The topic of "Working With Others" at The Firing Line Group of Alcoholics Anonymous in Saint Paul, MN

Alcoholic

I

Yeah, Thanks for having me again and being here. Somebody at least

what what I was trying to focus on a bit the last time I was here was

it's kind of a more practical aspects of my experience about working with others. I

the 12th step in the big book is haven't had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps.

We tried tried to carry this message to Alcoholics and to and to practice these principles and all our affairs. So basically the toughest are three parts. And

I just want to kind of reiterate that.

And I, I believe that, you know, our rigorous tough stuff work is the best kept hidden secret. And Alcoholics Anonymous, I think that's, I think that, you know, we're not doing it on a grand scale in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I think that's why many of us relapse. I think a lot of the reasons why people have a hard time later in recovery is because they

don't work with others.

I am basing this on my experience

working with a lot of people with time

sponsored a lot of people with time, like, you know, more than 10 years, more than 15 years.

And,

and they've, this is back home in Iceland and

they've come to me because they, you know, guess, you know, I guess because I was, I was enthusiastic about the program and I was enthusiastic about this fellowship. And that's, that's something they felt they needed. And, and sometimes these guys I've I worked with had, you know, had achieved the, the spiritual experience, maybe not working through the book, like we've been talking about, you know, step by step,

but they achieved it through various, you know, means their God as they understood them, guided them through this process. You know, there's more than one way to skin a cat and that's fine.

But the problem they were having this, they didn't know or didn't have any methods or means to transmit the program.

And I don't know if we talked about this before, but it's hard if you, if you like do your 7th step, you know, by losing a part of your finger somewhere, you know, and then you do the 5th step in a workshop in India somewhere through, you know what I'm saying? So if you do this work

through a like a nonlinear

process, it's really hard to transmit that. It's really hard to send that response to you have to India to a workshop. You know what I'm saying? You can't go and chop everybody's finger off to give them their seven step experience or the 6th step experience. So these, these people I was working with, the main thing I think I, I managed to give them was not, not necessarily that vital spiritual experience, but

the,

or the access to that or the means to go to that vital spiritual experience. But but more just a method to work with a new guy. You know, something because it's hard. It's hard to meet with a newcomer and you know and have nothing concrete to give him. And you don't know, don't know how to give him what you've got.

You don't know you

and and you don't have anything organized or concrete to relate to them. So you end up telling them a lot of, you know, phrases, a lot of stuff from self help books or areas you're reading at the time and a lot of stuff from Oprah of Intre, if you like to watch that. And those are all those are all beautiful things, but those are. But usually they, they're not, you know, the program of Alcoholics Anonymous

and,

and justice, you know, with, with these guys I worked with, just when they had that kind of, when they had these tools to work with, they all expressed such relief, not having to be witty and deep all the time. They could just go to the book, you know what I'm saying? And not having to watch Oprah anymore unless they wanted to, of course.

It's so simple. The program's just in the book and we can use it. And then you use our experience, of course,

and that's a really easy kind of foolproof way to transmit the spiritual experience.

I, I think another aspect of the Telstra this

or working with others as it's one of these interesting things and I don't know if I,

if, if I said this before,

I say these things to a lot of people. So I might be repeating myself, but hope not. I hope not

that that it's interesting. It it, this is the most potent

approach we have to help ourselves working with others and alcoholism honest. But when we get sick

of her alcoholism, you know,

or the spiritual malady part of alcoholism,

we feel we're not worth it to work with others, right? We get that feeling that I'm so messed up, you know, I'm feeling like this, I'm feeling like that, I'm not doing this, I'm not doing that. So, you know, I start feeling like I'm not worthy or I shouldn't be working with others, right? Because I have to, I can't transmit what I haven't got. So, you know, and, and sometimes that's the way I understand this. And so I feel I need to get well in order to get well, right? Because the most potent tool I have

work with others to get well, but I'm denying myself to do that right. I worked in oncology. I was, I was, I was helping people that were pretty sick with cancer and, and none of them said, oh, don't give me any medication for the cancer until the cancer gets a little bit smaller. You know what I'm saying? None of them said that they won't get the medication right to get the cancer smaller. They didn't wait. Well, I just want to get this tumor down to a reasonable size on my own here. And then you can give me the the

right. No, that never happened. The same with pain. You know, let me get this pain here, wait until the pain goes down a little bit, then I I'm going to be worthy to get the pain medication. Nope. No, just give me that stuff. You know what I'm saying? I'll take,

but for some strange reason I, I get to thinking, you know, that I need to, you know, to get better,

to be able to do the things I need to do to get better. That makes no sense. But I don't know if you experienced this or not. I've noticed this throughout the years that this is a pretty common insanity with us. And it's, it's an insanity because if we've gone through the work, we can transmit it, you know,

and, and I have, I, I, I know no more potent way to get better if I'm starting to get spiritually sick than work with another alcoholic.

And this is not rocket science, you know, I don't, I, I do not need to buy osmosis transferred to him some divine spiritual energy, you know, I just need to give him some experience and some information. That's it. Of course, you know, if I'm walking on water maybe that'll help, but that's certainly not a prerequisite to working with others.

Most of us would be drunk if it would be right.

Since I I have a couple of days days each year that I don't walk on water. I don't know, but

you guys,

so, you know, it's an interesting phenomenon. We get sick and we feel we're not worth it.

And

and I think like I talked about before,

once the idea that the main that the foundation, you know, stone in in, in my recovery is ingrained in me. And once I've seen that happen to other people around me,

they hardly get drunk. They hardly get drunk. If that's the first thing they turn to when shit hits the fan, when life starts happening and we start feeling that way or the this way, if that's the first thing we turn to, we turn to God and we turn to working with others,

you know, then if that's your initial response to hardship, I think you're in a good place. According to my experience,

if our first reaction is to how I'm going to change my sponsor, change a Home group, change, you know, my job, change the geographical location,

you know, talk to this guru or that guru, talk to this speaker I heard there because he's the only one qualified enough to help me because I'm so freaking special and complicated.

That's all. Well, and it could be, it could be you should change your jobs. It could be you should do that stuff, you know, I don't know. But the initial thought, at least for me is going working with others, you know, and hopefully that guru that I talked to somewhere is going to tell, you know, why are you calling me? Why aren't you trying to reach a newcomer

and work with it? If you have that solution? Of course, if you haven't experienced the spiritual experience, if you haven't experienced the awakening, if you haven't gone through the work now, I suggest you try to do so and check it out. At least you know what, What have you got to lose? I always say I, I, I always try to greet all the newcomers I meet in meetings

and talk to him and, and it, and if I you talk about being chronic and relapse or relapsers having a tough history. And then I asked him, well, have you gone through the, the work and the book? And they say no. And I said, well, that's great, great news. It really is. And I just say that. And they're like, yeah, they haven't tried it. At least they haven't, you know, at least they have that option still open.

They can check that out, you know,

and and then, and then there's hope. You know, there's hope if they haven't tried to go through the work. Well, that's that's it's not an illogical thing to do, right? After all, you know, our fellowship was named after the book. This is the basic text of our fellowship. You know, it's not,

it's not a really original or strange idea to kind of read through the book and follow the directions.

So,

yeah, I, I and, and

I, I was going to, I was going to use this time a little bit to, to talk about my experience

and, and trying to, trying to work with others and trying to do this work while, you know, with life happening around.

And, and of course, my experience in Alcoholics Anonymous was that I, and I told you this last time and I didn't get a lot of sponsors to work with in the beginning. And it did not work for me to sit around, you know, on the sidelines like a, like a shy 16 year old waiting for the newcomers to pick me up, right. I'd go out there aggressively, not aggressive to the newcomer, but aggressively to myself, you know, and go once that beyond what I dare to do and, you know, greet the newcomer,

you know, and, and it's,

and it's not really, it's not really complicated. Just wherever I am, if there's a new guy there, I try to, you know, I try to greet him and I tried to follow directions in the Chapter 7, find out about him if I can and give him my number. And, and then I kind of use my good judgment how much I talk or not, you know, sometimes you get that feeling that that guy doesn't want to be approached me. And I'm respectful to that, of course, you know,

and, but, but if I don't approach in that initial time and greet him and, you know,

start a little conversation, I never know that because some of them are really, you know, dying for some contact. Some of them have been to a lot of meetings and nobody's talked to them.

Nobody shook their hand. And that's why they're feeling. That's why they're looking kinda, you know, put off. That's why they're looking kind of

scary to approach me.

And so and I know, I know I was, I was when I got sober, I thought I was a dangerous guy. I was on probation, you know what I'm saying? My head shaved. I was a big guy, you know, with a, with a kind of a dark past. I felt, you know, and I looked at any everybody like they beat up my mother yesterday. You know, I thought that was kind of cool with, with this sensitive face. I can't imagine how I thought, how I thought that would work out. But still, you know.

And then I stood around these rooms, you know, it was a completely shaped head. And then I was like a large Russian winter overcoat, you know what I'm saying? Looking all, you know, trying to look all mean. So it's hard to approach guys like that. And then if somebody would would come and approach me, I was so freaking scared. I would usually, you know, answer them in an arrogant, disrespectful manner.

But I still really appreciate them coming greeting, you know what I'm saying? I really appreciate it.

And they were pushing anything. They weren't paddling anything. They were just simply bidding me welcome, you know, and, and you know, I'm here if you want to.

And, and that's what, what I,

that's what I tried to do and how I tried to approach it. And I,

I don't know, a new Comer coming into a meeting and not being greeted and not being paid attention to,

that's just an atrocity in my mind.

I have no tolerance for that.

I I just think it's, it's horrible if that happens. It's horrendous. And I don't know what the heck the people in that meeting are doing. God bless,

because if you're not doing that, if you're in a meeting and we're not and we have some time, we have some solution.

If we're not paying attention to the guy, what are we doing and why are we there? What's the purpose of the meeting? What is our primary purpose?

And I felt that when I, when I came over here, I, I, you know, I felt discomfort trying to, you know, I haven't have a teeny bit of an accent. If anybody noticed,

you know, I, I had a discomfort going up to the newcomers initially that introduced themselves. You know, who am I? Who, who do I think I am? You know what I'm saying? Like

am I trying to be a big shot here greeting the newcomers, You know, but it's not about that. It's not about being anything like that. It's just both this is what I do and I'm an alcoholic synonyms. This is where my focus is not because I'm so holy and you know, I have so great ideas just because experience has taught me that nothing works as well for my alcoholism as having that focus, right? It's not, it's nothing more complicated than that. Sometimes I do it, you know, for, for lofty ideals. But you know, 9 out of 10 times

I just do it because I'm there. I do it because I know it works

and I do do it because I know nothing works better.

Well, anyway, in the beginning I didn't get a lot of sponsors. I had, I didn't have a family. I was, I started, I was working a job with flexible hours, you know, stuff I was working at. I, I, I moved back home, you know, stuff like that.

So I had a lot of time to go to a lot of meetings and I was in a meeting, you know, every day I was out there. You know what I'm saying? It's like, it's kind of like being a deputant or something. You know, you just, you're just out there and you're, you know, you're getting to know the people, you're getting acquainted with the place, you're kind of learning about the culture, you know, different personalities, different cliques and a, a all that stuff.

And

so I, I could do that

and that's how I did my 12 step. You know, I went to a lot of, I didn't have a lot of sponsees. I just participated a lot in AAI went to the coffee shop before and after that I, you know, talked to the new guys there. You know, I talked to my friends that are trying to get sober or stuff like that. That's how I got the Tulsa book done.

Go into a lot of meetings trying to approach the newcomer in the best manner or the, you know, best way I could. And then, you know, people around me needing help. And that worked for me. I was fine. I, I don't need to be a sponsor to, to stay sober and Alcoholics Anonymous. I just need to be sincerely trying to work with or help another alcohol.

I don't necessarily need to be a sponsor. Often that's kind of a logical consequence of reaching out is you end up as a sponsor. You know what I'm saying? But at least according to my experience, that's not that's not a necessity. The main thing is I'm sincerely trying to reach out there

as I, as I, as I, as I got sober for a longer time as my spiritual experience kind of kicked in and it really kicked in after working with others for about 8 months, something like that,

6-8 months after I've been working with other pretty consistently for that time. That's where I got my real, you know, strong spiritual experience.

After doing that for a while, I started picking up some guys to work with, you know, and then the more guys and

and I kept going to the meetings, you know, and I kept going to detox this. I kept going to treatment centers, all that stuff.

Then I started, you know, college and I met my wife and that changed a little bit how I did things right. I couldn't attend as many meetings because they're on a they're, they're in a fixed schedule and all that stuff. But I was working a lot with newcomers and that seemed to increase.

What I learned is that

that is, it's, it is really important for me

to keep some sort of balance in my life,

you know, and, and for me to follow my third step, what I sincerely believe is Scott's will in my life. And I sincerely believed that God wanted me to go to college. I'm not saying that God's will for you guys. I'm just saying I believe that's God's will for my, for me at that time, right? And I sincerely believe that God wanted me to be in this relationship and to kind of be the best boyfriend and later, you know, fiance and husband that I could be. And so that's what I did.

And I still did a A because if I didn't, if I wasn't doing a A, if I wasn't doing my 12 step working, that would not work,

right? I wouldn't have the power, I wouldn't have the spiritual health to be that guy.

And so,

you know, that continued. I continued, I did a four year degree, undergraduate degree. I, I continued with my wife when I was when we had, we had been together for three years and I'd been through three years of school. I, we had a kid,

you know, didn't plan on it specifically, you know, but clearly had a kid. So he must have done something

and,

and that again changed things. You know,

I wasn't going out to the bar with my friends, you know, so I didn't have to stop doing that. But I, I was doing a lot of a work. I was involved with the Alano Club. I was in the board of directors there for for three years. I was doing general service work. Well, at least what we refer to as general service in Iceland and,

and I was sponsoring a lot of guys and I was always working with newcomers

and, and what kind of change for me at the time is at that point, I had enough guys. And I know we talked a little bit about that last time, but I had enough guys staying sober for enough time that and they were called, they kept calling me. They didn't call me any every day. We weren't meeting a lot, although we, I met them occasionally if needed be. But they wanted spiritual accountability. They wanted continued sponsorship in their recovery. And so they stayed in touch a bit and as they as those guys, because

what tends to happen if guys do the work from the book, they tend to stay soap.

Isn't that strange?

So,

so gradually after 3-4 years, I started having quite a few guys that I was working on working with on a continuous basis and that reduced the time I had to work with new guys. I felt though, that if I didn't work with a newcomer too, I, I stagnated a bit. You know, if I was only doing them the work with the guys that, that were already in the program. It, it kind of, I think my experience is that it limited my

a bit and I felt I was stagnated a bit. So I always tried to keep one new guy I was working with, but that's it. Since that time, I've only worked with, you know, one new new newcomer each time.

And it just kind of came about as I, as I had, you know, as we had a baby and the other sponsees kind of grew a little bit in numbers necessity kind of forced me to to go that route. That may change or may not change in the future, but that's where it ended up. And I thought, I think I talked about the reasons for that the last time.

Now having a having a kid and trying to be the father I thought God would want me to be.

That also meant time, right? All this stuff means time

and that means time I was doing something else with before. And in my case, that something else was mostly spent in Alcoholics and arms.

And so I, I was fortunate to the point that, you know, I, I got my 12 step home delivered at that point, right?

And I have quite a few spawn seas that that got their sobriety with my son in their lap. Right.

My son's probably heard the big book Rhett more often than most as.

And he was a, he was like a really Buddha like child. So he would just sit there like for the 1st 18 months and not do anything.

So that was pretty convenient. And that was, you know, clearly something I needed since, you know, since that's the way it was.

And so I started, and so I started more to invite the guys I was working with into my house, into my home. And I feel that has a real spiritual significance,

that they're a part of what I do.

You know, they're sitting there often with my son in their lap. You know what I'm saying? We're reading the book. They're in my home. They're in my

sanctuary, if you will. There. They're there where I, you know, spent time with my wife and, you know, or any,

any, you know, spiritual truth about me is going to be quick to surface, right.

And I, I just think it has a lot of meaning to it to invite a newcomer to that place. And it just says a lot, I think to him to how much he he matters to me, you know, not maybe personally at the time, although that may come, but just how much it matters to me to be working with a new guy. You know,

it's a part of who I am. It's a part of my family. It's a part of keeping everything together. I'm Volavera. I know what kind of guy gets drunk. I know what type of alcoholic go outs and gets drunk. It's a type like me, right? That's the type

and I'm, I'm aware of this. I'm aware of that. If I wouldn't be sober and the kind of alcoholic and I can say this and it's true. If I'm not sober, I, I lose most of the things I, I have to do and it would happen pretty quickly because of the way I drink. And that's just the truth.

So,

you know, having the newcomer, having the guys I work with as a part, part of my,

my close environment, inviting them to my home, I, I felt that's really important. Now,

I've been doing that for quite a few years and, you know, there have been one or two guys I haven't invited to my house right away

because of because of their history, you know, and because I know my wife wouldn't feel comfortable with them being there. But always, as you know, as the, and, and that's just me being respectful of, you know, my family basically being considerate. But,

and, and, you know, many times I'll maybe meet the guy the first time someplace else. If, if I know my family's going to be at the house. But, you know, eventually it always happens that they start coming there, you know, and they meet, they meet my family. You know, they may be, you know,

eat dinner with us or, you know, they take a ride with me picking up my son from preschool or, you know, put,

you know, whatever.

And,

and I, and I just kind of really,

I, I kind of, I'm really fond of that process. And the guys I've been working with for a longer time, they, you know, they, you know, I, I do stuff with them. I was staying at one sponsor's house when I got back to Iceland. He, he wasn't there, but you know, he lent me his house for a week. And while I was there, I was staying with another family. And, and that, that guy and his wife and his two kids, that guy's my sponsee. He's been my sponsee for eight years now.

And I've had probably

33 spawn seas, you know, that visit have visited me while I'm here in the US

and I have probably

seven or eight guys that call me on a regular basis.

And,

and that just, that's a pretty,

for me, that's a pretty unique field, you know,

not because they're addicted to my opinion or, you know, that I tell them how to run their lives because that's not a part of my job description, but rather that we have a relationship that that kind of matters to us. And, you know, they know I know their shit and they, they know me and they can trust that I'll hopefully most of the time will be coming from, you know, a specific

and but I'll be talking, hopefully be talking about this program when they when they call.

And that's the, you know, that's the direction and that I know what my job is. And my job is not to advise them in their relationships or have an opinion about the psychiatric medication they're taking. My job

is solely about sharing my experience with the work in this book, you know,

and if they let you know if they need their teeth fixed or, you know, they need a relationship with vice, they're professionals who can do that. Or like we talked about before, they can call their mom or their grandma or whatever, whatever, you know, people who can have an opinion about that stuff. I don't. I don't. I might have experiences on the subject on how to approach the solution, but I'm not going to tell them how to run their lives.

It was pretty interesting for me transitioning from

from, you know, having I had a kid. I,

I graduated from College in 2004 and I had two years where I was, I was working, I did some exercise, I took care of my family and I did a A and it was a pretty

peaceful period. You know, I two year, what I do is I tried, you know, my chosen profession is at least feebly trying to help other people. So that's basically what I was doing all day. You know, I was trying to do that at work and then I got hope and home and I was trying to do that. I got guys at my home most of the time, most nights

and I had I had a Home group. I had one Home group and that's the way I've kept it for many years. And that's, and that's basically I,

you know, since and like I talked about in the 1st 18 months, two years, I was all over the place

because I could right

after, you know, I, I started doing other things too, focusing on other things that, that changed for me. And since that time, I've had one Home group and I have, I usually, I, I only attend 1:00 AM meeting a week

because there's, there's nothing specific for me that goes on in an, a meeting that I, you know, that I need on, on a, on a, let's say more frequent basis than once a week. There's a fellowship, there's some accountability, you know, there's of course social relationship, all that stuff

and relationships that mean a lot to me. But

but the real stuff I need I get from working with a new guy, you know, or get working with guys, you know, one one-on-one preferably if I can.

And, and so that's where my main focus is. And I just, I never go to meetings just to go go to meetings. I go to meetings if I need to get some toast up with them.

And so my focus is not on going to a lot of meetings and

we can't. And like I talked about, it can't be an excellent way to do a lot of 12 step work, you know?

But if I'm just going there to hang out there, my time is probably at at least now Edward, I presently am in my life. My time is probably better spent doing something else.

If I talk a little bit about my Home group, My, my, that's another interesting thing about working with others is how important it is to have access to newcomers and to have a group that's actively doing, you know, work and actively participating in that. I would have a hard time being a part of a group where I was the only one greeting the newcomer, unless I was like a remote Tom somewhere in so we only, you know, meeting in town.

I think it's really important how my Home group present itself to, you know,

to do in the 12 step work. That's really important to me.

We started. We started our meeting back home. It's a man's meeting. It's called Man among Men. That's a direct translation.

We started it on December 20th in 99, about 2 1/2 years after we started. We were 15 guys who started it about 2 1/2 years. We were 180 guys in that meeting and we were all young guys, you know, ages, maybe 818. Sometimes we had like younger guys than that, up to 40 maybe

and all full of testosterone and it's just, it was a beautiful thing. You can imagine 180 guys doing the serenity prayer. You could hear it miles away,

especially young guys, you know, and and all, all kind of still

preaching fire about the pic book, right? We knew we knew the truth and you didn't, right?

It was kind of our approach there ever allowed

and, and we did a lot of experimentation in our group and, you know,

in the beginning, what we used to do

and I guess still sometimes occurs. This is a this is an open discussion meeting. And it's not really an open discussion meeting because we have a have a chair who chooses a leader and the leaders always from the group. He speaks for 10 and 10 to 15 minutes, then he chooses guys he wants to hear from. And he and, and, and our conscience has decided that we don't want to hear from anybody that the leader doesn't know approximately what he's going to say, right. So there's no rolling of the dice there. The leader is going to know that the guy he's

speaking up is going to carry the message and if he chooses somebody else, that's fine. But it's not going to be fun being him for the next few weeks at our meeting and he's going to get to hear it at our business meeting. I'm not saying this is the right approach. I'm just saying this is the approach we take right and has worked for us. Because what used to happen is that we used to clap and holler people down from the podium. And you can imagine being a relatively new guy,

you know, with, with a history like some of us had with a lot of drug use, being in jail, all that stuff. And you come into a meeting

and there are 180 guys there and you know some of them from the streets or from what, wherever you are. And then you go up and you try to do the stuff you did, you were taught in therapy to do share like you did in therapy about your day and about your car breaking down. And they start hollering at you like after 30 seconds, shut up, sit down, you know what I'm saying? Stuff like that. And then if you keep on going, after about two minutes, they're going to start to clap. Somebody's going to start to clap

and then somebody else is going to join in.

And then after about 30 seconds you have like 150 guys clapping while you're trying to share your message.

Talking about tough love, right?

So

I know, I know some of us miss the drama involved in doing this, you know, so when I, you know, I but, but we, we, we rarely do this now because we felt it was unfair to a newcomer. You know, we felt this was OK to do with guys who should, should know better, right? But we felt this was kind of violent to a newcomer who didn't know any better and was sincerely trying to do his best carrying this message.

Kind of kind of harsh, you know,

So we rarely do this now. And the way we, we, we try to keep the message pretty clear in our meeting is through the method. We, I was telling you we have a leader who is, who's from the, the core of the group means he's been in the group for one year at a minimum most of the time.

And

and he knows what the guys he's taking up to podium. He knows what they're going to say now, like with every, every big group. What happened is that we had a lot of groups kind of breaking off from our group, joining other groups, starting other groups, starting other all and no clubs. I think there are, there are probably 4L and O clubs now in Iceland and

and the first one will start in 2000

and

doing. And so we had, as I said, we have a lot of break off groups and our, and our meeting, our mammoth of a meeting, it, it went down and it's now about 100 guys, something like that,

80 to 100 guys.

And, and it was kind of interesting. And it has to do with working with others a bit, I guess, because I, I know, you know, some, some members of the Home group kind of were scared about that. You know what I'm saying? What's going on? Are we doing something wrong? All that stuff? Why aren't we popular anymore?

And you know, I, I guess I like my Group A little bit better after it got down because it got to be a little bit of a freak show that people showed up in to see kind of a show to see somebody being, you know, clap down from the podium, all that stuff.

But the the main thing I think is important about our group that the guys in our group do a lot of 12 step group

and we don't spend the time, you know, the 10 that those precious 10 minutes before and after the meeting, hugging and kissing each other.

You know, and, and we've talked about this all the time in our business meeting. You know, if somebody is somebody old, you know, that's been in the group for a long time, comes up to me right after the meeting, I'm just going to duck and put him away, right, Because I need to go after that new guy. I need to go after the new guy who's trying to get out of there before somebody approaches them. But still he wants somebody to approach him, but still he wants to get out of it, right. So what we do is we line up,

you know

where the exit from the meeting is. We line up there, probably 10 of us, fifteen of us, something like that, when we say the Serenity Prayer, so nobody gets out without talking to us.

And

I can guarantee if you go to that meeting, you might not understand the message, but you're going to be talked to and you're going to be greeted and you're going to be given some contact information.

And you're going to be, you're going to be given the option, the possibility to get to this work if you want to. And there's going to be people there that are doing it and have been doing it for a long time. And some haven't been doing it for a long time, but are enthusiastic about this program.

We, we had the experience with this that that we used to and we always lose some of the guys, they come to our meeting, they get the spiritual experience, they get all riled up and then a year passes, something like that, a year and a half. And then they get vice and all mature. And then they don't want to be in our meeting anymore because it's so immature.

And

and they don't have the tolerance towards the guys that are now like they were a year ago, right? Because they are. So you know what I'm saying? They're so intolerant. They're so likely so like that. So preach. You know that stuff

well. And it's been interesting. And I know most of us who stayed in this group have the attitude that that this is this seems to be a somewhat unavoidable side effect of getting a spiritual awakening.

You know, Well, you know, we do everything we can to help these guys get the power that propels the universe into their lives. Well, it's kind of have a small effect on their emotional life. They're going to get a bit of riled up. They're going to get passionate. They're going to get enthusiastic. It's a beautiful thing. It might not always be pretty. You know, it might come with some

side effects that, you know, aren't always nice, but that's going to go away and that's going to pass.

And if we're not there, if we're not there to role model how to go past that stage. And I'm not saying it's a bad stage. I'm just saying usually we we kind of move beyond that

after a while, then what's the point, you know what I'm saying? How is a going to move beyond just being there, being, you know,

so, so I really love that states because I I spent a lot of time in that states. I'm still kind of, you know, and I'm still enthusiastic and riled up about this deal.

And I just, I don't know, I just have a lot of tolerance towards that. And I think it's important that that we do as a fellowship, you know, that that there's a lot of tolerance to to be being on fire towards Alcoholics Anonymous, to having passion, to being enthusiastic,

although other people might call those very same things being judgmental and

arrogant. You know what I'm saying? I don't believe what I don't see it like that. I don't see it like that at all. And I think the main thing is that we're sincerely trying to work with other Alcoholics. That's it. That's what that's that's the matter. And The thing is, you know, I've seen a lot of guys go through that States and then revoked into it so much that they completely, you know,

leave the things that used to keep them sober, that kept them sane, you know, leave the very core of what gave them that, you know, that passion. And that's not a pretty thing either, you know, to see a light go out like that, that's a that's a God damn shame and it's sad. It really is, you know,