Workshop on practicing the 12 steps and traditions in relationships

Yeah. He wasn't our God anymore. You know, there's a loving God that ain't the alcoholic anymore. So he was dethroned Glad to give up the job. Like I said, my actions and reactions to my drinking, once I sobered up, the rubber band starts unwinding.

So where I wanted to control I mean, I killed animals in front of Sue and Simone so that I could put the umbrella of fear over them that you could be next. You see how quickly I killed that dog? I'll kill you the same way. And that removes all their choices. Fear.

And then I sober up. Please don't kill me. Please don't kill me. I wuss out. See?

I I the rubber band goes the other way. The whole personality chain. Now I got all this guilt. I'm sober, and I can't drink anymore, and I I totally went the other way. I'm at the mercy of the family.

See? Beat me beat me some more. I'm full of guilt. So now with the God in our life, there is a great conscience. Yeah.

I remember Simone was in high school. She didn't want to have a curfew. And Keith was traveling a lot with his job, and she was staying out late. And then when he had come home, I'd tell him, you know, she's not doing this, not doing that, and she'd say, no. I'm not.

I'm not doing anything wrong. And I'd say, I know what they do out there at 2 o'clock in the morning. Yeah. And, so we had a group conscience. And Keith and Simone voted that she didn't need a curfew, and I couldn't handle it.

And I got up one morning, and I just went in. And, because I'd been the night before, I heard a wreck down at the corner, and I I got up, and I was right at that window just like I used to be with Keith. And it dawned on me, I ain't gonna do this thing twice. I'm not gonna go through that in kind of sanity anymore. And the next morning, I got up and I started packing.

I didn't say one word to anybody. I wasn't mad. I wasn't angry. I wasn't playing games. I was just out of there.

They'd had a group conscience and I was odd man out, so I'm out of here. I can't live with it because my gut was churning all that stuff. And Keith came in, and he said, what are you doing? And I said, I can't live with that. You and Samoan, you know, it's group conscious.

You got your way, and I'm leaving. And he goes, no. Wait. Wait. Wait a minute.

And he got Simone in there and he said, you know, your mom and I have been together for a long time and she can't handle this. We gotta work this thing out. Simone said, no problem. She'd been going to Allatine for a few years, and she said, you know, when I get, when I'm gonna go somewhere, I'm gonna tell you when I'll be home and then you won't have to worry about it anymore. And I said, so what if I'm not home?

What what's gonna happen? And she said, I'll leave you a note. And so she started doing that. Now she learned how to do those things in, and it brought some more trust into her and my relationship. And once we communicated it, it it brought the unity.

Communication brings your unity. You know? And And it's like nobody was setting the rules. We communicated thing about that was we could change. I could vote with her because I thought, hey.

You're old enough. You wanna get out there and get it on. Whatever. Get it on. And then when I saw how it affected her, so wait a minute.

Sue and I were together before you came along. When you leave here, it'll still be me and her. So the unity is between Sue and I, not between me and the kid. I don't know why I voted that way. Maybe I had guilt.

Who knows? But I could change my mind. I could change my mind, and that still kept it. Matter of fact, there was more unity there. And what Samoan says, well, you know, I'll just let you know when I'm gonna be out, or I'll let you know where I'm gonna go so you don't have to worry.

So that was the thing. For our for our group purposes, but I want over them authority, and that brought it in. The authority by me getting out of the driver's seat, the alcoholic, the domineering violent person, what that did is is that then I could vote and they could vote and we could change our mind. And it allowed Simone to become a human being and stick up for her own principles and some things and then and we listened, and it gave her some self worth. She got to bring the principles from her alikim program into our home It made her an equal.

Okay. Our membership ought to, to include all who suffer from alcoholism. That's a very important thing. That is really the deal. The bottom line is our membership doesn't have to include everybody.

And we a lot of people misconstrue that. If you say you have they say, if you got the desire to stop drinking while you can be a member of AA or whatever. No. No. No.

No. That is not what that tradition said. Our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. If you suffer from a lot of other damn thing, that's fine. There's a lot of other places to go.

But if you suffer from alcoholism, it's an amazing thing that includes the families of the end of the chapter of the wives has tells you about Al Anon. That's why I said when we worked that 12 step, the next 4 chapters there is, you know, working with others, to the wife, to the family, you know, to the employer, a vision for you. And so when we come down here, it's those who suffer from alcoholism. That's a very important tradition. I'll tell you what.

Sue and I were around trying to sponsor people after we worked the steps. And part of our unity was that, you know, we were gonna work with all these people. You know? Well, we had 40 treatment centers. Within 15 minutes of our house, there were over 40 bed treatment centers.

We had every jackass in the country where they were kind of an emotional problem, neurotic, goofball, weirdo, ever hang up emotionally was flogging into these treatment centers, and then they push them out saying, I'm an alcoholic or I'm an Al Anon or I'm a coder or a motor or woda, you know. And we start bringing people into our house of all sicknesses and illnesses. And, Jesus, we've seen some people die because we were trying to help them with the principles of the big book Alcoholics Anonymous, and it didn't work because they didn't have alcoholism. They had himism or herism or itism. They have to find out what they had, but they couldn't take the first step.

And so we're over there trying to help it, and it frustrated our family. It frustrated our family. See? And and we we had to come to this this thing here and, get to this 3rd tradition. And the important thing about the 3rd tradition, this is one of the things that I love the most.

It like to drove me crazy. Ought not A, nor ought AA membership ever depend upon money and conformity. Look. Let me tell you something. Sue and I have loved each other broke.

We've loved each other rich. She's loved me when I had a lot of money and blew it off. She loved me when I come home with a lot of money and didn't spend any on her. She's done all kinds of things with that money. She loves me whether I'm broke or whether I got money.

We've learned that money always makes your depression shorter, but, and and I had to understand that I can't conform to everything that she wants. It's like I got up early this morning. I got around. I put on baggy pants. I did, you know, put on my titties, you know, and I I took a shower and put clean underwear on and everything.

You know, I'm clean. And so I knew what she's gonna do. She's gonna print and put on some nice dress and everything else. And, you know, we're coming up here for a workshop. And so when I got home at 11 o'clock, well, she said, well, you're gonna get dressed?

I said, no. I'm ready to go. Well, you're going like that? And I said, yeah. I'm going like this.

Well, you ought to at least put on a coat. And I said, I don't put on a coat. I'm not gonna put on a tie. It's a workshop. I wanna be comfortable.

And so she and me at least said, well, Norm said Norm says the only package the only the only example of the big book is what you see up there. I said, well, put in a Norm tape. You know? So we put in a Norm tape. You know?

Listen to Norman. When he come part about the coat and tie, I said, take that tape out. I don't wanna hear that. She's still trying to get me to conform to her. You wanna dress up and look nice?

Fine. I'm comfortable. I'm gonna do a workshop. I wanna I don't want pants that are squeezing my crotch. I don't wanna tie that's choking me.

I don't wanna stand up here with a coat on sweating, so I stink. I'm gonna eat, so I might want a pair of pants to stretch. I don't have to conform to the fact that she wants to look like she's going to church because I learned something very important. Just because you have your Sunday Beth on doesn't mean means that you're, you know, practicing the spiritual. See.

And I'm extremely grateful because I went to places where they tried to make me conform and I hated them. Okay. In this third tradition, it talks about relatives of alcoholics when gathered together for mutual aid. They call themselves an Al Anon family group, provided that as a group, they have no other affiliation. The only requirement for membership, there'd be a problem of alcoholism in a relative or friend, and that's what we had to realize that was wrong with us in our home is that we were relatives and an alcoholic.

And the order to come together, we had to have a common purpose, a common knowledge, a common solution for anything. In this program, this step or tradition has it explains it 2 ways. 1 is to avoid being diverted from our program by others, and 2, is to welcome into Al Anon anyone who is suffering from the effects of another's alcoholism. And I sit, in a room the other night and listen to a girl say, you know, I said, who's your sponsor? And she says, it's my therapist.

And my mind immediately shut because I knew from that point on, I wasn't gonna hear anything but psychology. And, and I don't know anything about that because these programs work for me. So for my own common welfare, this tradition applies in my life. I'm willing to give this thing away to anybody that wants it. My motives are that if I help you, I get better.

And that my only requirement to be here is that I have a relative of an alcoholic in my life. And he's in my life, and I definitely need this thing on a daily basis. And, this thing fixes me into the program. This is where I belong. I have no fight with that.

He's an AA. I have no fight with that. I have never asked him to go someplace else instead of AA. I have never asked him to stay home and not go to AA. I do not have a problem with him being an alcoholic synonymous.

When I when I sobered up, I recognized I had to talk to another alcoholic to stay sober. And there are certain patterns that I had that I found out through my steps. Certain times there's certain times of the day that I get thirsty. There's certain times of the week I get thirsty. There's certain times of the month I get thirsty.

There's certain times of the year I get thirsty. And, call it the call of the wild, whatever, but I recognize it, and I got thirsty in these times. And so I got alcoholics in my life, and I started bringing them into the house. And I got all these alky's around there at different times, and they're sober. I didn't bring any drunks into my house.

And I remember we were all lounging around in there one time, and Sue went and called up an old timer and said, you know, they're over here at the house. They got the ashtrays full of cigarette butts. They're in here. You know, their shoes are scattered everywhere. They're all in there talking AA and everything.

And, it was Elsa Chamberlain, and Elsa shared a story with Sue about the fact how, you know, how important it meant and, you know, for Alky's to talk together and and they'll learn how to respect your place. And as you get, I mean, the house we were talking about, I mean, there wasn't a picture frame that didn't cover a hole in the wall or wasn't a damn broken window. With door jams, we're kicked out, and she's bitching because these guys are sitting in there belching, farting with their shoes off, smoking a bunch of cigarette, you know. It looked like a flop house. Well, it was a flop house.

And and the reason it was good for us, and I lived there for three and a half years under my sobriety because I could get a bunch of drunks sitting and looking at that house, and we didn't have to talk drunk along. You just look around. It was right in front of us. You know? And and so what she did, the tradition there that is so important is there were 2 or 3 alcoholics who gathered together, were 2 or 3 alcoholics were gathered together.

Something was happening that she couldn't do. And that's what it tells us in the family after. There's a lot of jealousy there that I hear all these alcoholics are helping me stay sober and those who love me couldn't. So the traditions helped us understand and work through that jealousy and those various things that we were going through. And, And Keith was telling me, these guys need me.

These guys need my help in order to stay sober. And I was telling Elsa that and I said, you know, he's saying they need him. And she said, wait a minute. The first 100 people that Bill Wilson 12 Step didn't stay sober, but Bill did. And Keith needs these guys more than they need him.

Now if you want your way of life to be like Chuck and my way of life, then you better start working with newcomers and bringing these newcomer alanines in your home so your home will be a home and not a house anymore. She said that's the difference between a home and a house. Home has love in it, and you guys need these people to bring the love in there to help you have a home. And this is a part that's a tradition for with respect to its own affairs. Each AA group should be responsible to no other authority than its own conscience.

Isn't that an amazing thing? It's talking about each group should be autonomous. A conscience. By the time you work the steps, you have a conscience. You can't work the 4th tradition without a conscience.

You know what a conscience is? It is awareness of the consequences of your action. But this tradition, it says each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting another group or Al Anon or AA as a whole. This is what gives in a family unit. This is what gives individuals freedom, and that's what gave me the acceptance for Keith.

Keith is an alcoholic. He is autonomous for me. I'm an alanine. He's a different individual. Simone's a different individual.

We're each autonomous in our own makeup of our personalities. However, if my personality and my makeup of my person is affecting his sobriety, then something's wrong. I had a a home group that was this men's stag, and, we moved out of a a building. We got kicked out of a building because we had no money to pay the rent. Within a building, a room that was about as big as this.

So you had you had about 6 chairs on one side and 6 chairs on the other in an aisle down the middle. And we were kicked out of that room, and we were we went and got a room for free that was about big enough to have 6 chairs with no deal you had to have a little room along the sides for aisle. But it was a long room, real long and narrow. And so I was a setup guy for this thing. And so, Sue Sue told me one day, so let me go down and help you with that.

So she goes down and, you know, we're pretty new. And so we decide what we need to do since you could only have 6 across to get an aisle in there. You turn them so the Aukis were all facing the front and had the podium up there like like this, and you're all facing this way. Well, her idea was that you turn these people so they're looking at each other. In this long narrow room, you turn this thing so you could have an aisle down the middle, but you turn these people so they could see each other.

And the podium was still down at the end, but all these alky's are looking at each other like this. Jeez. They come in and put that as a meeting starting. These guys all started looking at each other, mad dogging each other across there. They never heard what the guy down at the podium was saying.

They had a fight. Had a big fight in there, blew it all up, and I ran out. I didn't tell who the hell set this room up like this? You know, I wouldn't dare tell them till a long time later that I did it really with an Al Anon. Al Anon didn't know what the hell Aukis could handle and couldn't handle.

All of them guys in there all mad dogging each other. And, so I learned I ain't gonna ask her to help set up my meeting anymore, You know? And, what I recognize is there are certain things here that are conscious to the group. What that taught me is is that just because you think that's a good idea, doesn't mean that it's gonna respond to my personality. And the opposite side of the coin is if that is the way I respond to something like that, she must have some things that she responds to that are the same way.

I remember one time we'd gone out to eat and Keith ordered pea soup. I'd never seen him eat pea soup before. And he said I said, yuck. He goes, I like pea soup. I said, it tastes terrible.

He said, Sue, what you have to realize is that pea soup tastes different to me than what pea soup tastes to you. And it's true. And it's the same way in life. I don't think like an alcoholic thinks. I don't understand what an alcoholic understands.

He didn't he he's the same with me. He doesn't understand a woman. He doesn't understand an alanine. Now I quit drinking a new sobriety because I just quit, and he didn't understand how I could just quit. It wasn't a problem.

Somebody punch Mike. We can't tell if you're snoring or farting. Okay. Tradition 5. One of the one of the important things about, tradition 5, and and this is it comes again to the unity of this thing.

And the unity has to go with, you know, what you're doing in your program, the things that you're going along with to bring, you know, together in any relationship. Each Alcoholics Anonymous Group ought to be spiritually to be a spiritual entity having but one primary purpose, that of carrying the message to the alcoholic who still suffers. You know, what we had to understand is my impression of the alcoholic who still suffers and her impression of the alcoholic who still suffers are 2 different things. If you got 2 alcoholics living together, you're one impression of the alcoholic who the, you know, selfish and self centered. You may be the one that's suffering.

And if she's the one that's suffering, you ain't gonna help each other. It's so obvious in our home. Keith works with alcoholics, and I work with Al Anon. An alcoholic come home over to our house, and he's chewing on them like crazy and I feel sorry for her. And then some gal will come over, you know, and she'll be hurting and stuff and I'll just be hollering and pounding on her and Keith goes, God, don't do her that way.

She needs some love right now, you know. And it's so obvious in that setting. Okay. Tradition 5. Thing that you gotta understand about tradition 5 is goes back to the simple thing is that one of the things that we had to have in our relationship is we had to have a common purpose.

A common purpose is not to make me happy, for me to make you happy, not for you to get what you want and battle with me. The common purpose is to carry the message to another person. That's what we said about the step. The steps is so that we put a power in our life that allows us to be what God wants us to be. Acceptance, love, and unity.

Okay. Problems with money, property, and authority may, easily divert us from our primary spiritual aim. And, boy, in a relationship, that does it. I mean, there is nothing caused more diversion from our spiritual aim, than money, property, and authority. And, when I sobered up, I had a house I paid $22,000 for.

I owed 80 on it. I paid 22, put 12 down, so I only owed 10. I lived in it 12 years. And then when I sobered up, I sold it after 3 years of sobriety and I owed 80. And I said, it's my house.

And she said, by God, you can have it. Ain't nobody in their right mind would want a house that they paid $22,000 for and didn't do nothing to it but tear it up, and now you owe 80, you know. And, you know, the property you want this property? You have it. I had a pickup, went down the road crooked.

I owed $250,000 to people. I I owed $250,000 when I sobered up. I had nothing. I had nothing to show for. At a house that I bought for 22, owed 80 on, I owed 250,000 dollars and I had nothing for that, and we wanna have a fight about money, and we wanna have a fight about authority.

I got all that you have the authority to take care of that crap. I'll tell you for sure. You want it? Take it. You figure out a way to do it.

It. I had 5 checking accounts. I had paper flying all over town. I had people who wanted to kill me. I had nobody to borrow from.

Keith had a job offer with his company to go to Bakersfield and to be over a whole division up there. And he kept telling me I didn't wanna go. And he kept telling me, look, babe. We can get 10 times the biggest house. You know?

I'll be somebody. I'll be the guy over the whole area, and you'll be the first lady of Chevron. And I'm saying, I don't wanna leave my program. I don't wanna leave Orange County. I at that point, Bakersfield, I didn't know what they had up there, but I knew it was smaller than Orange County and I didn't wanna go.

And I just there was no divorce. No talk about that or anything. It was just send money. If you're gonna go up there, send money. So we, we wrote, and I took it to my sponsor.

And bottom line in my inventory that I wrote with my sponsor, money, property, and prestige gets alcoholics drunk. If we go up there and do that, he's not talking about the program out there or nothing. He's talking about money, property, and prestige. He's gonna end up drunk if we do that, and I don't wanna be there when it happens. And I said, I'm not going.

And Keith did some writing, went to his sponsor and shared it with him and he decided to turn down that promotion. And his company didn't understand it, but we both did it for our programs. And it was individual decisions. Nobody put pressure on either one of us. You know?

We just let the other one do what we were doing. We didn't even know is he was writing and sharing it with his sponsor. One of the things about this tradition is is about the group in our family is is that, this, 6th tradition talks about the unity of the group. And and in our house, the individual's group has had just as much authority in our family commitment as the individual sponsor. See?

If Sue's gonna if if Sue says, I can't go with you, Sunday. I'm gonna go with my sponsor. That was never a problem. If Simone has said, I can't do this. I'm gonna be with my sponsor.

That was never a problem. Same way with the group. She said my group's going over here to do a marathon, or my group's gonna do this. My group's gonna do that. That was never a problem.

I think one of the reasons that it was really never ever a problem with us is because my group's a men's group. We didn't take women. You know? I mean, we have 2 campouts a year. We had things that the men did.

And women don't go. See? And she had certain women's functions that she did, and men don't go. That's pretty damn healthy because if your obsession is another person, then to get away from that person, get away from that obsession can be healthy. You know?

And the new part about not being together all the time when we did those things, I didn't know I could do stuff without Keith when I got to the program. And I started doing stuff that he didn't wanna do, and I started doing it with Al Anon's. And when we came together, we realized that when he did this with the guys and I did this with the girls, and then we came together, we had something to share and to talk about besides saying you're doing this wrong, you're doing that wrong. I I just talked about, oh god. We went here and we had a marathon.

We did this and so and so said this and I heard this, and it was great. It brought immunity back into our home. It brought program into our home. We went and supported Simone doing Alatine functions and what happened is that we all had a primary spiritual aim. Now all of our focus was in the same place.

We did things with Simone. We had we wanted to move out of that old beat up house, and we had a chance to move out and get another house. And, we tried to, you know, fix it up and try to do everything. And Simone was the alateen, she was a speaker at the Bakersfield Roundup and Sunday morning speaker. And, Sue and I didn't have any commitment there.

And we went to our sponsors, and our sponsors said you should go and support her. We put this we'd have this house up for sale, and it wouldn't sell. Nobody looked at it. It was just and we'd actually made an offer on another house. It was just a total you know, I mean, everything all the ducks weren't lining up, and we were praying and praying and praying.

And and Simone said, look. I got this commitment. I'd like for you to go. And so we went, took my sponsor and his wife with us. And we went there, and Sue's sponsor was already there.

And we devoted our whole weekend to support Simone and her home group, Alateen. And, you know, periodically, I have them little thoughts. I wonder what's happened. The realtor's trying to show the house, you know, everything. We we went in there that Sunday morning and listened to Simone talk, and she had a beautiful relationship with her god.

And she's the house didn't bother her. Hell, she didn't care whether the household or not, she was really in acceptance. And I'm thinking, I don't want her to go. You know? You know, and I'm sitting in there doing all that of what the house doing and this doing and what she's doing, and Sue wants this other house, and I wanna get this other house.

Simone, sit up there and talk about God is beautiful. I got angry because she had a good relationship with her God, and I'm not. We come back that evening, 6 o'clock that evening, pulled up in the driveway. The realtor was locking the door in the house, walked out, and said, well, I sold your house. So you gotta be kidding me.

No. I was just getting ready to leave, and a couple pulled up in here and bought this house. See. And and by me putting it my support into Symone and sitting there listening to her relationship, even though I couldn't get a conscious contact with God, all I could do was just take my body and go over here and sit in here, sitting in there listening to her. I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, I mean, what are we gonna do?

What are we gonna do now? And then pull up there and it was sold. See? If I'd have stayed home that day, I'd have probably run those people out of the driveway. What car are you putting in the driveway?

Get the hell out of here. Before that, everybody came here to go wash off the driveway. That was his way of getting ready for people to see the house. So so tradition says experience has often warned us that nothing can so surely destroy our spiritual heritage as futile disputes over property, money, and authority. There is no argument.

We're worried about money. We're worried about all that stuff. We've argued about it and done all kinds of things. And the main thing about it is our life has progressively got better in every area. And the thing in tradition, 7, that helped me so much, every group should be self supporting, declining outside contributions.

If Elon bothered me, my sponsor said if anything bothers you around the house, do it yourself. If you want it done bad enough, do it yourself. Don't wait on him to do it. And don't fight about it. If it bothers you that much, do it yourself.

So if it's like they throw down stuff and I got a resentment, I ain't picking that up. I ain't picking that up. Then I gotta leave it laying there until they pick up their own stuff. But if it bothers me bad enough, I gotta pick it up. And we got a thing, a sign, and we put it on Simone's bedroom door that had been condemned by the Orange County Health Department.

Okay. And I couldn't go into her room for a while because it bothered me. We've had, periods of sobriety where I had a lot of money. I mean, 1,000,000 because I I had the ability to make a lot of money. And there was a a period of time when I had enough money to buy my home group a building, you know, and be the ultimate authority by the property, would have been nothing to buy a piece of property.

And, you know, I was told to take care of my family first for the long term. Instead of running down and buying my home group a building, I took my money and gave it to mother superior, Al Anon, and she said what you need to do is think about your family and retirement. Instead of running over here trying to buy something for your group, you better put something away so that your family can have some retirement or future. See? And let AA take care of itself and let it be self supporting.

What you need to do, stupid, is to go get a job and work and quit stealing. The and so the 7th tradition taught me to go work. Now whenever I did made that transition, the 7th tradition, I said I set my family down. I said, tell you what, I I have this ability to make lots of money. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes legal, sometimes illegal.

But I have this ability to make lots of money. Legal, sometimes illegal. But I have this ability to make lots of money. Always have. But what I had to recognize for this 7th tradition is is that in sobriety, the way I handled the money was causing undue anxiety.

And so what I had to do was get some consistency. What I was told by sponsor direction and old timers was that you need the consistency. Your family is not impressed with you coming in here one day with $3,000,000 and coming in here another day with 50. They're tired of that. You're not you everything you do, you're putting it on a roll.

You're taught in alcoholics and illness. When you come in, they pass the severance tradition, put a dollar. They ask you to put a dollar. They've done that for years. They still do it for you.

And they said, you go, and then when you sit in a meeting by, hey, you learn to put a dollar in. Put a dollar in. And I can sit in meetings and watch the people that don't put a dollar in and they the rest of their program's like that. And that was the consistency of the money to put a dollar in that basket. And I don't and I just one of my pet peeves.

I sponsor guys. Some of them, and and they come in here with nothing, and then they get sober and they make a lot of money. And so they said in the meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, and they pass the 7th tradition. And they pull a a wad of twenties out, and they wanna change a 20 or a 50 or a 100 with the 7th tradition basket. See?

And Bill talks about in in the traditions here about how he would he wouldn't buy food for his family, but he'd go down there to that AA meeting and wanna pull a big you know, throw a 50 in there. See? And they taught me, when you go to AA, the price of admission, if AA has given you, you put a dollar in the basket, Which means you go someplace and get some $1 bills, and you carry them in your pocket. So when they pass that, you put that dollar in there. You don't have to impress us with your big water money.

We're not a bank. Your responsibility is to get those ones, have them in your pocket, and when that comes around, you don't throw change. You put a dollar bill in that basket. That's your responsibility before you get to the meeting. Very basic.

It's necessary to get the coffee and the things to pay for the rent and all those things. And when I when I did that, it was not a problem. I did that. But what I had to recognize is that I was doing the other over at the house. She said, can you give me $10?

I said, yeah. If you can break a 100. My sponsor was there one day when, that happened. And we walked out, and she said, your sulfur is really low, isn't it? So the next time I went to Keith and asked for money, I said, can I have a 100?

Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever non professional. We define professionalism as an occupation of counseling, alcoholics for fees or higher. We may employ alcoholics and so on. So such special service may well recompense, but our, usual 12 steps of work, is never to be paid for. I mean, we went through all that counseling and all those psychiatrists and all that stuff prior to coming to the program and getting in here, so we didn't have a problem with that.

We didn't have a problem with any of those things. We've never needed any marriage counseling other than sponsorship. We've had to go to AA couples and Al Anon couples to hear the answer. We've gone this is this right here is one of the things where if we had sponsorship direction that were was not conducive to the direction we were trying to go. We went to couples who were going in the direction we're trying to go and got the input from the couples.

And so we haven't needed any special counseling. I know. And it's been AA women that have helped me a lot learn how to be a lady, learn how teach me tell me things that help me learn how to be a sex partner, You know? Because I shut down in that area with Al Anon, and it's like, we have gone to Al Anon and Alcoholics Anonymous for all of our problems. One of the things that we had to I needed help with yard work and stuff like that and painting my house and stuff like that.

And and I watch some people who sponsor people, and, you know, they'd say, come over to my house, and, and we'll, you know, paint the house. And so they get all these over there, and they paint the house. And, and then they go to a meeting. And so I started asking people to come and help me do my house, but I paid them. The guy came over and and mowed you know, get some guys over and help them mow my back yard or whatever.

I I may not pay them top dollars, but I had some money in my pocket to pay them because I'm an Aalky. I understand the Aalky don't like to work for nothing. Even if it's your sponsor, and they'd always say you know, since they say, I don't know why you pay those guys. They never appreciate You sponsor them. You spend hours before the meeting talking to them about their personal relationships and all kinds of crap.

You know? You spend hours after the meeting. They get a problem. They come to your house. You'll spend all night.

They want to come over to your house right now. They gotta come over right now. And then you you say, well, they wanna come over and help you mow the yard and you give the guy $5. If you spent 10 hours with him this week, Christ, he ought to come over and mow your lawn and give you $5. And I said, what you gotta understand is the algae don't like to work for nothing.

And so I wanna give him some money, you know. I wanna give him some money. And this tradition is the one that taught me that we recover in here because we're equals. There's no sex, color, race, or creed in this program. We're equals in this we're equals in the home and when we got in here it's like we weren't the adult talking down to the child anymore.

Simone had a voice in our home and she was able to say things in our home that she'd never been able or allowed to say before. But she had an opinion whether we cared about or not or wanted to hear it or not, and it made us equals in our home. Tradition 9. Our groups as such shall never be organized but we may create service boards or committees directly as possible to those who serve. Our house isn't organized.

We're not organized, but we each do things that the other one. Keith and I recognized that we each have qualities that there's some things he can do that I can't do, and there's other things that I can do that he can't do. In other words, we have rotation and leadership. At the airport, I'm in charge. Yeah.

When it comes to to car maintenance, he's in charge. Yeah. Yeah. There's just different things like that that we've had to learn that we're not organized, but he's my service sponsor for my car, my maintenance sponsor. I have to look at him for guidance on that because I don't know nothing about that.

And that kind of stuff drives me crazy. By the same token, when we're in an airport and they're not leaving on time or the tickets are messed up, he can't handle that. And so I'm I'm the service board at the airport. What we had to do is split up our bills. Yeah.

See, this tradition taught us how to split up the bill. And I don't like a lot of little paperwork and so she can take it to work and do it at work. So she gets a lot of the little bills and I make the big payment. Because I'm big daddy and I make the biggest paycheck. But it's equal.

She pays a lot of the the amount of money going out is pretty equal, you know. And it's got lopsided at times and I had to have a sponsor come over and say, look, asshole, pick up some of the slack over there. Oh, yeah. You know? That was a neat day.

But there was a day when he quit, making all the extra bucks illegally that he was doing that he couldn't make all the payments and carried the load and be big daddy anymore. I set him down and I said, you know, I'm not gonna live this way of life with money anymore. I'm gonna go get a job and I'm gonna live it on a fixed income. I'm not gonna have this, you know, feast or famine stuff. And, oh, that's great day.

That's good, you know, blah blah blah blah. You know? And I said, what that means is I'm gonna go the the year that I did that, I went I made over $200,000 in in that 1 year. And the next year, I made 16. That was a social shock to that family.

I was going to world service one Saturday morning and I went into kissing goodbye. And he was in there working with the bills. And I said, what are you doing? He said, I'm paying bills and I'm short. He said, I can't handle it.

So you're gonna have to start helping me handle this. My sponsor told me to get ready for it, you know, and for us to work it out. And, she said, I'm not gonna tell you what to do. You and Keith work it out. You know how much each one of you makes?