Rick J. of Toronto, Canada leading a workshop on Sponsorship at the 2006 Saskatchewan Al-Anon Adult Children Festival in Saskatoon

Hi, everybody. And I like virtually everybody in this room, I'm a very grateful member of Al Anon. My hometown is Toronto, Ontario. Please don't hold that against me. And my home group is the St.

Clair Al Anon Family Group. We meet every Tuesday night in Toronto. Really happy to be here. It's the 2nd time I've been in Saskatoon, and it's really, this is a nice event, very intimate, very cozy, good attendance, nice energy. I'm really happy to have an opportunity to just share with you some of my experiences on sponsorship, and that's exactly what I will share with you.

They aren't ideas on sponsorship. They're not theories on sponsorship. They're experiences that I've had and have to this very day on being sponsored and on being a sponsor. The guide that you have in front of you, I refer to it as a sponsorship contract. The workshop I was at last night given by Randall, he asked it was a little point he made in his PowerPoint asking people have a recovery contract and I put up my hand and I say, I do have recovery contract.

And this was the beginning of that. This was the beginning of a commitment. This was not the beginning of a commitment to a person per se. This is the beginning of a commitment to my recovery. And it's a way of doing it that was totally foreign to what I had done previously.

What I had done previously was very loose, very unstructured and it didn't work. So after being in Al Anon and Alatine, I started in the program in 1968 when I was 11 years old. They kicked me out of Alatine when I was 21. I went to Al Anon for another 6 years. I left did a lot more qualifying and came back in April of 1987.

And from that point to the time that I met my current sponsor, I kind of use people for sponsorship. I went through that crazy notion of my head that I was sponsoring myself and the group is my sponsor. And I was going to meetings and I was doing all the things except having a committed 1 on 1 intimate relationship with someone who had done these 12 steps. And I wanted to step in front of a bus after 6 years of being here. It wasn't working.

I was doing everything that I was told to do except one thing. I had not opened myself up enough to say to another human being, will you be my sponsor? I just was unable till I reached that certain point to do that. So the kind of sponsorship I'm going to present to you, I'm not promoting it. I'm not encouraging it.

I'm not telling you that it is the way, but it is our way. But it is definitely the way that I do it. It's the way that I do it with the person who sponsors me and it's the way that I do it with the men that I sponsor. It's structured and that's exactly what we call it. We call it structured sponsorship.

It has accountability to it. It has intimacy. It has regular connection. It has honesty and there is not no barking at things. We kind of take assignments, we do it.

We take action, solid concrete specific observable action. It took me a long time to get sick enough to be willing to do that. And I wasn't sick enough when I first came in. When I first came in I was pretty damn arrogant actually. I knew all the words.

I've been around for a long time and we can hang around here not very long. And if you have even a modicum of intelligence, it's really easy to pick up on the verbiage. It's really easy to pick up on the words that we hang on our walls and steps that we read and start to spout that off and think that one is recovering. And I did that. I was a master at that, spouting it off, but it wasn't working because I wasn't opening up to someone who had worked these 12 steps, and who could show me how that was done.

It's not for everybody that's for sure. I've had people ask me I had one guy at my meeting one time say I will do absolutely anything to have you sponsor me. So I said meet me here before my meeting, I said meet me here next week at 7 o'clock and I'll show you what it is that I do. So I brought this guy with me. I showed him.

We talked about it for an hour. He said, hey. I'll give you a call. I never saw him again. Had another guy that said, yeah.

Okay. We can do that. Called me once. Never saw him again. I had a woman sit in my front room after reading what's on your table and she said, this is communism.

This is not sponsorship. It's like the Gestapo. And I said to her, clearly this is not for you. I'm not forcing this on anybody. I'm not making judgments about how anybody else is sponsored.

You can make all your judgments about me that you want. Just don't tell me that. Just listen and go outside and talk all about it. Right? By the tape and say, he's an asshole.

That's okay. Do that. Do whatever you got to say. But what I do ask you to do is keep an open mind, because I have run into people in my travels in Al Anon whose stories have broken my heart. I was in South Dakota back in spring and I shared my story and a woman came up to me and she said, I've been in Al Anon for 36 years and I have never done the 12 steps.

She said I have never asked anybody to be my sponsor. And I was in tears talking to her about that. I have met so many people in Al Anon and I was one of them who used people as a sponsor without ever saying to them, will you be my sponsor? And how dishonest is that to use somebody the way I use people before I came here? Because just because I'm coming to the fellowship, just because I'm sitting in meetings, doesn't mean I'm getting better.

It means that I have to take other actions. I don't come to a program. I don't belong to a program. I belong to a fellowship and the fellowship is us and I have to have this fellowship. I need this fellowship desperately.

And it's in the fellowship that I hear people share their experiences of working a program. And the program is simple and it's clear and it's 12 things. And it's called the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. It even says that in our Al Anon tradition that we practice the 12 steps of AA ourselves. We don't practice the 12 steps of Al Anon because we don't have any.

We don't practice the 12 steps of Al Anon adult children because we don't have any. We don't practice the 12 steps of Alatine. We are members of the Al Anon Family Groups to practice the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous ourselves because we ourselves are sick. It's a part and separate from anything that's going on with any alcoholic alive or dead in our life or not in our life. And that's who I am.

I'll try not to duplicate my talk tonight right now. I just kind of used some ideas about sponsorship that float around all the time is that men sponsor men and women sponsor women. It's not a bad idea and it's a pretty good guideline, but I will tell you clearly that my sponsor is a woman and I only sponsor men. Interesting, I've had many women ask me to sponsor them and I say no I don't sponsor women and they say how come and I say because you're gorgeous and I'm single. That is not a good mix.

Years ago, I had the arrogance to sponsor somebody before I even had a sponsor. 6 weeks later, we woke up together. She said, I guess you can't be my sponsor anymore. I said, how come? That this is perfect.

I get to sleep with you and tell you what to do. I love this. That's how sick I have been and can be without some guidance. If you're considering asking somebody to be your sponsor, know the answer to this question before you ask them. Do they have a sponsor?

That's really important, really important. The guy was gonna ask to be my sponsor one time and I called him up, man. And he, he said, gosh, Rick. He said it's great to hear from you. And I was calling to make make a sponsorship request.

He said, yeah. I haven't been going to meetings very long, and, you know, I haven't seen my sponsor for ages. Well, jeez, nice talking to you. Click. And My sponsor lives 1800 kilometers away from me.

And I didn't say will you be my sponsor. This is what I said. I said I am sick to death of doing this thing by myself. I will do absolutely anything you ask me to do if you will be my sponsor. I love the recovery you have shown to me and I want that.

Will you show me the path you walked to get there? I did not ask her to be my counselor. I didn't ask her to be my therapist, and I didn't ask her to be my friend. I asked her to be my sponsor. I said, I wanna know how you got where you are.

And she said, I will be glad to show you that. Welcome to the family, the Al Anon Family Groups. And that's who we are. We are the family groups, the Al Anon Family Groups and we are a family and we can help one another. I loved your analogy about the diamonds, but it's rubbing up against one another.

It's beautiful. It's way, way better than the onion. I really, really like it. I will flip back and forth between being sponsored and being a sponsor as I go through this stuff. I asked my sponsor by that letter, she'd be my sponsor, she sent me a package in the mail.

I thought well it's either a really long forget it, pal, you're a goof or you're in. And it was a lovely little letter and this is what it said. Said I got your request for sponsorship. I prayed a lot about that. And then she said this beautiful thing.

She said, I spoke to my husband about it because I was about to enter into an intimate relationship with a man and I wanted to talk to my husband first. And his answer was simple to her. He said, is it a reasonable Al Anon request? He's not asking you to go to bed with him. And she said, it is a reasonable Al Anon request, and she sent me that letter and that package saying, let's go.

Last nice thing she said to me for, like, a year. She said I don't she was vicious with me because you see I had been thinking around in here for a long, long time and it was tired. It was so tired of just hanging out, thinking that I was getting better, and going home and want to stick a knife in my own belly. That's where I was, doing this thing by myself. So she gave me these pages and as I read them, I thought, finally, finally, there's a path that I'm being shown that I can follow and someone is willing to show me.

I would go to conferences and hear people talk about going to a meeting and someone kind of grab them and show them to do this and bring them to do that. And I wanted that so desperately, but I was never able to let it in until I finally wrote that letter. So I'd like to go through some of this stuff with you and tell you what some of my experiences are with it. I'd like to thank Richard for retyping it into a format that was much better than the format I sent it to him in. So what I'm willing to do as a sponsor.

I'm willing to guide the one being sponsored through the 12 steps, not do therapy, not do counseling, not do friendship, but guide you through the 12 steps. I'll give my time for questions, listening to problems, giving suggestions, spiritual suggestions, program tools and principles to help find personal solutions. And that's the path. Hey, you're there and I'm here. You say to me, how did you get there?

And I say, I did this and then I did this and I did this. And that's the only thing that I can share with you that has any kind of integrity and any kind of authenticity. Because if I'm sharing with you anything else, it's just BS because I'm not here to be I'm not a professional. I have a profession, but this is not it. But what I do have is experience and that's the very foundation of who we are, is that I share with you my experience, not my thinking.

I share with you my experience. I walked there, I walked there, and I walked there, and that's all I know to tell you. I don't know another thing to tell you, That's what my sponsor said to me. I will guide you through the 12 steps and all I can share with anybody is this is how I did the 12 steps and these are some of my experiences doing that and I am really excited to be with you as you find your experiences going through those 12 steps. So that is the single most exciting thing that happens to me in my recovery is being with someone else and watching those lights come on, seeing somebody else change, seeing things happen, seeing relationships improve that were shot.

I got home a few weeks ago and a guy that I sponsored phoned me and he said his estranged daughter hadn't spoken to him for 6 or 7 years called him on a Monday morning and said, dad from Vancouver. He lives in Toronto. And she said, dad, I'm graduating tomorrow. He called me and he said, Rick, I can't believe this. He said, I'm going to Vancouver tomorrow.

My dad is graduating. She opened up, and he was available, and he flew out there. We had just finished doing a step 9. And I was electrified for him. And he got back and he called and shared this with me and I thought, what a gift this is for us that when we work with people, we get to be a part of their life.

The excitement is the recovery, not what happened before we got here. We like to listen to those stories, but really it's boring. What's really exciting is how we change. And that change happens with a guide. We will be committed to the pigeons recovery.

If you get hung in the word pigeon get a sponsor and talk about that. It doesn't bother me. It is not true we get hung in little things and it prevents us from moving on. This is kind of from my sponsor lives in the South of the United States and that's just what they use, big deal. It's just a term.

Willing to do whatever necessary to help the person to develop a program for living through the 12 steps in the 12 traditions. Because you see this is a discipline and that's when we don't hear much in our fellowships, but this is a discipline. I need to learn to live a new way because my old way didn't work. I didn't come to Al Anon because my life was just going along swimmingly. I didn't wake up one day and said, man, I got all the money I want, my relationship is fantastic, I'm loving where I'm living, great job, fantastic holidays, I think a whole lot of anon.

I didn't say that. I stand in front of a mirror just saying, like, I wanna jump in the lake. I wanna end this all. That's how I got to Al Anon. It's not going good.

This is not the first stop. This is the last one. I come here when all other plans have extinguished themselves and have proven that they do not work. That's what it was for me. It may not be that for you.

I have met people here like coming because it's a great little fellowship. Come have a little chat, have a coffee, talk about him, great. Come on in. I don't want that. But if you want that, come on in, you're welcome.

I think we choose the strata that we want to go to. And over time, we will find and we will be led there. I'm not making any judgments because I was all of that. Come to the meetings, hang out, go for a coffee, meet a woman, don't come back for a while, lose her, come back again. I did all that stuff.

Really, most most of what I did in the program don't do. Don't do it. Because I was just a goofball in what I did here. I will give love, understanding, encouragement, assignments as well as constructive criticism. And when assignment means someone tells you what to do.

Touch of that neuro debt book, but giving we don't give we don't tell people what to do, but we do tell them to work the steps. We tell them to get a sponsor. We tell them to go to meetings. We give spiritual assignments. Here's some of the assignments my sponsor gave me when I first met her.

Her. I had an abnormal fear about Revenue Canada. I still do. The oldest time sponsor of mine somebody you know, Greg M, married somebody who works for Revenue Canada. I went to their wedding and got married about a year and a half ago.

The room was filled with Revenue Canada people. I hate them because they want me. Right? They can't so I have this, like, unbelievable fear for about Revenue Canada. And as a result, they didn't file my income tax returns.

Oh, they won't come and get me. But after you don't file for 2 or 3 and 4 years, you start to think they might start to come and get me. And you can't get rid of that fear No matter how much you try to rationalize it away or anything, you can't get rid of that fear. And so I got a notice in the mail from maybe you can't request a file. Like, I was out of pocket.

I can hardly breathe, but I didn't respond. Then I'm sitting at home one day, and I was the GR of my group. Boy, good GR I was. And I got this a person from my group called me who I didn't know worked for Revenue Canada. And she worked from home, and she called in on my call display and says, Revenue Canada.

And my heart stopped. And so I started telling my sponsor about this. She went, oh, really? Whenever she says that I know I'm in for something. So she gave me a timeline.

She said, you have 3 months to get those taxes done. And you know what? There was amazing relief in that because I was so willing to do. Because I had said to her, I'll do whatever you I'll do whatever he asks me to do. Like, my life has to change.

It has to change. And so I I I got an accountant from some a guy I know, and I phoned him up, and I was like it's like I was calling a counselor. I I need an accountant. She said, come on in. I was like, go to a therapy session.

And I sat in front of her. Like, I was shaking, and he gave me a list of things to do. I was afraid of Revenue Canada, but I also keep meticulous records about everything. And so I went home and I gathered up all of this information that that was requested. I brought it into him, dumped it on his desk, we went through it, and then I went down to see my sponsor.

And I said, I gave it in. She said, congratulations. And the fear started to go away. I didn't think myself out of that fear. I acted myself out of the fear.

I got back home and there was a message from my accountant. Your returns are ready. Are you getting afraid of that? What do I owe them? What is it like 4 years later when you owe all that money?

Oh my god. So I said, well, what's the deal? He said, I won't tell you on the phone. You come on in. So I go into the office and he said, this is what the first word my accountant said to me was, they're gonna be sorry they asked you to file.

I got back on 2 years of files $10,000. Return. Return. So I called my sponsor and said, thank you. I said, the assignment is complete.

I said, I got that $10. She said, I want 10%. Sorry. They're spending in all these phone calls. That's an assignment.

That was a good assignment. I just have a fear of institutions. I have a I live in downtown Toronto. I have this thin tall house. The upper 2 I have a 3 story house.

The upper 2 floors are an apartment. So I rented it out. That was one of the reasons I was afraid to file. I wasn't claiming the rent. And so then I'm afraid, well, they're gonna come in and shut me down because it's illegal.

So she said, phone the city and find out what a legal apartment is. But I made the call. I would never ever have done that on my own. But I made the call and I said, what's the code? The fire code for having an apartment in your upstairs of the house.

And I got this simple answer. As long as they can get out of a window and stand someplace for a minimum of 10 minutes, you're legal. And every window in that upstairs apartment has a ceiling or some kind of roof outside of it. And the fear left. And there's some of the assignments that I've had.

My mother and father are separated and I was always in the middle of the 2 of them. I teach music from a high school band director. Every year, I do concerts with my students, 2 at, like, 2 at Christmas and 2 in springtime. My mom would always call and say, which concert is your dad going to? And then she would go to the other one.

And so I'd say, I don't know. I'd hang up and phone my dad. Hey, dad. Which day are you coming? Okay.

You're coming the 2nd night. Mom, dad's coming the 2nd night. Okay. I'm coming the first. Good.

Send me to my sponsor. I said, I feel going back and forth. Assignment. She said, you will not answer that question. You will get out of the middle.

Mom phoned and said, what concert is your dad going to? I don't know, and I'm not gonna ask. Dad calls and said, what nature of your conscience? I gave him the nights. He just said I'm coming on this this night.

It was the night my mother was coming. I kept my mouth shut. I'm in the hallway my colleagues conducting one of the groups out of the auditorium comes my mother saying to me, you didn't tell me your father was coming. I said you're right and I will never tell you that again. It's up to you to work out that with him.

Both of you are my parents and I love you both and I'm thrilled that you both want to come out and continue to support me in what I do, but I'm not getting in the middle of what's going on with you 2. Called my sponsor. Thank you for that assignment. There are some of the ones that I've done and I would never have done any of those without a guide. The next one, I will encourage the pigeon to learn about and accept that alcoholism is a family disease that it didn't cause, can't control and you can't cure it.

And that's really key that I have been affected by alcoholism. I have not been affected by an alcoholic. My father is not the problem. I've been affected by a disease and that disease is called alcoholism. He had it.

He doesn't choose to have that. It was just there. And when disease is present in a home, it infects us all. So the 2 parts of this section are I will encourage the people that I sponsor to realize that this is a family disease that I can't do anything about it for the person who has alcoholism. And the second part of that is the sure understanding that I have been affected by and inflicted with a disease called alcoholism, the family disease.

And this is something that I need to deal with apart and separate from the alcoholic. It's something I have. But that's true. I've got it. And no alcoholic gave it to me.

A disease did it. And that has freed me up from the blame. Tremendously freed me up from the blame. And that's a hard one for us. I will encourage regular attendance at as many meetings available as possible in each week, and I certainly do that.

Get to as many as you can, especially in the beginning. Immerse in it. Because I certainly immersed myself in my sickness 24 hours a day. Middle of the night, middle of the afternoon, any day of the week, any time of the day or night, I would immerse myself in my thinking and what I think is right. And my thinking destroyed all the relationships I have.

I chose 3 alcoholics, Chose them. They didn't choose me. I went looking for them. I need to do things I need to immerse myself in this. I will carry the message of recovery.

I won't carry the person being sponsored. I'm not gonna do anything for anybody that they can do for themselves. I don't do casual sponsorship. I present structured sponsorship, and that's exactly what it is. It's not kinda like, hey, phone me whenever you want.

You want a sponsor like that? I'm not the guy to sponsor you because I'm not available all the time. But I will establish a time for you and I to talk and I'll talk about that later in this guide. And the structure is you will do is there's very clear parameters on actions to be taken. Sign up for this.

This is the way I do it. If you don't like this, that's okay. Look forward to talking to your meetings, support to chat with you here and there. This may not be the way to do it. If you're hungry for your recovery and you've been hanging around for a while and it just doesn't seem to be working, May I boldly suggest you open your mind to a different way of being sponsored.

I used the 12 steps and the 12 traditions, and this is the way my sponsor told me to do this. She gave me a guide that she wrote. She didn't write this to be published. She didn't write it as conference approved literature. My sponsor is a very organized person.

She's very literal. And if action means action and there's things you need to do. So this is what she said, you will use this 12 step guide to do the steps with. So what she wants me to do is she gave me a listing of all of the books at Al Anon and included the big book of AA and the 12 traditions of the AA 1212. And she said I want you to read everything in each of our books and in each of those AA books about step 1 for example.

And then she said there's a dozen questions and I want you to answer them in the wrong hand. Not yes or no. Answer the questions and share the answers with me. And I said, well, how am I gonna share the answers with you when I live in Toronto and you live in the southern United States? She said, well, you can put it on an audio tape.

I thought, well, that's okay. But then my head went this way. This was a pretty new thing for me. I said I've been thinking around with this for a long time, and I'm willing to go to any length that I have to go. So I said to her, how about if I sit in front of a video camera and record the answers to those questions and send you a video tape?

Because I don't wanna hide from you at all. Said I want you to see me. I want you to see the way I look. I see the expression on my face. They're talking to somebody who had a vicious problem with his own image.

I'll talk more about that tonight. And I found myself that I answered these 12 questions. I set a video camera up in my office. I sat in front. I turned it on, and I said, hi.

And I answered the questions. I read the answers to my questions about step 1. And then I watched it. And I saw me in a way that I had never seen me. And I sent it to her.

And she watched it and she said, hey. You look pretty good on TV. I said, yeah. Not bad. And then she gave me some responses to the to the questions and then said this incredible thing to me.

Congratulations, Rick. You've done step 1 to the best of your ability today and listen to this. Move on. Now that's music. That's music.

Move on. And that's what I've done. I did 6 of those video tapes. The other 6 steps, I managed to do face to face with her. And I do those with the other guys as sponsored just this past 3 or 4 weeks I've done 2 of them with guys.

We sit down and every step is the same format. Read everything in all of our literature about the step. Answer the questions come on over we'll do it and I've had some amazing experiences doing that. Sherpa also offers other tools. She calls them tools of torture.

The tool of torture that I received is a wooden slug for someone who got lazy in his recovery. After a while of doing it yeah. Yeah. I'm doing okay. So she gave me this slug, but not just to keep on my desk at home.

She said, you will bring this with you everywhere. To work, to your meeting, when you speak, I'd place it on the podium. This is my slug. And you know what? It worked for me.

It may not work for you. People find it abusive. This isn't meant for you. It's okay. But it worked for me because I needed to crack through that arrogance.

I needed to crack through that part that said I know what to do. Because by me saying I know what to do, I wanted to step in front of the bus and it didn't work for me. I won't ask anybody to do something I am not willing to do, haven't done and I never have. I often say I've done this and I'm just asking you to do it too because this is how I got to where I am. I used the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, not the most popular thing in Al Anon, but I use it.

I don't diss the Al Anon literature. I use Al Anon literature widely, But for me nothing is as powerful as the initial text, the big book. It's just that simple for me. It's popular in some places. I've been some places and talk about that.

Everybody claps and stands up. And in other places, and they kinda sit their hand and go, So wait a minute. That's me. It's my experience and it works well for me. Really, really well.

I use tough love instead of cool kindness. The next page. It's amazing to get Al Anon how in under the guise of being loving, we watch people die in front of us or do really stupid things just because we don't want to offend them. One thing I've so I love my sponsor for so much is she has never cared about offending me. She's offended me many times in front of many people, and it's always been something that's been right.

Here's one example. One time I was at an assembly, a guy who's a trustee tapped me in the shoulder and said, hey. I think you'd make a great delegate. Oh, really? Because my head needed a neck brace to hold it up.

I go home and on Monday night, I call my sponsor and said, hey. Have you said to me I yeah. That he thinks I'd make a great delegate? And there was this pause. And my sponsor said to me, Rick, don't you think your area deserves a delegate that's practiced all 12 steps?

She said, Rick, step 12 is 12 for a reason. You don't do service until you've done the first 11, and you know where I'm here. Thank you very much. I didn't stand for Elliot. Consumers can be a slippery slope.

Then step 1, hey, I'd like to be Chairman. Oh, really? Give that a try. Just another way to get approval. If I'm filling myself up with service activity before I've done my personal recovery, when the service activity is over, I feel hollow.

I've done that. If I'm doing service after I have been through my 12 steps, I'm doing it because I'm giving it back. And when the service position is finished, I'm relieved. And I've had that experience many times and I've done a lot of service. And I ended one just a few months ago and it was relief.

Thank God. I'll do another one later but it's not filling a hole anymore. It's something I do because that's part of the thing. I'm encouraging the pigeons to become familiar with the sponsorship family. This is what a sponsorship family is.

This is my sponsor and this is my sponsor and this is who I sponsor and that's who they sponsor. It's not a cake. It's not an isolated kind of thing. It's just get to know the people that are doing this the same way. One of the greatest times I've ever had with my sponsor was the day I went over to visit hers.

It was beautiful to see my sponsor be sponsored. And one of the things I love to hear her tell me is, I was talking to Lubell today. I love it. I have a picture in my front. Lubell is a beautiful black woman from the South.

And I have a picture in my front room of me, my sponsor and Lubell. And people come in and say, who's that? I say, that's my granny. It's delightful because we pass it on. Isn't that one of our slogans?

That's what we do. I do it one way. I what should I tell you? You tell somebody else. They tell somebody else.

Cool. That is the way it's work. We just share our experience. That's what this is about. I don't share my thinking.

I don't share my therapy. I don't share my philosophizing. I share my experience, And that's what my sponsors done. So there's a one page of kind of what she's willing to do for me and then there's like lots of pages of what I have to do. Right.

And so that's what I require from the Pigeon person being sponsored. A commitment is I'm asking you if I'm going to commit my time I want you to commit yours. Say, I'm going to be there for you. You need to be there too. Because if not, then this isn't working for me and I'm going to let it go.

And I have let people go and I've had people let me go. It's all right. No balking at those assignments. Imagine if I had a bock at that tax assignment, I would have missed the reward. I would have missed it.

If I had a barked at that thing about my mother and father, I'd still be caught. I'd always be in the middle. I extricated myself from the middle. It's a good stuff. Do honest clear assignments.

Study of the big book. I used to have a big book study in my front room for Al Anon members. Great stuff. Thank you. Love them.

Tenants at a minimum of 3 meetings a week. I used to go to Al Anon meetings a week and I do this other thing. This is not a conference approved deal, but it's it's a thing that I do with another member, an AA member. It's called a mastermind meeting. It's kind of little like a little prayer kind of thing.

And, and she's a marvelous she's one of your native sisters. Her name is Mildred Frank from Humboldt and, just an absolutely marvelous member of Alcoholics Anonymous and one of my dearest friends. And so that's one of my a meeting I do with every every Monday night we get together, Monday after work. And so that's one of my committed meetings. I also do all of my sponsor calls on Monday and so it's kinda like another meeting night for me.

Attend them all, study and apply the books. This continuance of reading self help books. Is that a deal in Saskatchewan? I don't know. But it sure was a deal in Toronto.

I had more SELTA books than I had Al Anon literature. And I'm saying I'm a member of Al Anon. Oh, really? I thought you were a member of some other kind of cult, some other kind of therapy group. Because everything that came along well, I'll buy that book.

I'll buy that book. I'll watch this video. What a great idea. And my life still didn't work. I was getting all this information, but I was taking zero action.

So she said, don't read any of those books. And it seems like a pretty harsh direction. But if somebody wants to learn another language, what do you tell them to do? You send them to Quebec to stay with the family that don't speak English. And you've got to learn to speak French because otherwise you'll die.

You just have to learn how to do it. I needed to immerse myself in 12 step thinking, 12 step action. And so I immersed myself in Al Anon literature and AA literature. It's a great thing. If you've seen an abstract painting, think of 1 if you can.

Chances are 9 out of 10 that the artist could draw a fantastic real life, almost like a portrait. So they know the foundation of art and they choose to deviate. They choose to go another way. Get the foundation in this and then when I find when I start reading other spiritual literature, you start reading other approaches to recovery. It all is it either works for me or it doesn't if it connects with 12 Step Recovery.

If it doesn't, I don't want it. But there's a lot we don't have the only way to do it. But our our message is we do it through the 12 steps. And in my personal seeking for my own growth as I move on and on and on, I do enjoy reading other literature, but not in the little first little while. 1st little while, immerse in it.

And it's amazing what that will do. Do the assignments like I talked, regular contact. Regular contact is really important. Flip the page over there. Long distance sponsorship, that's the kind of sponsorship I have.

This is how long distance sponsorship works. I have a dedicated call in time. My call in time used to be midnight on Monday night for many years. I was a real night owl as was my sponsor. After about 5 or 6 years, I said, you know what?

I'm getting a little older. And so we changed it. So it's 10 o'clock Eastern, 9 o'clock Central. And so 10 o'clock my time, 9 o'clock hers. And in 12 years and 3 months that I've been sponsored by my sponsor, there has never been a time that I have called her and she has not been there.

Now that's commitment. One time she was not able to make the Monday call, she let me know. And this is what had happened. My sponsor has one living relative her sister and her sister had a heart attack and almost died. This is only about 5 months into our sponsorship relationship.

And in the midst of the possibility have her only sister dying, she thought to remember that I have a commitment with a guy in Toronto. And at 11 o'clock, this is when I was calling at midnight, 11 o'clock Central Time, he's going to call me and I wanna let him know that I'm not gonna be there. So in the midst of her sister almost dying, she called me from a pay phone to say, Rick, I'm not gonna be available to make the call tonight. If you need to chat, call Jennifer. And I understood at that moment what commitment is.

I had never known that in my life. I understood it. I have missed one call in 12 years 3 months. As I told you, I teach music and around Christmas time one time I took my students to play in a breakfast television show. So I was up at 4 AM so I could go get the kids, get the instruments, get down for the 7 o'clock call.

And I was calling at midnight that time, and I was whack. I was so tired, and I fell asleep. She called me at about 5 after 12 my time, woke me up, and she didn't she wasn't angry. She said, I didn't say how come you didn't call. She said, are you alright?

She said, you have never missed. And I had never been consistent with a thing in my life ever. One of the reasons my wife left me was because she said I never believed you would be there for me. She said your mouth said you'd be there but your actions spoke totally differently. And what she was telling me was that simply by signing up for a commitment, I was starting to become committed.

I was starting to become dependable. My friend Mildred when I was late for one of our meetings one time. She wasn't mad. She said, are you okay? You're never late.

I was late all the time. My nickname when I was in university was the late Rick you took. Because I was late for everything and I liked the attention coming 15 minutes late, it's Rick. See any kind of attention is attention negative or positive and I just got all the negative kind. Right?

And I became dependable from that one commitment. I have a guy that used some of you know, Greg Marshall used to live out here. Lives now in Toronto, my longest time sponsor Took a trip across Canada down the United States into Mexico and back. Never once did he forget to call me or miss his time. He called me once from some kind of grain elevator out here in Western Canada, and he and he were chatting away and he said, hold on a sec.