A Cocaine Anonymous Workshop in Toronto, Canada

Okay, we're moving on to our second topic, which ties in with the first topic of powerlessness,

which is what is the solution to the hopeless situation of powerlessness.

I will read you a brief quote from the chapter entitled, Again,

there is a solution which puts it into a nutshell.

The great fact is just this and nothing less,

that we have had deep and effective spiritual experiences,

which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life,

toward our fellows, and toward God's universe.

The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty

that our creator has entered into our hearts.

and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous.

He has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could never do by ourselves.

If you are as seriously alcoholic or addicted as we were, we believe...

There is no middle of the road solution.

We were in a position where life was becoming impossible,

and if we had passed into the region from which there is no return through human aid,

we had but two alternatives.

One was to go on to the bitter end,

blotting out the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we could,

and the other to accept spiritual help.

To elaborate on this nutshell, I give it over to Chris.

That's excellent. Excellent.

Thank you.

Can you hear me?

Yep.

My name is Chris Ramer.

Grateful recovered alcoholic addict.

I had one.

It didn't take me but one break to finally get one to come up and talk to me.

He says, you can't introduce yourself as a recovered alcoholic or a drug addict.

No, and I'm not making fun of that person.

They're still in here.

Welcome.

And I try to explain.

Again, this is where treatment centers have taken us.

If you want to introduce yourself as somebody that's still sick, by all means do that.

If you just got sober, you are recovering.

You are, you're with us?

Two weeks after I got back to this fellowship after that suicide attempt, I'm working the 12 steps.

I've got a completed fourth step ready to dump a fifth step, and the obsession to use was lifted and has never returned in 20 years.

Now, I'm going to take that power and put it under a bucket because it makes you uncomfortable?

I don't think so.

And that's what we're talking about.

I know that some of this guys is going to make some of you feel kind of goofy and kind of uncomfortable

because you're not used to talking about it.

But we need to all get to a place in all of our fellowships where we can talk, here's the word,

unapologetically about God.

Unapologetically.

Thank you.

I want to mention real quick that the big book tells me to introduce myself to the newcomer as a person who has recovered.

I mean, we've got to hit this and we won't hit it anymore.

Treatment centers, they're the ones that started this.

I want you well, but I don't want you too well.

Because you're a great customer, but you'd be a better one if you can come back about six or seven times.

You follow because after all, we're always sick.

Can I get sick again?

No.

Absolutely, guys. It's not a guarantee. The book says that if I will do certain things, I will be placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected. And that's what we're looking at. And once I get in that spot, the obsession goes away. Do you think it bothers me sitting out there on that street last night? Why? Right across from the Zanzibar, as a matter of fact.

Yeah.

Do you think it bothers me for a second that there was a guy I'm sitting there right there across there watching a dope deal go down?

I'm looking at that thing and my mind's going back and I remember the time I'm the same kind of deal in Houston, Texas and you with me?

Did that trigger me?

Did I think about using?

Absolutely not.

I'm a recovered alcoholic and addict.

I can go anywhere I want to go.

Any place.

And it's one of the things that we've got to clear up because that's one of the reasons we have such a tough time in the states keeping the young adults in our fellowship.

Right.

That's one of the reasons that so many people out there in computer land want to take shots at our fellowship.

And they always use that as the first shot they take.

Who wants to be a part of a fellowship where you have to admit you're sick for the rest of your life?

My disease is in remission.

I am well.

Thank you.

If the obsession hadn't come back in 20 years, I don't think it's going to come back tomorrow.

If I continue to do what I'm supposed to do, later just read it.

As long as I stay spiritually connected, everything's rock and roll.

You'll follow?

They paint this picture in treatment that every day is the day you could use.

Oh, my gosh.

Yeah.

We had a lady in our group not long ago that came up and she said,

she said,

Christor,

some days I can't even go down the wine aisle at the grocery store.

I said, baby,

you need to finish working these steps.

She's 15 years sober.

And she can't be in a room with wine?

That's pathetic.

It's pathetic.

It's pathetic.

Yeah.

And it's not an accurate representation of what the fellowship is about.

You could get me on a soapbox.

Oprah, a couple of last month, I don't know if it was a rerun or not.

I had this little girl on there, and she's talking, I've been sober.

She's a little drug addict.

I've been sober for four years.

And Oprah said, oh, it must be hard on you.

And she cried, every day is a struggle.

Yeah.

Well, Oprah doesn't know any better.

She just let it go.

Now, what a piss poor representation of sobriety.

Can you imagine one of the little dope fiends watching and sitting there smoking a crackpipe

watching and saying, you know, I've been thinking about getting sober.

But gee whiz, it four years.

Is she that miserable?

A hell of that.

We've painted this picture that it's so willy-milly that it's just, it may happen and it may not happen.

It's not my experience, and that's not what the big book says.

I've got to show you something here.

Here.

In the 80s, part of the problem was

is that we took the stuff in treatment.

We took it all and we turned it into a self-help program.

And again, with the insurance companies,

I was talking a couple of cats at break about it.

When the insurance company started swinging back the other way,

that's how we answered it.

I was like, oh, well, this is not spiritual.

This is self-help.

And we did biofeedback,

and that's when the little teddy bears came on the scene.

And oh, my gosh, it was just a cluster, you know.

But we got away from this idea about the spiritual stuff.

And still to this day, it's the one area that,

that we want to walk on eggshells about.

There's two things that we are afraid to tell the newcomer.

This is about God, and you've got to get off your butt

and go work with another drunk.

We don't want to talk to him about that.

We need to start talking to them about that.

My question to you is this.

In this short time we got,

I'm going to try to finish up a little earlier

so we can get some more questions.

But the question is this.

Why is it that we're so nervous about this God thing?

In chapter to the agnostics, we agnostics, in the first paragraph, it gives a great summation.

If any of you want to know where the summation is about how to qualify a drunk, sit down with somebody and it says this.

In the preceding chapters, you have learned something about alcoholism, drug addiction.

We hope we've made clear the distinction between the drug addict and the non-drug addict.

I'm paraphrasing.

Here's the sentence.

If when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely.

Power of choice.

Or if when drinking you have little control over the amount you take, you're probably one of us.

Big? Bill Wilson's being very diplomatic, but he's asking you two questions, choice and control.

Now, here's what people hear when we say, when we talk about this, going back to the last hour, when they say we don't have a choice, it sounds like we're letting everybody off the hook.

I've got thousands of choices. You all understand this? There's a bunch of you in this room that made a conscious choice.

I'm either going to stay home and do honey-dos or I'm going to come to this little gathering and I'm going to participate.

Thank you for coming. But that was your choice.

You follow?

I'm going to bring my book to group or I'm not.

I'm going to follow my sponsor's instructions or I'm not.

You with us?

I've got thousands of choices, guys.

But if I make the choice to pull myself away from this fellowship, all bets are off.

The insanity will come and it doesn't make Jack what your external world looks like.

You're going to go use again.

I'm going to ask the question to sum up on that.

How many of you guys drank and drug when life was great?

All the hands are up.

How many of you drank and drug when life was crap?

All the hands are up.

There you go.

Nice relationship.

Cruddy relationship.

Great job.

Cruddy job.

I'll never forget.

When I first started working at the hospital in the early 90s, the lottery was just in

the United States, especially in Texas there.

And so we had one of our first lottery winners from there had come through our hospital.

And they were zonped.

They were alcoholics who won the lottery.

Bad...

But I'd spent half my life, tell him it because poverty, because I didn't have any money, this, that's why I drank.

Financial stress is what caused me to drink.

Now, here you got a guy with $10 million in a bank, and this bozo can't stay sober.

You follow?

And it was like, oh my gosh, you know, you look at the cats that come in this hospital, drop dead movie stars, you know, these gorgeous people.

It's like, why would you drink?

You've got everything on earth.

It ain't nothing to do with that external crap.

Why can't we get away from that?

It's about disconnection with God.

Let me read this real quick

before I forget.

My meds are out of adjustment.

It could be the coffee, too.

I don't know which.

To one who, two paragraphs down.

But it isn't so difficult.

About half our original fellowship were exactly that type.

They're talking about agnostics or atheists.

You with this?

About half.

That means an alcoholic's anonymous,

cocaine anonymous,

about half the cats that come through

or grinding their teeth on this God's stuff.

You know what that means?

That means that half of us aren't.

Y'all down with this?

Why is it that every time we turn around,

we've got to turn this into some kind of major controversial argument?

When I was trying to get sober in the early 80s,

the old-timers used to tell the people that were early in the program coming in and says,

don't talk about God too much.

You'll scare the newcomers off.

I'm more concerned with my membership in my group than I am whether or not this person gets the message or not.

The problem is that our fellowship, we could sum this up for a whole hour, all with this one sentence.

We are so open and roomy.

It's not even funny, folks.

We don't care who you prayed to.

As long as you pray to something.

Everybody just gets jammed up about this.

Well, I don't know if I'm a Christian or not.

Well, rock on.

Work the 12 steps.

You're going to get in touch with some kind of higher power.

It's not my decision.

That's just the way it works.

It's cause and effect.

If I want to get out this room, what all I got to do?

I can talk about it until the cows come home.

You with us?

We can visit about it.

We can do workshops about it.

But sooner later, I'm going to have to disconnect and walk straight out that door.

I'm not getting out any other way.

You can't carry me out.

I got to walk out.

It's the same thing with this thing called a spiritual experience.

Do the work.

You'll have a spiritual experience.

Well, I don't believe in God.

Are you willing to believe there might possibly be something to this?

Well, on the outside chance.

Good.

Let's do the work.

Oh, but I want to talk about this some more.

I mean, I hear people in meetings all the time.

It's like, I'm working on two and three.

I'm working on two and some of you are in here now doing it.

I'm stuck on two and three.

I'm stuck on two and three.

No, you're not.

You bozo?

You're stuck on one.

You're stuck on one.

That's exactly.

I'm telling you, the people that are griping about God, there's too much God talk in here.

There's too much talk about spirituality in here.

They're the people that are not the real alcoholics and addicts.

If that offends you, come see me.

so I can do it to you closer.

Because I'm not going to change.

Come on, guys.

I'm going to say it again.

That's what we do in the qualifying deal.

Guy, if you can stay sober because you want to,

because you're on probation.

We went through this before.

If you can stay sober because you want,

that's what our families are waiting.

When the cats come to treatment, they're all coming in.

And when the lady will call me on the phone,

their mom, you know, I said, well, I think she's probably hit bottom now.

I'm going to say,

Oh, you think.

We're fixing to find out if she's hit bottom.

Well, this last DWI should have done it.

You're nuts because the book says we're not going to remember the consequences of even a week or a month ago.

You follow?

If your experience can stop you from drinking.

That's the guys in the South.

That's what they talk about.

Keep it green.

Keep it green.

Oh, my gosh.

You know, that's why we end up going to meetings and just listen to war stories.

Listen to the people talk about smoking crack.

Listen to people.

We're going to keep it green.

Why?

Why?

Guys, constantly looking at the dark is not going to tell you anything about the light.

We need to shut up sooner or later about this.

We're going to talk about it some later on the night.

This idea this afternoon, this idea that we're supposed to be, that's all we do in AA,

is talk about the dark is ludicrous.

Some of you grind your teeth about this until the cows come home.

All we have is our story.

No, sister read it earlier.

We talked about it on page 17.

We just started talking about it.

Page 17 says, we've got a common problem.

What's the common problem? Look around this room, guys. We're all cut from different cloth.

I mean, drop dead gorgeous. There was a guy back over here that's so butt ugly I don't see him.

Well, it's the same stuff. We're all the same. You know what? But the only thing that ties us together.

Come on. What do we got in common? Look at Layla. Look at me. What do we got in common? Nothing. We come from two different walks of life.

But the thing that we have in common is the problem.

is that when she puts cocaine in her body,

it does the same thing it does in me.

And in order to stop using the cocaine,

the obsession to go away,

she had to do certain things to get connected spiritually,

just like me.

The church didn't work for me.

Just going in and pray and didn't work.

It may work for some people.

It did not work for me.

I'm not knocking the church.

I'm saying the church alone is not enough.

Those are the cats that come into our hospital

are the toughest people we deal with.

Born again Christians,

the toughest people,

just impacted with what they already think they know about God.

And everything you think you know about God

is going to keep you from knowing

anything else new about God.

You can just see him as I was, I know, I know, like a damn minor bird, like Mickey Bush says,

I know, I know, oh, you do.

You were just smoking crack cocaine last night.

If you know so damn much, why don't you shut up?

I get you.

Okay.

I spit a lot.

I spoke at a place in Texas one time

and they did it like a Gallagher concert.

They all had sheets in front of them.

They pulled over them.

I'm like,

I'll be a little bleak shield here.

I, um...

The book is so open and roomy.

Bill Wilson and those cats, you know, Bill was, I mean, coming from a Christian bent, he understood it.

In the writing of the literature, they all understood it.

But there were some cats involved in the original writings of this book that were not Christian and did not believe the ways a lot of us believed.

And they wanted to keep this open and roomy for everybody.

And it's a soapbox of mine.

I need to tell you, I'm going to go ahead and say it from the podium and it may offend some people.

I have Christian roots and I, when I got sober, those roots had been pretty well shattered.

I was kind of not comfortable in my skin around it.

And over the years, what's happened is I've been kind of led back through several different religions back to my Christian roots.

That's just my experience.

But the.

Problem that we see in our fellowship today is that we either want to go from one extreme to another.

I want to jam this down your throat.

You need to believe the way I believe.

No more of this higher power.

It's Jesus Christ.

Or it swings back this other way to, you don't need to worry about any of that.

It can just be the light bulb.

Now somewhere between Jesus Christ and a light bulb, there's some wiggle room here.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know what to tell you.

But I mean, back in the 80s, when I was trying to get over, that was the big deal.

You can believe anything.

The group, anything.

No, I'm sorry.

That's not what the book says.

The book says you're going to find a power greater than yourself.

And I think if we walk on eggshells around this too long, what we end up doing is losing

the cat completely.

I don't care what you believe in, but you're going to believe in something.

Right.

You follow?

Otherwise, when the work actually starts, you're going to crap out because it's going to get uncomfortable.

And that's what I want to talk to you about.

We have people all over the world, because I speak and because of the CDs and stuff have traveled everywhere.

I mean, I get emails from all over the world.

And I get a lot of emails from people that are not Christian who chafe because they can't come to Cocaine Anonymous because it's a Christian fellowship.

I think historically, we need to look at the fact that we started out as a Christian fellowship.

It was started by a bunch of Christians.

It also was started by a bunch of people that were also atheists and agnostics and nonbelievers.

But I'm saying we set this thing up so that anybody could use their own faith and their own walk, be it Buddhist or Muslim or Eastern or Wiccan or...

vegetarians for all I say, I don't know what to tell you.

I don't care, but you can do it any way you want and still get the same results.

If it's working for you, let's do it.

One of the things that you've got to have in order to get sober folks is a dose of humility.

And I just got to bring this to your attention.

You want to sit there and tell me that you're powerless over alcohol,

and then you want to argue with a concept that could save your life.

I know we're just talking amongst friends here, guys,

but, you know, it's everything I can do

not to tell that person to go jump off a bridge.

That's why I said it a minute ago.

Then go back to the first step experience,

because if you think you've got power over this

and that you could stop on your own, then go do it.

Shut up talking about it and go do it.

We got...

Okay.

The room...

The room's divided like this in Cocaine Anonymous and all the fellowships.

The rooms are divided like this.

There's the people that are working the steps and have had a spiritual experience whose lives are on fire.

They may not be rich.

They may not...

Their life may not be perfect.

But you can...

We're sitting at the stupid breakfast table crying this morning over a what?

A bowl of muclicks, for God's sakes.

I mean, this is nuts.

You know, what is this about?

And then there's a part of these people that are sitting over here trying to intellectualize everything,

trying to get it all figured out.

Listen, I'm saying it again.

If you're drowning in the water and a boat comes up and the hand reaches down,

you're not going to start questioning who that hand is.

Well, I prefer a white hand, thank you very much, over a black hand.

You don't care.

You know, it's what she just read.

The desperation of drowning men.

Are you ready?

There's no middle of the road solution for us.

If you're powerless over this substance, we know what's going to fix you.

It's this thing called a spiritual experience.

So I'm going to say this again.

So we get this new little guy in there and he says, I don't know if I understand this God stuff.

And I'm sitting there 20 years over.

There's no kidding.

Me either.

Open minded.

I mean, I don't know.

I think I know a little bit more now than I did when I first got here,

but it's constantly changing.

It's rearranging.

God continues to take me to different places.

I was telling Lela at breakfast.

There was sitting on a plane coming back from Seattle reading this book about homeless people,

and I started to come undone.

I mean, I'm crying on this plane, and it's like, and I am really self-conscious,

because I am not a crier.

I just like, and I'm like a girl on here, and I'm crying like this.

Stewardess comes by, are you okay?

And I said, but I don't, you know.

Get back to me on this one, because I don't know.

I'm coming undone.

I'm being touched by this information coming out of this book

and what I'm actually doing in this fellowship.

Is Chris Kramer doing everything he can do

to help his fellow man on this earth?

I'm going to tell you the answer for me was absolutely no.

No.

And I'm going to tell you it touched me.

God's going to move me to a different spot, folks.

Y'all think that you've arrived.

I'm not drinking and drugging, and the obsession is gone,

and I am happy, Joyce, and free.

How cool is that?

And how boring is spit is that going to be a year from now,

six months from now?

Complacency is what kills us.

How many of y'all understand that even in relationships?

It's complacency that kills us.

We just get bored.

God dang, I couldn't, I couldn't, I just wanted to breathe the air she was breathing.

And now it's like, honey, move away.

Complacency, entitlement.

That's what gets us.

So you're working with a newcomer,

and he's questioning whether or not

he believes in this God thing or not.

And so what do we do?

We dust it.

We'll go study it some more.

Pray about it.

Think about it.

Talk to 15 people and ask them about their higher power.

Oh, my God.

Why not give him a gun

and let him go out in the back

and just shoot himself

because he's fixing to go smoke cocaine?

You're asking him to do something

that he can't do.

Figure this all out.

Okay?

Show me in the book where it says that you've got to have it all figured out.

It says, do you believe there's something out there bigger than you?

Do you cause that beautiful raid yesterday?

No.

Maybe something else did?

Yeah, maybe so.

Move on now.

We're done with two.

Believe there's the power out there bigger than you?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Third step.

You willing to let this power help you in your life?

In other words, are you going to stop trying to run the dang show

and realize that there's a power out there that wants you happy, joy, and free?

And it can take you to a different spot in all areas of your life.

Again, we remember we talked about lack of power.

That's the dilemma.

We're not talking about just power over crack or alcohol.

We're talking about power in my lives around my credit cards, around my health, my exercise life.

Could you want some of this power?

Are you willing to let something guide you?

Well, I don't think it'll be.

It's not what I ask.

Okay.

I said, are you willing to believe that there's something that could possibly help you?

It seems to be working for me.

It seems to be working for millions of us.

Are you willing to believe that it could possibly help you?

Well, I guess I'm willing to go that far.

Rock on.

Yeah.

I sit down and I explain the third step to them.

We go through the third step prayer where it says quite clearly that it's going to remove your difficulty.

So victory over those difficulties can bear witness to God's power.

We're going to do a little third step prayer.

And then we're going to get up and we're going to talk this afternoon about the four step stuff.

And we're going to move right on through it.

I wish you can stand up here and look at your face.

It's like, that can't possibly be.

That's like, I've been taught.

It's that simple.

Guys, if I could figure it out without doing the rest of this stuff, without your help,

why in the hell would I need to come here and to begin with?

Everybody wants to make this so much more complicated than it is.

I never once, I was talking earlier, I never once had a problem believing that there was a God.

Me, Chris Schremer, I never did.

I'm eating out of dumpsters in Houston, Texas, and I knew there was a God protected my ass.

You with me?

I was pissed at that power.

I need to tell you that.

How could you do this to me?

Yeah.

It's all God's fault.

You know what I'm saying?

I understood that.

But when I got back, and I'd been in and out of lots of churches and stuff,

and that's the big news around.

So many of our necks is that if you've just believed enough,

guys, I believe there's a power out there that created the universe

that could change me and fix my eye like that.

I don't think that's going to happen.

Why?

What's the point?

I've watched too many people miraculously healed from their illnesses

to know that that takes place.

Right?

One of the things that I learned early on, though, is that God wants us off our ass doing what we're supposed to be doing.

And God's not going to do for us what we can do for ourselves.

And all God wants us to do, the book says, is be of service.

And we're so blasted selfish.

That's why Bill Wilson understood it and paid 62.

The cocaine's not the problem.

It's your refusal to be of service to another human being that's the problem.

Now, guys, I'm in AA for seven years, and nobody will explain this to me.

I'm sitting in AA for seven years, narcotics anonymous, nobody will talk to me about this.

Nobody will put it that succinctly.

I want to argue my right.

In fact, anytime I get up to try to help somebody to do something, oh, no, no, easy does it, buddy.

You just got here.

You take your time.

You take it.

Slow down.

Like, again, why didn't they just hand me a gun?

There's been some great studies out there, guys.

There's been some great studies out there.

And that was a great article.

If I ever find the name of it, the title of the author,

I cut it up because I was traveling and I stuck it in the book.

And the part, I don't even remember who wrote it.

But they talk extensively about these windows of opportunity around the spiritual life.

Each and every one of us, we have a moment when we come in.

And even the most...

difficult of us.

If we stay around long enough and we get our feet underneath us a little bit,

we begin to have this little experience with what we know is God.

But what everybody wants to do in our fellowships, we don't do it so much in CA,

but we do in AA.

We want to make fun of it.

We want to call it the pink cloud.

And it's like very few things irritate me more than listen to some old geyser talk about the pink cloud.

Because I'm going to tell you something, folks, there's no such thing as the pink cloud.

Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob understood it completely.

Dr. Bob wrote extensively about it.

If we're trying to get you to a thing called a spiritual experience

and you start to show symptoms of this spiritual experience,

why do I want to pour a bucket of cold water on your head

and embarrass you in public by making fun of what's going on with you?

Thank you.

And we want to walk on eggshells.

Somebody comes in excited about God, right?

Excited.

You're not going to believe what happened today.

I was listening.

I was sitting there and this lightening, this storm came up and he's telling me about this.

And instead of understanding that this was...

very meaningful for this person.

I want to make light of it.

I want to listen, buddy, but just talk to me about this.

Don't talk to the group about this because we don't want,

because there are other people that are struggling with this God thing.

We don't want to invent it.

So let's just water the whole damn thing down.

Take the passion out.

You're with us?

Don't get too happy.

Don't get excited about recovery because it's not, it's not good.

What about the poor person in the back that's struggling with depression?

Oh my God.

How can you...

How can we get to this spot?

How can we, how did we take a perfectly wonderful fellowship like this and drop it in the toilet being so damn concerned about somebody?

That person that's suffering from depression needs to be, quote unquote, we've said it a thousand times in here, pulled with a vision.

We need to tell this person that they're, everybody thinks it's just about not drinking.

One day you're just not going to drink.

Big deal.

It's like Mickey B says, one of my buddies.

He said, hell everybody, hell the cat's been sober of 13 years, who cares?