Step workshop in Slidell, LA

Never was that to be critical to them. Absolutely impossible to an anated alcoholic of mine. I'm gonna say it several times this weekend. I want to shatter a new piece of water down a In inventory, I do not look for my part. If I have only a part, so do you still have a part, and this thing tells me I'm to ignore anything you may have done entirely and look for my mistake, not my part.

I'm to never be critical of you. You have no part in the way I feel about this, the resentment or the fear. Only me. We'll get to more of that later if you wish. I do not look for my part.

I look for my mistake. Where was I wrong? Me, not you. If you're a son of a bitch, I picked you. Oh, yeah.

I was to test my thinking by the new God consciousness within. We had an old Assembly of God preacher used to come. Now I love to meet with the Assembly of God folks because they sing, and I love to make a joyous noise unto the Lord. I just I can get into it. I can't go along with much else.

It's just me, but I love to sing with them, and I love the people I have met among the Assembly of God. This this little boy used to come in every Sunday. He was doing what a a 12 steppers do. He was taking his own time out, going to the most hostile environment he could find to carry his message. So I listened to him.

Don't disregard what spiritual people had to say no matter what their doctrine. And he taught us how to do this in a very practical way. He said there are times, and he claimed Jesus was alive and well on him. He was conscious of the presence of God. He said, there's still times that I'm doubtful.

I'm just not sure. And And we said, well, what do you do then? He says, well, I take him by the hand and say to him, if I go do this, will you go with me? What an awakening that was I Either get a yes or get a no If I don't get anything at all, it's no. I know where I am God is and will go anywhere with me, but that's a good test for my behavior.

And that has grown some. The question no longer is will you go with me? Would I do this now if he were with me? Well, he's with me all the time, and it really becomes a guide for my behavior. Good stuff.

Can't do it unaided. It takes the very power of God to make me able to do that, but that's available. Common sense thus becomes uncommon sense. It doesn't say common feeling becomes uncommon feeling. Common sense becomes uncommon sense.

There is a sense of things that transcends feelings. Feelings are based on whether it's hot or cold, or sunshiny or dark, or my perception of what's cute and exciting. Feelings aren't to be disregarded, but they're certainly not to be trusted either as the final gauge toward any decision that I might make. How I feel about things, my sponsor said, meant absolutely nothing to him. He just really didn't care.

In fact, it seemed to me that he liked me feeling bad more than anything else. Never denied me my pain, and I will never deny you your pain. If I stop your pain halfway through your journey, you don't get to go back and pick it up halfway. You gotta go all the way back to the beginning and do the whole damn thing over again. That's my experience.

More better I encourage your pain. And he did that in little ways like this. Oh, Bruce, I say. I feel so guilty. He said you should.

You are. Finally, somebody who understands. Bruce, I feel weird and strange. You are. Bruce, I'm terrified of my own mind.

You have good reason to be. Finally, somebody who understands. There's freedom in every one of those things when I finally get it straight. And I get it straight because somebody says, yeah. I know.

So what's your point? I love you anyway. What's the difference? When I I was to sit quietly, one doubt, asking only for direction and strength to meet my problems that he would have me. Absolutely contrary to the alcoholic evil nature.

What do you mean sit quietly when in doubt? When you're worried or in doubt, run-in circles, scream and shout, create a diversion. Get them busy till you can get out. That's my nature. The minute you catch me off base and I'm wrong, I have a multitude of things I'm gonna do immediately that will in 5 minutes have you begging for mercy and my forgiveness because you were so wrong.

I'm not about to look at me in my ego state. The basic AA prayers are right here. Learning to pray is what I'm about. If I'm gonna have a relationship with God, I have to learn to communicate. We just call that prayer and meditation.

Communication is a two way street. I talk and I listen. If it's a new found friend, I'm gonna talk that way to him. I talk to God just like I talk to you. And then one afternoon, I called him a big bully.

Seemed to me that's what he was. Didn't seem to bother me. Unfortunately, the minute I uttered it, I realized who the bully was. Weren't him. I say him.

I don't know. That's a non genderized him, by the way. I need direction and strength. I'm confused, so I need direction, which I get. Now I know what I'm supposed to do.

I don't wanna do that. That's gonna take some time and energy and some work and some talent. I don't wanna do it. I know the right thing. I just don't wanna do it.

So I ask for the strength to do it anyway. You wanna be careful with that one. That's a very dangerous prayer I've learned. If you pray for strength, that's what you get. You don't get relief.

Okay. You get strength. God's very merciful. If all I want is relief, I'll get it. It may take a drink to give me relief.

I'm allowed to do whatever it takes, but if I ask for strength, I will get strength and several times through this book give me the strength to do the right thing. Point me in the right direction and give me some strength. And in my experience, my strength comes from the partners that walk the path with me. That seems to be who he sends me. You are my strength.

When we walk together, there's nothing can stand in our way. Nothing. And out of that simple idea came the fellowship that brought us together this weekend. Bill did this on his own for 6 months, and, nobody got sober. He was going nuts.

It was not a good deal And then he and Bob started doing it together and look at it here. We are Never was that I pray for myself except as my request, but more on my usefulness to others. This is not about me. My sobriety is not for me. It's for you.

My life is none of my business. Only the conduct in my life is my business. I am responsible for my conduct. Pretty easy solution to the ambition problem. Don't have any.

I'm I'm one of those people that my mother owed me against, a man without ambition. I have no idea what I wanna be when I grow up. I can tell you this. I sincerely hope that I die before I grow up and become an adult. I've met 2 of them, and I don't wanna be like that.

Still a little judgmental, but they were certainly nobody I wanted to hang out with. They didn't know how to have fun. I suggest to you that we are on God's amusement park planet. Yeah. We are God's children.

What are children supposed to be doing most of the time? Playing. And you and I take this whole damn thing seriously, and we miss it. This is a goofy place, this planet is. There's just never any amount of fun going on here.

And the animals on this planet, particularly the people types, are fascinating. Better than any zoo that you can imagine. I need something, and and I've known it since I was a small child, and I'm fully aware of it now. What I need most is a sense of the presence of God. That's all I need.

And I ran into this, and it hit me. I cannot ask for that. If this is true, I can't ask for that for me. I can only ask for it as it might bear on my usefulness to you. Now my schemer has never died.

I just let it work under some guidance and direction. And I have a prayer I'm going to give you that has been with me for years that comes right out of here. Everything I do comes right out of this book. Dear God, please fill me with your loving spirit, and let it flow through me and into the lives of others. And that works.

As long as it's flowing through me, I am full. Yes. Please fill me with your loving spirit and let it flow through me and into the lives of others. Find your own variation on that theme. I used to say, fill me with your love, and somewhere it expanded.

It's gotta be more than that. Anyway, that works, and it came from here. This is a guidebook. If if it's true, it'll fit, and it'll be my guide. How do I conduct myself?

Isn't that wonderful? All laid out right in front of us. Then only might I expect to receive, but that would be in great measure. Just experience. When I came here, I didn't even have a name.

They took my name away from me and just put a number on me, which was correct. Put me away where I couldn't hurt anybody, which was correct. Nobody knew my name. Nobody had access to me. You took me at that point and accepted me as it was where I was, give me back a name and my purpose and on and on and on.

Okay. Very simple change that has taken place is that over the years, by being with you and doing what I'm supposed to do here and just saying yes to life and to God and you, It is not possible for me to keep up with my mail. I'm corresponding with people in Korea and Australia and Canada and all over the United States. There's very few places I can go today where I don't know somebody. People call me when they're moving somewhere and say, who do you know here?

And I can tell them. I've had dinner there. I have history with people. I don't know whether that's important to you, but it was to me. I always burned you up and burned my bridges behind me and moved on.

I have history with people. I'm not afraid to come back to Slidell. I've been here before. James was kind enough to let me live in his house while I did a roof down Wayland, Mississippi to have history with people. I've received in great measure in social youth.

My god. What what a thing to have happened. I could have done it on my own. The best I can do, the very absolute best I can do based on fact, is put my children in a foster home and put my mother in a position to say on Christmas Day, you can't come to my house with your kids because I can't stand watching you die. So I don't even get any credit for it.

I can honestly say I'm loved by thousands of people and so can you be. I'm loved by people who've never met me. I can walk into a a anywhere in the world and have done so. And I'm a member of that group. I belong there.

We walked into a meeting in Moscow in 1980 8. November of 9 1988. First meeting in Russia. We didn't bring it there, by the way. They were celebrating their 1st year and a completely insane egomaniac priest brought it to Russia.

Love him, but he was a nut. But it was puree. They they opened the way I was used to having it open. We had to listen to the interpreters. We were home.

They opened with the serenity prayer. They read the traditions. And they said this will be a second step meeting. And, this Russian kid started to talk about his second step. And it's an experience to hear him say that and then have to wait while the English is being translated.

And then when he's talking again, I get to think about what he just said. It was quite an experience. And all of a sudden, he and I were the same. He was telling my story. And then he said I have no history of God in my life, but I wanted to be sober so I did what they said to do in this book and I have found spiritual power within myself and I'm home.

That's what we belong to, you know, that's what came out of this simple little deal. Laying in a hospital bed nearly MDTs, willing to do just what Abby said here, straighten up the past and start praying for strength and direction. Something? My friend promised when these things were done, I would enter upon a new relationship with my creator. God does not exist way out here for me into some esoteric mystical thing.

Where I am, God is. I have a working relationship with God as I understand God. It has stood the test of time. It's carried me through joy, and it's carried me through pain, and it's carried me through flat times. It's carried me when I wasn't even aware of it.

I have a relationship. My main relationship with God is my relationship with you. As a sponsor, I'm a I'm just awful when it comes to romantic relationships. I can't be of any help to you whatsoever. I've never learned how to have a successful sex relationship.

So all I can tell you is quit that. If you would like to learn how to have a successful relationship with God, I can tell you precisely what I do. And since I got that one straight, all the rest of them are straight. That means I have enemies. My relationship with my enemies is absolutely correct.

Not everybody on the planet is gonna like me. I had a pro officer tell me one time I'll know you're okay now when I meet somebody who's just met you, and they can tell me the truth that they didn't like you at all. Because then I'm real. If my relationship with God is right, all of the others will be. If it's not, none of the others will be.

That's just my experience. It's both a scary and a wonderful thought to be able to have a relationship with God. It means I have to trash everything I believe about God or think about God because I'll limit it. What an idea. If I go here, will you go with me?

I won't go here if you won't. That I would have the elements of a way of living which answered all my problems. They are these, belief in the power of God. See, just believing God is not enough. I believe in God.

I believe He created the heaven and the earth in 6 days and rested on the 7th and for me He was still resting. Chuck believed in God. He hated the son of a bitch. A belief in God is not enough. I believed in the power of God because I saw it at work, plus enough willingness, honesty, and humility to establish and maintain the new order of things with the essential requirements.

I hear funny stuff sometimes throughout the fellowship that there's no musts. I don't know what the hell a requirement is if it's not a must. There's no must for you showing up here. You got a nurse to hang out with a bunch of lunatics? Come ahead.

You're welcome. Recovery has some requirements. One of which is the belief in the power of God. And then enough honesty, willingness, and humility to establish and maintain a new order of things that's required. And I have trouble with the idea of humility.

At that time, I was thinking of humiliation and that's not what it's about. And I searched diligently to find something. There's all kinds of really cute things on humility. For me, it's simply humility is the willingness to seek and do the will of God. That's all it is for me.

If I'm willing to seek and do the will of God, that's all the humility I'm ever gonna get. I am prone to false humility. Oh, not me. Which is just ego in a new face. Simple, but not easy.

A price had to be paid. There's a price for everything in life. I used to love when Chuck would say I can either live by my own will and pay the consequences thereof or live by God's will and pay the consequences thereof. The price that has to be paid here and throughout the book are departure points and here is one. Where without this, don't bother me going any further.

It meant destruction of self centeredness. I'm surprised I have to pay for what what has happened to me. That's the price I did pay. We don't hear well. Do you know what I first hear?

Destruction of self. That isn't what it says. It says destruction of self centeredness. Let's discuss that for a minute. Let's play with that.

If God had made any 2 of us the same, one of us would have been unnecessary. Been another model just like this one and never again will there ever be another one just like this one. Same goes for you. You're it. One time around for this model.

And that means I have a very specific contribution to make to life. And if I don't make it, it will never be made because you can't make my contribution. And you have a contribution to make and if you don't make it, it won't get made. There's only one thing I can do better than anybody on the planet and that's be me. If God is in truth everything then myself is also part of that.

An interesting thing is I've played with this over the years is that if I don't make my contribution, life seems to go on anyway. It doesn't seem to make a damn difference. But if I do make my contribution, it seems to me that the fabric of life is just a little bit richer that day. Don't know how, but it is. But, Danny, this isn't about finding out who you are.

Sounds funny. This isn't about finding out who you are. The whole inventory is to find out who you're not. So you can get rid of it and then who you are will show up. Self knowledge will not do me any good at all.

So finding out who I am isn't what it's about. I know who I am. I know who I've become. Now I've got to find out what God would like me to be. Anyway, destruction of self centeredness.

That's the price. There's a question implicit in this. Am I wanting to do that? If I'm not willing to do that, might as well go home. That's what it's gonna cost me.

Self centeredness. Let's put self centeredness in street terms. I have to think of street terms. Where's mine? That can't be mine.

It's not big enough. It's wrong color. There's not enough. When is it my turn? That's not fair.

You can think of a 1,000 others. That's gotta go. Why me? Why not? Somebody special?

Yeah. Somebody extra special? No. Someone said one time, and I believe this, that it takes all of us to be the Christ spirit. That's the spiritual link we have.

And if one of us is missing, I'm just not complete. And I need to go help you so that I can be complete. We are a selfless program that's based on self. Welcome to the lunatic assignment. The only way I'm gonna define spiritual for you so that you those of you who need to write something down, Ken.

This is not the whole truth. Spiritual to be spiritual is enlightened self interest. It means I finally understand the best way for me to get mine is to make sure you get yours. Enlightened self interest. May or may not be true, but it's one of those things Kurt Vonnegut used to call the kind of lies that make people better.

If it is That doesn't what we are doing. Yeah. I must turn in all things to the father of light who presides over us all. All things. Test that one.

Oh, I've had fun testing that. It's a little crude, but I want to tell you one of my tests. And I do test God constantly. How else am I going to get rid of myself? I woke up one morning constipated, and and I'm in there busy trying to force the issue.

When I remembered all of this business. When agitated or doubtful, we pause asking for the right thought or action. So I just went inside and started doing that, started relaxing. And I don't know how much time, but pretty soon I got relaxed enough. It was all over.

Mhmm. Because I took my mind off the problem and just went and paused and started asking for the right thought or action. I didn't get any answers, so I just kept sitting. That's what you're supposed to do. When you ask, wait until you get an answer.

And if you wait long enough, whatever you've been having difficulty passing will pass. Yeah. This too will pass. I just couldn't resist that one. This will if if it's true, whatever this book says, if it's true, it will fit any circumstance I can bring it to.

And if it doesn't, I need to find out why I can't see. That's all Then Bill had that wonderful experience. Now all through this book, there are descriptions clear descriptions of what spiritual looks like, feels like, and tastes like. Because we are so bright that we have a spiritual awakening and we don't even know what the hell happened. Here's a description of the spiritual experience.

And my suggestion is, while Bill's was boom, let's look at the elements of this and see if we've had any of this happen to us. These were revolutionary and drastic proposals, but the moment I fully accepted them, the effect was electric. Have you ever had a sense of just almost like an electric shock at a meeting or with a friend or something since you've been sober? Just there was a sense of victory. The battle's over.

The war is over. I am victorious. There's just that sense of that, and it doesn't have to be a big deal. Have you had that happen? Followed by such a peace and serenity as I had never known I've had that There was utter confidence.

We're scared to death of that. In the presence of God, I should be utterly confident. It's not an ego thing. I felt lifted up as though a great clean wind of a mountain top blew through. I didn't get that one till later.

In the 8th step, I had a lifting up experience. And over the years, when a when a particular piece of truth hits me, that chill runs through me. It's almost like walking from a hot room into a cold room going from the inside out. I expect that must be kinda what he's talking about. I've had all the elements of this.

If you've had all the elements of this, you've had a spiritual awakening. Someone challenged Bill one time and said, yeah, Bill, but you had the the advantage of that Wampus experience. He said, you've all had it. But just for some, it comes slower a piece of the time. For a moment, I was alarmed.

I called my friend the doctor to ask if I were still sane. There it is. Every time I have a spiritual awakening, the first thought is, oops, I've lost my mind. And the reason for that is I have. My old mind just left.

My old way of thinking, I've just lost it. And I have no idea how to live with the new one yet, so it's a little scary. For new people, we talk about spiritual experiences like they were fun. I haven't had one yet that's fun, but they hurt. Getting born is not an easy deal.

Anne and then Bill and the people that brought this to us gave us one of the most critical pieces of all. We must walk day by day with the new man on this journey. What a horrible thing it is to wake somebody up and then leave them. My house is full of babies right now, so all my analogies have to do with babies. I can't conceive of enough meanness to wake this 4 month old baby up sharply and then just walk off and leave.

And I have to ask myself, do I ever do that with the people I'm working with? It's the same thing, you know. If I'm gonna wake you up, I'm responsible for walking with you for a while while you learn how to function. Now I play with babies. I don't know about you.

She and I have fun. I plop her right here on my lap and she gets a hold of these fingers and I hold on to her little bitty wrists and I can feel her starting to tense so I lift her up. She wants to stand up. And she smiles, and I sit her back on her butt, and she smiles again. And then she tenses, and I lift her up again.

We exercise over and over. That's our game. She's getting stronger. She's exercising her muscles. Same thing with going through the steps with somebody and working with somebody over and over and over again while we exercise that muscle, that spiritual muscle, that new mind.

Silkwork was one of the most loving, understanding, brave human beings that ever walked this planet. Remember, he's had Bill twice before, and he's the one that said, get him a keeper. There's nothing left to to pick up here. Bill calls him in after coming out of the d t's with this new thing. Doc, I feel like a cold wind blowing through me.

And so, of course, response to Bill, am I still saying is something's happened to you that I don't understand, but hang on to it. It's better than what it was before. And then Bill has the nerve to say, you know, this is so good. I think I ought to give it to everybody else, doc. Can I visit the other patients?

What a brave man. You know? This is a guy that needs a straight jacket and so forth sees something in it. What happens to us is so profound even the world can see it. In fact, they usually see it long before we do.

Am I a living example of that? If you look at me, can you see what God has done? Not in any great profound way. If I'm gonna go on out and try to convince you that you ought to walk this way, can you see that I walk this way? Or is it all words?

So when I sponsor you, you get to come to my house generally about 6 in the morning. I well, what the hell? That's when I'm up. I know. Thank you.

And that's when you're at your weakest. No. Part of the reason for that is that I want you to see how a recovered alcoholic and his family live. First of all, we have an address and you come to it every week and it's there every week. You can't say the same for your life.

We start up on the couch. There have been some changes, but this is a day up on the couch in the family room right by the front door. My family and I have had group conscience. They know exactly who's coming into our house. Thieves, rapists, murderers, lunatics, drunks, Mhmm.

Unstable people of all kinds. That's okay with them because they know I know what I'm doing. I'm keeping them on a couch near the front door. My family has seen some really dangerous people come into our house, but they're not dangerous while they're in my house. They're really not.

We're there for God's purposes and they're not dangerous. They won't hurt anybody. K? They see how we get ready for work and school. My youngest daughter is mouthy.

Is that fair? Opinioned. And not the least bit concerned about sharing her opinions with you. K. She's very direct.

A lovely child. Just very direct. She's an activist. When I met her, she was 3 years old and running a Montessori school. She was.

So I got one of the lunatics sitting on the couch, and we're busily engaged in doing this big book thing. She was probably 12, 13, came down the stairs, and suddenly I hear excuse me. And it's pretty well known. I'm busy working. Don't interrupt me.

So it shocked me, and and I said, yeah. Well, what do you want? She says, I live here too, you know, and you've never introduced me to this person. And we both got a big lesson out of that. So you come to my house so I can learn too how to interact and It was so important that she meet him as soon as she got his name.

She's gone. We make massive dramatic deals out of shit like that Okay Through circumstance, she was put into an arena where the ideas about people aren't the same as they are in our house, and I sponsor a lot of gay guys. I don't care. I sponsor drunks. Whatever the hell your deal is, that's your deal.

I don't really don't care. But she came downstairs one day talking with her sister making noises about gay people that were ugly, truly ugly, biased and prejudiced and mean and ugly. She heard them somewhere. And Sam was right there on the couch. Sam's gay.

And he's watching me now to see what I'm gonna do. And I said, Kelly, you need to know something. Some of the people that you love the most and that love you the most are gay. Oh, dad. Tell me who.

I said, no. No. You get to figure that out. And left her alone in about a couple weeks. She came back to me and said it just wasn't worth the effort The ideas were gone.

We fight nobody we fight nothing Okay. It's 130. I finished this little piece up. We'll take a little break and then do another one. I hope it's alright with you.

I'm just wandering and telling stories. That's what you asked me to do. Okay? My friend had emphasized the absolute necessity of demonstrating these principles in all my affairs. That means a couple of things.

First of all, I've got to have some. K. Like work and family and neighborhood and whatever. It also means that I'm not to have more affairs than I have principles, so we ease into it. I like that.

I practice principles pretty good at a meeting. It's easy. You got a lingo as long as I sound right. It's easy. If I do not give my children the same love and attention and tolerance that I give the people I sponsor, I'm not doing this at home, and I've been guilty of that.

Okay. If I can't wait for Jackie like I'll wait for Danny, I'm not doing this deal Particularly was an imperative imperative to work with others as he had worked with me. Well, this is how they did it with me. 29 years ago, they sat me down and said, you can't talk for 5 weeks. Shut Shut up and listen while we read this to you.

And then they did the same thing. They told me stories and had when I got to directions, had me do things. After the meetings, they'd visit with me. And I still do the same thing, and I'm still here. And it works.

Faith without works with dead and how following the truth for the alcoholic. For if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life to work and self sacrifice for others, he cannot survive the certain trials in those spots ahead. Little departure here. A lot of the folks that they're in my immediate AA family. AA is a big family.

But as in any family, there's immediate family and there's kissing cousins. K. My immediate family are people who are so sick. They just have to have this thing at hand all the time. We're busy, big book people.

We're working steps and all that, and we'd sometimes say that the steps are the work. I suggest to you the steps are not the work. The steps prepare me for the work. The steps get me fit to do the work. The real work is working with others.

That's the work of Alcoholics Anonymous. K. A business that takes no regular inventory will soon go broke. A business that stays in constant inventory is also gonna go broke. You gotta be open for business now and then.

I continue to work the steps on a regular basis, mostly because I sponsor at least 4 or 5 people all the time, so I'm always in the step process. Periodically, I've been known to just turn myself into somebody and let them take me through the steps. I think the last time I did that was 6 years ago. It was an interesting experience. Took about 3 weeks and not not a bad experience, but I did not grow spiritually through the steps.

The steps are what put me in touch with and help me learn how to relate with God. I grow by sacrifice and work with others. That's how I grow. That's what it says here. That's what my experience is.

I've been on the road a while. Just a little example of that. I'm gonna take a break. Recently, my my work is incredible high stress. Don't need to belabor it, but from the moment I start until the moment I can finally get out of there, there are no free moments.

There are always 4 or 5 things going on at once, and most of them are life threatening in one way or another. It's just one of them kind of businesses. It makes me kind of tired sometimes. And then I go off and do a weekend like this, and it rejuvenates me, but it leaves me a little tired. Anyway, I was in North Carolina 2 weekends ago, and we done this whole show and tell business.

And it was fine. I had fun. I loved the folks. We had a great time. But Saturday night, I was tired, and I really just wanted to go home.

And they had me set for a prison meeting in the morning, and I just didn't wanna go do that. But they took me out to maximum security prison and put me in a room with 4 guys who were working at that time on the 8th 9th step. And I had something specific to share about that because that's where I hit it too, locked up when they wouldn't let me out to make amends. And we had an hour and a half that Rejuvenated me and I grew spiritually and physically and emotionally and I came home just fine. Not because we were working the steps, but because I had something specific.

It was a sacrifice for me that morning. I didn't wanna go. I had to pray for the strength to go. Shame on me. After all the sobriety, I should go just because it's no And there we were, the 4 of us locked up, spiritually alive to each other.

We grow through sacrifice and work with others. Chuck just lays on my mind. My work with Chuck carried me through some very difficult times. Business was good. Family was good.

My life was good. My insides were getting so rigid that it took work with the guy who nothing would work to loosen that. It's a sacrifice for all of you. It's a sacrifice to listen to somebody for over a year and moan and whine and god. No.

Oh, your days, I wanna push him out of the car into the traffic. If he did not work, he would surely drink again. Mhmm. And if he drank, he would surely die. Let's take a break.

What time you won't be back? 10 minutes. Oh. Whatever you say at your party. 2 o'clock.

2 o'clock? I hear 2. Do I hear 2, 2, a 5, 2 10, 2 10, 2 o'clock, 2 10? It's 1:1:35, 2 o'clock back here. Okay?

Ready to go. We have Alcoholics Anonymous. Know thousands of men and women who were once just as hopeless as Bill. Nearly all have recovered. They have solved the drink problem.

That's the AA message or part of it. Here, they all have recovered. They have solved the drink problem. A tremendous fact for every one of us is that we have discovered a common solution. We have a way out on which we can absolutely agree and upon which we can join in brotherly and harmonious action.

This is a great news. This book carries those who suffer from alcoholism. I have a friendly enemy at home. I don't like him, and he doesn't like me even more. We got together one time for lunch because he'd come to make amends to me about all the ugly, nasty things he'd been saying about me before he ever got to know me.

I wanna know what what I could do to straighten it up. I said, well, let's go to lunch and get to know me. And we discovered over lunch when we're through, he said, I don't understand this. We seem to agree on almost everything. And one of the things we agreed most on is we didn't like each other.

So the best thing for the most people would be for us to just kinda stay away from each other as much as possible. It it's a friendly thing. Hi. How are you? Fine.

I'm glad. Bye. He and I have been on 12 step calls together and worked with people together with no problem whatsoever. We can join umbrella and harmonious action in that. 5 minutes after it's over, it's over.

It's nice to know right where I stand with him. I know some people who've actually hit him. I'm not really prejudiced. He's not likable, And there's times when I must not be, and we can join a brilliant harmonious action. Do you know how wonderful it is for me to sit here and see Danny come here and know that whoever is talking to Danny, Danny's safe because he'll get the same message out of this group from whoever it is that's talking to him.

Different words, different styles, but he'll get the same message. And you know why I know that so? Because Danny's still here, And we've been shooting at him since last night. If I were him, I'd have gone home. He can still smile.

We join in brotherly harmonious action. I wanna be part of whatever it is that does that. I'm going to surrender to whatever it is that can cause that to occur. That's what I've been looking for my whole life. This is a very basic human need, a principle.

We all have to belong to something, whether it's a club or a gang or a movement. I'm a very private person, and I still must belong to something. Must be able to join with you in something to feel it together we're doing something. It's just a basic need, and we got that. We've got a common solution.

Bill calls me, and he's got a friend or relative in Longmont, Colorado that suddenly decides he wants to get sober. And he wants to know who can I put him in touch with? I can tell him because what he's really saying to me is who will present the same message you and I understand that to this person. I know. I also know who won't.

I'm not afraid to let him go there, but I won't send them there. It's kind of the deal we there's a joke about it, but it's true. Left a meeting one night and one of the guys says that was some of the best bb I've ever heard. One of the other guys says, what in the world is BB? I said, I have no idea, but it certainly wasn't a.

Without being arrogant, we have a way out on which we can absolutely agree. And one of the things we have to agree is that you may not want our way out. Once we present it to you, you have some decisions to make, and we're gonna bring you to them if we're doing our job. I do. I bring people as I was brought to departure points.

Here's a decision. Make it. Won't matter which way you go from here, but you have to make a decision at this point. Do I wanna be part of this? Danny's sitting there, and that's going through, maybe not consciously, but part of him is wondering, do I wanna be part of this?

Are we presenting anything he would want? Let me tell you what they presented to me. I didn't know I needed sobriety, so I certainly didn't want sobriety. I just know I'm trapped in a body that won't die. And in somewhere between the next year and a half and 7 years, they're going to put me back on the streets of Denver.

I wasn't afraid of the penitentiary. It's just another community. You learn to live in it. But they were gonna put me back on the streets of Denver, and I had no idea how to live out there. Had me terrified.

Part of their message to me was that you're not thinking too well. We can show you a new way to think. We can show you how to learn to live a way of life that'll make sense to you. That was an interesting piece of information. I've been trying to live my life so it made sense to you.

Didn't make sense to anybody. Today, the joy of my life is that my life makes sense to me today. It still didn't make sense to a lot of people. There are people who think I should be locked away. I wish they'd hurry.

I'm willing. Long as she can go with me. One of the questions in this basket asked me about where's the line about disease? I'm not sure there is one about disease, but on page 18, it says an illness of this sort, and we have come to believe it is an illness, involves those about us in a way no other human sickness can. So whether it's semantics in the word disease or illness or sickness, I have no problem with any of those words.