My way of living, it's much more advantageous to you to have me living the way I am than the way I used to.

K. Just another view. No. We got that. That's why we keep reading this over and over, Helen.

Yeah. My children are better off because of this way of living. My boss is much better off because of this way of living. My parents are better off because our way of living has its advantages for them. And then I learned some things about how to conduct myself as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous publicly because we're not a secret society.

We're an anonymous society. Simple means that we're equal, and nobody speaks for AA. I speak for my experience of AA, but not for AA. So when it says when writing or speaking publicly about alcoholism, we urge each of our members or each of our fellowship to amend his personal name by designating himself instead as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. So at open meetings like this one, my name is Don, and I am an alcoholic.

And I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. On a more personal level, you get my whole name. But in a public level, I just comply with this. It's nothing fancy. Old Bob White, who was one of my heroes, said all we do here is comply with the conditions.

So you may not like that. Comply doesn't fit well into the alcoholic makeup. So all we have to do is just comply with the condition. So it says do that. That's what I do.

People find great whimsy in my little group's name. We not only find it whimsical, we're complying with the conditions. Any 2 or 3 alcoholics gather for sobriety, they call themselves an AA group, and that's the name of my group. That's how I was regaining, an AA group. Our central office spent 3 weeks trying to figure out, telling us we can't do that.

We said, we are already doing it. Just write it down somewhere. I was in my first federal penitentiary when I was 19 years old in Japan. It was not because I was a big time criminal. I was a 19 year old drunk, and I was baffled by that.

I mean, when I joined the Navy, I really had it in my 17 year old mind to come home a hero, having saved America from the communist menace. Truth was Denver was too small for me already. My head was too big. Nobody but, I ran with some other guys who nobody else liked either. We ran up and down Colfax drinking beer and looking for girls.

I remember that we found some. It was a terrible night. All we knew was looking. We didn't know what to do when you found them They didn't know either. It was a bad night So I joined the Navy And I really love the Navy.

I loved the work. It was challenging. I was a radarman and radio man on a destroyer. At 17/18, war is exciting. We went to Korea and we blow them up during the day, and they'd fix them up during the night.

We go back and blow them up during the day. I have no idea how many people we killed, but I do know we killed one whole herd of cows. They were where we were supposed to be shooting. So that week, somebody ate good that week. I loved hanging out with the guys where you cuss and spit and chew, and we drank everything.

We drank some stuff that was just downright dangerous. Thank God we didn't ever have to fire our torpedoes because there weren't any fuel left in them. There's there's a way of straining the lead out of that and mixing it with grape juice, and it'll put you to the moon. Well, one of our guys I know today he was an alcoholic. As they were taking me off the ship in handcuffs, they were bringing him back on in handcuffs.

This guy had drank some mustard, Peter, fuel that his stomach was rotted. And he would tell you if you mess with me, I'll puke on you, and he could just without him thinking about it. But they brought him aboard, and I was listening to him tell the quarter deck watch why he'd been gone for 30 days. He'd been kidnapped by the communist Chinese and held in a shack tied to the mid pole for 30 days while they interrogated him for all this incredible information and secret stuff he knew. I thought, I like that.

It won't fly, but what a story. He's one of us. I hope to God he got sober somewhere. It doesn't surprise any of you, does it? Of course.

Someone important to me, they knew right away. Kidnap this one. I went on liberty and just kept getting back late. When I drink alcohol, I get lost and can't find my way home, on time, or at all. So I'd get a captain's mask because I was a couple hours late getting back.

The last time that happened, I was 23 days late getting back. I've been given a 24 hour Liberty in Long Beach. 22 days later, I'm still in Pershing Square in Los Angeles mooching drinks. Willing to do and having done anything as long as I can keep drinking. Lost and baffled and scared, but I got to keep drinking.

I could not go back to that ship under any circumstances I couldn't even run away and go home On May 23, whatever that was, wasn't there anymore. The madness was gone. And I turned myself in and returned to the ship as a sane human being to face the consequences of my act, which put me in a federal penitentiary and gave me a bad conduct discharge. But I was baffled. Why would that happen?