12 step retreat at the Bolton Convention Center in Bolton, Ontario, Canada

We people wonder why it would start when nobody is here. We have to let the people here. It is my particular feeling that AA meetings of all meetings in the world should start on time. Yeah. Yeah.

Because we are I we've lived disorganized lives, and this is a start an organized some degree of living with some degree of structure. I hope that every time that you have a convention, you'll insist that they start to be on time. You have to take a local group on time because when you start to be on you'll insist that they start to be in that time and you have to stretch a local group on time because when you start late, it just encourages people to come in. That's all it is. And it won't start till we get there to help.

As I've given my harangue on that subject, I This morning we are discussing the 12th step and the steps. Thank you very much, Bill. The 12 step, of course, as most of us know, is an interesting step because it's of all the steps, it's the only one that's been changed since it was first printed in the 1st edition. So step is they had they made a change in its wording from the first time it was printed in the big book. Out of the preliminary, but in the bit actually in the press.

And it goes back I didn't wanna start when you got here, Frank. I was waiting for your comment. Alright. Just for a moment to reprise if there's there's nothing else to go outside to a freeze, so might as well stay in here and talk. But remember, you know, it comes with age in the history of any role in Hazard, went to pay the year with doctor Jung in Europe, Switzerland, and then got out and got drunk, and they tried to send him back.

And doctor Young would not take him back at the hospital. So I will not take him back because I made a misdiagnosed of his case. I thought he had deep psychological problems. I thought it was helpful. It turns out that he is going to sell it as an alcoholic.

And to the best of my knowledge, there is no effective treatment for his condition in the world today at any cost. This is just 59 years ago. Well, Roland was a little taken aback by this. But what does this mean, doctor? The doctor said, what it means is that, Roland, you must either keep yourself confined voluntarily or involuntarily as long as you live or you almost certainly will intermittently drink to excess until you die or go mad.

And this didn't cheer him up very much. And he said, well, what is this? Is there no way out, doctor? And I said, well, there have been some cases in the literature. I have never seen one.

I've never heard of anyone who's seen it, but there have been cases in the literature where some alcoholics, 1 in a million, 1 in 10,000,000, 1 in a 100,000,000 drugs, have some sort of involuntary, deep psychological reversion. Involuntary. Absolutely. They describe it as some sort of a spiritual experience, but I have no idea how to get it. I never heard anyone's gotten it.

I certainly wouldn't recommend that you wait for it because, undoubtedly, your chances of being hit by lightning are greater than having this involuntary spiritual reversion. So Roland came back, remember, and if nothing else, as the first time he really realized the gravity of his condition up to them in kind of a game where he could change whatever he wanted to. And he did something on the way back. He didn't get drunk on the way back this time. He got on the ship, and he did something apparently that most of us have to do sooner or later if we're in the state any length of time.

He surrendered to the fact that he was hopeless and gave him a deep feeling of despair and hopelessness. And he came back to New York, and he'd been a church member in the Episcopal Church, Parent for good church members. He was not a young man. He was a middle aged man. And he he decided to see if he could stay sober a while.

He knew going to church hadn't done it. It's a spiritual awakening, and there was a movement going in, which we all heard about, of course, called the Oxford Group. A lot of people know the Oxford Group, what some of the young folks might not know. If you can imagine something like s or something of that nature, wasn't designed for low bottom sick people. It's designed for upper middle class people with money to go and, where talks about psychological problems.

Yasodhara talks about spiritual understandings and insights. So he went to this for a while to see as he wrote later, I wanted to see if I could stay sober at least long enough so my parents would have a pleasant memory of me when I died drunk, which sounds kinda funny except that, eventually, he did, apparently. At least he died. When he died a short time later, 3 years later, to this day, his family had not released the cause of death, so they assume it had gone back to prison because he obviously never had a spiritual experience. And because of he was staying sober for a while anyway because of this surrender as follows, I presume, accentuated by his interest in movement.

Plus the Oxford Movement didn't keep people sober because doctor Bob was a spiritual in Oxford Movement. He's drunk all the time in Ohio. But he had this belief And as a result of that, as you remember, his family was so pleased by his recovery that they gave him a little reward and sent them to the summer home in Vermont. And while up there, he ran into his childhood friend, drunken Eddie Thatcher, who was about to be sentenced to the penitentiary for violation of parole for being drunk again. Just run his car into a home and was just dreadful shape, and they prevailed upon Evie to won't you please say a few words to the judge?

Can you remember having to prevail upon Roland? If he was with the judge about Ebby and said, can't you help him? Because he's nothing else. He's a friend of ours. He's a bad guy.

He just he gets his terrible drinking spells. So I've been over and talked to the judge since Eby was a very, very wealthy man, came from very, very wealthy people. His family owned a lot of territory around there. The judge was concerned with penitentiary, but I'm going to release him in your probation, but you must take them out of the state of Vermont. You cannot be in the state of Vermont.

So Rolle took it back to New York for the Ashford group, and he didn't really wanna be in the Oscar group, but he didn't wanna be in Vermont. So it all balanced out. He went to the Ashford for a while, and eventually, he he had to do something that, they had to do the Ashford for a while. They had to go testify, and he didn't wanna go testify. You know, find stranger and humiliate yourself, but Roland insisted he do it.

So, you know, who did I testify to? Humiliating, embarrassing. And you have to remember there's a lower companion he used to be because he's even worse off than he was. A down and out puke in summer New York. He tried to find out who he was.

He made arrangements to go call on this down and out loser named Bill Wilson. And he wouldn't call on you know, there's a very funny change here because Roland had never heard of Bill Wilson. So Roland had to find everybody to get it back to New York to get Bill Wilson in the chain. It really is a funny series of coincidences. And he called on Bill Wilson and as we and we Jeff told me the touching part of Bill's story where he sits at the kitchen table and Abby calls on him, and it doesn't seem quite that way from Abby's point of view.

He came over there grudgingly to testify, and here he is, goof who doesn't seem to have any interest in what he's saying. You know, he He responded the way I hope most of us when somebody came yeah. Yes. Very wonderful. I mean, Would you mind handing me that bottle of gin behind you there just before you tell me more about Jesus?

This hurt Abby's feelings. He didn't wanna testify, but he had to be put down, but he's a loser. So he came back 3 or 4 days later and he had the Oxford group closure with him. And he gave him really a pep talk. And Bill Wilson did what, I suppose some of us would have done that same condition.

He, he was off in one of the damnest trunks in his life. Here's the news, but the afterjoker. And he wandered around and he wound up one night in the mission in Manhattan that Abby lived in. He's gonna see dropping to see Abby. But Abby was there to give a quick sermon and marched off the street.

He's a real goof. You wouldn't want him in your meetings. I'll tell you that. And he wound up in the hospital, and it turned out of all things, all the wonderful people in the world, this loser was the one who had the spiritual experience. And he he wrote letters, The other room was filled with light and wind going through my ears.

He would not talk to the doctor about it. He was afraid to know what it was. Doctor didn't know what it was. Doctor had been treating drugs for years. He had never seen one or heard one.

He says, I don't know what it is, Bill, but hang on to it. People changed you somehow. Now you wonder, well, Bill Wilson would have had the same experience either way whether I mean, you would have called out or rolled it, everyone would see doctor Young. What's the big deal? Why is the chain required?

Because of one little thing. Of the very, very few people who had spiritual or these deep psychological reversions, they always construed it to be a religious experience, and they would go and get involved in church and then we heard from him. But he somehow connected it with Abby and is not drinking. So instead of going to the church, he went to the Oxford group and he thought he had some sort of mission to be like Ebi. And he went out to stay to keep people sober.

And as we know for the next 6 months, he tried to keep people sober. And he I don't remember state, so even Eddie didn't say sober, but he certainly tried. He stayed sober. He basically, as you remember, he went out to Akron, Ohio, find another job. And it's interesting little thing, the 10 to 6 months, he'd been working with every day again, and he was he was working with street trucks and not not high bottom trucks.

He would snatch them and take up the auction group meetings, and these people are gonna go tired of this, you know, kind of upper class, nice people in ladies with their gloves. You seem to be vomiting on my shoe, young man. They weren't there really for evangelical work. And sometimes he'd take him home and have him stay at his house and then get up and leave in the morning, get drunk. After 6 and he had plenty of time to do it because he didn't work.

His wife worked, supported him, which sounds kinda cold, but worked in our family. Family. But anyway, one morning after about 6 months of this, he got up and the guy who brought home the night before had done it again. The guy had gotten up yesterday in the morning, stolen some stuff apparently to sell for wine, and that was the end of that experiment. Even with the spiritual experience, even with everything, he had run out of gas.

He he said that's the end of it. We're not gonna do this anymore. I thought I had some sort of a spiritual call to help people. I could barely it's not working. Whatever it is, it made you consider.

I've been trying to help people for 6 months, and not one person has stayed sober. Not one. And right then, the, this retreat and our fellowship and our lives hung by a terribly thin thread. And she turned to him and off the top of her head said something that changed the course human history, literally changed the course of human history. I've left with her a few years ago to connect and I said, how did you ever think of that answer, Lois?

It just changed everything. I don't know. It's a big deal. It is quite obvious. But she said when she said, it doesn't work, Lois.

I'm quitting. Not one person just takes over. She said, you did. And he gave the same sign that Alcon has been given for years again. Oh, yeah.

He continued to try to help people. Met doctor Bob. Stayed out of his house for a while. Some of you know young Doctor. Bob, Doctor.

Bob Sun, he's not a young doctor who was 16 years old at the time, maybe for the talk. It's kind of interesting. I know him number of years. He's an oil man in Texas. And I said, it must have been very thrilling for you to be present at this birth of the greatest spiritual movement of the 20th century, and you were in that house.

Just watching it happen around you. It was like a shepherd boy, Bethlehem almost. And he said, no. I didn't like it much. He said, it was nice.

My dad was sober, but he was sober every so often anyway. I fell off from New York. She'd be a nice guy, but he's a little too intense for my taste. So you can never bring any kids home from school. How does that spell?

I spell it. If you never spell it, it's spelled in ether. If you ever had it, it tastes like ether. And hustle and there's always drunk in the sulfur. Some guy shinging down the rain pipe to get away from these 2 bastards.

It's just I really thought it was pretty gentle, really. Well, as you probably know, God punished him for these terrible attitudes. He never he never was alcoholic. God punished him. He grew up in and married an alcoholic, and he's now in Al Anon.

God showed him. Anyway, going back to New York eventually. I got these little groups of people. He wrote this book we talked about the other night. And in the group, in the book, He wrote in chapter 5, he included these 12 steps, and the people all looked at it I've seen a lot to them, the book, and they went to press.

And after it was off the press, the first edition, big red thing. You may wonder why they call it the big book because it was a big book. And the reason it was that big, it had so few pages. They put it on very thick paper, so it looks as though it'd be worth the money you're spending for it. That's human beings in operation.

But after the book came out, there was some little upset among Bill's followers. They said, Bill, this is wrong. The 12th step is wrong. You have written having had spiritual experience as a result of these steps, we try to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs, and that's not right. We never had spiritual experience.

You had a spiritual experience. And you didn't have it as a result of these steps. You had it in town hospital 3 years before you wrote the steps. What do you think of that? That's true.

And they've rooted about it. Fortunately, the book sold so terribly slowly. They had plenty of time to think about what they put in before the next edition. So about 3 a year or something like that. And that's one of the exaggeration, but they didn't sell very many.

I think that what happened, they remember they sent a mailing to every doctor they could think of. They waited a couple of weeks so they could just come back and fill the orders and they found about 3 postcards there. And it was really a tough condition. I got a lot of time to think about it. And they little by little began to get an inkling of something they could not really identify.

It's relatively easy to see it in retrospect. Yeah. If you ever listen to this tape next summer, you can remember how cold it was today, but let's do this tape. But, anyway, we began to get an inkling that the thing that was happening here, the doctor said, may be true, that you haven't started having spiritual experience. But these people didn't have a spiritual experience and they were staying sober.

How could this be? And they they chase a little bit. And in retrospect, I think we've learned this positively now, but they learned what they surmised. But the miracle of Alcoholics Anonymous, the unexplainable, inexplicable miracle of called it's darkness is that its steps bring about an incremental spiritual experience, Not the way Bill Wilson got his. But the way we get ours.

Make amends for that bitch. And little by little, we bring about the altered perception that comes with the spiritual experience. And so as we know, we read today and we read them all from the second printing on. We went back and changed the 12th step to read having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps. The only step that's been changed and certainly rightfully so because they were spiritual experiences, were not interesting thing.

Roland did not like AA very much and he didn't go to it. And his future was questionable and he apparently didn't stay sober. Abby, since he had brought the message to Bill that he should take instructions from Bill, He never stayed sober. In fact, it's the odd thing about every 1960, I was at the international connection in Long Beach, California. Didn't especially wanna be there, but my sponsor thought it would be a good idea.

And I'm so glad I went to change my life in many regards. But have we talked? That's the only time he ever talked to Internet connection. That's the only time he ever stayed sober in that time. 7 years he was sober in 1960.

And he gave a talk and I thought I detected a funny note and wasn't even to me without knowing much because he was kind of kind of supercilious toward Bill a little bit. Kind of and shortly after, he was prosecuted. I talked to people in Texas where he lived, and they said one of the things that always bothered him was that that damn Bill Wilson was getting all this attention, and he was the guy that saved Bill Wilson. He didn't get any attention. Completely ignoring the fact that this who does it?

It's what you do after you die. He didn't stay somewhere. He thought he should get detention. Made up of human beings. Made up of human beings.

The so Bill Wilson is the first one in the chain who had the spiritual experience. Doctor Bob didn't have a spiritual experience as such. Bill Gee, the 3rd, number 3, didn't have a spiritual experience as such. In fact, to my knowledge, I've only known 2 people I've ever met that I truly believe that spiritual experience. That does not mean spiritual awakening or some sort of I can see that people say breakthrough is spiritual.

Spiritual experience is involuntary deep inversion of where just everything works is different. But even that doesn't last. For example, Bill Wilson, the spiritual experience at the end of 6 months is ready to pack it in. So we can assume that having had a spirit awakening, getting to some new perception reality, it's not gonna automatically keep you safe for the rest of your life. It requires a maintenance.

So we get off to do these these steps have become the gradual, spiritual, incremental experience. And we we talked about them? And for the last few days, I read one last go over them. We discovered the steps that they are not anywhere near as complex as we like to place them in our mind, because they are quite simple and straightforward and they are simple solutions for complicated minds, not complicated solutions for complicated mind. And we first we have to admit that we've had trouble with drinking, and we in the same step must have admit that we have trouble sobriety.

I could do the trouble drinking just as another phenomenon. Sobrieties become untenable. Just admit that, and you're taking the first step. Then you somehow we have to we somehow have to come to believe that a power greater than ourselves, whatever that might be, God meeting AA sponsor Snow will return us to sanity. I think the case can be made that sanity for us is to be able to live in reality without having to induce chemical psychosis.

And we're going to try to turn our will in our lives over the care of this power, whatever that may be, which in effect means I'm going to do what you tell me even though it doesn't make sense. Then we started to leave. I got kind of the surrender steps which I would imagine, as I've said before, I find myself using from time to time long after I took them the first time. So every so often, I gotta go back and surrender and remember why I'm doing these things. Then the steps where we take a fearless and searching moral inventory of our self, write down things that we have always hidden, things, like, definitely wouldn't tell our psychiatrist, things that are just so frightening and fearful.

There's a school of thought, and I'm not arguing with it, that says, well, we should put down bad things and good things. Let's put down good things too. It will be so painful to put down the bad things, But that's alright, but unfortunately, there's no place to do. And the 5th step is to admit to god, ourselves, and other human beings the exact nature of our wrongs. I guess the right you just take in your pocket, keep with you for every few minutes.

I'm a wonderful son, bitch. This is not a step where you're gonna feel good. Writing the 4th step is what we're talking about. If you're good in the good 4th step, it should make you feel bad. It should make you realize what a what a wreck you're really in bed.

And you take the piss up and hope. One of the great reasons to take with a sponsor or an AML, in my opinion, is that you may get psychiatric insights from doctor. You may get religious insights from a clergyman. You may get baffled in comprehension from a total stranger, but from an AA member, you will get some identification and realize that you are not as different as you feel, as you feel. What you want to make reading the table with the sponsor?

You ask the sponsor to. You don't want to give them control of your life temporarily, but you want to tell them what you really who you really are, which is ridiculous. You write this inventory, you take it with God, yourself, another human being. Now one of the things is to remember is that so far up to this point, that really is you can get this from psychoanalysis. You can get this from going to see a good psychiatrist where you talk about things, you identify things, and learn about things.

The thing that makes AA different in psychiatry is that in a sense, psychiatry ends at that level of talking and evaluating and discovery and analyzing. But in AA, that just gives you the place you now identified the things you're now going to work on. Now you start working on it, and we talked about it yesterday morning. Coming to trying to come to the ability to become willing to surrender the defects of character. Most defects of character are deeply ingrained and some are associated with survival and certainly most are associated with whatever comfort there is in life.

But we have to try to become willing and ask as we have done the 3rd step on a continuing basis, ask the health of this power to do something of myself I can't do. So we ask this power to do it, and we can't. We'd like to be willing to give up everything. It's we at least have to be willing to do it in principle, so as it becomes they become available to give them up. And in the 7th step, we humbly carry before God as ourselves whatever that maybe or that power, we're talking about humbly, the humility of just being myself without heirs or without false negations or false defenses, to ask god to remove these defects of character.

And, again, knowing that I don't know if I can do by myself any of them. But with God's help, maybe little by little, I can get rid of them. As the road gets narrower and I realize that there are values of life that are more that more than supplants some of these defects of character. Then you you want us to start living in harmony with the world around us, try to not carry the terrible baggage of the past, pretty hard to live a day at a time carrying a pack that contains resentments and despairs and hatreds and long list of people who have hurt me and on and on. So we try to list write a list of people.

We have harmed and become willing to make amends to them all, and a great many of them we will discover from our perception have harmed us more than we harm them. So the argument there is to the hope there is that we can start off by issuing a blank forgiveness. We are going to want them to forgive us, but we our our lives depend on more comfort than their lives too. They can be able to live with unresolved resentments, but I cannot for in death of it. So I'll try to forgive them.

I can I can forgive most of them and some require a little more work? Some I had to make the amend to before I could forget it. I used to get it for you. You don't hate them after you're done making amends, I said yesterday. Yeah.

We make amends to such people except when you do so injure them rather than We go and bite the bullet. Some is really fun and romantic. I'm sorry. Oh, I'm so glad. It's so good to see you.

A wonderful man. Just glad I made that a man. But others are, get out of my office, you sick bastard. Did you say that? That's what you said.

But that's part of the nature too. Some don't even hear it. Some it's too late. Some are dead. Some are gone.

Find techniques to deal with that. We make those. As I said, the phenomenon of the immense step, at least I can perceive it for my personal strength because all my life I've been a hater. I'm easily I'm a great hater. I can resent and hate on the top of my head.

It was most of me to find that I never hated any of those people after I made a mention to them. I didn't necessarily like it, but I didn't hate it. It never kept me awake at night ever again. Then we continue to daily inventory to check and see how we're doing, see how our selfishness is and our self willed for running rampant and what we were doing. And as Bill wrote in the book, we tried to practice 4 elements, today which are almost superhuman, but we've been working on them, trying to practice self restraint to not instinctively, to try to take a moment to honestly analyze the nature of the conflict.

Am I fault, is everything's fault, is it making differences on and on before you say. Then if I find myself after a moment computer like honest analysis, find myself at fault in this to bring myself to swallow my pride and my being right, I'm admitting I'm wrong. Sorry. I guess I'm innocent. Tough tough thing to do.

And the other aspect, of course, is try to their fault to immediately continue to, almost superhuman, Almost I don't know if Tracy could do it, but she's been working on it. And once you can do it, but really it's remarkable. It really works, but it's more it's more fun to holler at him. The perversity of the human spirit. You're sorry later and you wish you hadn't.

I mean, you know, but call it crossing a line sometimes. And then, which brings it up to seeking through prayer and meditation to increase our conscious contact with God as we understand it. By this time, hopefully, we have something beyond our sponsor. But at least I would get to the point that the power that our sponsor represents, but the thing is you would certainly realize that your sponsor was not the power of the universe, but you could still believe that he was the official representative of it. But as far as you're concerned, was it AA or the group?

But hopefully there's some as you change your resentments and failures and despairs and hostilities and hatreds, you should open up the channel a little bit to see, well, maybe despite all my fear, maybe god does love me. Maybe maybe god's grace exists and god's grace falls on me just like it falls on the pope, like it falls on the president, like it falls on everybody. God's grace falls on anybody, it falls on everybody. If you don't fall on anybody, you don't fall on anybody. You gotta believe that.

Also, it is not a godlike feature. It's just some biased, bigger than old thing, and would be of no help to anybody. So we try to seek through prayer and meditation using a great one of the great prayers of all time for people like us. That Saint Francis of Assisi prayer where we learn to whether it's anger to bring love or whether it's fear to bring faith and on and on. By giving, by forgetting himself, we find very, very anti anti all of my old feelings and occasionally my feelings today.

It'd be so nice if we could look at these old feelings and say they are not put away, but they're not put away, they're just what we've done is reduce them to feelings and kept them from being obsessions. And many times they just feelings come and go, but at least these feelings when they come and go, I know their feelings, they don't to give in and run my life based on the distorted perception of hatred or I might want to do for a few moments, but I don't have to do a month to a year in my life. To improve our conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that up. I think that means as I said yesterday, to get away from the continual dickering, the continual bargaining with God. If you'll do this, I'll do this.

If you'll do this, I'll do this. Won't you please keep my aunt alive? I'm saying the fact it would be an inconvenience to me if she died. Please let her stay alive in her cancer and lay screaming in her pain so I won't be inconvenienced. God, just arrange all these things as I give you orders.

So so easy for cunning, cunning folks like me to do things like that, maybe like some of you. So I had to really confine my prayers to saying thank you for my sobriety and thank you for keeping me relatively sane and safe and sober, and then praying and asking for knowledge of God's will for me, whatever that might be as incongruous as it may seem at the time and the power to carry it out. If I have some question about what it is, I better check it with somebody around the sponsor or someone who knows me well. So this all of this has done what? It has theoretically and hopefully and apparently done because it's working millions of people.

Brought about a spiritual awakening, a changed perception. A Bill Wilson rally in 5 minutes, it takes some of us days weeks months and sometimes years to get turn on days to get a different perception of reality. And even that perception is not a constant because it's it's interlaced with human emotions that all humans have. It comes. What we've got rid of is a perpetual distortion.

We have a natural perception, hopefully, with some degree of hope. Hope has interest at least part of the time replace desperation and hopelessness. So the 12 step, very simply just analyzing having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps. It's amazing in this day and age that so many people are waiting to for a spiritual awakening before experience before you wanna take the steps. I can't take my inventory.

I've had my spiritual awakening yet. That sounds silly, but it really is true. You have to keep saying you do it as a result of these things. This is not a prerequisite to taking the steps. This is the result of it.

You take the steps for rotten motives, stinking reasons, resentment and hostility if you have to, but eventually you get some spiritual awakening. And it must bring us about because there are millions of people who have stayed sober who by any test of scientific dogma have never been able to stay sober in the history of mankind. The spiritual awakening, having a spiritual awakening, we know these stuff. We try to carry this message to alcohol, which, of course, is the number one therapy of alcoholism, ongoing therapy. Introspection is not the ongoing therapy.

In fact, that's one that we almost avoided except briefly in the condensed therapy. Continual self obsession. Self obsessed people like to find socially acceptable reasons to get back into self obsession. That makes them goofy, but they're spiritually goofy, so it seems alright. They, carry the message to our hearts.

Now we all know the story about how I mentioned the other day, Doctor. Bob and Bill sat and discussed spiritual insights for 2 weeks, and Doctor. Bob got drunk. And when he came back, they decided to as Bill states, so we're trying to help all these fools on the streets of New York, so it's the Acrid Hospital, called on a guy named Bill Dee, who was a lawyer from Kentucky, who had taken a geographic to Akron, real Southern accent. And he went to Akron and got worse there and he pranked and people drowned him.

He was married to a very strong willed woman. I many, many years ago, I heard him talk tonight. I said, how are you, Bill? She said, he's fine. Let me home check.

I'll tell you. But yeah. But, end up in Cullinan. Years ago, I heard him talk and I said, it's interesting. Yeah.

Because he'd been talked to by everyone in my district. And he he said, I've been in that hospital in Akron High. Real terrible. My wife came in and said, 2 of the callers wanted to talk to you about my drink. And I thought, oh, hell.

I don't wanna talk to anybody else about my drink. She insisted so I I agreed. I understood that. And them 2 fellas came in and the funniest thing, they never talked about once. They talked about and how they felt, and I never heard anybody describe me quite so clearly.

I was so impressed with them. I stuck with them. I've been with them ever since. If you give me number 3, we got a couple others. Did they had something didn't stay so now I know.

And they got Ernie. It's cold. I thought I might take a minute talking about Ernie. I enjoyed thinking about him. He is a young guy.

1st young guy in the head came around this of course, he went AAV and still off branch of the offshore group in a sense. And he was the serpent who brought evil into the Garden of Eden because he came and had AA's first relationship, And it's never been the same since. Of all the words that sponsors can hear on the telephone, that's the last one you wanna hear. I wanna talk to you about my new relationship. So really thinking fast.

Mister Emerson ends the day. He go home long time ago. But usually, they got you. You know? And then you listen to that crap.

Oh, this this is the one. I knew that I was. But god. I said, it's just so wonderful. I thought it was so come and walk out of detox then.

So Ralph and said you need to try to put the phone on the uh-huh machine and get back to work. That's really all I wanna hear. And, you know, one of the things about alcoholics, our emotions discussed in 12th set incidentally, but in the 12/12, the scientists who decide we are highly sensitive, childish, and grandiose. That doesn't have coverage. That's why that's been.

That's that's after your well. You should see it before. But, anyway, we all have these all of us have these emotions. Most most immature emotions are predicated on things like, I want things to be wonderful. That's all I want.

I want I'm looking I'm willing to do anything. I want a wonderful relationship. I want a wonderful car. Want a wonderful job and a wonderful home. And you are always when I say you I mean us, we are always disillusioned.

It takes a long time sometimes in sobriety to discover one of the great facts of life It makes you comfortable but at least it gives you an explanation. Nothing is wonderful after you're used to it. Nothing is wonderful after you're used to it. It can be good, you can love it but it isn't wonderful. It doesn't have that tinglinglinglingling every time you see it.

One day the wonderful car just becomes the old car. And you know you hate to tell these guys that when they're in the midst of a new relationship. Hate to tell the bad news, you know. It is gonna stay this way. I I know this is the one because we were having lunch today.

We reached for the salt. Our fingers touched, and I swear to God there was a spark. There's electric I could feel a spark. And you hate that you don't know whether to tell them or not. It's gonna be like that long.

3 years from now the chances are 1 in a trillion but you might be married to her and you might both be separate and living happily wrecked or have 2 little wonderful children. But it isn't gonna stay that way. You're gonna be sitting at the kitchen table, you're gonna have lunch, you're gonna reach for the song, your prayers are gonna touch, you're gonna say, give me the goddamn salt. That's, that's the curse of being a human being. Which is not bad except people like me go through life being continually disillusioned because things don't stay wonderful.

I expect that they will stay wonderful. In AA, I've learned that they will not stay wonderful. That is not a realistic perception. But this Ernie came in with his fell in love with Doctor. Bob's daughter and they got married.

Our first marriage. And that sounds pretty good. Marrying your sponsor's daughter should bring you a certain amount of certainty. Most of you know that happened in my family. My youngest daughter watched my chagrin, fell in love with a guy I'd been sponsoring for several years, about a 10 year difference in their ages and they got married.

I didn't want to ruin everything but I felt like it. I would say that's always to me but the textbook example of mixed emotions. If you want to know what mixed emotions really are. It's watching your daughter go down the aisle to be married to a man who's 5th steps you've heard. You can't really say anything and disrupt the ceremony, but you you can give little clues if you want to like let me know if you ever reach a sheep home, honey.

But, he got married. He got married. And he didn't have to be as active as the others because he was now a member of the family. So they were all shocked when he got drunk and died. But as always is the case, alcoholics don't take the steps and keep things going on.

Let them die. Funny thing was, it turned her bitter towards AA for the next 40 years. Just around the last few years that she had been available to say kind things about it again. But they thought she knew that but it's just that's a tremendous scar. That's a little by little group and AA12 step work has always been the same.

It is carrying a message. And the great help of course is that it helps the person carrying the message. That's what it's about. Hopefully they will stay sober, but the person carrying the message starting with Bill Wilson and the only thing that cannot help is that if you get caught up in depending on whether or not they stay sober. And that happens we say what should never happen.

It happens a lot. Has happened to me and it's happened to anybody who's ever made 12 step calls to try to help people. When they get drunk you feel the sense of the life failed. I'm no good, I'm a loss, not much but you do it once in a while. You got to somehow remember that these stories of these people, Bill Wilson failed again and again in the 1st 6 months and after he said, hard to remember that most of the people drank.

Very few states over, very few. After 3 years Bill Wilson wrote, we are a group of 100 men and women who have stayed sober a year. And he later wrote that was not exactly correct. We were only 79 but 100,000 better. We all understand that clearly.

We're going to write something. But it's terrible, terrible attrition. And as I said last night, you kind of just put a straight to to me is always there are 2 great virtues in trying to be of service to others or help others or help them get so far. 2 great virtues and a couple not so great virtues. The great virtue is when I am trying to help him, it makes me think about what I'm saying and it makes me focus on my own things that have happened to me.

And secondly and perhaps even more important, when I am thinking about him, I am not thinking about me and that is the goal of life. That is humility. Thinking about someone else just being yourself. The not so great virtues, I guess there are virtues, they're not so great. There's a certain feeling of pride that comes as if your efforts are crowded.

It's nothing to brag about. We know it's not Australian but there's still as human beings there's a nice feeling to know that somebody stayed sober because you helped. Gives you a little better reason for being. I've been a sponsor a lot of times. A lot of people I've worked with with have gotten drunk over the years have gone away shaking their fists.