The topic of "Has AA lost it's Edge?" at SouthBay Family Roundup, CA

Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Good morning. I know this is a little early for a workshop, but here we are. My name is Bill, and I'm an alcoholic.

Hi, Bill. Jay the alcoholic. And what we're gonna do this morning is talk about, has AA lost its edge? You hear a lot of things around Alcoholics Anonymous. And one of the things that you hear is that there was a time we had a 75% success rate, and now it's down to 10, maybe 5 percent or less.

That we've lost something. That somehow, the message has been diluted. The fellowship is different than it used to be, we're not working the steps correctly, the meetings are structured poorly, the message is not being conveyed. So what we'd like to do is we'd like to address some of that. And, Jay and I are blessed to be able to travel around AA a bit and talk to a lot of people.

He's cursed with the historian problem. And, so and both of us are cursed with the fact that we think we know some stuff. And, and we're gonna burden you with that a little bit this morning. Oh, back. There we go.

Scott Peck, was a philosopher and a therapist and an all around interesting cat. And one of the things that he really loved was Alcoholics Anonymous, and he loved watching us, and he knew a lot about us. And he would talk about us, and he would always preface his talks with, I can't stop smoking, so whatever you hear from me is worthless. Yeah. He said So he says, thus, I believe the greatest positive event of the 20th century occurred in Akron, Ohio on June 10, 1935 when Bill w and doctor Bob convened the first AA meeting.

It was not only the beginning of the self help movement and the beginning of the integration of science and spirituality at a grassroots level, but also the beginning of the community movement. Heck, what one of the things that you hear a lot is that we have become a self help movement, and that is not what AA is, but we've become that. So maybe we'll discuss that a little bit. The historian curse. In the beginning, we're gonna talk about numbers a lot today and where different things come from.

Hank Parkhurst was one of the people who helped write the book Alcoholics Anonymous. He was a standard oil executive who drank himself out of a really, really good job, and he was Bill's real right hand man in New York. He actually was responsible for getting Bill to actually follow through with right in the book. And, Frank Amos was, the person who the Rockefeller Foundation sent out to Akron to investigate Alcoholics Anonymous. And he asked Hank in 1938 to put together a report on what's really happened.

And so this is what, Hank came up with. 41 people were on the ball. Here's here's one who is not. In fact, the the he's he is he is in the next section, which is questionable. We did that on purpose.

Yeah. And of that, there were 6 that were questionable. 12 of these people that were in AA at the time were so difficult that they were practically denied. Okay? 10 were definitely sober, but out of touch.

Mhmm. You know, we know they're still sober, we just can't find them. And and, 25 of the prospects were, they were just prospects. There were people. So now we'll go to Jim Burwell.

Jim Burwell was another of the New York guys, and one of the privileges that I've had over the years is to actually hold his copy of the multilith copy of the big book, you know, the little pre publication thing that they did. And in it, he had some numbers from the people that contributed to the writing of the big book. And he said that there were 48 men and one woman, who actually were contributors, so he got 49 people that were active and contributed. Of the 49, there were 11 that were continuously sober from the beginning from the publishing of the big book. Jim, since he was writing it, happened to have had a few drinks, but it was bef he came into AA, got sober, then had a few drinks, but since he was writing the surveys, it was from the when the big book came out, and he never drank from the time that the book came out.

38, the other 38, they at least picked up one more time, and either they stayed sober or they or or they didn't, but that's just another little number thing for you. Now here's the Jack Alexander article, and, in in the article, Jack talks about that AA is 100% effectiveness with the non psychotic drinkers. These are technical terms. Right. Now here comes the kicker in all this is the caveat in all the numbers thing that goes on, is that who sincerely want to quit, and that's what was claimed by the workers of Alcoholics Anonymous.

The program will not work, they add, with only those who want to quit, or who want to quit because they're afraid of losing their jobs or their families. The effective desire they state must be based on enlightened self interest. The applicant must want to get away from liquor to head off incarceration or premature death. He must be fed up with the stark social loneliness, which engulfs the uncontrolled drinker, and he must want to put some order into his bungled life. Another technical term.

Yes. We do a lot of bungling at the Hermosa Beach men's stag. And then this is a real you know, if you ever wanna meditate upon the miracle of this gift that we share, These numbers that doctor Thiebaud, that were provided to him by Alcoholics Anonymous that he gave to the American American Psychiatric Association in 1944. K. Statistics at the New York office of the organization read as follows.

At the end of the 1st year, 5 recovered. At the end of the 2nd year, 15 recovered. At the end of the 3rd year, 40 recovered. The movements go on 4 years. When they're putting the book out, a 100 people have recovered.

At the end of the 50 are 400, and then the Alexander article hits. And if you have if you're in this room and you don't belong to aagrapevine.org join because you get all the cool stuff And one of the things is, is the Alexander article, which you can also get at any AA meeting and read it. It's a wonderful piece, and it was sent by somebody who was coming in to bust AA up to prove that we were a fraud. That article comes out and the fruit of that is 2,000 people at the end of the 6th year and 8,000 at the end of 7th. The Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous is a matter of long established principle policy and practice, does not engage in public debate and seeks to avoid public controversy.

The authors of this paper must emphasize that we do not speak for AA. We have a personal interest in the history of AA and consider it imperative to correct historical inaccuracies and the propagation of myth. So what we're gonna talk about now is this document, and, by the way, if anybody would like to get this stuff, come on up here afterwards and give me your name and email address, and I'll email this out to you. It's pretty heavy, so we just didn't wanna make a bunch of copies. But if you'd like to get it, and it's really fascinating.

Recovery outcome rates. This was 3 guys, these 3 gentlemen, looked at this. In essence, what they got tired of hearing this thing constantly talked about as if it's fact. People will throw around things will just say stuff. They'll just say, we have a 5% success rate.

And we all walk out of the meeting going, god. What has happened to AA? It's not it's chanting. Chanting is killing our fellowship. And we've gotta stop chanting.

You know? That's what it is. You know? And and and we and I, myself, have felt this. Like, my god.

We have we really lost something. Or you'll hear somebody else talk about, it's the drug addicts. They're taking over. You know? The it's the drug addicts.

My god. We've gotta weed them out somehow. What are what are we gonna do about the drug addicts? Why do they keep talking about that? You know?

And AA is collapsing right around us. You hear it all the time. So these guys and and the source of the statistics that are used This paper is written for AA members. It's an intent and is intended for internal and public circulation as an item of AA historical and archival research. It is offered to help inform the AA membership and academic researchers of a widely circulated misinterpretation and mischaracterization of AA recovery outcomes.

Go ahead. Let's see. Every 3 years, Alcoholics Anonymous does a survey. They send out a survey to try to find out what's up with the fellowship. Approximately, how many people we have, how many meetings there are, and where they're located.

And this is a very difficult thing to do. Number 1, the only meetings that are contacted or a percentage of meetings that are registered with New York. God knows how many AA meetings there are that are not registered with New York. In 1990, there was an internal memo that came out within GSO it took a snapshot of these from 1977 to 1989 every 3 years they took a snapshot and came up with this bar chart or this chart. And what it shows is you've got 89, 86, 83, 80, and 77.

And they track a snapshot of a group of approximately 11,000 people. And they tracked, they took this group and they said, all right, how many of you in this group are 30 days sober 60 days sober 90 days sober and so on so of the group 19% were within their 1st month. 1st year. 1st year. What?

1st year. Right? Oh. Yeah, but in their 1st month's over. 1st month's over.

13% 2nd month, 10% 3rd month, and so on. And you can see it come down to where 5% of those people were in their 12th month sober. This has been used to show that there is only a 5% recovery rate. Completely erroneous. It is that number of people were sober that length of time.

So these guys that did this report, if you read this, will discuss how that was arrived at, and then this is what they did. 1st year the 1st year retention data in the surveys does not contradict the 50% plus 25% success rate. In the 1st few weeks or months, the prospective member typically answers 2 questions. Am I an alcoholic? And number 2, am I really trying?

Many people come to a and find out that they are alcoholics. For some of the answer is obvious and easy, others need to explore the question for a while. Here's the 1st year average. So this is just another way of looking at it. You can see the percentage point and the number of months, and it comes down here to 5%.

Okay? So they lay this out. Next. Okay now if you take these numbers and you do in the statistical research which is called normalize and you took each group, each percentage, and you started that off as a 100%. So if you had, the the 1st month, 2nd month, 3rd month, people, whatever percentage that was, you start off at a 100%, and then you extrapolate that to the end of the year.

Here's what you find. Of the 1st group, the 1st month, 26% statistically, were sober at the end of the year. 38% of this of people with 60 days sober, People with 90 days sober at the end of a year, 50% were sober. The 4th month, 56%, and so on. So if you look at this, if you take these numbers and you turn it around and you say, okay, I've got this snapshot of this number of people.

How many of them were there at the end of this reporting period? You get a completely different perspective. So here's another way of looking at it. This is the normalized numbers. Now, you gotta if you we're not gonna spend 45 minutes trying to hash this out.

But you can read this, and they're very clear about how they spell this out. Now here's another way of looking at it. Here's your 100 percents in each category and the percentage at the bottom of the month, if you statistically extrapolate this. One other thing, when you look at the reporting that comes out of New York, one of the things that's used is in the last couple of surveys, the level of population has flattened out, The number of groups has even dropped a bit or the population has dropped a bit. You've gotta look at this.

You got a bunch of people back in New York that are doing the best they can with what they have. There are no attendance records. They have no idea. They have absolutely no idea how many AA meetings there truly are in the world or in the United States, much less the world. They only know the ones that report to New York.

So they take these numbers, and then they try to adjust them over a period of time when they believe because they're they're using estimates. 93 and 94, a major revision occurred in the GSO accounting methods and record system. The number of groups reported no longer included those described as meetings. These are East Coast people. We're West Coast people.

Mostly, we have meetings. We don't have groups. And California is 20% of the population, as far as we can tell, of Alcoholics Anonymous, just California. So they eliminate meetings, which chose not to be considered groups. Those meetings, typically special interest alcohol and pill and family meetings, men's STAGS, men's STAGS, women's STAGS, you know, special interest groups are included in prior year data and inflate the numbers.

So you've got this big number, then all of a sudden, boom. I'm getting I'm getting cranked up. These years are often erroneously viewed as a drop in AA membership. So was there truly a drop in AA membership? The other thing they did, at one point in the same category, they doubled the number of meetings in Europe.

They just doubled them. For no apparent reason, they doubled them. You know? Bill? Bill?

No. We'll do that at the end, Bill. Yep. Please forget it. Yeah.

Sorry. He's in charge. Yeah. Otherwise, we'll never get done. Okay.

So so now we've got this we've got this say out here, meetings and groups are different, you know, and and in most of the world, a group will have a number of meetings. So that say there's 800 members in the group or 200 members in the group, and they've got 6 meetings or 4 meetings during the course of the week. Alright? That's why they changed the reporting, because otherwise, those people were getting counted again, and again, and again. Right.

So back to now back to the past, we're gonna talk a little bit about, you know, how it is that they got the, you know, Clarence Snyder talked about having a 90 3% success rate or a 95% success rate. Where does this come from? Well, first, let's talk a little bit about starting AA in a new area, and why it is that these numbers maybe are pitched the way that they are. Here's Bill Wilson on getting started. Getting Alcoholics Anonymous started in a new environment.

Okay? Like, we're coming to Dallas. It's usually a big job. In fact, a hell of a job to get a group functioning in a new locality. But once you have 8 or 10, really on the ball, things go faster and much easier.

Our experience shows that we cannot, in the beginning, walk into public hospitals or snatch lushers off the street willy nilly. Technical terms, willy nilly. And have much but a headache. It's very easy in this way to attract a big fellowship of panhandlers and mentally defective people. The Birch Street Alano Club.

Surely, Birch Street, they are all as important in God's side as any of the rest of us, but they have had a tougher break, and we are finding that later on when a group gets size and power, quite a number of these individuals can be assimilated and those who can't or won't fall away quickly. But if you get too many of them in the beginning, you are really likely to find out that your home becomes a drinking club, a hospital, a bank, or a nursery. So I like to say, this is the price of the success rate that was given back in the day. Okay? Because they had this little thing called pre screening.

Here's one guy's experience. This comes from doctor Bob and the good old timers. A great read. A great read. After Clarence talked to me at my home, others would come over and talk to me.

25. They they wouldn't let you in a meeting just by one guy talking to you as they do now. They felt you should know something about, where you were what you were going to hear and the purpose of the program. Then Clarence made me go to the home of one of the newer members every night for 3 months. And they had 9 or 10 people talking to me.

Then, I had to read the big book before I went to my first meeting. As a result, I think I had a better understanding of what they were trying to do. Now this is in correspondence that Clarence Snyder, if you know Clarence Snyder, if you read in the in the compilation of stories that we have out, Experience, Strength, and Hope, he's in there as the home brewmeister, and he founded AA in Cleveland, and, he and Bill were corresponding about what was going on in Cleveland, why were they so successful? Well, the active or even recently active alcoholic was definitely not welcome at early meetings in Cleveland. In September of 1940, now again, remember, this is only 4 years into the movement.

Clarence wrote, Bill, that several groups do not permit a Rummy to attend unless he has been hospitalized or talked to by 10 men. Clarence wrote that most groups required either hospitalization, being talked to by at least 5 members, or being passed by a committee before a new person could attend meetings. I think we should put the committees back together, don't you? There's some people that need to be screened around here. My mind, is a committee at times.

So and you've hear a lot about, you know, the wonderful work that sister Ignatia did. And and she and doctor Bob did. And and how did they do this? How did they do this? Well, after Bob's death, Sister Ignatia continued to have high statistics at Saint Thomas Hospital because she made the AA members do, the prescreening for her.

She insisted that an Akron AA member in good standing had to sponsor the newcomer. In addition to making sure he had AA visitors, this meant agreeing to pay the newcomer's hospital expenses if he dropped out or did not pay for it himself. Gives a whole another little drift to sponsorship, doesn't it? In the Akron manual that Bob came out with, and when Jay and I do these sponsorship workshops, it states the same thing, that the sponsor should be fully prepared to pay the hospital bill of the newcomer. If that were the case, I would look at you in a completely different light.

I'm sure glad your mom had the money. God bless, good old mom. So you know, and Sister Ignatius referred to as the angel to alcoholics, and this is how the angel functioned. Okay? You can be certain that this made this prescreening process rigorous indeed.

Sister Ignatia normally allowed people only one chance to go through the hospital. Okay? On rare occasions, she would let a patient come back for a second try, but that patient would be completely isolated from the other incoming alcoholics so as not to tear down morale. In addition, no one at all got a third chance. So that's why hospitalization was so effective back in the day.

David Hawkins wrote a book called Power Versus Force. And in that book, he states, AA and its offshoot organizations have been estimated to have affected 50% of Americans at this time. 50%. If it if he's talking about just the United States, that's about a 150,000,000 people. They affect indirectly because they reinforce certain values by example.

There are now close to 300 anonymous groups dealing with almost every form of human suffering. So one of the things that has happened in AA, as we have tried to stay true to our singleness of purpose, which is a very important concept. It's it's not to be made light of. And the way Alcoholics Anonymous has approached singleness of purpose, it it has given its program to absolutely anybody who wants it anybody almost almost there there is a few we'll we'll we'll get to that. But the way we've done this is we've said, you have a cocaine problem, you have a heroin problem, you have an eating disorder, you have a start a group here, we will help you.

We will help you. Here's the material. Here's the literature. Here's the book. Here's the steps.

Here's the traditions. You know, we don't keep that to ourselves. We let anybody start. Now if you look at the growth of AA, I believe this must be considered. The growth of these other 12 step programs must be considered as an offshoot of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Cocaine Anonymous, one of our biggest brothers around here, good old CA. We contacted their general service office. Amount of sobriety, 1 to 90 days, 29%, 4 to 6 months, 12 7 to 9 months 6 10 months to a year 13 percent 2 to 5 years 23 percent 2 to 5 years 6 to 10 years, 8%, 20 years, 7%, 21 plus years, 2%. There are estimated 2,000 meetings a week worldwide. We thought there would be more meetings than that.

I've traveled Europe a little bit, and cocaine anonymous is growing dramatically in Europe. I mean, some would say it's stronger, more structured, and organized in England than AA is. This is a really cool logo, isn't it? I'd really, if you want, take a look at this. This is the Iranian Narcotics Anonymous website.

And, for our brothers and sisters in the Islamic world, if you drink, this is considered a punishable crime, much different than with us. In some cases, even a capital crime. But doing dope ain't. So not only can you, you know, a drug problem is different from an alcohol problem because it's not moral. Okay?

And so what's happening is, is in the Islamic world, just like here, the AA tent's wide open. You know, everybody can come to the open meetings and, you know, they can hide out in the closed meetings and say they're alcoholics, destroying the inner fiber of Alcoholics Anonymous. Well, the same thing happens for the the lushers in the Islamic world. They can go to the NA meetings, and be, be full fully, engaged members. You can't have AA meetings because that would be recognition that there is drinking going on, and there is, of course, no drinking going on in the Islamic world.

Our friend John that's here has personal experience with that, when he was, in Brunei. So this is what's happened with Narcotics Anonymous was started in 1958. So in 1978, they said that there were fewer than 200 registered groups in 3 countries. By 1983, there are more than a dozen countries and 2,966 meetings. In 1993, 60 countries had over 13,000 groups holding over 19,000 meetings.

In 2,002, a 108 countries had 20,000 groups holding over 30,000 meetings. In 2,005, a 116 countries had over 21, uh,500 groups, and in 2,007 there are over 25,000 groups holding over 43,000 weekly meetings in a 127 different countries. That's huge. Yeah. And a lot of people.

And if you want something to meditate, you know, I mean, we've we're talking about other fellowships because we didn't break down the international stuff for AA. But right now, at this moment in West Africa, there are groups of 2 and 3 alcoholics getting together where water is not safe to drink. Beer is cheaper than soda pop and they're having an AA meeting. And our contributions to our general service office, you know, why our groups need to be registered is funding the outreach to those people. It's an amazing thing that's A lot of you know that I have this email list where I send out quotes and stuff and and announcements and different things.

Recently, a guy contacted me, and he works for a an organization that is doing work in Rwanda. He's a sober guy working with this other outside or NGO. And he contacted me, and he said, you know, there's no AA in Rwanda. And I said, well, I know people in South Africa and in Uganda. I know some people.

Maybe we can do something, and I sent out a thing. And I also put him in touch with 2 guys at the general service office, and this guy's on the East Coast. He drove up to the general service office. They came up with a crate full of literature, And they have connections, not necessarily in Rwanda, but we're smuggling AA stuff into Rwanda. You know?

And other people around the United States and other parts of the world have responded and are sending this guy literature, and he's heading over there for 6 months on his other tour of duty, and they're gonna start building alcoholics anonymous in Rwanda. I mean, it's just incredible. It's incredible. We've lost our edge. So here, just for your for your joy, is a list of some of the other anonymous groups that have sprung up of late.

Can you see this okay in the back? Okay, great. Because, you know, like, here's a, you know, there's Alcoholics Victorious, which is a Christian interpretation of the 12 Step. Going back to the original literature of the Bible. And, how many recoveries are there?

In the grapevine, 3 years ago, there was an article that stated that fifty 1% of the people that are recovered in the United States and by recovered, in the insurance parlance, that's 2 years abstinence. Okay? That that this group of people, 51% of them are sober in the anonymous groups. 49% are sober in other things. You know, so like like, Alcoholics, Victorious, and the like.

Or how about Befrienders, anonymous, Befrienders International, it's a suicide prevention group that uses the 12 steps. What's a slip in that? He said that. Are there any guys in here whose wives want them to go to Clutter's Anonymous? Now Bill, there's one you qualify for, Hepatitis C anonymous.

Then there's Marijuana Anonymous, Obsessive Compulsive Anonymous. Those are very correct meetings, I'm sure. Lots of sex groups and lots of food groups. Sex and love addicts anonymous. How about secular organizations for sobriety?

They use the 12 steps, they just tweak it a little bit, you know. Trauma anonymous for people that have PTSD. So, we've talked about the problem, or a perceived problem, but what's the solution? Are we gonna do Gresham first, or Let's see. Yeah.

So to describe the problem, there's this wonderful thing that was written by a guy by the name of Tom Powers Junior, who also is involved in another split off movement called, All Addicts Anonymous. They do things very correctly. They're an interesting little group up in Northeast, New York. I had the pleasure of going up and going to the spot and it's their their their literature is very fascinating. But anyway, he, took a economic model which is Gresham's line.

Gresham's law says that bad currency tends to drive out good. In other words, if they're valued the same, that the bad currency, people are going to use that more than they will the good, and so it drives the good down. And that this has been operative in Alcoholics Anonymous, that weak AA is tending to drive out the strong. So, there are 3 ways of working AA. We use coffee as a metaphor because it works really good, right?

Strong, the original way, proven powerful and reliably effective for over 70 years. The medium way, which is not so strong, not so safe, not so sure, not so good, but still effective. And the weak way, which is no way at all, but literally a false teaching. It's a corruption of the stated program. So what's strong?

You do all 12 steps and keep on taking them. Keep on taking them. Practice rigorous honesty takes and continues to make restitution. No, we're not perfect. Admits faults, prays and meditates daily, goes to 2 or more AA meetings weekly, actively works the 12th step.

Bill, what's medium AA? I think we're all familiar with medium. If you've, been around any length of the time, you've done medium. Yes. Medium works pretty good, not necessarily for the psychotic alcoholic.

It starts off with a bang, you stay sober, and then you procrastinate on the parts you don't like, maybe the god steps or the inventory steps. One meeting a week, that should hold us together. Less and less self examination. It's hard to self examine when you're taking others' inventories. No effective sponsorship.

You can say you have a sponsor, but it's been months since you've talked to him. And service at a group level, the mistaking for activity for action does not mean that the activity is bad, but there's lots of people in AA that say, well, I don't sponsor people. I do other things. So and their, you know, their secretary of the meeting, they flip hamburgers at the Labor Day picnic, their treasurer, they do a lot of stuff, which is positive. It's all part of being part of the community.

But in the end, I think there's an emptiness to that, because it's all about me doing things. And then finally, week AA, and if you've ever been around for a long time, there's also sometimes that we've done week But but as a program of recovery, you know, unlike the medium, big chunks are left out of the program. You go to lots and lots of meetings, and you stay away from the first drink. It's like being a sober elk. You know, the the the deal about being in the in the group is, is that the primary thing is we don't drink, and we go and do lots of stuff.

The people who founded this program absolutely did not believe that it was possible for anybody to stay away from the front drink without spiritual help. And the whole program was set up for those who are beyond human aid. And yet, we found that this process is so incredibly powerful that you can just do a little bit of the spiritual exercises and still not drink. Now, whether you have a rich and full life, whether you actually have the spiritual awakening and all the fruits that that come from Alcoholics Anonymous, we can we can talk about that for a long time. If all you have is meetings, if that's all you have in AA, and and you've fallen victim to the belief that if I go to 875,000 meetings a week, I'm doing AA, that that's what AA is, is lots of meetings.

That's what it is. If you fall in victim to that, it becomes critical how the meetings are run, because that's all there is. The entire message that you receive is from the meetings. Therefore, it's got it's critical. And I my personal belief is that a lot of this, the AA has lost its edge, has come from this group, From people that are very concerned about how the meetings are degenerating.

Because when they walk into that meeting, they're walking in to meet with their sponsor. That's their sponsor, is that meeting. That's where they get the message. That's the only place they get the message, is in that meeting, that there is nothing underneath it. There's no underpinning to hold us up.

We're not walking in there to look for people to work with. We're walking in there to actually hear the message that we need. Whenever I hear somebody say that I it's been a while since I've been to a meeting and I get really squirrely, I wonder about that. You know? I mean, if you're 20 years sober and you're going to 8 or 9 meetings a week, I personally think there's something wrong.

You know? There how could it be that? How don't I have a life? I mean, the way it looks a lot is that you're working with a lot of people. There's people at the house.

There's people you're on the phone with. There's people you're interacting with. You've got guys that are coming over, and you're sitting reading the book with them, working the steps with them. I mean, to me, that's kind of the heart and soul of the whole thing. Just my opinion, but it's a really good one.

He criticizes me when I go to 5 meetings a week. I never criticize. So the other thing that we think that's really important is, aside from this idea that that that that that the core of Alcoholics Anonymous is is working with others. And, my philosophy and the thing that we're always talking about is, you know, I when I was 28 days sober, I had a guy ask me to sponsor him. And I had already gone through the first seven steps, and, with my sponsor, and I called him up and said, what do I do?

And he said, if they're sick enough to ask you, you can't hurt them. And I believe with all my heart, if God sends them to you, you can't hurt them. You know? And people say, well, I don't sponsor people, you know, or I'm not good at it. Well, just a second.

Bill Wilson worked with, say, 700 people before he even went to Akron. None of them got sober. Was he good at it? Is there any of the spiritual exercises that we're good at? I mean there's the whole not drinking thing upfront.

There's none of these things that are but over time as we get after it, we grow in effectiveness. And that's what this thing is about. So how is it that we make sure that our meetings, we make sure that our groups are functioning along these lines? That they're not just a place for, you know, coming in to talk about my day. Well, in Alcoholics Anonymous, we have a wonderful piece of literature.

I know this is really awful to do, but I'm gonna strongly recommend that you go to the soft literature rack on occasion. It's really interesting what's in there. And there's one new pamphlet, the new graphics on it, it's green called the AA Group. And in the AA Group is a thing that's recommended for AA meetings to do called the group inventory. So if in your AA community, there's a strong ethic of sponsorship, if that ethic really lives, the meetings will reflect that.

We don't have to go to the meetings to get what we need. We create it, and the meetings reflect what we as a group have. So every so often, your group can do this inventory. You can look as a group, which is part of the growing process of me actually becoming part of a larger whole. That is not springing forth from me, that that god does actually reveal himself in the group conscience.

We say that. The group inventory will actually reveal the reality of that, that it really is a true thing. Many groups periodically hold a group inventory meeting to evaluate how well they are fulfilling their primary purpose to help other alcoholics to recover. AA suggested 12 steps of recovery. Some groups take inventory by examining our 12 traditions, one at a time, to determine how well they're living up to the principles.

What's next? So here are the questions, what's the basic purpose of our group? And then you talk about it. All your friends at the meeting, even the ones you don't like, hear what they say. What more can our group do to carry the message?

Is our group attracting alcoholics from different backgrounds? Are we seeing a good cross section of our community, including those with special needs? Well, out here in the South Bay, you know, we don't have a large, you know, you know, pool of folks, of different folks, but we've got enough strange ones. Psychotic one. Yes.

Do members stick with us or does the turnover seem excessive? If so, why? What can we, as a group, do to retain members? Do we emphasize the importance of sponsorship? How effectively?

How can we do it better? And in this, when you do this inventory process, there's no votes taken. We're not we're not we're not here to decide structure or anything. We're allowing the group conscious to speak, especially people that may be sitting in the group that feel they have no voice. When we did this at the Hermosa be Beach men's stag, there was a whole group of people that rose up within that group that really felt they had no voice.

Maybe they weren't complaining about it that much, but they felt that there were these other people that were you were surfing a lot of time. This was an opportunity for these people to express themselves without fear of any kind of condemnation or that there was gonna be a vote taken or anything to allow them to feel part of the group. Are we careful to preserve the anonymity of our group members and other AAs outside the meeting rooms? Do we also leave what they share at meetings behind? Sorry.

Okay. Does our group emphasize to all members the value of keeping up with the kitchen setup, clean up that are essential for our 12 step efforts? I mean, if you're meeting at a church, having been a vice president of a church, one of the things that the insurance companies now don't want us meeting at the don't want the church providing us with stuff. Just so you know, when you're there, when when you're on church property nowadays, their, legal people and their insurance people don't want you there. And they're doing it out of the goodness of their heart, because they believe what it is that we do.

Okay? And are you getting are you once in a while, like, sending them a copy of the 11th step once a year and thanking them for the privilege of using the room? You know, letting them know that the purpose of this thing, this is what we're this is what we're promoting. And you think that they know, but, you know, the the boards turn over and folks, you know, the folks don't don't know. Are, are all the members of the group able to speak at meetings and participate in other group activities?

9, are they mindful that holding office is a great responsibility not to be viewed as an outcome of a popularity? In other words, when you're having a group, vote, is it that you're just voting for your buddies? Or are you voting for the woman or man who could most benefit from being of service? Does our group do its fair share toward participating in the purpose of AA as it relates to our 3 legacies, recovery, unity, and service? What has our group done lately to bring AA message to the attention of professionals in the community, the physicians, clergy, court officials, educators, and others who are often the first to see alcoholics in need of help?

How is our group fulfilling its responsibility to the 7th tradition? So, you know, a lot of these questions you can just check off. You can say, say, well, hey, we're doing pretty good or this really doesn't apply. But when you ask yourself the question, what are we doing to to carry the message out to professionals, You know? And the answer to a lot of groups is, well, nothing.

We don't do that. We're just here in the Alano Club, and we just meet and that's what we do. Good morning. You know? Maybe it's time to do more.

Maybe you might think stop and think about that if your group asks itself that question. Maybe there's somebody there that you don't even know about who's a doctor. And he says, well, you know, I could really use a couple of people to come over to the hospital where I work at and talk to these people because they don't know what to do with these alcoholics. They just, you know, that question might come up. We are responsible for making sure that when folks come in, they're greeted.

And if you're, you know, and if you if you're showing up at the meeting and you're talking to your friends and you're not greeting the new person, what are you doing? You know, what are we doing? You know, and and for me, it's really important to realize that the people that I'm meeting in Alcoholics Anonymous might not be on the same terms that I met them when I came into AA. In other words, I came into an AA where all I had to do for entertainment, on any given moment, at any given day, was go down to the Alano Club, order a cup of coffee, and there'd be a phone call within a few hours that there was a 12 step call, and I had a Pinto that I'd been living in, and I could go out and get them. And they said, don't talk to them, but just bring them back.

You know? And but I mean that that's how I engaged with them. That's not the way you meet people now in Alcoholics Anonymous. So what is it that we can do? How can we as a group use all the great resources that we have to make Alcoholics Anonymous inviting and effective to the people that come in.

So, you know, to kind of wrap this thing up, what's really happened? What's really happened to Alcoholics Anonymous? Well, AA's overall membership estimates, if observed as a broad indicator, signal that AA is doing something right and has been doing so for quite some time. In 2nd in 7 decades, estimates of, membership have grown from 2 members and 2 groups in the United States to almost 2,000,000 members in a 100000 groups worldwide. That is not a measurement of doing something wrong.

In the bottom line on this report that we've used most of this for, and then at the end, kind of our opinion, they come up with that probably in the good old days, which Tom I says there were no good old days. These are the good old days. But back in the old days, there was probably closer to a 40% success rate. And today, there's probably about a 40% success rate, if you look at it. Have the demographics changed?

Dramatically. We don't go into hospitals and bring them in anymore. They just show up. They just come here. They get sent here from all kinds of different places.

And if it's true that when anyone anywhere reaches out for help, I want the hand of AA to be there for that, I am responsible. I believe it's up to us to adjust to what's coming in, not try to control what's coming in. It's up to me to carry the message, not the meeting. It's up to me. And if there's enough mes around, if we're getting together and we're inventorying ourselves as a group, we will carry that message.