A 12 Steps & Service Workshop in Richmond, VA

By cold drink. My little hootenanny done here real quick. Well, I'm sure glad you got here. We'd have never made it without you. I'll I'll just sort of get us opened up.

And, if what we do this morning is, Don says he's gonna have to fly away to to the Golden West, we'll, he'll pretty much do the first the first half of the work, and then we'll take a break. And so that's gonna be somewhere around 10 well, you I mean, I know there's no point in telling this group what time we're go do something. It'll be it'll be roughly around or even telling them why we're gonna do something. But somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 or 50 10 or 10:15, as dictated by the airline, we'll take a break. And and it will shoot for a 15 minute break.

And and, if if we can if we stay fairly close to that, then we'll shoot to to finish up around 11:30. So we take a little little so so I can take a little bit of a break, and then, we're gonna go over and do correction workshop in, at, somewhere in Richmond at, at 1:30. So, why let's open with a surrender prayer. God God. Grant me your serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

It is good news. I welcome my buddies, the Back Row Gang from, North Carolina. I guess everybody knows They're they're the honesty committee from North Carolina. Check it out. It's Steve.

You haven't met him, it's Steve on the left on on our left. Your your right. And the pretty page and then Jerry. Pretty one. Pretty.

Good god. Well, did you notice he's got on he's he must have gotten married. His shirt's pressed. That's a very discerning eye out. It is great to have home folk here to help us get out of town and, as well, guys.

We've had a good weekend. I had the chance to work with my buddy and, just a neat experience. He said we ought to keep on dancing like this. So a good chance we might. And, so Donald, what we're gonna basically do is is gonna we're gonna start out with the immense stuff, sort of look at how that gets look at how that gets us back into the community.

And then in the latter half, we're gonna try to pick up that notion of effectiveness and how those last three steps kind of put us into some effective things with some recognition that our world has to get a little bigger than just me and mine. And so generally that's the kind of direction we're going to try to go for it. So Donald, we're putty in your hands. There are 3 people that can get away with that. No.

Who'd that call you? Donald. Donald? Oh, no. That's what you said.

Jesus. That was fraud of you, and I'll tell you. The one that bothers me is Donnie. Oh. I still have an aunt that calls me Donnie.

She's the only one left. God. Now there we are. So through the nature of alcoholism and my own strenuous effort, I managed to become completely alone. Worked my way down to where I even gave away my name and became a number in a single cell maximum security penitentiary.

There is no more alone than that one. But all that is, is a reflection of the alone I had become out here. And become out here. Alone in the crowd. Who the hell am I relying on you to tell me that?

And then having learned not to get in crowds because if you tell me who you want me to be, I can be that very quickly. And then you tell me and I can be that. But if there's 2 or 3 of you, I get confused. So I have to you know? The ego sense that I'm the only one on the planet is what I'm talking about.

And one of the reasons I didn't get along with folks is you didn't really exist for me. It was me and who I needed you to be so I could get what I wanted. And then when I was through with that, you disappeared. Either I moved or you threw me out. And in one way or the other, you just disappeared.

And there really wasn't a whole lot of regret about that. It's just a lot confusion. On the other side of that is this spirit that is within each one of us, I think, that knows the truth. I am you, and you are me. We are truly kin in any way you can imagine it.

We all come from the same place. We all want the same things. We all want the same things. I need a little appreciation, a little warmth, a little food, a little sex, a little applause, a little comfort, a little recognition. We all need a little of that.

Bill was very clear about that in the 12 and 12. I I don't use the 12 and 12 much, but that his understanding and ability to communicate that these are our basic instincts. These are our basic These are our basic character traits. My character defects are just natural traits that I have that are defective. I want a little applause.

No. I want the entire world to give me a standing ovation. Regularly. And I want that to happen before I've done anything. This is when I come on stage.

My genes tell me as a young male that my main job on this planet is to repopulate it. That's a genetic imperative. It's not a joke. And, there's a process of selection. I don't wanna get all clear about that, but I didn't meet the criteria.

I just had the urges. By the way, one of the blessings of getting older is I know that's no longer my job. It's his job. One of the needs of a human being, a person in a human condition, is for continuity and regularity. The sense of belonging that comes from knowing we get it here because we have an 8 o'clock meeting.

We know that's when we're gonna be able to gather with people of our own own kind. There will be a comfort period here. We establish that. That's good. Natural and normal.

As an alcoholic, I tend to either over establish it or ignore it completely. Everything is done on my time. So anyway, I end up alone. Through the process we've been talking about, I wake up. I'm not alone.

Someone comes and talked to me, and they were telling me their story, and all of a sudden, that's me. How do you know that? I had a wonderful experience with a kid in a meeting one time. I'm sitting next to him and he's calm, cool, and collected. And, in the course of the light conversation, he's also just 3 days sober.

I got a chance to look in his eyes. And I need to make contact because he's way too calm, cool, and collected. All of his energy is being devoted to staying in that chair. He's not gonna hear a thing. So I leaned over and I said, you know, I bet inside you feel like you got 10,000,000 needles all pointed out and any second they're gonna go.

He came up out of the chair. How'd you know that? Well, I know that because I have had that. And I recognize the look in his eye. Now he and I have made contact.

Scared the hell out of him. But all of a sudden, he's not alone. The great master used to walk the world. And the stories they tell him, one of the things that he would do, he'd come upon some guy who was sitting by the leaned up against the wall all crippled and covered with sores and blind. And, the master did some interesting things.

Very simple stuff that I watch happen in AA. That's why I know I'm in the right place. The very first thing he did was this, didn't say a word. I don't care if you wanna be alone. You can't be when that happens.

You can hate it. You can rebel against it, but you can't deny. Whoops. So he established contacts. Then he knew something the guy in the wall didn't know.

The guy in the wall thought he was alone because he was crippled and had sores and was blind, and so people didn't want to be around you. The master knew he was crippled and blind and had sores because he thought he was alone. So it touched him. Then he would say something like, is there any bloody there? Yeah.

So he touched him. Then he would say something like, is there any bloody there? Like, is there anybody there? You don't have to do this anymore, you know. You don't have to.

Whatever's wrong with you. You want to walk? And, well, yeah. And he did he was able to say that with such total conviction that the person on the other end hurt it. Lie.

Well, they usually are. I had gotten so desperate to become part of something that I was willing to risk even being a little bit honest. Even though I was being guided by big book people, I jumped ahead and actually went back to my cell and spent 2 hours writing down the worst things I'd ever done. I thought, that'll get me some status here. I will be accepted.

I will be accepted here. I will be accepted. Took it back to my sponsor and he said, that's garbage. He wrote that to impress me. Get out of here.

And crushed me. But I I'm resilient and I have a will. And by God, I'd worked 2 hours on this thing. Somebody's gonna listen to it. So I went and found me a guy, A guy named Leroy who was a member of the AA group, but wasn't really a member of the AA group.

He showed up for meetings. And I would tell Leroy one of these things I've done and Leroy would say, well, that wasn't that bad. And, what I awoke to was the fact that once again, I had picked somebody, and I had picked somebody, and I had picked somebody, and I had picked somebody, and I had picked somebody, and I had picked somebody, and I had picked somebody, and I had And, what I awoke to was the fact that once again, I had picked somebody who'd tell me what I wanted to hear, so I didn't have to do anything. And if if I didn't stop that instantly, I would die a very ugly death. And I'm not afraid of death.

I haven't been afraid of death for a long time. I've done it three times. It just it doesn't do anything. You get reborn again right away. And Shit.

What a waste of time. Anyway, What I was afraid of is that to die an ugly death means that for some period of time, just prior to that, I'm going to have to live a very ugly life. And that's the one I can't stand. And that's the one I can't stand. And that's the one I can't stand.

And foundation to get away from the guilt of making amends and gives a real purpose. If I'm just prior to that, I'm going to have to live a very ugly life. And that's the one I can't stand. This gives a nice foundation to get away from the guilt of making amends and gives a real purpose. If I'm going to live a useful life and I'm stuck here, my family is.

The shortest the shortest the the youngest member in the family cemetery that I saw was 65, and he died in a train wreck. So I don't think that one counts. Rest of them are 80, 90. Hannah Ann was a 102. My mother's 91 and she hadn't even slowed down yet.

So I need to find a way to live with some piece. I've already identified that I'm no longer alone. I've been touched. Identified the stuff that's been separating me from you. See, the whole idea of God is too big for me to grasp.

I can grasp that there probably is one. Can't grasp much else. So the mercy of this deal is that I get to work it out through you, the children of God. And anything that separates me from the children of God, separates me from God. And my life depends on not being separated.

And God. And my life depends on not being separated. Depends on it. Not my death. My life depends on it.

My life will be in accordance with that relationship. It will be reflected in everything I do. So anyway, we got through all that. And now I've got a list of people that I have harmed. If I harm you, I separate us.

And anything that separates us is not a good thing. I need to repair that. It's a very ancient principle. And I really have come to dislike the word amen because what it seems to me is I'm sorry, which is crap. I'm sorry he doesn't get it.

Our sponsor is very clear. This is you never get to say I'm sorry again. You've been sorry your whole life. What you get to say is I was was wrong. Oh, shit.

I have harmed I truly believe that this whole thing is based on willingness. I think willingness is the most demonstrable, observable, most powerful sign of the presence of God. It is so powerful that the instant I'm willing to be changed, I've already been changed. The making of amends does not set me free. The willingness you're so insensitive you have no idea what it did to them.

So you're going to go out there and make amends and screw it all up again. I want you to go back to yourself with this list and go over the list, close your eyes, picture everybody in your mind, and see if you can have a willingness to say to each one of them, I have been wrong and I've harmed you. Would you please tell me what I have to do so we can get the books to balance? And in the process of doing that that evening, I was literally lifted. The sensation was I was lifted from that chair and set free.

They didn't know I was free. They kept being locked up for a while, but not often. Remember I told you how Bruce used to come by and how astounded I was that he was walking in tears talking to us? Shortly after that occurred, they started to let me talk to people. Because following his footsteps, I began working with the next group.

It was my job to go around not just in the school, but afterwards and be available to them. Because they were sitting against the wall still, crippled. And they needed somebody to come by and say, message. I'm walking free. Follow me.

Get up off your ass. Walk. But I had some direct amends to make. I'm free already. I'm being free now.

I'm willing to truly make amends, which means to change. Amend means to change, to set right the wrongs I've done. And they wouldn't let me out to do it. So my experience is a little different than yours. Because I was ready.

There's a great danger at this point in sponsoring people. They enter into their evangelistic stage and start running amok. The danger is that I'm inclined to reign them in. Let them go. Keep guiding them, but let them go.

Let them run them up. This thing needs a few evangelists. And and the fellowship itself will cool them out. I don't have to cool them out. They'll run into somebody else's meeting.

My mother, for instance, on Christmas day, the last day of my sickness, my little boys and I went to my folks' house for Christmas. It would never occur to me not to go home. My dad met us at the door and said, Don, I'm sorry, but your mother says you can't come in here anymore because she can't stand watching you die. Now how do I straighten that one up? To this day, I can't come up with any way to do that.

I must set that straight. Well, one of the things that I learned in that 8 step experience reviewing the list was that once I asked the question, what do I have to do? I'm supposed to shut up and listen while they tell me. Okay? I know roughly I know what I did.

I know roughly what I can do to straighten it out, but my job now is to shut up while you tell me what I needed to do. Do. Months after I got out, I was allowed to go see my mother. She was frankly quite reluctant. Destroyed everything worthwhile in my life.

And I have no right to ever expect anyone to even talk to me again. And with that attitude, I'm free. Whatever happens now is appropriate. You want to throw me out? You should.

You want to forgive me? Good. But it doesn't matter. I'm just here to set the screen. So that's the attitude I approach life with.

I don't have any rights. That's when you can think about at 2:30 in the morning when you can't sleep. But I don't. I gave them all up. Burn them out.

So I got to my mother's house and we just had a little light chat. My dad, fortunately, was a very wise man. He helped My dad fortunately was a very wise man and he helped guide me as to the timing of this visit. And in the talk, I found a way to ask the question. You don't ask that bluntly always.

What do I have to do to set this straight? But I found a way to ask the question. And her response was, honey, all I have ever wondered for you is that you be happy. So for 32 years now, I've been going by my mother's house on a regular basis happy. And it worked.

She said it was 6 years before she believed I was gonna amount to anything. But that isn't why I was going. I dragged my happiness with me. My wife, my grandchildren, $2 bills, the fun stuff I get to do. My mother's a traveler, but it's getting a little harder on her.

So I tell her about all the places I've been. I tell her about you and what I'm doing. She thinks I'm the president of AA. And and I thought one time I really need to straighten her out on that. I heard her say that to one of her friends on the phone.

I thought I better straighten her out on that. And I realized, no. After all the disappointments that she's had on me, let her think it. As long as you and I understand I'm only the vice president. After I have initially addressed the harm I did to you, Now it's about changed behavior.

I must be a different person, which means I will behave in a different way. And this is something I'm not powerful enough to do on my own. This is a spiritual deal. This comes out of the fact that I truly understand if I cause you pain, I cause me pain. And I can't stand any more pain.

I think the spiritual life is one of enlightened self interest. I still want mine. I just finally understand that the best way for me to get mine is to make sure you get yours. And mine just comes right along with it. But it's still there.

There's no nobility in in spirituality. Nobility is one the greatest dangers to spirituality that I know of. And yet, we get busy doing things that are perceived as really quite doors for you, but don't you? The the change with my dad is very simple. I went to him with my list.

I'm among list makers, so I have to mention lists. And he looked at it and I can see in his eyes, he don't wanna hear this shit. And I started out we're supposed to be hard on ourselves and easy on others. That's a basic principle, not only in making amends, but in life itself. So I've been taught to prepare.

I said, dad, first of all, I need to straighten out some stuff I did in the past. Do you have some time? Yes. I lied to you. I stole from you.

I I cheated you. Blah blah blah. He said, please stop. I know all that. All you can do by telling me again is hurt me all over again.

So I get to live with the details of that. What he said was you and I will just have to start from here. Wonderful thing. We started from there. And for 27 years, my dad and I built a relationship.

It was both father and son, man to man, friend to friend. We built 1 day by day by day. I owed him some money. And he says, the whole thing's written off. Don't worry about it.

I said, no. This is one I got to take care of. I said, alright. Here's what we'll do. Every now and then, you can buy and give me a little bit of money.

And when you think it's done, it's done. But I don't want to be any part of your accounting And money. And that tiny little chink in her armor died, she inherited some money. And that tiny little chink in her armor opened up and she got it. She reported her for the money.

I saw the only mean streak I've ever seen in my mom. I'm not her for the money. I saw the only mean streak I've ever seen of my mom. Didn't last long, but she got it. And every now and I, I come by with a $20 bill to repay my debt.

And that became his pocket money. It's more than me just saying I'm sorry. Now I'm to be of service all along the way. The big book's very clear. It says that while we're trying to get our lives in order, this is not an end in itself.

Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service that God knows about us. This is how I get fit. I do these exercises and they make me fit to be around. And my transgressions then become tools by which the spirit can work. It's wonderful.

Time finding the words to describe my experience with it, but that 12 step study school we started in was partly because we were not fit to go to the regular meeting where there were real people. We weren't fit. It didn't mean we were bad people. We weren't fit. We hadn't done anything to become fit.

We were part of the a, but we had to go through this orientation. Now, I don't subscribe to that out here and yet I do. Okay? Old fellow named Bernie Roddie one time, He was an old bank robber. You loved him.

Drunk bank robber. Robbed a bank in downtown Denver one time to about $35,000 went up and rented most of the Brown Palace Hotel and had a hell of a party over the weekend. It was broke on Monday. And the Brown Palace is only a couple blocks from the bank and, he did a little time for that one. One.

They just followed him to the party. Bernie only had one leg. They've been amputating him for a while. And he had a nasty mouth and nasty attitude, but he really loved people. And he kind of took me under his way.

I've been on the street maybe 5 months when, he did when I was getting a car. It was my car because he couldn't drive but get in the car. We're going to Brighton, he says. It's a meeting up at Brighton. Dick and Mary Earbond's meeting.

Fine. I got to this little church. We went down the stairs and these 2 older people just put themselves all over me. And I got to experience ovation before I'd ever done anything. And I got my standing ovation before I'd ever done anything.

He had waited 5 months. I found out later because we talked to make sure that I was fit to go one of those lovely people. He wasn't dragging no bum into that one. That's part of what I learned about this thing. And I I pass that on.

I take the people I sponsored a tamper with these people. I'm sure they're not gonna screw this deal up. Up. They're not going to tamper with these people. My room is one of them.

Anyway, I began to get involved, and I began to get Anyway, I began to get involved. I gotta tell a story on my coming down to see you because it fits here. See, this is a lifetime process. When I when I moved down to North Carolina and went to work with Tom, I figured I'm fairly safe. Now I'm I'm in the middle of my second or third month of interferon treatment for hepatitis c and I don't feel good.

And for whatever the reason, I'm being told by my spirit, leave home, leave your support system, leave your doctor, leave everything, and go down to North Carolina where they don't even speak English. They speak southern. But I'm safe enough because I'm gonna join Tom's group. But I am prone to spiritual arrogance from time to time, and I know how it's supposed to be done. And they weren't doing it right.

And this is a this was a lovely group. I had a little meeting ahead of time where everybody got introduced and they had this thing called the chip system which I'd never seen before. And then they broke up into 4 different meetings. It was a beginner's meeting, step 1 through 4, I think it was, and then step 4 through 12, and then a big book meeting. I thought this is cool until the chipmunk got up and waved this silver token in the air and said this is how you join a hay.

If you don't wanna come down and get it. I think my God, I've fallen into a bunch of baptist real often. But I'm cool. I'm 25 years sober or so and I'm cool. I don't say anything.

Then I go off to the the step meeting. And there's no big book. They're reading out of 12 and 12. And that's fine. It's just that I don't have a lot of experience with that.

And, so one more little piece of discomfort shows up here. The next week, I go to the meeting on 4 through 5 through 12. Same thing. 12 and 12. And I don't have any experience.

I don't feel right. And the way I translate when I don't feel right is they're not doing it right. Got to the big book meeting, and they were in the family afterward, and there was actually a big book there. In my arrogance, I'm thinking, we're okay now. And the chairperson read a little from the family.

Afterwards, somebody mentioned dysfunctional family and the meeting went to hell. Then that young girl, I can't remember her name, 19 years old, in an effort to make me feel part of the group, asked me if I would be the chipmunk. Cindy. Cindy. Yeah.

And I lost it. They also after the meeting did a big book raffle. And and I don't dig raffles. I don't think A and E's to raise money. What I found out later is he set it up as a way to cheat and get books into the hands of new people.

That's what that was about. But I'll go off on this poor little girl and her boyfriend. There are 2 things I will not do in this group. I will not hand out those damn chips and I will not participate in that damn book raffle. If you ever want to know why, I'll tell you.

He said, I want to know why. So I told him. And on the way home, my heart is breaking. I know I've been a jerk. So I did what I had been taught to do and found out why their behavior threatened me and went through all that stuff.

And once again realized something I've known for years. Whether I feel like I belong here has nothing to do with whether you accept me or not. It has to do with whether I accept you or not. That's when I go on. So I was I got it fisted.

I was it you I fisted up with, Jerry? Yeah. He's only one I could trust to see what a jerk I was. I had to go back to the group the next week and go to Cindy and say, could I please have the privilege of being a child. I was wrong, I said.

Completely wrong. And thanked her for her kindness, and they let me be the chipmunk the next week. I did not say this is how you join. Said this is a good marker of the night you decided to get sober. It'd be a good token to have to remind you.

And if you like, one of these that night, nobody got any chips. And I was never asked to do it again. I don't know whether I did it wrong or not. The thing was I had to that's the kind of stuff we have to straighten out. The hydromic stuff is over.

I need to belong somewhere and I need to be part of it. That means I have to accept you as you are. The book raffle got to be fun because I woke up the fact this happens after the meeting. Don't be such a millennial thinking a cop. I still don't do raffles.

So it got to be that I was the one who got to pick the number because he and I talked about it. I was the only honest one in the room. I didn't have a ticket. And I began to understand what he was doing. He was making sure the books got into the hands of new people.

In fact, there's times we cheated. There's no carny trick. When you use a hat, you put winning number in the band and drop the others here, and when you pick it up, you got the winner. We did that. Yeah.

It's a long way of saying what I just said. Whether I feel like I belong or not has nothing to do with whether you accept me, it's whether I accept you. And once I've cleared away the garbage in my head that you're doing something to me and understand no one has ever done anything to me, and if they have, I set myself up for it. Then I can take you as you are. You took me as I was.

So amend means to change. And there's some principles behind it that are critically important. One of them is being on time, being here now. And what it translates out onto the street is if we have an appointment at 8, from my viewpoint, you need to know there's a 10 minute window on either side. If you come 20 minutes early, I'm not ready.

I'm doing something else. My life is really full, And I move from one thing to another. And if you're too early, I'm not there. A 10 minutes till if you're coming to my house, for instance, I got a chair out. Fine.

I need to go sit in it and watch to see. Because I want you to experience something that I experienced. When you show up at my house, as you walk up toward the house, I open the door for you. Important. You don't have to knock.

We translate that in groups by putting people at the door to welcome you in. They shake your hand as you come in. Very important stuff. It's a terrible thing. And I know Tom's run into it because we get around a lot to go someplace to a meeting and nobody ever talks to you.

They don't whether you've been there a little while or if you're brand new, the meeting goes on, nobody ever talks to you and you're gone. There are other meetings where you can't even get to the coffee pot. You gotta go through this gauntlet of people. I like them. I love having some noodle twelves at me because he doesn't know better.

I just let him do it. You know? It's kind of fun to see how far they'll go before they ask you how long you've been sober. I like the enthusiasm. And I do it pretty much.

There was a period of time let's see. I must have been 5 or 6 years sober. I went to work at the call it a reformatory. The Colorado Reformatory, getting jobs for the guys as they came out, jobs and housing. We did some preliminary work so they didn't hit the street cold.

They had something to go to. This is a 120 miles from Denver. I had to come over once a week on Monday to check-in to the office and to catch my home group because the group in Buena Vista was me, another guy, and a continually drunk Mexican kid who came and went. I need a little bit more than that. Back.

And I've got these 2 boys who've been with me the last four and a half years on the road. So their experience with me is sometimes he gets back and sometimes he doesn't. And sometimes when he comes back, we move. There was a lack of continuity there. And the way I have to make amends to my children is to create an arena where they can heal.

There has to be continuity. We call it home. And I I thought one time, you know, with that going on with the boys, when I leave every Sunday night and I don't get back until Tuesday morning, I wonder what that's doing to them. So I ask them. Ask people.

You want to know what what's going on with them? Ask them. They'll tell you. I said, boys, does it bother you Then I go over to Denver once a week. They said, no, we don't mind if you go, but please make sure you tell us when you're going to get back.

See, the the way I change that is from undependable to dependable. I stop being a surprise and start bringing surprises. But there's a need to know. I fly a lot. My wife's afraid of a stepladder.

She's never comfortable knowing that I'm in the air. See you when I get back. If I get back. When I get back. No.

She has my timetable. She knows exactly when I'm supposed to. Right? I will call her from the Richmond airport after I've checked in and I said, we're ready. And when I hit the ground in Denver, I will call her and tell her we're on the ground.

And I will call her and tell her we're on the ground. And it's just a little thing. It's subtle, but that's a necessary thing. For her comfort, not mine. I'm comfortable.

She needs to know that. The people in my life need to know that. You need to know and so I tell everybody. My home group is known as an AA group, and we meet at St. Joseph's for me and can't find me, I'll be there.

Or if by chance I'm on the road, they will know when I will be back. My group knows when I'll be back. They're informed too because I'm a member of that group. My little group does things together. We don't just meet on slicked this hospital head nurse books from us.

We bought a case of 3rd editions. So she will have them so she can pass them out when she runs across an alcoholic. And she will call us, so we can go see. She has agreed that it would be a good idea. We planted a seed that maybe we could do an in service for could do an in service for the entire hospital staff.

We'll bring some couple alcoholics in an hour and a us and do an in service for the staff. Following that, we will post a meeting notice at every unit. And from time to time, we'll just drift through and talk with the nurses. This is the activity that's real service. We're we're trolling for drunks.

We know there's one in this hospital somewhere. K. But it's up to us to go find them. K? So I became a member of his group.

I took it as it was, where it was. But because I didn't have a long experience with working out of the 12 and 12, I've read it. There's pieces of it I like, but I don't work out of it. I I couldn't share from that. They would read a piece from the 12 and 12, and then everybody share their experience.

And I didn't have any. But it was on the steps, and I do have experience with that, so I share my experience with that. And then Jim came to me one day and said, where'd you get that? And I have learned to be courteous, please. I said, do you really want to know?

Okay. Yes. I really want to know. So I took took my big book out and showed you. And I said, Would you like to hear some more about this?

Well, yeah. I would. So the next thing you know, I got me somebody to sponsor at 6 in the morning. And for alarm, number 5 of them. And pretty soon, we were allowed to start a big book.

We call it workshop. It's a long term group walk through the steps. An hour and a half early so it wouldn't taint the regular membership. Right? But, that got going.

That's still going. Yeah. The group going through the steps together then going to the regular meeting. See that that activity, walking through the steps of the group, is not a separate activity. It's an activity for those who would like to do that, but you're still gonna be part of the main group.

Don't let it separate you. We learned that the hard way. We had the step group that did that and then tried to become a group of its own. Within 3 years, it was inbred and died. New people wouldn't come.

We were so good at what we were doing, we just blew everybody off. One do that. I'm I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I've got to be able to go anywhere in Alcoholics Anonymous and accept them for who they are as they are so I can be accepted the same way to bring my contribution. We each have a contribution to make to life.

Nobody but me can make mine. Nobody but you can make yours. And it's up to me. And that's what I mean by change behavior. I'm not to stir up stuff with one exception.

If you ask me to sponsor you, now I'm compelled to stir up stuff. Tom mentioned it. I give you permission Tom mentioned it. I give you permission or you give me permission to come unannounced. One of the new ways of of change, the ways of making amends, I don't ever show up unannounced anywhere.

It would never occur to me to stop by your house just unannounced. How rude. I'll call first and see if you got anything going. Do you mind? I'll call first and see if you got anything going.

Do you mind? And I don't want you doing that in my house either. Format. Whether I agree with it or not has nothing to do with anything. I'll follow your format.

Now, after we get into the main meeting, I may become an irritant to you. And maybe not. But I will I will I will comply with the conditions of this group, however it is you want to do it. Same thing at home. We learn to take group conscience by first admitting there is a group here.

First inventory is always shabby, because I don't have enough memory. That first inventory is always shabby because I don't have enough memory nor nor the discernment to know all the stuff that's going on. They come slowly. Anyway, I've been on the street for about a year and a half, which means I was about, got close to 3 years sober. Still on federal parole.

To 3 years sober, still on federal parole, working, beginning to be allowed to visit my kids again, getting back into life. House father at a place called the hand of hope. I told you about that. A little 2 bedroom house with an empty basement where we put drunks on mattresses and then dignified it with a name. And my memory came back that On my last long run, when the kids and I were running in Cheyenne, Wyoming, I wrote a check, because that's what I did.

I'm a paper bandit. It wasn't even real. We had gotten somebody had stolen a sample book from a print company that was samples and checks, and we were just using Yeah. They were payroll checks. I wrote a bad check-in order to get a prescription that I had also written, Phil, so that I could awake enough to get the hell out of Cheyenne.

And that memory came back. And I come from the school that says there's no slack. If I harm you, I owe you. I must even be wanting to go to prison because my spiritual condition is more important thing. So I must do something about this.

I also believe that when the book says, if others will be be involved, we should consult them. And I have guides. I went to Gary, because he wasn't all too smart. But at least he he now had a family and he was doing better than I was. And he was my sponsor.

And I told him about it and he said, yeah, we gotta do something. But who will be most effective if you go to Wyoming and confess to 2 more felonies? My federal parole officer, that's who. So now I'm faced with a proposition that I need to consult him. I can't leave the state without his permission.

Can you get the feeling? I gotta go tell a federal parole officer about 2 more felonies I've committed. My old behavior was maybe we can wait a while. Now, in this life, everything is immediate. So Gary and I went down to see him, told laid the whole thing out to him.

He says, you're right. You got to do something about it. Here's the deal. You have my permission to leave the state. And if they arrest you, I will not violate you.

Go get it taken care of. Because he'd been watching. He knew about it. And I'm the rider home guy and I were talking and he said, it also says in there you're not to be a foolish martyr and stick your head in the lion's mouth because other people will be affected. He says you've got a job now.