The Our Primary Purpose confernence in London, UK

It now gives me great pleasure to introduce Maiz Myers are. Little slip there. He's gonna share his experience, tonight. Thank you. Give you one little job to do.

That's it. That's just one. Amazing to me. I gotta get this thing to sit some place. There it is.

My name is Myers Raymond. I'm an home group is the primary purpose group in big time Dallas, Texas. They, I wish, I wish I could say that every group in Dallas and Texas and, the United States was like our home group, but it's it's not. I we sort of steeped in the, the bowels of middle of the road solution in a lot of places, and it's fairly bizarre sometimes. And we'll talk about a little of that tonight.

There's a couple of things I want to do first. I especially want to thank, Vic and David and his buddies that took all the time and effort to put all this stuff together, having done my own set of conferences before and and whatnot. It's an amazing amount of work and it's a thankless job. And, we owe these guys a great deal of gratitude. I wanna thank the sickest addict I've ever seen crisscross for coming to spend some time with us yesterday.

And it was, it was, a fun day. Fun fun stuff. Barbara, thanks for your share. Is it it's funny. She's some of the stuff that she's talking about on this stuff.

This this thing of saying I don't know, the 2 most freeing things I ever learned in Alcoholics Anonymous, especially as a sponsor is, I don't know and I'll have to get back to you. Those two things are so freeing. It's not even funny. Don't we always say, well, I gotta have an answer every time somebody's got a question? It's it's not true anymore, man.

It's not true. Thanks again for that stuff. I feel like I owe it to everybody that's gonna listen to this thing on a CD. That if you've not experienced this room, you need to. For those not here, this room is sort of like, it's kind of like a melting of Liberace and Boy George.

It's just kind of it's an extraordinary it's an extraordinary room. And if you come to London and you don't see this room, I think you're missing something. It's just like every time I've been at this podium, I've looked up and expected to see GI servicemen walking up here like this. It's like 19 forties and I It's just the weirdest feeling in here. I've talked in some strange places, those guys.

And, this is good. I love this. I want you guys to understand something real quick, and I'm I'm I'm believe me when I tell you this, that I I didn't wake up this morning with God's whispering something in my ear to the tune of, I need you to go out there and straighten those bastards out tonight, Myers. I just need to God didn't say that. And believe me, it is not my intent or my job to come over here and straighten you out.

I have been blessed time and time time again, and I've had a 100 conversations with men and women here who I could learn immeasurable amounts from. I'm no guru, and I'm no I'm no man with all the answers. I'm just a busted up drunk that's been around long enough that I've seen good and bad in AA. And we want to talk a little bit about that stuff. If your experience in AA was that you came to a bunch of discussion meetings and you dug them and you stayed and you love them and you're still happy today, God bless you and keep coming back.

I'm glad you're here. It's not my my my place to judge you. If you came and sat in those same meetings and loved everything, and then day by day got sicker and sicker and sicker because the solution was not there, hopefully, we can talk about some of that stuff. And I and I am here specifically to talk about some of that. And I want you to understand.

Most importantly, I want you to understand that I realize on a on a gut level how badly I need to be here carrying this message. How badly my recovery needs you. I'm I'm simply a lost drunk without you. And I, I'm so grateful that you guys took the time to travel. I'm always caught off guard on these internationally kind of conventions where when we're over here, how many people traveled such huge distances to be here and sometimes at great cost financially and and and and other ways.

And we're blessed that you're here and thank you for that. For you guys that I've met and talked to, you understand most of you guys, a lot of you guys I've already met before. I'm a 3rd generation drunk and, you guys have met my illustrious, illustrious bad seed, Chris, who who is the evil twin. There's sometimes there seems to be some debate about who that is, but I can assure you Chris is the evil twin. Chris was, Chris was my guy who I always every one of you have a guy just like this.

He's the guy I looked at and said, if I get as bad as that SOB, I'll quit. You see? And here he was, man. I'll tell you. Chris saved my life twice in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous.

He's 12 stepped me and brought me to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. And then 7 years sober when I'm suicidal and unraveling in our meetings, he scooped me up again and got me plugged in with a bunch of big book thumpers. And, that's 2 saves in one lifetime. It's pretty good deal. And if I haven't told him lately how much I love him and appreciate what he did for me in this deal, because I would not be here nor would my wife and nor my 3 precious daughters.

Somebody asked me one time why I mentioned my old group, if it was such a tragic deal, and I'm not going to spend a bunch of time with this thing, but, there's also been this perception in AA for a long time that as long as there was a circle and triangle on a door, that God was there and everything was fine. And I truly believe, and this is an opinion not out of the book, I truly believe from a personal standpoint that at one time that was probably true. Unfortunately, what has happened in a lot of cases is that our meetings have gotten so toxic in some places. Again, not here, but I'm talking to a lot of guys here that are from some wonderful groups. But over the years, we've talked to some phenomenally volatile situations, and they just kind of blow you away.

And we'll talk a little bit about that stuff. But it is possible indeed, likely that you can come to some of our rooms and day by day get sicker and sicker until it becomes so painful that you have no choice to do, except to go and do what you've done all of these years. You see? It's it's it's crazy. It shouldn't be that way.

And some people take huge offense when we talk about that stuff, and please don't. This is my personal experience based on my personal experience on this thing. And I and I I wanna make sure that that you understand that. If this is not your experience, then tomorrow you can blow me off and just, you know, tell the guys in your wonderful, warm, fuzzy discussion meeting how what a vile man I am. And and it's okay.

It won't bother me in the least. Scout's on it. But I might say as a post script, a year from now when you're so painful in that meeting where you can't stand who you are and who they are anymore, you may want to look some of us up that are doing this work out of the book and see if you can't gravitate to what the solution is that was guaranteed. It'll be a it'll be a good deal. It's a funny thing.

I'm I'm a book binder by trade. And, I can remember being 19 years old, sitting at the Mason Jar restaurant in Houston, Texas a yeah. We'll have another beer, and we'll talk about it tomorrow. But we'll you know the drill. At 19, we knew.

At 34, I finally stopped. But in the meantime, things would get fairly desperate around the old Ramer household. I don't get into a bunch of drunkalog stuff because it's not really important. Suffice to say, I'm just a badly behaved drunk. And as I get drunker, I get more fearful.

And as I get more fearful, I tend to do things that put me in a position to be hurt, like touch you and say stupid things that make me get whipped up. And I, I just I've been beat up in bars left right. I cannot go towards the end of this deal, guys, do you ever know what it's like when I can't go anywhere without being drunk? And yet I'm so afraid to go someplace because my big mouth gets me in all kinds of trouble. Let me drink 6 beers and go to a party, And and it's moments before I have my hand on your date, which thrills you, gentlemen.

Doesn't it? And and it's just you ever know any guys like that? I mean, it's just and why is it that the scrawniest guy in the room, and I'm it. I've been looking at you. I know I'm it.

The scrawniest guy in the room has also got the biggest mouth around stuff that he has no business talking about. And so every time I turn around, somebody's wanting to take a swat at me or take me outside and kick the crap out of me and this kinda and it just gets painful. It just gets so somebody said, Myers, what made you finally wanted to to sober up? I I got just tired of getting beat up. I got tired of getting beat up and I got tired of of of doing crazy things.

I got in a I got in a fight one night at a pizza place because it was taking too long. I don't know really what the reason was. All I remember was this is this year old kid with a black cowboy hat about that big around standing in front of me, and he said something to me I didn't like. And the next thing I know, they're beating me off of him with a beer pitcher, and I'm choking the living you know what out of this guy. I'm trying to kill him right there in the middle of this this this stupid pizza place.

Oh, I forgot to tell you that the bad part about this is is that my 4 year old daughter is watching the whole thing. She's there while this goes on. 6 weeks later, I tried to beat up a liquor store clerk in Lake Dallas because he called my house to have him because I gave him a credit card. It wasn't good. And he happened to get my wife.

And she's looking at me going, like, what's going on? And so I go back down there to kick his rear. I mean, this is not good. This is not the way we're supposed to live our life. You see?

Being the scrawniest man around, I'm also real real sensitive to bullies. It's a funny thing. The things that we hate the most, oftentimes, we become in this deal. Don't we? I hated a bully with a passion.

And yet, here I was, at almost 34 years old, pushing my wife around, pushing my daughter around, getting to be a, you know, like a Is there anything more detestable than a guy that's like that? Did I wanna be that way? No. I just simply couldn't figure out where it all going. Why was I like this?

So fast forward to a point, Chris comes in one day. He has a black out. A guy that works for us at the bindery, 12 steps in, carries him to a meeting, and his life changes. He'll tell you about this stuff in the morning. Well, I'll save him.

I'll tell it now. No, I won't. He'll tell you. He'll tell you in the morning. But but Chris never spent any time trying to jam me up about being drunks.

He never tried to drag me into AA. He never said anything. He just lived his life a day at a time, living there and working in that boundary. And I watched his life change. I watched him get up, go to work, do a good day's work, go to a meeting at 6:30, do the deal, come back, work at night, go home, go to bed, get up the next day, no booze, no fights, no weirdness, just doing what a man is supposed to do.

I watched him do this. And I remember back there one night, I was watching him in the dark like some sleazy punk, while he was working. And I'm just watching him like this and I'm going, God damn. And I go home and I remember staggering into the house and I told my wife. I said, Buddy, I tell you, if there's anything I can do, if there's any way I can have what that man has, I'm gonna do what I have to do.

And I called him and I asked him to take me to one of those stupid meetings, and he said he would. And he did. And I'm one of these guys that came and stayed. And I loved AA from the very Alcoholics Anonymous. I loved drunks.

I loved I loved everything about that room I loved. I loved being in a room full of people that understood me. I I I It was just God, I loved it. And I was gonna stay. And for 2 or 3 years, it was the coolest experience that I'd ever had in my whole life.

I wasn't really working any step guys. And I had a sponsor that was a friend. We wouldn't, you know, but I'm proof positive. I'm the poster boy of middle of the road solution. I like the concept and idea of hanging out and being here.

I like the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. The problem I had though was that I failed to find and failed to understand that there was another side to this deal called the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, but nobody told me about the program because we were all too busy doing this stuff. I don't know if you come up through the same ranks. We got 21 meetings a week in that group. 20 of them are open discussion meetings.

We just discussed. I got a bad day. I discussed it. I got a bad job. I discussed it.

I got a bad girlfriend. Some of you guys have come up through the same ranks. Nowhere in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous did it tell me that my sobriety was gonna depend on the meeting. It didn't say that. It said that my sobriety was gonna depend on a spiritual experience as a result of doing the work.

But nobody holding me accountable to do the work. So you you guys that are smart, I can see your eyes going. You already connecting the dots. You know what's gonna happen. Almost like clockwork, I started to unwind.

I started to get twisted around my own axle and it was not a pretty thing to see. By now, Chris has moved to the hill country. He's got married. He's got a great life. He's doing the deal.

He got hooked up with a big book sponsor that was jamming through the work and they were having a great time with it. It was lots of fun. And I was still going to this deal. Now, you guys understand this thing about allegiance to a home group. Right?

I mean, most of us to a fault. Guys, I'm telling you, scouts honor. If I had found out that my home group was full of child molesters and and and and Satan wannabes, I'd have stayed there still out of the allegiance to that home group. That's where I sobered up. That's where my allegiances were, and that's where I was gonna be.

And I'm watching you day by day, and I'm watching your lives, and I'm watching my life, and I'm watching how things are just just disintegrating at my feet. And I'm getting day by day more fearful. I'm getting day by day more afraid that this is not gonna work. See, I'm not totally stupid. I just looked that way.

I I'm not I'm not so completely out of it that I don't realize that Al Pollock's anonymous is indeed the only house on the block for me. It is the last deal for me. I have to have this work, and all of a sudden it's not working. 3 years drifts into 4 years, 4 years drifts into 5 years. In the last year and a half I was in that group, it was the most painful experience of my entire life.

Excuse me. People say that before you sober up, you'll have the most painful time in your life. Guys, I can tell you from personal experience, the most painful time that I had in my entire existence on God's green earth was the last 2 years that I was in Alcoholics Anonymous, removed from booze and those other outside issues for 5 or 6 years. I was simply a nutcase. Malady was kicking my rear, but I had no no idea what a spiritual malady was because we didn't talk about that.

I'm being taught that if I managed well, smiled at work, treated my wife with respect, blah blah blah, that everything would just fall into place, that I would be okay. I'd have the nice car. I'd have the nice job. I'd have the nice girl. I'd have all you see what I'm saying?

Yet the book's not telling me this stuff. The literature never said this stuff. Things just got hugely painful. We voted God out 1 night, which was a thrill. It was a wonderful group conscious meeting.

I'm always embarrassed to tell you this story, but I'm telling you because it serves to show how sick things can get and how we, as weak individuals in this deal with no book to back us up can simply go with the flow and do whatever group says do. So So the group came in. We had a guys a bunch of guys come in from a group conscious deal, and they said they thought we were talking about God too much in the meeting, that we probably shouldn't do that, that we were going to scare off the newcomer. And in the group conscience of which I was a voting member, we voted God out of that particular meeting. And we took a meeting that was hugely sick already and turned it into an absolute cesspool.

It was horrible. The inevitable happened. I finally got sick enough that I almost drank. I got scared. I called Chris.

Chris connects the dots, puts me in touch with with Crusty Cliff. And Cliff, You guys got to meet this guy. Put me in touch with Cliff. And Cliff, I went over to see him. And and, if you've heard my talk, I'm not gonna get into a bunch of this stuff.

But I want you to understand that in 45 minutes sitting in Cliff's room, his front room, he showed me the book for the very first time. Now, people that hear my story will go, Myers, I can't believe that for 7 years you said in meetings and didn't know any more about the big book than that. Okay. You can believe whatever you want to. I'm telling you the absolute God's truth.

I had no idea what a spiritual experience was. I had no idea what my primary purpose was. I had no idea what my responsibilities to AA were. I had no idea that the steps were what were supposed to get me clear of the work. I had a vague idea.

We talked about it some, but mostly we talked about Jim's bad day at work and Sally's shitty divorce. That's what we talked about incessantly. You see? You ever wonder why this is? Is that it's always as an observation looking back on these men and women, and they love me to death, and I love them too.

To this day, I still love them. But do you ever wonder why it is in those meeting settings like this that you can come in and be so excited about the dumping situation for about a year. And then after that, those same people that you love, you want to choke the living crap of out in the parking lot. I mean, it's an amazing deal. When you start doing inventory with some of these guys, the guys that I sponsor, a lot of them have come up through the ranks of that kind of of of meeting.

And it's amazing to see on their 4th column inventory stuff, stuff, how much wreckage is around the meeting. Got it. Got it. Kate that guy. Got it.

Got it. Jeez. Do you realize have 20 pages of resentments and all of these are people from your home group? Let me make a suggestion, slick. Get out of that meeting.

But I will. I will. But I understand it. And you gotta love the guy, man. I was there.

I understood exactly. But let me tell you what happened. 45 minutes sitting in this room, Cliff Bishop starts carrying me through this stuff and he starts telling me all this stuff about the book. And I'm going slow No. No.

No. Slow down. Slow down. You're going too fast. And I'm writing just as fast as I can.

And I'm just going and none of it sounds familiar. None of it. And he takes me to the part about the the the bedevilments on 52 or 53 or whatever. When he's talking about all this stuff, and I'm going, Yeah. Yeah.

That's me. And he's going, It ought to be you. You're dying of untreated alcohol and there's the perfect description to it. I'm going, oh, no kidding. And I'm thinking, you know, I haven't had a drink for 7 years, Cliff.

Doesn't that account for something? He goes, I don't know. How happy are you? And I said, not too happy. And he goes, well, there's your answer.

You see? You see, Mike, I'm convinced, like a lot lot of people, that as long as I don't drink, I'm okay. That I'm a winner if I just don't drink. The funny part about it is, is that if you look, if you'll start asking those personal questions we talked about earlier in the workshop stuff, and you start looking at the experience of the guys that you know that are doing just that. They're not working any program.

They're just not so not not not drinking. And look at the quality of their lives. And when I did that to my home group and I started looking at them, I'm not coming from a point of judgment here, guys. I'm just saying this is what I did when I had to look at the truth there. And the truths were indicating.

I got a room full of men who cannot keep their hands off other women. I got a roomful of men that cannot keep, jobs on the square and straight level. They're always fudging around the edges. They're not paying this. They're not paying that.

They're trying to jam somebody up here. They're trying to cheat somebody here. You see what I'm saying? We're living our lives with this, like, this big hypocrisy. I'm a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and yet my life is in total shambles over on this side.

That's desperate stuff, guys. It's horrible. You see? And I didn't want any part of it. That's the reason I'm so uncomfortable in my own skin.

The spiritual malady is kicking my rear end. Remember on page 64, there's a line there that says, if we straighten out the spirituality, we'll if we deal with the spirituality, we'll straighten out mentally and physically. They're talking about the mental obsession that Chris is gonna talk about in the morning masterfully. Nobody does it better than he does on this stuff. And we're talking about the the physical allergy.

Stop and think about this just a minute. How many, all you guys understand the physical allergy, don't you? I'll spend 3 seconds on this because it's important for the rest of this talk. Everybody understands once they get started, they can't stop stuff. The physical part is the easiest part for everybody to see.

It's easy for you to see and understand. It's easy for your family to see and understand. God, once he gets started, man, he just can't stop. What I never understood, because we're not reading the book, was why Bill spent so I do understand it now. Why did Bill spend so much time from the doctor's opinion straightforward to page 44, or they stop at page 43, the bulk, 95% of everything that they talk about is about the mental obsession.

Why is it stone cold sober, I would pick up a drink knowing what it would do? It's the craziest crap in the whole wide world. And every one of us in here has experienced it. Stop and think about the craziest thing you ever did drinking. Driving over somebody, falling off something, doing something else, getting arrested, getting raped, getting you pick it.

Whatever it is, fit it in there. And then and I'm telling you right now, the craziest thing you ever did, you may not have even thought of. It was the fact that stone cold sober, you came back and picked up a drink after all the wreckage wreckage and and drama that it caused in your life. And then you wanna sit here and argue with me when I tell you that you're an insane fruitcake. You are.

We are. It's an amazing thing to see, and yet that's what we do. The mental obsession, this inability to manage the decision to not pick up that drink. If If we could just do that, we'd be great. And this is the part, the mental obsession, that separates us from the heavy drinker, the problem drinker.

This is the stuff that our meetings were full of. I can only speak for Texas, and I can only speak for our meetings in the local area there primarily. Because there's where most of my experience lies. But to watch these guys, let's look at this thing realistically. When you came to AA, how did you learn about AA?

You learned about it from the guys in your meeting, didn't you? And and and so it's like we're parents. They say something and we say something. And they say something and we say something. And pretty soon, their doctrine becomes our doctrine.

Now, that's all great if they're in the big book and all they're talking about is big book stuff. But history has shown us our reality in AA has shown us because of the success rates or lack thereof, that what's happening is is we had a bunch of people that decided to set the big book and its clear cut message down and pick up a bunch of discussion stuff. We call it just disco rhetoric, discussion rhetoric, just stuff. All meant well, all coming from loving hearts, and yet and some of it was good stuff. I'm not saying it's all evil.

Some of it was horrendous. Take a step a year. Now there's something that has the power to kill a few And if you happen to be somebody that's involved in another fellowship like crack addiction, wait a year to get into the work? See you, dude. You'll be frightened at the end of a year, you know, and you know you will.

So this the crazy stuff. And so what we have to do is, it's like somebody said said one night, said, Myers, you make it sound like you're the only right one and everybody else in the fellowship is wrong. And I said, Well, I don't know. It depends on where we are. In this room, 99% of you guys are walking the same path doing exactly what I'm doing.

You're already in the book. But let me tell you something. I've been in rooms with a 1,000 men and women where there was only maybe 10% of the room that was on the page, and everybody else was coming out of these these dark tunnel meetings that they talk about. Meetings that have gotten so toxic that nobody can recover. And I know it makes people grindy to hear this stuff.

But guys, let me tell you something. As an absolute God's truth, I can name you at this particular moment, 2 groups north of me in Dallas where they ask you not to bring your big book to a meeting. Now I'm not talking about Please understand this. I'm not talking about they suggest you leave your book at home because we're gonna have the meeting we'll have it something printed or will They're saying, don't bring your book to the meeting. There's nothing there we want to hear.

You think that's fun? I can name you 3 groups I know of in the Dallas Fort Worth area right now where they charge you to hear a 5th step. Charge you. How much do they charge you? Well, it depends on how good a 5th step you want.

Please, don't tell me we're not off the beam. Don't tell me that AA is not getting sick. Statistically, when worldwide, we're doing 8%, 5%, sometimes less than that, and we were doing 75, 85, 95, depending on where you were, percent success rates? How arrogant of us to stand there and say that we're doing what we're supposed to do? That everything is okay.

Guys, somewhere this apathy has got to stop. We have to be to a point where we can take this thing back and and see it for what it is. And it starts with us individually. It starts with each one of us asking the question, Is my own personal program of recovery out of the book? Is it what it's supposed to be?

Is the message that I'm carrying these guys when they ask me to to help them? Is it is the message out of the book or is it my opinion, an idea about how they need to live their life? Oh my god. Let's talk about arrogance. Mine.

It's what I know best. We're 3 weeks into a into a a big book environment at this new group I'm going to. We have no discussion meetings. They're all big book studies. And I keep wanting to share my experience, strength, and hope.

I keep wanting to share all of these wisdoms that I've picked up in 7 years of discussion stuff. Now keep your finger on that thought, guys. There's nothing wrong with me wanting to share this stuff, except for the fact that I'm suicidal. I can't keep my hands off other women. I'm writing hot checks all over Denton County.

My life is a freaking mess, and yet I wanna share with you the wisdom of my 7 years of recovery. Now you tell me that's not arrogant crap. And yet I watch people in our meetings do it incessantly incessantly. You see? That's why I'm so I hate the discussion meeting format because it breeds all kinds of disaster.

Certain things on certain things? Yes. In the Oxford group stuff in the back of the in the, 16161, it talks about that stuff. But they were talking about a newcomer bringing his problem to the meeting, so that the old guys who had the experience and knowledge could fix it, could help them see the path they needed to be on. This crap of dumping stuff.

I got a friend of mine. You you'll love this. I got a friend of mine that sent me an email from Boston. And they She said she said, you'll think this is funny, Myers. There are 2 new groups in the Boston area on the inner group record.

One was called the shake hands with feeling group, and I thought that was funny. And the next one was called dump it here group. I don't know about you guys, but that makes me squirm so bad. I wanna just I can hardly stand still. My head wants to explode when I hear of a fellowship of men and women coming up through the ranks who think that their sole purpose is to walk into a meeting and dump how crappy their life is and how absolutely bizarre things have been.

Let me tell you a story. One little aside, then we'll get I'll get back on track. Scouts on her. Then we'll get I'll get back on track. Scouts honor.

I'll try anyway. The the this group that I left, they got so sick. And I'm I'm now 3, maybe 4 years into this big book study. I've now had a spiritual experience as a result of doing the work. I know exactly what my primary purpose is.

I know what my responsibilities are. And I had the urge one afternoon to walk into a 6 o'clock or 30 meeting of that old discussion group where I left. It's real close. It's like, it's like 60 yards from where my shop is in, in, in Texas. It's really I have to I have to pass 11 AA groups to get to the group that I go to.

It's a hall to get over there. But it's where I go. So I go into this sick meeting, and I'm sitting there like this. And there was a girl named Barbara. Barbara's not her name, but I'm just gonna use it for just right here in front of me.

You're too sweet. Maybe I ought to change that name. Her name, it's a so I'm sitting in this meeting, and nobody I recognize is in the room that I knew from when I was there, except Barbara. And we start off. Now, Barbara was always one of these girls that always shared how bad her deal was around her employment.

She never had a good job, and it was always the boss's fault. And she never had a good relationship, and she never had she was always just this pathetic mess. And it never got any better for 7 years. It was always the same deal. And so we're sitting in the meeting and I'm looking around like this.

I'm looking around 20 or 30 people around this circle like this. And, okay, well, it's now 15 minutes past the time to start the meeting and nobody started it yet. And finally, somebody says, well, I guess somebody's got a chair. And somebody says, okay. Yeah.

Well, does anybody have a problem? And they started like that. And I look around and all of a sudden I went, oh, shoot. There's Barbara. Anyway, we're getting around the room like this and we get right up to her.

She's the 3rd one in line and she shares. I would I would I would love to tell you that she was a spiritual giant and she saved lives in that meeting that night. But you know what she did? She said, You know, I got this situation going on at work, and there was an audible You could just hear the air being sucked out of the meeting, and and I'm sitting there going and the sweat underneath my arms, I just goes, bam. Bam.

Like this. And I'm I got sweat running off my face. I am so emotionally entwined with this woman, it is not even funny. 4 so what is that? 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 years now?

She has been suffering through this same thing. Am I mad at Barbara? No. I am so angry at a fellowship of men and women sitting there in that room that would allow her to sit there all those years and nobody would step up and say, Barbara, shut the fuck up. Come on.

Hush. Let me suggest a novel idea, Barbara. Why don't you work the work so that you could have a spiritual experience, so that perhaps God God could move you from this place of being a pathetic victim to a place of power. Lack of power is your dilemma. That's what you're wanting, but you want it by dumping stuff.

You wanna treat this like it's some kind of therapy session that if you just process it out for enough years, you're gonna get better. Well, how many years is it gonna take, Barbara? I mean, I'm sorry. I'm a much more gentle and kinder Myers now. Thank you.

I Forgive me. Forgive me. It's simply, as I get older, I get more sensitive and I tend to get more sensitive to people's pain. And when I see somebody suffering, sitting here watching somebody walk in earlier and they were kind of uncomfortable when they walked in, they're looking around like they didn't know. And I'm thinking, I gotta go get this guy.

I cannot stand the pain of somebody feeling uncomfortable in a room. And before I took 2 steps, 3 of you were on them. I mean, it it worked fine. You guys are great. The but you understand what I'm saying.

Did did I scoop Barbara up after the meeting? You bet you're sweet. You know what I did. Me and Barbara got nose to nose and I said, sweet pea, please come study with me. Please come do this work.

Please get you a good strong sponsor that can carry you through this stuff and show you what you need to do in order to recover. Did she? No. She didn't. She's in that meeting tonight, sharing the same crap that she was sharing.

And it is my fervent prayer that one of these days, the pain will become so immense that she'll say, Hey, I remember what Meyer said. And she'll scoop up my number and call me. And I'll go get that gal in a heartbeat. And I'll have her button a beating in so fast, it's it'll make your head swim. And there is indeed hope there.

You see? That's why our deal here is to slowly change the perceptions of what we're doing in our meeting and pay attention to what we're doing. And to know that the things that we say can indeed hurt and harm, and that we need to be real careful. That's why the big book is my constant companion in a meeting. I would never walk into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous without a big book.

Because I wanna make sure that when it comes my time to share something, it's coming out of the book. And if people groan, so be it. You know what? There's a world of people in Alcoholics Anonymous that hate my guts and do not wanna be in same room with me with a big book. However, comma, there are a lot of young guys getting their butts kicked out there that gravitate to me like like I'm I'm I'm made out of gold when I share a message out of the big book.

Because the new guy, I don't care how new he is, understands the message of depth and weight. In the same way that I instinctively knew that Cliff was telling me the truth sitting in his living room, the new guy instinctively knows. And that's the reason why the young lady that was talking about starting a new meeting and stuff, trust me on this. The guys that I know in this room, there's 4 or 5 of you that have start in the process of starting new big book studies all over Great Britain. And I'm telling you right now, guys, in the beginning, it always starts out the same, rough.

You're getting your heads handed let me read you this. You're gonna get a kick out of this. This was sent as a carbon copy to me from Cliff from Cliff from one of you, and I don't remember who it was. And I don't have a name on it. But the comment, it was a friend sent this to Cliff from the UK.

He'd they started a big book study, and this is a message that he got on his cell phone. My group, in accordance with intergroup discussions, will not be promoting your extreme cause. A few of my members have already had bad experiences with your method and relapsed. Leave us alone and do not and do your recovered program elsewhere. I wish they had sent me that message.

I I would love to have faced those men in that situation. They make this sound like these precious men and women that were going to start this group, they make it sound like these guys were evil, like they were starting some kind of Satan crap back there. Like they were gonna cut some cats tails off and do some kind of weird satanic crap. That's crap. These were these were absolute wonderful children of God who were sitting there wanting to do something to carry some hope back into a fellowship that is getting the crap kicked out of it.

And they had the guts to stand there and take it. And then some some coward who wants to write it on an email or write it on a cell phone deal sends this kind of a message. Unfortunately, I have three letters just like this from different parts of Great Britain. Exactly like this. All from different people.

All attacking man and a woman back into a clear cut set of directions that was guaranteed to change their life forever. Sometimes I think that people think I'm trying to stir people up, and get them to go into meetings with big sticks, and kick the shit out of people. I have to tell you I have to tell you in it is one of my favorite fantasies. But I don't, but I don't want you to do that. And it would serve no purpose if you did.

And all of a sudden people would think that they were right and we were wrong again. And don't do that. Well, I don't want anybody getting brutalized or bloodied because of the work. It's not necessary. What we're gonna do is we're gonna do what what we found a long time ago.

We won't try to make sweeping changes of anything. Change in Alcohol Anonymous is going to come when one strong sponsor talks with another individual. And that individual becomes a strong sponsor. And he comes out and he sponsor somebody, and that girl turns out to be a strong sponsor. And she goes out and sponsors somebody.

You catch my drift? We've been doing this long enough now to see the legacy spread out before us. I was in a meeting the other night, and there were 5 generations in that meeting of people starting with Cliff Bishop that sponsored me, and then I sponsored this cat. And he sponsored a couple of guys, and they sponsored a couple of guys. And then they sponsored a couple of guys.

Now, I gotta tell you, the funny part about this is is that the guys that were below me on this deal, none of had been had been, sober longer than 2 years. 1 of the guys that's sponsoring 3 guys has only been sober 6 months. And I know some of you guys are going, no, that can't happen. I'm telling you right now. If I had a daughter, and I have 3, and they needed AA, and I may have one.