Big Book study at the Men's International Convention in Scranton, PA

friends and can we have the cell phones turned off please if you have one um i'm joe and i'm still an alcoholic

my sobriety date is march 18 2003 and my home group is the rule 62 group of alcoholics

anonymous and uh chapter four we're going to review today uh the chapter we agnostic um i know when i first

looked at this big book and I saw a chapter we agnostic. I was kind of turned off by it.

I was like, because I didn't really know what it was and I was pretty sure I wasn't it.

And I probably skimmed through it and skimmed over it.

And as I got a little bit more time under my belt, I started really reading into this chapter.

And I really got a lot out of it, I think.

you know it's a great chapter um i'm not a big book expert i don't claim to be and uh neither

does uh johnny um the only thing i could share is my experience of what i get out of this chapter

and what i've heard uh you know i'm a big big fan of jojo and charlie cdies and what i get out of

listening to them and uh

You know, so we're going to go over chapter we agnostic.

You want to say anything?

We're going to, we only have an hour, so I'm going to touch on a few things.

And, you know, try not to move too fast, but there is a lot of information to cover.

I'm not saying what I get out of it is right or wrong.

You might say, well, my sponsor didn't, you know, say this, or, you know, I'm not getting that.

That's fine.

I'm just here to share my experience.

I know in the first paragraph, it says, if you honestly want to,

you find you cannot quit entirely or if when drinking you have little control over the amount you take you are probably alcoholic

if that be the case you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer

my experience with that is uh coming in um I didn't drink every single day so when it the first couple chapters completely smashed home the idea

What happens to me when I do pick up that drink?

My vision of the alcoholic was homeless, living under a bridge

with a bottle of something in a brown paper bag.

That was my vision of the alcoholic,

and this book helped me to smash that,

to get rid of that idea of what the alcoholic looks like.

And when I put a drink in me, all bets are off.

And I had to come to the realization of that and come...

to find it internally, you know, basically surrender to that.

And alcohol, you know, basically whooped me.

And when I came in and they were talking about a spiritual experience,

some people come in and are like, spiritual experience,

they want nothing to do with it.

I was kind of curious as to what the spiritual experience was

because I was pretty beat up, you know.

Everything whooped me.

And when I came in, they were like, you know,

you might want to try and find some sort of power greater in yourself,

maybe a god of some sort, and you might want to start praying to it.

You know, and when I look back on my alcoholism, I didn't have, when I picked up that first,

I didn't really have a choice before I even picked up the first drink.

But when I picked up the first drink, all bets were off.

I might be gradually sitting around the house and just drinking, and then the next week,

you know, I'm smashing stuff.

You know, I don't know what happens to me after I just pick up that first one.

To one who feels he's an atheist or an agnostic, such an experience seems impossible.

But to continue as he is means disaster, especially if an alcoholic of the hopeless variety,

to be doomed in alcoholic death or live unlawful.

or to live on a spiritual basis or not always easy alternatives to face.

What I got out of that was pretty much insanity for me.

To even to weigh out those options, a normal person doesn't have to weigh out those options.

In the beginning, you know, when I was just...

spiraling around Alcoholics Anonymous,

I kind of asked myself,

what kind of,

how bad of an alcoholic death are we talking?

You know,

because the spirit,

part of me was fighting the spiritual part of this,

and I wasn't really sure on what,

what was going on.

So, you know,

I came in slightly closed-minded

and slightly open-minded.

I wasn't really sure as to what I was going to get out of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And, uh,

As I came around, you know, the alcoholics and the fellowship showed me that there is a better way to live.

And the spiritual life got really, really more attracted to me.

I had, I would, you know, pray to God.

I had no idea what God could do for me until I came in to Alcoholics Anonymous.

I didn't have any really belief growing up.

I went through CCD and all that other crap, and I had no idea.

what really, I close my mind to God at a young age.

When I was going through all that stuff,

I was just going there to have fun and then try and enjoy myself.

I didn't pay attention to anything they were teaching me.

When I came in Alcoholics Anonymous,

I heard someone shared her like,

you know, the Catholics believe in a punishing and yada, yada,

God, when I'm like, I have a punishing God.

You know, I was in a delusional world.

I didn't really know what God could do for me.

I always thought, you know, you know,

You could live your life pretty much however you want, and before you die, you pray to God and ask for forgiveness, and it's like an actor's sketch.

You just shake it, and it's all gone.

Poof, it magically disappears.

You know, that was my belief in it, and it was pretty much, you know, pretty much insane, you know.

All right.

Hi, everybody.

My name is John Osgoat.

I'm recovered alcoholic.

My sobriety date is December 5th, 2001.

My home group is Rule 62.

Meets at 7.30 on Tuesday nights in Lake Silkworth, Pennsylvania.

Very grateful to be here.

I'm here only for one reason because of God's grace.

Two things I know about God's grace is one, it's not deserved, and two, it's never earned.

However, I did not come to Alcoholics Anonymous.

with any type of God in my life at all.

You know, I came in here calling myself an alcoholic,

not really knowing what that meant.

I really didn't, you know, I was just saying I was alcoholic,

but I didn't know what made me alcoholic.

And, you know, and the book spends almost 42 pages

describing the alcoholic of the hopeless variety and, you know,

And through coming to Alcoholics Anonymous and suffering from this disease after I got here,

I got my piece, which is I am a Hopeless Variety Alcoholica of this book's type,

and how I got that was the way I lived every day.

My experience was lining up with verbatim what I was reading in this book in black and white

that was calling the Hopeless Variety Alcoholica.

It was made.

And I spent nine months smashing that home, and I had...

Joey talked about the heaven and hell punishing God.

I grew up in, you know, very religious...

Went to church.

You know, my family, you know,

they taught me morals, values, right from wrong,

all that stuff, man.

And the book's clear on it.

It says that if, you know, moral philosophy

could change our alcoholism,

we would have done it a long time ago.

You know, morals, values, none of that worked.

I had great morals and values.

I just went against them on a daily basis.

You know, and for me...

Alcoholism had to beat me into a state of reasonableness.

And a lack of power was truly my dilemma.

Joey read the definition of an alcoholic,

if you really want to quit, you can't.

I spent the last six months of my active addiction,

putting every bit of power that I had my life

against my alcoholism to try to stop drinking and failed utterly every day.

I got up every single day for six straight months and swore to God

I would never ever drink again.

Never.

And I meant it with everything I had, man, everything.

By the end of that day, I was drunk all over again.

The book talks about the mental blank spot in the alcoholics mind,

and I definitely have that.

And it says we are unable at certain times to bring into our consciousness

without sufficient force, the memory of the pain and suffering of a week ago or even a month ago.

This renders us without defense against the first drink.

This defense must come from a higher power. Must.

You know, you'll hear there are, they're just suggestions in Alcoholics Anonymous.

There's a lot of musts too.

You know, the suggestions are for the ones that, you know, don't care if they live or die.

For me, I must do this.

This is not a cafeteria lunch for me.

I cannot take what I want and leave the rest.

I have to do what this book asks me to do, where I'm a dead man.

On the flip side of that, though, I get to live a life beyond my wildest dreams.

When this book talks about that, it means it.

I've experienced things that aren't possible for a guy like me.

Just really not.

I shouldn't be here.

The things that I enjoy in my life that I haven't hold dear, man, I don't deserve any of them.

I should have been dead.

I should have been dead a long time ago, and...

You know, lack of power was truly my dilemma.

And I understood that when I got to alcoholisna.

So I knew at some level that I was powerless over alcohol.

It owned me and I don't, you know, I didn't own it.

It told me what to do.

And I knew that from trying to quit on a daily basis for six straight months and failing utterly.

And, you know, um...

For me, I had no problem admitting the lack of power.

But as far as the surrender of the rest of my life, I had a big problem with that.

You know, I remember sitting in meetings of alcoholics and items for the first couple weeks I was in AA.

And my head's spinning 7,000 miles an hour in 30 different directions, man.

People are talking in an open discussion meetings and I can't hear a word you're saying.

And I'm really trying to listen.

Okay.

But for whatever reason, I'm sitting in the same Thursday night meeting, Harvey's like, you know,

same people there that were there, you know, the six other times I was there.

And same people probably shared in that meeting that shared the other six times I was there.

But one guy talked that night and I heard, it's like all the stuff in my head just turned off,

and I heard every word he said.

And what this man said is going to meetings on a daily basis, calling your sponsor and talking other alcoholics is great.

It's a big part of this deal, man, and you definitely need to do it.

But if you do not apply these 12 steps into your life,

you're going to get worse because alcoholism is progressive and curable in most cases fatal.

And there's two things on this planet, and this is absolute fact, that treat this disease.

One is booze and the other one's the 12 steps.

If you're not doing either one of them, you're sitting right in the grips of a disease that's getting progressively worse.

And you're going to know you're getting worse because the people around you are getting better

that are applying these 12 steps to their life and ah.

What I heard out of all of that was, this man wasn't saying run away from it, changed people, places and things.

That's important in the beginning. Don't get me wrong.

But, you know, I knew if that's what AA was about, I'm screwed.

Because I tried running away from him, man.

I tried changing all that stuff and got drunk on a daily basis despite it.

Could not stop.

My past wasn't keeping me sober.

The fear wasn't keeping me sober.

Nothing was.

Everything I tried failed.

To where I didn't, I just gave up, man.

What's the point of even trying, man?

I just thought I was going to have to drink until I'm dead.

But this man was saying this isn't about running away from it.

This is about changing the way you think so you no longer want to do it.

And that meeting was over.

I got up and I walked right up to that guy.

I didn't have the courage to talk to anybody.

Couldn't look anybody in the eye when I spoke to him.

I'd be staring at the floor looking at the wall behind me.

Or my eyes would flutter and roll right up in the back of my head

and I didn't even know what was going on.

But I walked up to this guy,

I looked in the eye and said, you know, I told him who I was,

and I said, I need help you sponsor me.

And the guy looks at me, dead in the eye, and says,

here's the deal.

I'm not your father, I'm not your brother.

I'm not your best friend.

I'm not your shoulder to cry,

and I'm not a counselor for your affairs.

As far as your problems go,

I don't know clue what you should do with them.

I can't answer my own.

My only job is to take you through these steps,

which will guarantee you a connection

to a power grading yourself,

and that power will fix you, not me.

If you're cool with that, that's what we'll do if not get lost.

And a man absolutely saved my life.

because he forced me to rely upon a God that I didn't believe in.

I had a lot of, and the book talks a lot in this chapter about,

the one word that sticks out every, all over this chapter is prejudiced.

You know, the first time it talks about it, it says, you know, we have shared his honest doubt and prejudice.

I had a lot of prejudice is a prejudgment.

It's things that I think I know for sure about God and it's the things that I've been taught growing up.

And I grew up in a Catholic religion.

I heard a lot of heaven and hell punishing God.

You do something wrong, God's going to get you.

You know, a family member would die when I was a kid.

My mom would say it's God's will.

Well, you know, so God kills people whenever he wants.

I don't want to know part of that God.

Huge problem, God, huge.

You know, and the book says the first requirement is just to lay aside prejudice.

Put it aside.

Doesn't say get rid of it, it just says lay it aside.

That may be everything you know for sure about this God thing ain't so.

Can you put it aside?

Some of it may be correct.

We're not telling you to get rid of it, but it's saying put it aside.

And you may go back to it later, and some of it may help you, and it may be true, but some of it may be clearly wrong.

That's the first requirement.

It talks about it five different times, men, the lay aside prejudice.

It talks about page 46, the second paragraph,

it says, let us make haste to reassure you that as soon as we're able to lay aside prejudice

and express even a willingness to believe in a power greater in ourselves,

we commence to get results.

Even though it was impossible for any of us to fully comprehend or define the power which is God,

which tells me if I'm trying to understand God, I'm trying to play God.

And we've got a big problem.

It's not my job to understand God.

That's his job to do what he does.

And it says I need to lay aside those prejudices and open up my mind,

and maybe I'm not right here.

And alcoholics and anonymous deals with fact, not opinion theory or belief.

It's fact.

You know, and it was explained to me.

I was having a real hard time with the God concept,

and my sponsor looks at me and says,

you know, do you have any type of God in your life right now?

I said, absolutely not.

He's like, are you praying?

I said, no.

He's like, you spend any time doing meditation?

No way in hell.

No.

He looks at me, he's like, how's it going?

He's like, he looks at me.

And the truth was, my life was hell, and I wanted to die.

And what he did for me is I was in AA long enough that he pointed out several people that I came in contact with that I saw in meetings on a daily basis.

And he asked you one simple question, how does it look like they're doing?

And I had to be honest to myself and say, you know what, they look pretty happy.

They look like they're doing well.

And he would say, I know for an absolute fact that these people have a power grader and themselves centered in their life.

So the facts are you have no power in your life's hell and you want to die.

And they do have a power and their lives are good and they're happy and they're sober.

that's the fact, man.

That's what got me to open up my mind.

Maybe this heaven and hell punishing God,

maybe this ain't so.

You know, and I've since seen so much evidence

to disprove that theory, it's ridiculous.

Because when I sit in an alcoholic's night of this meeting,

what I'm looking at it is a group of the worst criminal elements

absolutely known a man on the face of this planet.

Sitting in the same room alive,

sitting up and making sense and happy.

If that is an evidence of a forgiving God,

I don't know what the hell is.

You know, and...

If God was punishing, man, everybody walked out the door of an A,

meaning we'd get hit by a bolt of lightning.

That's my sincere belief.

And, you know, so I had to put those beliefs aside,

and the open minus was the key.

And if I didn't have that, I'm done.

It's really that simple, man.

For the alcoholic, and the book's clear in this,

for the alcoholic not to believe in a power grader herself,

the best analogy I could put to that is, um,

you know, it's just like not believing in parachutes.

You know, you have a family that's a bunch of screwballs

that pack parachutes for a living man

and you see how they do it every day

and you say yourself, there's no way in hell

I'll ever frigging up a plane with a parachute on my back.

I'm not doing it.

You don't believe in them at all, man.

No trust, no faith, no belief.

But I take you up 7,000 feet above the earth,

throw you out of that plane with a parachute on your back.

Now you're hurling to the ground at 110 miles an hour.

You got some choices.

You know,

You know, one is keep not believing in parachutes,

hit the ground at 110 miles an hour,

and die, or maybe change your mind about parachutes.

Why do I have to change my mind?

Because I don't want to hit the ground 110 miles an hour.

That's the same thing with alcohols, man.

Um,

Life or death.

This entire chapter, we agnostics, man.

Summary version of it, change your mind.

If you don't believe in God or your unsure of God,

change your mind.

It's really that simple.

That's the summary version of this chapter.

Why do I have to do that?

Because this is a life or death error and I'm on.

Lack of power is truly my dilemma.

I must find a power greater to myself.

If not, I'm done.

It's really that simple.

And I saw so much evidence in the rooms of AA.

Um...

that that power existed.

If I could only tap in,

and I remember first putting that power as my sponsor.

You know, and the only thing that man ever did,

man was forced me to go to God first,

and then he would deal with me.

You know, I'd call him up with a problem.

He'd be like, do you go to God?

Nope, I don't believe in God.

Click.

dialed to him, man, and now I'm pissed off at him.

Pick up the phone, I'm like, dude, why did you just hang up on me?

He said, you go to God yet? Nope, click.

He forced me to pray to God that I didn't believe in, man.

The only reason I did it is because I wanted to talk to him.

He was the only hope I had.

I knew for a fact, man, if I could get a tent of what this guy's got, we're cool.

I mean, he was walking around with the grace and the dignity I couldn't even wrap my head around.

And I wanted a piece of that, man.

And, uh,

I was very, very willing to listen to him.

I didn't always do what he said, but he was the power.

Somehow, some way this man found a way to stay sober for 16 years.

His life is happy, and I could tell.

It wasn't the material world around him.

It was a swagger to grace, the dignity.

He was walking around with me.

And when he looked me and the eye and asked me how he was doing,

I could tell him meant it with all my heart.

And, you know, I just needed a piece of that.

And I became willing to listen to him.

But, um...

You know, I had to change my mind.

I came in here with a lot of skewed ideas, a lot of misconceptions,

a lot of things I thought I knew for sure that I absolutely don't know a damn thing about.

I knew so much about what was untrue.

I had no idea what was true.

It was that simple for me.

And for the first nine months, I was in Alcoholics and Nonoms,

I didn't take these 12 steps out of this book.

I didn't, the only thing I did was go to God because I was forced to.

I didn't believe in God.

Um...

But my sponsor wouldn't deal with me unless I prayed to him.

But when I started things just from that process of going to a power grader myself and trying to pray,

just so my sponsor would deal with me, I started to get results.

And a book says that.

It says, we'll commence once the open mind is there.

And a book says later on a page, it says, God does not make too hard of terms to those who seek them.

The moment I started the action of prayer, God's there.

He does not make too hard of terms.

Okay.

There's no specific way I have to pray.

There's no, you've got to get on your knees, you've got to do this.

If I had to get on my knees every time I pray, I'd be screwed.

Because I've got to talk to God all day long, man.

This head goes 100 miles an hour in 40 different directions.

I need his help.

If I have to hit my knees, I'm a dead man.

Because I can't do that everywhere I go.

And God doesn't make too hard a terms.

So, you know, the simple action of prayer started to open the doors to this power.

And what happened for me in my life at that point is it's like all of a sudden I started to become lucky.

You know, things started to work in my life, man.

The first good thing would happen, you know, it was coincidence.

That would happen anyhow.

Yeah, that was luck.

It started to happen so often and so much.

I started, I stopped, I realize I'm just not lucky.

I've never been lucky.

Now all of a sudden I am.

Maybe there's something to do this power greater in ourselves.

Maybe, and I started to see evidence show up in my life.

And I started to feel better.

God's not a truth, I started to feel a little bit better at this point.

And I had a little bit of hope.

Um,

You know, and with that, you know, Joey start, touch on some more points, but, you know, the prejudice is the big thing for me.

And a lot of the guys that I sponsored, I deal with, they have huge problems with the power, you know, when they hear the word God.

And, you know, before I shut up, this is the last thing I want to say on this piece is, you know, um,

I remember my sponsor saying this to me, man, and I do this with all of the guys that I sponsor, man.

It seems to work very, very well from my experience, and I'm going to pass it on you.

If you can use it, use it.

If not, don't use it.

But a lot of guys, and me including this list, I came to alcohol because I have huge problems with this power rating herself.

And one in specific that I just dealt with like a week and a half ago, man.

He's sitting, we're outside my home group, we're in a parking lot,

and meeting, it's raining outsiders.

There's just three of us left, and this guy was new.

And he's, as soon as you mention a word of God, man, you can see him cringing.

You know, and he shared with me.

He's like, you know what, I grew up in a military family.

You know, it was kill, kill, kill all week long, and then Sunday go to church.

He's like, I got a huge problem in his God thing, man.

I looked at him, I said, you know what?

Everything you know for sure about this God thing, why don't you put it aside,

if you could create your own God right now.

uh,

write down,

take a piece of paper out when you go home,

write down all the characteristics you want God to have.

Um,

and whatever you come up with is cool,

man,

they don't have to be mine.

I gave him some examples of mine,

which is loving,

forgiving,

all powerful,

there to take care of me no matter what I do or how bad I screw up.

Um, perfect.

Will never hurt me,

will never leave me.

It was always there to take care of me.

And,

uh,

And I said, you want to use some of them, use some of them.

You want to create your own, create your own.

Whatever you come up with, start praying to that,

because that's your God from this moment forward.

And it starts right there for them.

And it started right there for me.

I abandoned the heaven and hell, punishing God, and the prejudice,

and I open my mind up to maybe there is a loving, forgiving God,

and I've started to see evidence that that was the case.

And that's never been disproven to me.

Okay.

You know, and the book talks a lot about that.

So that's all I have on that piece and let Joey keep going with the book.

Thanks.

Next, a little bit more, touching them a little bit more on the book touches a little bit more on step one in the beginning of the chapter.

Hoping against Hump, we were not true alcoholics.

I know in the beginning for me it was, you know, I would pray that I wasn't a real alcohol because

That was my solution the whole time.

It was like, that's what I wanted to do.

My entire life, all I wanted to do was drink.

Drink and pretty much obliviate myself.

And people wouldn't let me do that.

And that's what I really, really wanted to do.

And then it says, but after a while, we had to face facts that we must find a spiritual basis of life or else.

You know, and or else...

you know, that came, it came down to me or else, or else I'm going to die.

And I didn't come, I pretty much came to the realization of that.

You know, after my tolerance towards alcohol and other things was going through the roof,

and it was definitely a full-time job with unlimited overtime.

It was, it was insane.

And then Bill goes on and tells us, after we pretty much smashed in the earth and we got,

you know you're an alcoholic within.

He says, but cheer up, you know, um, okay.

But something like half of us, you know,

and we're like struggling with the God thing and everything,

and we're trying to search out if we're a power grader and myself,

I know that's for me and, uh, you know, but cheer up,

but something like half our original members

where atheists are agnostic.

Our experience shows you need not be disconcerted,

confused or upset, um,

I know I had a bunch of morals and values and instilled in my life.

And, you know, those little lines that I had drawn in the sand as I was growing up, you know, don't do this, don't steal, this, that, and whatever.

I had, I had those growing up.

Um,

And every one of them got eliminated.

They got wiped away as I was going down my road of addiction, you know?

And it says if a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism,

many of us would have recovered long ago.

My experience shows that that's not true for me.

I mean, that's true for me.

I could not stop drinking and using alcohol.

to save my life by myself.

It was, there was nothing.

I had, you know, I tried girlfriends, you know, material things, you know, I tried all...

what the world was presenting on the outside, you know.

Maybe if I just had this girl, you know, I'd be all right.

I'd pretty much have a full-time babysitter.

She's not like me.

You know, this would work, you know?

I would want to stop for her.

Negative, you know.

It didn't happen like that.

Well, maybe if I move in with her and this, that, and whatever you have, you'd be.

No.

I'd be right back to doing the same insanity over and over again,

except this time I would have it's hostage.

Okay.

goes on to say

but we found that

such code and philosophies did not save us

no matter how much we tried

we could not wish to be moral

we could wish to be philosophically

in fact

we could will these things with all our might

but the needed power wasn't there

our human resources

as marshalled by the will

were not sufficient they failed

utterly

from everything

I just went over.

Everything I tried, you know, every idea that was rolling around in my head to try and beat this thing, failed utterly.

And I knew I was beat.

It was something inside of me felt like that white flag got raised and said, okay, I surrender.

I got nothing.

It goes on to say, lack of power was I a dilemma.

All right, you beat me down in the first 42 pages.

and said, you know, there is no, you have no power.

I'm like, okay, well, I can't walk around being powerless.

So now they're going on to tell us how to exactly look within ourselves to find some sort of God,

to even like just have a little bit of belief that there is some sort of power greater than ourselves out there.

Lack of power was our dilemma.

We had to find a power by which we can live, and it had to be a power greater than ourselves, obviously.

But where and how were we to find this power?

Well, that's exactly what this book is about.

Its main objection is to enable you to find a power greater than yourselves.

That will solve your problem.

Okay. Sounds good.

That means we have written a book, we believe, to be spiritual as well as moral,

and it means, of course, we're going to talk about God.

Uh-oh, I'm out the door.

I know a lot of people, you know, come in here,

And, you know, as soon as they talk about God, they're out the door, you know.

And, you know, don't, you know, some guys are like, don't talk about God too much around the newcomer.

You know, you might chase them away.

Well, I believe I heard Jojo and Charlie say, well, the whiskey will bring them back in again, you know.