The Willing to grow conferece in Vaud, Switzerland

My name is Chris Raymer. Very grateful recovered alcoholic. Can can y'all hear me okay? My head's still full from the stupid flight. I don't know why it's just I don't know.

I can't hear. So it sounds like I'm screaming, but if I get a little quiet start pointing at your ear and I'll I'll speak up. So I, how many of y'all were there last night? If you just raise your hand real quick. We got some some newbies in.

You may be a little I think if you were there last night you kind of know where I'm coming from. I what I want to do this morning, we're going to swap the podium back and forth. I got about 45 minutes and I want to talk to you about this idea of qualifying an alcoholic because my experience in Alcoholics Anonymous was that I had such a difficult time getting sober and and I started going to AA in the States, in Texas, in the early eighties and I didn't get sober finally until 1987. I've had a 7 year history of doing what's I watch so many people do and that's go in and out and in and out and in and out, this chronic relapse stuff. And unfortunately, what I get to see is a lot of people never make it back in the doors after a period of time, you just lose hope.

And one of the problems is is that, when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous in 1980, no one, no one qualified me. Just I gotta say this before I get into it again because I I don't want anybody to get cranky today. You you you are absolutely free to agree or disagree with anything I say. We're we're coming out of the big book and I'm sure in my experience, I do clerical work for a treatment center and, down in Texas and we treat 1,000 well, we treat about a 1,000 alcoholic Xanax a year at this hospital and that's all I mean, I've been there 13 years. You do the math, you know.

I mean, I've watched a bunch of cats come through and I also sponsor a bunch of men. That's my program and, by working with others that we get to stay sober ourselves. So listen, I'm just trying to share some experience my experience with you. If it doesn't jive with your experience, that's perfectly okay. I didn't didn't come all the way to Switzerland to tell you how to do it.

These are just some observations, that we've gathered along the way from studying the history of alcoholics and all that. And I'm sure Peter can allude to that too when when he gets a chance to visit with you. Just because you drink a lot doesn't make you an alcoholic. That's so controversial sometimes, you know, because there's a lot of people that drink too much. But given sufficient reason, those those folks will stop or moderate eventually.

The alcoholism and drug addiction is a disease and it's progressive in nature. We understand, we talked about a bit last night, this is a genetic predisposition. You either you either have it or you don't. It's like being allergic to a food. If you're allergic to, who knows, whatever, you stay away from it.

You know, how do you find out? You try it. It makes you sick, you quit. Peter's obviously allergic to Italian food. He needs to learn to stay away from this stuff, you know.

But the the let me explain kind of what happened in the States because the ripple effect starting in Akron, you know, kind of rippled out and then we eventually got to Europe and we're all a product of that in this country. In 1935, Bill Wilson and Doctor. Bob got together and started, I'll call it synonymous. Y'all are familiar with that story. It's in the big book.

You don't have to be a historian to know that little story. In the first 30, 30, 35 years, we had approximately 500,000 sober alcoholics in the United States and surrounding countries where people would travel to. It took us 35 years to get 500,000 members in his fellowship. About 1971, Nixon, President Nixon, some of y'all remember him? Right right up there with Bush.

Okay. Right before Nixon was on his way out the door, he signed into legislation a little thing called the Hughes Act, which, in a very general term, it acknowledged alcoholism as a disease. And what happened as a result of that is that insurance companies got on the bandwagon and started paying like slot machines in the United States for people that wanted to come to treatment. The worst insurance policies out there carried riders on there to treat alcoholism and drug addiction because they were going to make a $1,000,000 on this. Now, the government's acknowledging that this is a disease and we're gonna we're gonna get rich.

It was a little bit of a mistake on their part. What happened is that every Tom, Dick and Harry, any any idiot with a big book came down the pike and decided that they can open a treatment center. And we had thousands of centers opening in the United States. And some of these were very good. Some of these are still in existence today and some of these were absolutely horrible.

You'll follow? And a lot of people came into these hospitals and didn't get well, left, relapsed. And the insurance companies got sick and tired of paying for something that wasn't working so they stopped paying. That's what we're experiencing now in the United States. If you really want to get sober, you better have a pocket full of money in our country.

And I happen to work at a hospital that takes lots of pocketfuls of money and I'm glad I've worked there. But the long and short of it, what happened was, we saw lots and lots of people come into the fellowship via these treatment centers. Now, the hospitals weren't teaching the 12 steps. They weren't teaching the traditions. They weren't teaching Jack.

What they were doing was giving a bunch of little one liners because the insurance companies wouldn't pay for the big book. Well, down with that, what the insurance companies would pay for is what we were talking about last night, your your triggers list and, of course, key stuff and relapse prevention. And they treated our politics anonymous like it was a self help program. And we immediately got away from the roots of Alcoholics Anonymous, which was a spiritual program of action. Your higher power, your business, but it's spiritual in nature.

Alcoholics Anonymous is not a self help program. It is not therapy. The steps get me connected to a spiritual experience and that spiritual experience removes the obsession to drink. That's the way it works. You with us?

The problem is the steps are a little uncomfortable to do at times. Most of us are great. Most of us are we're great at like 1, 2, 3, you know. We call it the 3 step shuffle in Texas. You know, it's a little dance, you know.

It's like a country western dance, you know, 123, drink, 123, drink, you know, and that's the that's what we do. Because it's easy because you all you got to do is you get and sit on your butt and just sit there, you know. And in treatment, of course, they qualify the alcoholic to ask you a bunch of stupid questions. How many DWI's have you had driving while intoxicated? You with us?

How many times have you been arrested? How many times have you wet your pants? You know, it's like, excuse me? But you see, my book, the big book that I, that I read doesn't say anything about anything about a DWI. I mean, that's why we were talking about last night.

When I went to Alcolepsy anonymous in the early eighties, I sat in these rooms and listened to all these horrible war stories and I says, I'm trying to identify. That's why they're giving us the war stories but I can't identify because I'm a functioning alcoholic. I'm in corporate America. I'm a professional chef and I can't sit down if I don't have any VWIs. I don't black out.

You know, you sit in these meetings long enough, you'll hear, I mean, you know, it's you start over here and it's, Oh, I've had one DWI. And you start with, Oh, I've had 3 DWIs and, Oh, that's nothing. You think that's bad. I've had 6 DWIs and I beat my wife and I robbed the liquor store and I'm sitting, you know, I'm smiling. Thanks for shit.

You know, but I'm in mental check, check, check, check. I have never done that. You know, I'll get out in the truck, open a quart of beer, go. I said, Boy, that was a nice meeting but I can't feel I must not be an alcoholic because I've never chopped up people and put them in a plastic bag and threw them. I I don't understand why we do it.

Still to this day, still to this day, I argue about telling war stories in meetings. War stories, our stories, it talks about on page 17, are there for a 12 step call. Our our common problem is one element of cement that binds us. You're with us? We all know what it's like to hurt.

But guys, if that's all we have to share, shame on us. What we have is a common solution. The same steps that got me sober in 1987 will get that little cat that was screaming out of my my window at 5 o'clock this morning, drunk on his butt. It'll help him too. But we come from 2 different worlds.

So what? The disease is the same. Y'all down with that? The problem is that we don't have anybody out there in AA land, in the country, most of the areas, they won't qualify us. We've got too many peoples hanging around Alcoholics Anonymous that don't need to hang around Alcoholics Anonymous.

You need a good therapy. Eat some meds. Go away. I talked about it last night, guys. The book is crystal clear.

If you can stay sober on a non spiritual basis, you're not one of us. Over and over in the, in the first 164 pages, Bill Wilson makes this point very clear. If I'm gonna show you. I'm gonna show you what the book ask us to ask the newcomer. And I'm in AA for 7 years and nobody ever asked me this stuff right here.

All they did was try to identify with a stupid war story. And I'm gonna tell you, they scared me out of the room and I still watch that today. Little businesswoman, nice lady like Julia comes in, you know, and she coming into a new meeting and she's kind of freaked out. She didn't know anything what's going on. Is this a cult?

Are they gonna, you know, sacrifice virgins in here? What are we gonna do? You know, and she's a little nervous but everybody keeps saying, well, you need to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. And so, she's sitting in there and she can sense that that there's an answer here and it was, oh, we have a newcomer. And the first thing we do is we start telling all the stupid war stories.

She's a professional businesswoman. She's not out there smoking crack cocaine and hooking on a, well, maybe she I don't know anything about it. I don't know. But but but, you know, but you see her, she tenses up and she gets a little purse, puts it in her lap, you know, so it's like that. It gets up, thanks everybody, and leaves and we never see her again.

And then we wanna look back at her to, Well, she just didn't want it. Didn't we give her the message that she so desperately needed? You follow us? Just because you drink a lot, doesn't make you an alcoholic. The disease has 3 symptoms.

These are the symptoms. I'm gonna I'm gonna show you as a result of not qualifying. In 1955, you read the Ford, the 2nd edition, we had a success rate in this country of 75% in in the United States. Excuse me. Where am I?

75% success rate in the United States. There were areas in around Akron, around Cincinnati, excuse me, the Midwest, where we had an almost a 100% success rate of cats coming into the Alcoholics Anonymous and staying sober. Right now, in the United States, our success rate hovers around 8% or less. How do we take a perfectly good program that worked unbelievably well but a few years ago and now, practically nobody can get sober? Everybody wants to make excuses.

Oh, it's been crack addict. Oh, it's the kids. Oh, it's the Baptist. Oh, it's the Catholics. Oh, it's the it's the breakdown of the family unit.

Oh, I just wanna puke. No. It's that we stopped using the big book. There's you can go into most meetings where I got sober in 1980, from 80 to 87, you'd walk into meetings and it wouldn't be a big book in the place. You read how it works and then first thing out of everybody's mouth, well, who's got the problem?

And we would spend an hour talking about your your problem. Oh, and by the way, that problem wasn't alcoholism. You know, it was the kids, it was my sister-in-law did this or the work did this, or the traffic, or the weather, or my hemorrhoids. I don't know. I don't know.

Drives me nuts. Drives me we got to stop that. We got to take our fellowship back and start talking about what we need to talk about to leave meaning. And that's how to get connected to God. That's what our traditions ask us to do.

Our fifth tradition says, we're supposed to carry the message to the new comer. What's the message? The 12 steps. I'll say this real quick, No, I won't. Yeah, I won't.

I don't know about you guys here. We try to really adhere to the traditions in the in in the area where I'm sober at in the United States. They're in Texas And and we try to keep this singleness of purpose pretty clear. You know, little little crack addict comes into our AA meeting and starts talking about smoking crack or a little heroin addict comes in there, starts talking about the spike, you know, and we're and, you know, there's some old geezer who get up and, you know, buddy, this is an AA meeting. We're here to talk about our problems with alcohol.

They're doing exactly what they're supposed to do to keep this message clear for the alcoholic. Nobody has a problem with that. But yet, you can come into the same meeting tomorrow and talk about your stupid divorce one more time. And how the hell is that different than talking about crack cocaine in an AA meeting? It's not.

Come, come before the meeting. Let's talk about the divorce. Stay after the meeting. Let's go to dinner. Come over to my house.

For an hour a day, why can't we just talk about the message out of the big book? We would see success rates go straight back to the ceiling. That's my soapbox. I'm off of it. And I feel better too, having said that.

This is what the big book says. We've got approximately 10 to 15 percent of us in the United States and I honestly don't know what the what the stats are here in Europe but but pretty close to that. So 10 to 15% of us are genetically wired, alcoholic addict. We're born that way. There's some great books.

I can give you the titles of later if you're interested about the genetic predisposition to alcoholism and drug addiction. Alcoholism and drug addiction is not causal. You're born that way. Most of us, if you get in there and you're talking to some real alcoholics and you start talking about what we're talking about here, they can identify these symptoms when they were when they were 8 years old. You don't have to wait till you're you're blacked out someplace.

I mean, this we're born this way. A small percentage of us are alcoholic and addict, the rest of the percentage that we call hard drinkers or moderate drinkers, they can take it or leave it alone. Here's this it's a 3 part disease. Y'all see it on the circle and triangle. That was what was the original circle and triangle was all about it.

It signified the physical, the mental and the spiritual. Thanks to our colleagues anonymous is bad clerical work. We lost the copyright to that so they took it out of the 4th edition. Edition. And so it's not we just stamp it in our book so that we can get back to the root.

But, I'll never forgive them for that. You think they care? Physical piece is about the word called control, about the phenomena called craving. The doctor's opinion, up to page 23 in the big book, talks about the physical, the allergy, the physical craving. And you either got this or you don't.

And a newcomer can identify with it. What I was saying, in order to work the 12 steps, I've got to have something behind me pushing me through those steps. Because when it starts to get difficult on that 4 step like we were talking about earlier, it's easy to sit and do the first three steps but now I got to actually start doing something, making some you mean go make amends? If you're not convinced that you're one of us, you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna crap out. You're gonna stop.

And that's what we see so many people do. And then they stop and then they get sick again. If you keep going, you'll get well. You with us? The physical piece looks like this.

At certain times, not every time the book says, says, but at certain times, I can't control how much I drink once I start. Did you ever set out to drink, have a couple of glasses of wine with dinner and end up drinking a bottle or 2? Okay. I give everybody a bonus, a bonus, loss of control, you know, because when we're we're kids and we don't know what the stuff does to us, we just we, you know, everybody eventually puked straight up. I mean, that's that's what we do.

But after that, can you learn from that and stop? I've used this example a 1000 times in my own family. You know, my little sister, I said, Lisa, you want another drink? And she's a year younger than me and she says, No, thank you. I'm starting to feel it.

It's like, y'all, me too. Do you want another drink or not? Because it doesn't make any sense. Excuse me. I'm assuming that her experience with the alcohol is the same as my experience.

But what's happening is, she starts to drink and starts to feel a little goofy and then she wants to quit. I start to drink and start feeling. Y'all should see, y'all should have seen the whole audience next sale. That's pretty good. But you see, we understand that and normal people don't understand that.

I'm not I that's the time she's losing control, I'm gaining a semblance of control. But what's happened is this phenomenal craving kicks in and I end up drinking too much and I and it gets away from me and I make a fool of myself and I come back home and I got a big hangover and I wake up the next morning, I'm never gonna do that again. You with us? And of course, the big book calls it the insane experiment of the first drink. And then I start drinking it again and it gets away from me again.

You know, I mean, how how many times do we have to do this to realize that there's something a little goofy about what we do? This I want my time here. This physical piece, again, the big book spins from the doctor's opinion up to page 23 generally talking about what happens when I ingest the substance. Now, if that's all we had to deal with, what we would have was a behavioral problem. You'll follow us?

It's it's it's physical part that's a problem. This is as far as my buddy Nancy Reagan ever took it. That's where the just say no crap came from. You'll follow us? Well, if you know you can't control it, dummy, just don't drink.

You with us? We got a guy in in in, in the little town where I live, it's been sober about 30 plus years and that's the best he can come up with. Every time he speaks, he says, and remember, looking right at the little newcomer, and remember, if you don't drink the first one, you won't get drunk. And I would I come out of my skin every time I hear this moron say it. You know, it's like, you're not telling her the whole story.

I'm gonna kill him when I get back to the state. That's all there is to. When you combine this physical piece, okay, with the mental piece, now we got something to look at. All right. Hang on.

I got to set this up. Most controversial word in Alcoholics Anonymous today is this word right here, choice. Those treatment centers that were killing people in the United States not understanding this, they don't understand this choice thing. I I have never talked to a doctor, therapist, counselor, probation officer, significant other, out of line member. I've never talked to anybody that can't get their mind around this physical piece.

That's why we spend an entire time in treatment trying to keep people away from alcohol. You with us? Don't go near it. Don't be around it. How in the hell are you gonna do that?

Well, we'll talk about that later. Just don't do it now. You know, it's like, well, what? Wait a minute. The alcohol is not the problem, I'm the problem.

And if it continues to bother me, I'm gonna okay. Y'all with us? Choice. If you got your books, some of you, if you don't, you're taking notes. The book says on page 23, The observations would be top of page 23.

It says, these observations will be academic importance if our friend just never took the first drink, thereby setting the terrible cycle in motion. Therefore, the main follow of the alcoholic centers in his mind rather than his body. You with us? We can get you past the physical piece, folks. It's called detox.

A lot of you guys are familiar with that. Yeah. I detox often. I detox well. The problem is I can't stay detoxed.

Okay. The next page shows me why I can't and this is next page that nobody bothered to show me in 7 years and I'll call it synonymous. 7 years in AA, I don't even have a big book. Makes me wanna scream. Top paragraph in on page 24, the fallacy.

The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so called willpower becomes practically non existent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory and suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink. You're with us?

That's why the book continues to say it page after page, no human power is gonna be able to defend us from the from the drink. That's why we have to have the spiritual experience. Question that the book is asking me to ask you, does this apply to you? Can you relate? Can you choose to stop and make it stick?

Talking to a lady down in the valley in Texas and, she, I was talking about, you know, in my story, I've taken a bunch of antidepressants most of my adult life and when I got sober, I was able to wean off those antidepressants and hadn't taken any sense. Because the problem was not that I was depressed or bipolar or manic depressive. The part the problem was I was an alcoholic and and when alcoholism was arrested, all of that other stuff went away. You'll follow us? And this lady wants to take exception with what I'm saying from the podium.

What she did was, she came to Alcoholics Anonymous, got hooked up with a good doctor. The doctor gave her some sleep medication and I says, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Why were you drinking? Well, that's what I'm trying to tell you. I was drinking because I couldn't sleep.

Uh-huh. That was the only reason you were drinking. Uh-huh. So they gave her some sleep medication, she didn't have to drink anymore but she's been in Alcoholics Anonymous for 13 years killing people with that crap. Can you imagine what the girls she sponsors get to do?

They get to go to doctors and get the sleep medication. 26 and a half 1000000 prescriptions for sleep medication in the United States last year. Freaks me out. Absolutely nonsense, rubbish. This is what you do to qualify alcoholism, physical allergy.

Can you control it every time? No, I can't do that. Mental obsession. Given sufficient reason, can you quit and stay quit? Go back, look at your truth based on your experience, not what you think you're gonna do in the future.

You with this? They come to treatment. Well, I've never been in this much trouble before. I'm gonna stop. Buddy, how many times have you said that in the past?

Thousand times. Can you choose to stop and make it stick? What does your experience show you? Because I get caught in what the book calls my mental blank spot. He says, the consequences of even a week or a month ago, we don't remember.

That's why it drives me crazy when we sit in meetings and tell these stupid war stories. You're not even going to remember your own stupid war story, much less mine. I just I don't know. Isn't it the truth? This right here.

3rd piece, again, it's something that even in the States, people don't want to talk about. But the big book talks about it on dozens of pages. The spiritual malady, the third piece of the disease, the spiritual illness. Folks, this has got this has got very little to do, if anything, with believing in God. Everybody wants to grind their teeth over this.

This is about not believing in God but gaining access to that power. There's it's 2 different things. The spiritual malady looks like this. I drew this little guy up here. He's issue man.

I've got these little buttons up here. Y'all are welcome, too. I got issue woman pins, too. Some of y'all definitely need those pins. Issues are what we drink over, you know, you tell the therapist, Chris, why you drunk again?

I'm telling this therapist, I got all these little x's on the outside that indicate. Patty, my wife, she, she brought it to my attention. It's a little issue woman pen has one more x on it than the men. She said, Yeah, that's you. These little but this little internal condition, this little dark spot that I've drawn here, that's the spiritual malady.

It looks like this. Let me let me give you the symptoms. How many of you all understand? Let me clarify. Away from the drink, this is, this is venous and I haven't had any.

The further away I get from that drink, now answer the question. Everybody wants to talk about what happens after I drink. You know, I eat out of dumpsters, I do this, I do that. But when I'm not drinking, do you understand the symptom of irritable, Restless. Discontent.

Y'all ever heard that term, discontented spirit? Book talks about boredom, anxiety. How about depression? Number one symptom of alcoholism and drug addiction is depression, No sense of direction. How many of y'all have done that?

No sense of direction. Think about it. I called my mom. I'm fixing to go back to school And I'd call her after lunch. No, I've decided to start my own business instead, you know.

I mean, I'm just I'm a I'm a great starter. I'm just a crappy finisher, you know. I mean, I some of y'all can relate. How about trouble in personal relationships? These are on page 52, the benevolent.

How about trouble in personal relationships? How about the one with yourself? This feeling of uselessness that the book talks about. This low self esteem. We spend all of our time in treatment, getting these patients stand in front of mirrors and do these positive affirmations like that's gonna work.

I'm a beautiful child of God and everyone loves me. You know. And I go back over to the pier and load my gun, you know, and I'm fixing to off myself, you know. It's just like it doesn't work. Not You know what will help your self esteem more than anything else?

Go sit with a new drunk. Go help somebody. You'll feel better than you've ever felt in your life. But that's beside the point. It's this internal condition, that's the reason that I drink, folks.

It's the most controversial stuff we talk about. Alcohol is not my problem. The dope wasn't my problem. It was my solution. This is the problem.

Guys, I've quit a 1,000 times. I had a 20 year drink in history and I knew intuitively by the time I was 19 years old that I was in way over my head and that this was gonna be a bloodbath. And I knew I needed to quit. And I would stop often and I would my MO is about 2 weeks. And 2 weeks, the further away I would get from that drink, the less comfort I felt inside and I would gradually become so agitated and irritable, I would get to the spot where I would stay, where the pain of staying sober would outweigh the benefits.

And my mind would eventually say, To heck with it. I'm gonna have 1. Well, my idea was usually with, I'm gonna smoke a joint. Oh, Jesus. I'm not addicted to pot.

A lot of people are not addicted to pot but if you smoke pot, this physical allergy will be kicked into the areas of the brain. It's called cross addiction. We watch thousands of people leave our hospital and believe that crap. I ain't go smoke any more crack cocaine, but I'm still gonna drink alcohol. What?

What? We're just changing seats on the Titanic, guys. We're all going down. That's it's absolutely nuts. This spiritual malady is what the book says must be treated.

On page 64 it says, once the spirituality is treated, the physical and the mental get straightened out. What happens when you have the spiritual experiences, the 10th step promises tell us quite clearly is that you're gonna be placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected. It won't even bother you. And I sit here and I listen to people constantly talk about, can't be around here. I can't go there.

I can't do this. I can't do that because there's alcohol there. What a cry in shame. That's not why we got sober. If you have to walk on eggshells around alcohol and dope, if you can't be around it, you're not recovered.

There's something wrong, quote unquote, out of the book, with your spiritual condition. And it's up to you whether you want to get connected or not. If If you want to spend the rest of your life walking on eggshells, worrying about that elusive drink that's going to jump up and throw itself down your throat, go ahead. I don't want to do that. I just absolutely don't want to do that.

Let me give you a quote real quick I was thinking about. I'll let, Peter pick up if you got something he'd like to share here. My friend, Danny out of Maine, Danny S says, If if alcohol is your problem, then detox is as bad as it's gonna get. If alcoholism is your problem, then detox is where it just begins to get bad. Makes sense?

A hard drinker, you can detox and that's the worst you'll ever go through. If if if everybody wants to talk about these little x's and that's what we have to do in qualifying. We have to find out, buddy, are you drinking because you can't sleep? Is that truly why you're over drinking? Are you drinking because you're married to that evil woman?

I try I try to explain to the guys I sponsor, buddy, get ready. They're all evil. Don't worry about it. But you see, because that's what what I did for 10 years in therapy. I kept chasing the the the little thread to try to figure out what it was.

Mean, we talked about everything under the sun, you know. It's the woman, it's the job, it's the traffic, it's it's being blind in one eye, you know. It was it was Vietnam. It was I'd never been to Vietnam but we talked about it continually. We I spent most of those 10 years in therapy talking about my sexual preference.

We talked a lot about being gay. I'm not gay but we've talked a lot about being gay. You don't understand? Something's bothering you. You're not being honest.

You're gay, aren't you? No. But I wanted to be. You know what I mean? If this is If I could if I could if I could catch a little deal to it and say, if that is causing it, then I could do some good therapy around it or come out of the closet and just be openly gay, whatever, and I would stop drinking and drugged.

But guys, I'm going back to apartments where where I am so alone and so afraid of my own skin. I mean, I'm so uncomfortable. I can't stand it. And I'm afraid to call people and talk to people and afraid to go do life. I'm hiding out, dying, drinking myself to death.

And and I will do anything to get better. And the fact that come into our politics anonymous, they're willing to do any. They're willing to screw up their courage and come into a strange meeting with a bunch of strange people just to see what this is about. The very least we can do is grab them at the door, set them down, make them comfortable, and then as soon as we can, as soon as we can get them detox just a bit so they can hear what you're saying, couple of days, guys, we need to start qualifying them to find out if they need to be here. Do they need to be in Narcotics Anonymous instead?

Is the real problem crack cocaine? Is the real problem heroin or whatever? We need to help them. What because this fellowship helps alcoholics very well. We don't do without poop with drug addicts.

Makes sense? We have a responsibility to qualify the newcomer. And if the cat doesn't wanna get sober, we have a responsibility to let them go and let them go do whatever they wanna go do. It's their life. We spend way too much time chasing people that don't wanna get well.

My passion comes from the fact my passion comes from the fact that I watch a lots of people in Alcoholics Anonymous who want to be sober and can't get sober because nobody will spend the time with them to show them how to get sober. You can't get sober just coming to meetings. Meetings don't treat alcoholism. If you hear nothing else I say this weekend, you've got to hear that and you got to take it to heart. Meeting makers don't make it if you're real alcoholic.

I'm not knocking meeting. That will not get you connected to God spiritually. The 12 steps get you there. Cool? Here, you got anything you got?

Good morning. I'm a recovered alcoholic. Grateful to be alive and sober. Just a couple of things I wanted to, chip in along with, Chris's, talk. Chris was setting up what it's like for someone to diagnose themselves as what a real alcohol it is.

We suffer from allergic reaction to alcohol, that when we drink alcohol, the body craves more. The cravings intensify, not satisfied. And I have a mind, a grave emotional mental disorder, mind that'll take me back to that which is killing me, and it's usually alcohol. And for some of us who have been around here a while, it may not be alcohol at the beginning, but my mind will take me back to something else they call sprees, because we're feeling what Chris talked about, restless, fearful, and discontented, so I need to seek relief somewhere so I experience sprees to go get comfort. And what I'm really doing is running away from discomfort to get some relief.

And eventually behind those sprees, because of the spiritual malady, I'll pick up a drink. End of spirituality. And these three things are what separate us from the moderate and the hard drinker, makes us the real alcoholic. Once the spiritual mao is overcome, we're shown on mentally and physically, and for the moderate or the hard drinker, or you'll hear back home, I hear a lot of people say, well, I was a heavy hitter. That doesn't mean they're alcoholics.

Even if they needed medical attention and and maybe even detoxes, people who wind up in detoxes are not necessarily alcoholics. They just have to get to detox. So for the real alcohol, and our book separates us, they use words like alcoholics of our type, allergic types, in that class. What separates us? The real alcoholic probably needs the spiritual experience in order to give be given a new mind and a new body.

If we're not picking up a drink, we're not experiencing the allergy. All action is born of thought, so my mind takes me back to that which is killing me. Having said that, I'm clear I'm a real alcoholic. Right? So I come to an AA meeting looking for a teacher, looking for a sponsor, looking for the elders to teach me, and here's where we get into trouble.

And my qual if I'm clear I'm a real alcoholic, and if I study the first 43 pages of my big book and I'm not sure, it'll make me clear. Maybe I'm just a hard drinker who needs to go to therapy and not come into Alcoholics Anonymous. But it qualifies me. I go through and I say, I'm a real alcoholic. Where we get into trouble in AA is this way, do I know if my sponsor's a real alcoholic?

Because we're depending on the people in the room to give me clear instructions, guidance, direction on how to recover from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. Right? But I may sit down with Joe who's in AA for 30 years and tells you at every minute how long he's sober. Right? You know, you got those people in AA that keep reminding you how long they're sober because they want a monument outside the AA meeting made for them.

Right? But I go to Joe or Frank or Bill and seek guidance, but they may be hard drinkers or moderate drinkers who still have the power of choice. And by the word the way the words power, choice, and control are interchangeable. They can still put the plug in the jug. They can still make a meeting a day and rely on the meetings as their remedy for alcoholism rather than God.

Right? So I go sit down with Joe and I say, this is my 5th treatment center. I can't stop drinking. I have no power. I wanna stop.

I have a powerful desire to stop. I keep picking up a drink, and once I drink, I can't stop. What do I do? And Joe kicks back, folds his arms, and says, well, kid, make 90 meetings in 90 days, and don't pick up the first drink. Keep the plug in the jug.

And then the newcomer gets drunk. And then Joe folds his arm and say, he didn't want it. Who's next? So the people, us, right here, are we clear? And we're gonna talk about this in the name of the following topics.

Are we clear on what we are, and do we stand at the door, men and women, armed with the real answer for the alcoholic? Because that's why a lot of us are dying. When we could talk till the cows come home about the non AAs walking into AA, and we don't throw anyone out, they have a seat and they become part of this glorious fellowship, but it's the elder statesman who was sitting here, who would who aren't alcoholics either, and giving away your middle of the road solution. So we have a huge responsibility because we may get the real alcoholic man or woman walking through the door, and I'm a put the plug in the jug guy, and that's how a lot of us are dying. What message are we carrying?

Because if I'm around here a little while, and I'm just looking for a good cup of coffee and to get a date, then go elsewhere. If I'm a real alcoholic, eventually I'm gonna seek out a spiritual solution to what ails me, it's called alcoholism, because the real alcoholics will eventually pick up a drink and die. And the nonalcoholics I I was given a great story. A friend of mine in Manhattan, he belonged to this group, and he did a lot of fellowshipping. And there were a handful of big book guys and a handful of people who just made 90 meetings in 90 days, and did a lot of coffee, and, you know, put the plug in the jug, guys, and they played on this sober softball team, right?

And a couple years went fine, a lot of those big book guys got drunk, and the guys who were just not drinking go to meetings were still sober. And I didn't understand the point of the story. The no the don't drink and go to meetings, guys, with the hard drinkers and the moderate drinkers, and they can just hang around AA, play sober softball, and they were not picking up a drink. They made a choice every day not to drink because they wanted real alcohols. The guys who are in the big book were the real alcohols, and they walk away from the solution, the spiritual solution.

And for people like that, there's only one thing left to do, and that's to use, and I got it. So those of us who are in here, besides qualifying a new person walking in the door, the newcomer should be qualifying who their sponsor is. Because if you're a real alcoholic, and I can tell you this experientially, if you're a real alcoholic and your sponsor is not, run for the hills because they'll kill you with bad information. Okay. We're done.

Any questions? Yes. If you read in the chapter Working with Others, it talks about giving them a copy of this book and letting them read certain pages And it and it allows them to kinda kinda see where we're going with this. But ultimately, the book asks us to ask the newcomer some specific questions. You could get even it's a 164 pages.

The steps are outlined in a 100 pages or so. And it's but it's that's still for a newcomer a lot to read. And and and the sooner that we get the little guy qualified, it's it's just these three questions to find out. You with us? They want to come in and all they want to do is talk about the drama, all the issues.