What it means to be a trusted servant at a GSR & Trusted Servant Workshop in Minneapolis, MN

Hello, I'm Bob. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Bob. And Brenda, thank you. That was fantastic.

I just love the history of of Alcoholics Anonymous. And when you were talking, it brought to mind over there how many people here have watched the video of Bill speaking on the 12 traditions? How many didn't know there was 1? You're cheating yourself. You need to watch that.

It's Bill speaking on the 12 traditions, and it's got a couple of neat things in there to watch for. And, dynamics of that meeting are quite interesting. It's Bill sitting at this long table, and they're all smoking, number 1. I mean, I think all of them are. And a large majority of women, I think he drafted them out of the office and made them sit in there to to listen to it.

But his talk on the 12 traditions was just fantastic. The first time I didn't know it was on video, I heard an audio tape of it. And it was Bill speaking on the 12 traditions. And and in particular, you know, you think we have some hard decisions to make now and again in our group or in a 8 that we're doing. And this had this this is where Bill talked about the the piece that they wanted to do in Time Life Magazine on him, and they wanted to do he was gonna be the cover story, and he was gonna be turned either all the way around or partway around, and then they were gonna do the story on him in Time Life Magazine.

And Bill had to ponder that for quite some time. And in the talk that he was giving on it, he said that he spent many, many sleepless nights trying to decide what to do with that. Because he knew that if he did this, thousands of members thousands of alcoholics were gonna come into AA and get help right away. But then he also was looking at it and this is the vision I believe that only a power greater than ourselves could give to somebody like that. Because Bill is a power monger egomaniac just like me.

And here he is with this opportunity to be in Time Life Magazine. Now, boy, would your ego just have problems with that one? I mean, you bet. Can't we do it face on? But he had to choose no.

And he chose no for the simple reason, and this is when the, I believe when the the, saying was coined that oftentimes, the good is the enemy of the best. And he knew that if he knew that 1,000 would come in, but he knew that we were dealing with 1,000,000 yet to come. We read a little bit about that earlier, about that baby who's who's still not born out there and all the people that are coming to us. And we've got we've got so many people. We're not running out of alcoholics, by the way, so don't worry about your turn to deal with them.

But here he is, he had to he spent many countless nights, just sleepless nights over that even after he made the decision. And can you imagine making decisions like that and where you'd have to be based spiritually to be able to make a decision like that, and especially when it's playing on your ego to be in Time Magazine? And that's the kind of stuff that it's on that video. I mean, great stuff. How many didn't know that there was a video you can watch, and it's actually Bill and Lois talking together, and they're in the kitchen, they're drinking out of the coffee pot at stepping stones, and it's him telling his story?

How many didn't know that was available? It's available. You can order it from the general service office. There's probably available in your area through your, library. I know it is at ours.

Our the person our literature person takes care of that, and then those are available to rent and sometimes at, different, places, inter groups or whatever, they may be available to just rent. It's absolutely fantastic. I guarantee you, you will not regret seeing those, and they'll give you some a real bite out of our history. You get to see Bill talking about this and get to see Lois and you get to see his other people. It's fantastic.

Well, now that I've sold some of those, we're talking about trusted servants, and, I had the privilege, a few years back, in fact, 1993 in Saint Cloud, Minnesota at a regional service conference to talk about trusted servants. And and the the main thing is when we talk about trusted servants, it's, we're talking about the trusted servant. Now a lot of times I thought about it as this is somebody that we have to trust, and that's what it's all about. But there's another side to that. And the servant who's doing the doing the job has to feel trustworthy too and and be trustworthy and and make sure that we do those things.

And now you guys, here in this area, does your area chair choose your standing committee chairs? Okay. Now that's a that's a, that's a thing of trust. You trust your area chair to pick the right people, people that they've looked over. Normally, they get information from other people, the the standing committee chairs that just served, and they do that, and so you end up with trusted servants.

If you don't trust their choices, you've picked the wrong person at your own fault, straight out. And so much of the time what we do is we end up asking people to serve us and then we don't trust them. We just will not trust them, and and whose fault is that? Because we haven't been active enough to make sure that we get trusted servants or picking the right ones. But if we're gonna pick 1, then we should trust them.

But there's also a different, part there, and Brenda was talking about it a little bit here just a minute ago. And there's a thing in this, pamphlet or in this packet that we got. You've all seen this. This triangle here, the AA you see where the AA groups are? Right up on top.

That's the top of the heap. Everything in AA is directed by the groups. Everybody else serves as trusted and willing servants all the way down through. So if we're the ones who are doing the direction, we probably should know what the directions are. And that's our responsibility in the groups.

We have to be responsible to make sure that we're doing our job, that we're doing what we need to be doing, that we're, informing everybody enough so that they can be good trusted servants. Probably an area where the AA groups have fallen down worse than any place, in my opinion, and this I I won't preach on this, but it's just my been my observation where we have fallen down miserably in the last several years is in our response to the people coming out of treatment centers and court systems. We have failed miserably in sponsorship to these people. We have watched them come through the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous and just come in and sit down, and we expect them to get it. You know?

30 days ago, they didn't even know what had them. All of a sudden, they've got a name that they're is their problem, and they're thrilled to death to have something to put their finger on and say, this is my problem. And we have kind of failed in that. And so as groups, and this is what groups can get yes? That triangle that you just, showed us.

Yes, sir. Is that really a practical, view of AA, or is that a, what would be in a perfect world? I would hope it it could exist in both worlds. In a perfect world, yes, it would just exist handsomely. But in sometimes we get it a little out of whack and sometimes, like when I was a district committee member I kind of slid myself back up on top, you know, for a while until they jerk my chain and slid me back down the chain where I needed to be.

And that's what it's all about in our area's assemblies and that's where it's important for our trusted servants, especially, you know, this weekend, we were talking about the GSR, but trusted servants in general. It's so important that they're informed and that they're charged that we pick the people that are best to do that, people that we can trust. And and when we get into this trust issue, on the trusted servants, it's we need to trust the people that we choose, but that and I think I made a note on this back in here because when I was reading through it, it says, pick them, but don't be stupid. And, you know, because sometimes in AA, we have a tendency to do that. We just think everybody's, we're all in this and we're doing so well.

Everybody will do good and nobody will ever do bad. They'll never steal the treasury. They'll never take that. I don't know about you guys, but our group really screwed up there. Little gal took all of our money and got went and got hammered.

We went out looking for her, found her, drug her back. We're all bawling and hugging her and how much we trust her and to show her how much, we let her be treasurer again. As soon as there was enough money gathered up, she's gone, drunk. So we picked another one, and, she, misappropriated about a $185 out of it, and then we thought, maybe we ought to have 2 signatures on the chair. But when you pick somebody, a trusted servant, and if you are a trusted servant, I don't have anybody have any problem with somebody coming up when and asking me what I'm doing and what I did and where do these expenses come from.

That's natural questions. I should be willing to answer those. The only time I should not be willing to answer those is when I'm trying to hide something. And that's a two way street. You know, kind of hoping that the people will ask where is this coming from, why is this that way, and and there should be a 2 a free and open two way street to asking these questions.

It shouldn't be where you walk up and ask and they and somebody just makes you feel like you hadn't got wish you hadn't got up that day. It should be an open thing, there's trust. It really needs to be an open trust issue. And and I find in that, you know, it's that way in a lot of places, but in some places it's not. And and actually, I think we, cause a lot of our own misery by the way we just lay back and let things happen, we in AA.

I'm responsible. I've been responsible. I try to be more responsible now to making sure that when we have elections, that we find out who's standing and what they're doing and where they came from. And and right now, you people have a rotation coming in right now. So now is the time to start looking at the next one.

Watch who's doing what in your area. Watch who stands up and serves for 2 years, who actually shows up for 2 years. In Alcoholics Anonymous, volunteers are a dime a dozen. People who actually show up are tough to find. As you know how that is, boy.

We need volunteers to do this and hand shoot up all over. And then on the day you show up to do it, there's you and maybe one other person that got the wrong address. And it's and that's kinda how it goes. But it's trying to help get the right people in there and and making sure we watch who does what. It's not it's not wrong.

It's not wrong to ask people in your group or in your district, well, what do you think of so and so? What have you seen anything, you know, or whatever? It's we're not taking their inventory as such, but we sure wanna know if they've got what we want. Now that's the first place they directed us to ask that stuff right there and how it works. If you got what if if you've got what I want, you know, I'm gonna ask you how you did it, and then we're gonna have to do I wanna have to do what you did to get it.

But we we do ask that, and that's really important to us in our groups, in our districts, and in our areas to ask about these things. We've had some elections in our area where people can just nominate from the floor for the, standing committee chairs. And all all of a sudden, there's nobody going up for where's people? Archives or Grapevine or something. You know, there's just nobody wanted to take that position, so there's it's just sitting there silent for a while, and all of sudden somebody nominates somebody because they're a voting member of the assembly.

They nominate somebody, and nobody knows who it is. But that's the only name up there, so they get it. And a lot of the time what happens is, in about 6 months before our next assembly, they call the delegate or the area of chance, I can't make it. I can't do that, John. I'm gonna have to step down.

Well, they've been they they were so terrified when they got nominated, they couldn't they didn't know how to say no in front of everybody. So they go home and they sit on it for 6 months waiting to figure out what to do, and then at the end of the 6 months, they finally call up and say, I can't do it. Well, the area or the district, or whoever, has just lost all that time serving AA. And that's just not that's just not, that's not good on our part to do those things. And I just I just kinda wanted to touch on that that part of the trusted servant thing.

For me, being absolutely trusted to do what I'm supposed to do, go there and do it. As a delegate, I was asked I was on the literature committee too. And, we had a couple of doozies. We had the history book, and that was a whole thing all by itself. But we also had the anonymity statement.

At that time, everybody in AA was using alanons. And, so we were discussing what kind of an anonymity statement could we, come up with. And our area, a bunch of the people in our area, our area committee said, well, just go there and ask them if we can't just use elanons. And I said, well, I'll go ask. I mean, I wasn't thrilled about it, but they said go ask.

And and so in the committee, I I asked. I says, Ari suggested that maybe we just use Al Anon's. And and they'd already done it was in the combined meeting of the trustees committee and and the conference committee, and they said, we've already asked Al Anon. They said, yes. We can use it.

And I went, holy cow. They said, but we have to put down at the bottom of it, with permission of Al Anon. And so I'm sitting there digesting this for a little bit and nobody's saying anything, so I'm thinking, well, this is over with. We can move on. It hit me right there that if we put that on our tables or on our walls and it says this nice statement, with permission of Al Anon, it's almost I I felt almost like God was talking to me at that moment because he he said, pretty soon we're gonna have with permission of the Latter day Saints, with permission of, with permission of, with permission of all over our rooms.

And we were having a real hard time at that time getting people to just keep conference approved AA literature in an AA meeting. And so I had to suggest it to the committee that this might be the law the wrong way to go using Bill's words. This this piece of good may be the enemy of the best. And, boy, it just got blown out of the water just like that. And then I had to go home after the conference.

And I went back, and I told the area just exactly how it went down and what I did. And you know what the area did? They said that was great because because none of us thought of it back at the area, and we did there with more information. And that's the trust that they put in me. But I also I came back and reported on exactly how I voted on every single issue and why I chose that way.

And that to me is what a trusted servant is. They also trust me to stay up current and up to date on what's going on. And, you know, and it's like well, at the time I was delegate, we didn't even get the background information except for your committee, period. You didn't the only way you got information from any other committee is if you asked the committee chair and they decided they wanted to give it to you. That's the only way you got the other information.

So you just dealt with yours. But they expected me to deal with everything I could with the information I had. Since that time, the information flow in a a in the areas is fantastic because the information that's sent back, and then everybody gets involved. But to me, being a trusted servant is absolutely to me, I would rather fall on the sword than do something against AA. And when they charge me to do something, I do it to the absolute best of my ability.

And when they show when they when I say I'm gonna show up, I show up. That's one of the things I have to do. I wish I could say that I did that all the way through since I got into service. I had the opportunity to give my 5th step on AA service one time at a regional service conference, and I got up and got to tell him everything I did wrong. That was quite a long talk.

And, and I didn't get to I didn't do everything I could have done for my group. I was I was learning. But in the district, when I when I was the district committee member, I didn't get to all of the groups all of the time. I didn't get around to all of them. And, basically, basically, I would like to say there was some great reason for it, but I just didn't do it.

And it was it was not right. And if if anybody would have really been paying attention, they shouldn't have ever had me be the the, public information and correct, cooperation with the professional community chair. However, I did that one. I really, really got into that, and I really like that one. And, from there on, my service, it picked up.

Maybe it was the guilt out of the DCM that helped me. But for me, don't ever worry about that you're not doing it perfect. Because if you were doing it perfect, we'd have to fire you, and that's what the rotation's all about. But being trusted, I have to trust them. The group has to trust you, and and we have to trust the group too.

And there we come upon this, and we get into the 12th concept, and it's so huge. I can only touch on a few things in here. But in the in well, this is just one. And this basically runs down to the, in the 12 concept or warranty 4. I'm sure you all know that one.

That's a good one for any fight. And this is that all important decisions be reached by discussion, vote, and whenever possible, by substantial unanimity. And that's extremely important and we usually try to decide beforehand what substantial unanimity is gonna be. Oftentimes in AA, it's 2 thirds. Sometimes it's 3 fourths.

But for us, when we reach substantial unanimity through discussion, and and we've gone all the lengths that we can, and then it's finally it's finally done, and it's it's in our home group. And then, the group decides, unwisely, to have a different idea than I do. And, so here I am. They've decided something with with a informed group conscience, and it it's contrary to what I want or what I wanted. What do I do then?

Do I just become the pouting, bleeding deacon over in the corner, Or what do I do? Do I go with a group conscience? I can still bring things back up for discussion. I just have to do it in a manner that's somewhat likable. You know?

I have oh, I heard a thing about we asked a guy one time, why is it that some people become bleeding deacons and others become elder statesmen? And he said, we all become bleeding deacons. Some of us just don't get over it. That was pretty good. But, for me, being a trusted servant is is the absolute and doing what the group group has decided.

I have to trust my group too and, making sure that I bring back all the reports and make sure that I bring back all my expenses and turn those over to them. There's I'm a stay out of that one. That might cause dissension. There's one other thing here, and this is something that we really need to trust, and is that I trust the structure system the way it was designed. It was absolutely designed to work so well.

Once in a while, we AAs have a tendency to be able to find a way to find a niche in there and twist that black stuff in the book and turn it a little bit. We use the white stuff to do that, but we get it kinda turned to fit our purpose. And what I need to do is trust that the way it was developed and how it came about. And I heard this there's a statement that Bill wrote. This is paraphrasing.

It says that the, the the traditions are not a monument to our our great successes. They're more a testament to our colossal failures. And, and the concepts are the same thing. How did we get those? Because we thought this is a good idea.

No. We thought, that was a bad idea. Let's put something down on paper so we don't do that again. And that's that's kinda how these all came about. Today, I'm an alcoholic that I have absolutely 36 principles that I can look up in a book and put my finger on and read about them.

You know how many I had just before I showed up here? 1, do you before you do me. That was it. And now I got 36 that don't involve that one at all, except to teach me how to help you if I can. And I think that's fantastic.

And and the the triangle that we have, I was also there when we lost the circle and triangle deal. That was wasn't too volatile. But the triangle is a is is really strong and it's recovery, unity, and service. But none of those can stand up without the principles that they rep that represent them. So if we're not living up to all those principles, we're weakening one side or the other of that triangle.

And me as a trust as a servant to AA, I have to make sure that I'm living up to all those, that I'm not driving by mandate. And as an alcoholic, sometimes I'm fairly good at kind of, manipulating, let's say, to make it sound better my direction. And I have to I have to watch that very careful because I become convinced that what I'm saying is absolutely right. My brain tells me that all my ideas are good, and I have to watch that. What I have to do is truly try to represent this.

I I talk to my sponsor. I read the literature, and I try to serve to the best of my ability. I try to do that every time. And that's what I expect from the people that serve my home group, the the group that allows me to be there, the district, and the area. That's what we expect, and we have every right to ask that of them.

Because this is talking about AA. This isn't about a popularity contest. Every job in AA is far more important than the person in it, and that was hard for me to grasp at first. But it's like our first tradition says, the group come first and individuals come shortly thereafter, but it's a group first. So that job is much more important than worrying about the feelings, and we get into that quite a bit.

I do. Am I gonna hurt their feelings? You know? And I don't wanna do that, but sometimes if their feelings are hurt, sometimes that's not even my fault. That's what they have sponsors for.

Go talk to your sponsor about your hurt feelings. We'll get back to the other stuff here in a little while. But in this, here's one that can cause some, this is one that I have to really watch that I stick to this too. And it says the primary purpose of an AA group is to carry the AA message to alcoholics. Experience with alcohol is one thing all AA members have in common.

It is misleading to hint or give the impression that AA solves other problems or knows what to do about addiction or to or to drugs. That one gets to be a fairly volatile issue now and again in AA around AA. It gets very volatile. And we've had we had a riot in the treatment center in Billings one night over that, talking about closed meetings and all I mean, it was a flat out riot. A guy from my home group who is a the treatment chair and I were sitting there giving a orientation to AA, what AA is and what it isn't.

And when we got to the closed and open meetings, when we went in there that evening, all these people looked angry, but I thought they had just arrived. You You know? And I I'm not there. They're really angry. Well, what they were, they were ready for us.

One of them had been there a month before and and had walked out and left the treatment center, but they got him back. And when he came back, he was ready to do battle, and he had enlisted everybody else. Well, here we are. We sat down, and we had and as soon as we said what closed meetings were, this person explodes and the other one exploded. And pretty soon they're getting up and they're walking out of the room and they're getting other people and coming back and they're screaming and hollering.

They're standing one of them is standing. Used to be they crowded my space. That was always a bad thing to do. This person was really crowding my space and calling me and my friend, names that ended in e r and started with f and some other things, and and we just sat there. Principles of the program, we just sat there.

We kept a calm voice. We did not try to out holler them, and we just stayed there. We were only supposed to be there for an hour. We were there an hour and 20 minutes trying to just talk calmly to some of the people that wanted to ask questions, but these people kept screaming. We asked for the person in charge to come in, and they came in and started trying to out holler them, and that didn't work.

But the result was is that we stayed there. The principles of the the person that we trusted to do that job, we stayed there and we did the job and we did not cause a problem. I didn't even stand up because sometimes people take that as intimidation. And I didn't wanna do anything that led to problems, but we discussed this with the treatment center afterwards. And because we have because of this trusted servant thing, we talked with the people who ran the the treatment center, and things were settled and things were changed.

And some of ours changed and some of theirs was changed. And the result is is that now we have it's very quiet. It it works good. They ask lots of questions, and it works. But that's because there was somebody there that could be trusted and didn't get up and punch somebody out.

You know? Yes. Okay. The question was, if somebody introduces themselves as an addict in an in an a closed AA meeting or or some of the other terminology like, junky, addict, whatever. And how do we handle that?

How does the group handle it, or how do I handle it? Me, personally, how I handle that is I don't jump up in the middle of the meeting and start screaming at them. I believe that we were told that we were supposed to be loving, love and tolerance is our code. And that and if what we do is we normally if it's already in the meeting, we don't we don't blow a gasket over and start screaming at people. What we do and I do is after the meeting's over with, I'll go over and talk to the person.

And we also and I know some people may not agree with this, but we keep meeting lists and phone numbers for all of the other, organizations that's, fellowships. We keep NA and OA and GA and and all of them that we can find. We call those numbers and make sure they're viable numbers so that these people can get help. You know? And and that's very important because sometimes you get numbers that don't work.

But we we try to have meeting list we don't post them right out in front of everything that we have all this stuff. We have it there. And if somebody happens to come to us for help and they happen to just got to the, they need to go to a different place, then we we show them we give them the, information where they can go. We also have a meeting list there that shows all open meetings. However, we don't try to, mislead them to the understanding that, open meetings are the backdoor in for them.

We try to get them the help that they need because we have, and AA, killed people before by trying to be everything to everybody. But we don't do it. We do it, very lovingly and tolerant. And if they happen to be somebody that wants to stay in that meeting and they are an alcoholic, when you talk to them, we just talk about singleness of purpose, and we some people don't think you teach AA. You do.

I mean, the people come to us, they have no idea what it's about, and it's up to us to tell them. To expect them to sit on their hind end in that meeting and get it through their hind end, it just doesn't work. We we need to explain to them. Sometimes just give them a brief history of what AA really is. It's amazing.

It it it just opens eyes up. But our job is to be loving and tolerant and try to guide these people to where they might get the best help for them. Oh, problems other than alcohol. Fantastic. To just get their attention, hand them the little short one, the abbreviated version, but tell them the answers to all those other questions in there are in this one, and you hold that up and it has some great, it has a great definition of what Alcoholics Anonymous is, what our purpose is, abstinence from alcohol, and it gives a lot of stuff in there answering questions like who can belong and who can't, and they're and they're done in a very good manner.

And and there was a great author who wrote them, as a matter of fact. If you read that pamphlet has everyone who always written, read the pamphlet problem problems other than alcohol? Please, everybody read it. It's really important to have read that so that when people come to us and and they found the wrong place or maybe perhaps they're not sure, we can give this to them to help them make up their mind. Because there are a few of us that show up that don't believe we're alcoholics at AA.

We'd rather be called anything. I told that to the lady at the psych ward. She we she called me in for a meeting after we ran a meeting at the psych ward, and she says we were talking about something. I says, well, you know, boy, us alcoholics, we'd rather come in here and say we're nuts than than say we're alcoholic. And she says, you're kidding.

I said, I said, well, I think we need an in service workshop here at the psych ward. And we did. We had one after that, but they couldn't believe that alcoholics would actually rather come in there and say they're insane and get a little bit looped up on whatever they shoot you with and stay in there and then escape back out to alcohol. They they they just found that unbelievable that we would do such things. They need to come to some roundups and listen to speakers.

Montana. Okay. The question was, sometimes, treatment center centers and other facilities send people to us in group, and some of them are alcoholic, some aren't, some have various other problems, some have no alcohol problem at all, and they're all sent to us. And how do we address that as a group? Does that pretty well capture it?

That's a great question because we've had that a lot of times, a lot of times. And that's where it is so important in your district to have a good CPC committee, cooperation with the professional community. And if there's there's a position there, public information is very important also, but cooperation with professional community, you really need to have somebody who's diplomatic on that committee that's going out there and talking to these people. Because believe it or not, there are some egos involved with some of the professional community, And, you have to really be careful with that. And it's how you address them and how how we talk to them and how we treat them and and treat them with the respect that they're due and discuss these things.

And what we have done is we've taken them up meeting lists and we've shown them where the open and closed meetings are. We've explained to them again what open and closed meetings are and asked them, and we tell them, and it's right at the bottom of the the information, information about AA, Iran AA, and it tells you what AA does and does not do. There's, like, 3 versions of those. I think Tom and I have found about 3 or 4. One of them, the statement on, singleness of purpose, one's doctor Vincent Doyle, one is, George Valiant, and another one has no name.

I know that but they're all good. And we take those to them also, and we try to explain all of these things. And and at the bottom of that page, it says, in the end run, what we all want is the same thing. We wanna help the alcoholic recover. They do, and we do.

And we try to find a balance in there where we can do that with them and cooperate with them. We don't affiliate with them, but we try to cooperate with them. And so sometimes rather than go up there and say, look. You can't do that. Sometimes it's better for, like, the CPC committee to come up and say, you know, we're having a little bit of problems.

How can we solve that? What what do you think we can do? And sit down with them. Take them to lunch if you have to, or if you're lucky, like the last time they invited us to lunch. But but going there and talking to them has been the the better solution.

You you get students from the colleges and stuff attending your meetings? You wanna see some nervous alky's is when they come in and start taking notes. Boy, I mean, we really get nervous. We have started going to the professors and giving them, open giving them meeting list with all the open meetings, Mark, and explain why it's so important. Because there's alcoholics whose lives depend on this, and they come to the closed meetings where they can openly talk about this and not have to worry about it.

And we've had we've had nothing but cooperation with the people at the colleges. Actually, they ask us up there to talk about it at times with their students. The same way with our treatment facilities and our, in there's we have the in house and we have also the, outpatient intensive outpatient and outpatient, and we've worked with all of them. And we also work with a pre release center. I know you have those where they're right down in your neighborhood, and they send a lot of people over, and we've worked with a lot of them, and we take meetings into them too.

And, we've we just try to keep this open. And that's one of the neat things. That's one of the best things about having districts is that all of the groups can come together and pool their information and find have somebody be the contact person. And I cannot stress enough that you have somebody who's trusted as a that is informed about AA and is up on the traditions and up on the concept, you know, and maybe they can be guided by somebody who is that has already been through there. But when you go to these people and you talk to them, you have to treat them with respect and try to impress upon them what AA is and what it's all about.

And we have found that it's really important, it's we found it it's also important to, give them a little bit of a breakdown on what our structure is and why we are here and not just somebody else. And instead of having somebody from every group hitting on them, we've got one name where they can call. They don't have to worry about trying to get all these other people. They can call one number and get a hold of either our our CPC chair or the, DCM, and they can get action. And then we only have one person taking the problems from all the groups back to them.

So we don't have this. We don't antagonize them. And we found that this, they develop a relationship with them over a 2 about a 2 year period. And if they've served on the committee before, it's even longer. But this re this relationship they develop with them, it just makes things flow so much better, and we eliminate a lot of these problems.

Yes. All we can do is request anyway. Oh, the question was, would it work better to send a letter, if if since we have such a big district and we have so many of them, could could sending letters also work if if you can't get to all of them person to person? And, we can't tell anybody what to do. We can't even tell the courts what to do.

We just go ask them, you know, could could we cooperate here? You know, but what we can do is we try to get to them all personally. And if you absolutely cannot, I guess then you would have to to write them. Do you get junk mail? What do you do with it?

Most time, I got a I got a dumpster right by my mailbox out by the county road. It doesn't even get to the house. I just start shuffling it off. But what we have to do is make it very clear. Don't do a lot of stuff on there.

Make it clear, very short and concise. Maybe even phone them and let them know that this letter is coming. Do something, but by and large, the letters, we've had poor luck with the letters. Even when we've had, CPC luncheons and invited them with the with the letters, we just didn't get the response. When you go out and ask them, we got a lot better response through it.

But if you're if you have no other choice, absolutely. But, for us, we found, if you can't get it all on the front side of the sheet, don't send it. It's just like a resume. If you haven't got it on the front, well, they're not gonna see much on the second page and try to capture their attention, call them, say, please call us. We'd love to come and talk to you, or whatever.

Luncheons are a good thing. Do you guys do CPC luncheons? Breakfast or luncheons or whatever. Even potlucks, they love that. And and get a bunch of people there and set somebody at each table with them and let them ask questions and do this stuff.

This is what works really good. It's it's very good to have, again, trusted servants going out there because, you know, you want somebody that can represent AA. And it isn't saying that you gotta be dressed really fancy or anything else or be a a linguist of any kind. Just polite and treat them with respect. That's a key thing.

Brenda. I just wanted to mention, because I mentioned this earlier, about that statement of purpose. Brenda's gonna be up here and say something. I I just wanted to mention, earlier, and I talked about this, because it's so key. I mean, it's it's in all of our pamphlets now that that, are written to the professionals about our statement of AA singleness of purpose.

And I think that it's a really good statement to use as a talking point in beginning to talk with some of the professionals. And I'll I'll read it again just because it says exactly, what Alcoholics Anonymous is. Some professionals refer to alcoholism and drug addiction as substance abuse or chemical dependency. Nonalcoholics are, therefore, sometimes introduced to AA and encouraged to attend AA meetings. Anyone may attend open AA meetings, but only those with a drinking problem may attend closed meetings.

And that's a good statement of purpose to begin talking with a professional about about that issue. Thanks. Thank you, Brandon. That's also one that AA as a whole has voted on at the conference. Well, sometimes you just have to keep trying.

Just look at how many times they tried on us. And, not that we didn't hear every time either. In fact, I don't think I heard a damn thing till I was inside. But, I think this is this is a key thing, and it's so important to have informed people like your GSRs going to the district and and and picking the you know, choosing the people by election that are gonna serve your district in your area because this is this is extremely important because as we said at the start, all we are is a life support system for that 12 step call going on. That the one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic.

That's what it's all about. And we just happen to have the opportunity to go into places where we have captive audiences, prisons, jails, treatment centers, whatever. We get to go in there and do this, and and it's a fantastic opportunity, but we need to keep those doors open. And I I know the same thing happens here. It happens where we're at.

All of a sudden, there'll be a new election, and you get a new sheriff and there's a new jailer, bam, the jail's closed. You can't get in. We didn't do anything wrong. It's just sometimes there's an alcoholic in charge in there now, and they don't want us there. Whatever the reason, treatment centers have a turnover in in whoever's in charge.