Why and how they sponsor at the "Kitchen Table AA with gumbo" workshop in Now Orleans, LA

I just, I don't have the time. I'm married, I got kids, I got a job. You know, I got things to do. I got, I got a life. Now I just don't. I don't have the time.

You hear that right? I would sponsor people but I don't have time.

OK, I don't really know where to start with this except that,

you know, I just get in my own experience, you know,

I wake up in the morning at about 5:00 in the morning because I have a disabled wife and I have things I have to do before she wakes up so that I can keep my sanity. And I spend some time meditating and praying. And sometimes I just screw around, play my guitar. And then I get my kids awake and I get them dressed, and then I get them ready for school. And then I break up their fights. And then I wake up, my wife and I get her dressed, and then I go to work.

And at work, I talked about 20 Alcoholics because we called each other all day long.

And then maybe I'll meet somebody before meeting and then I go to a meeting and I love that life. It's a full rich life. But then during that course of the day, I'll talk to a guy that I sponsor who doesn't have a job yet. He doesn't have a girlfriend yet, doesn't have anything. And I'll say, hey, did you go to that meeting? We talked to. And he goes, yeah, I was, I was real busy. I didn't have time. So it's relative. And I think really the the Jay said to me a long time ago, it's a faith issue whether you have time or not. And to couch

in a way that maybe some of you can understand, when we had our third child, my wife said, Oh my God, we're not. We don't have the money for this. We don't have the time for this to pay attention to a third child. You know what? That child came and suddenly there was time. And it was God provided the time. God made the the hierarchy of my affairs line up so that I had time to nurture that child and to earn enough money to feed that child.

But I'd rather couch it to you this way. If you get somebody that says they don't have time. My son and I like to play. What kind of superpower would you like to have?

OK. And he always wants to look through people's clothes, but he's a budding teenager.

And I want to read minds and all that. But what if somebody said to you, I can give you the superpower to raise the dead?

I can make it so that you have the power to bring people back to life from death.

Would you say to that person,

I don't have time,

I'm sorry, there's a TV show on tonight and my daughter has a soccer game and my wife, blah, blah, blah, and my job blah, blah, blah. You'd say, hey, man, I can raise the dead. I'm going to spend an hour a day just raising the dead. And what I like to think about when I sit through this morning with Jay is that in 1932, guys met 1930. What Jay 5

met in a little living room in Akron, OH. And talk to each other about their problem in the spiritual solution that problem. And because of that, I'm alive.

Because of that, you're alive.

So this I don't have time. Thing is like, what is it that you do that's more important than raising the debt?

I,

I,

you know, there are some people

that shouldn't sponsor,

you know, they're hanging outside the meeting, they're smoking cigarettes, they're drinking Red Bull. They're just, they're just, they're, they're not living righteous lives. They're not really doing stuff. You know, these people are you know, they, they, they should not be out carrying the message.

We do these workshops and we'll ask a question, we'll do Q and AA lot, and one of the things that comes up is we'll sit, we'll make the statement.

Should everybody sponsor?

And invariably there's a bunch of hands that go up, go no, there are some people that are dangerous, that they're spreading the disease, not the message. They shouldn't be sponsored. Well, how do I know that? What you don't need is a shitty sponsor.

How do I know

who made me God to determine who's a good sponsor, who's a bad sponsor, who should do the work and who shouldn't?

Jay loves to say that the second-half of the 11th step is not extra credit.

I like to say the 12th step is not extra credit. It is the heart and soul of the program. It's the one job that all of us have to do if we want to complete the steps. If we want to confront our defects of character, we will sponsor people and we'll run into every one of them. If we have the experience of one-on-one interaction with other Alcoholics, that will change us more than any other single step.

Mean one through 9 is about 15% of the program. I mean, it's the basic sober one O 1. It's what we have to do in order to have a message that has some depth and weight. Now, the parking lot people, as I like to call them, the ones out in the parking lot that are drinking the Red Bulls and smoking one cigarette after another and they're not hanging out in the meetings. You know, they're looking for her or him or doing whatever it is they do. The part a lot of you may here have been parking lot people at one time or another.

Maybe you're a parking lot person now and it's just raining outside and you felt like you should come in, you know, You know, welcome to the parking lot people. You're welcome here, but you can't have any gumbo unless we, you know,

how do I know that some guy, in order to get the pressure off when everybody's asking if he has a sponsor, goes out to one of these parking lot guys and ask them to be a sponsor. And the parking lot guy doesn't want to look bad. So he says, Oh, well, sure, I'd be happy to sponsor you, but he's freaked out because he doesn't know anything.

How do I know that that won't motivate him to come into the room to pick some stuff up that he can pass on to this other guy? How do I know that that guy won't keep him moving so that this guy doesn't catch up to him? Maybe that'll be the motivation for him to finally get into the book, finally do some work. I've heard that story before.

I mean, Jay told the story,

28 days sober guy asked him to sponsor him, He goes to a sponsor. What will I do?

He says. We'll show him what you know, essentially, you know, I've had guys ask me that question. Well, is it too soon for me? I haven't finished all the steps. Now you better stay ahead of the guy. You know, it's a race now.

Now, when I started sponsoring, I was probably I was less than a year sober when the first guy asked me to sponsor him. And being arrogant and pompous like I am, I figure I already knew it all. The truth is, when I look back on that, those guys taught me a lot.

I've had guys ask me to sponsor them that have a depth of knowledge of the book much greater than mine. To this day, I have guys that a sponsor that are much more students of the big book. I think I'm pretty good. But these guys are just, they're academic. They remember stuff. I'm starting to forget a lot of it. You know, I need them to carry around shit for me. You know? I'll turn to the guy. What page was that? 42, right, 42. It's on page 42.

I do workshops

have done for a year, a lot of years now and I get guys that have some time to come to the workshop and and we all work the steps together over a six month period of time. And I've gotten over the idea of me being the facilitator. Now I really are consciously look for what they're going to bring to the table, what I'm going to learn from how they've worked the steps. And I think early on when you say that some people shouldn't sponsor,

everybody should sponsor, it is the vehicle that'll cause us to grow up emotionally more than any other exercise we do in a A.

Yeah, You know, I, I tried sponsoring some people. I, I sponsored I think like four guys and they all drank and I'm just not really good at this. You know, I don't, I just don't think I should sponsor people.

Oh, why don't you just go sit down?

Don't give him a fork. We want, we don't want him to have any sharp objects. That's the depth of his understanding.

So

this thing about I got sober listening to a guy by the name of Norm Alpy and if you if you want to have really fun, it's like it's kind of like classic rock and roll. You go to xaspeakers.org and then the search, you put Norm A and there's this guy that just talks amazing. And and we used to for entertainment, we used to go around and and and listen to this guy talk. You know, we just call his house and go where is he tonight? We

in the car and we'd go out and hear Norm dock because it was just too much fun. And he always used to say that counters are losers.

Counters or losers. I had a sponsor, Fred, who when I was started to say that I was too busy,

you know, I, he said I never know. He said never know how many people you sponsor. I have no idea how many people I sponsor. I do know that there's a lot of difference between who it is that I think I'm sponsoring and the amount of people who will say OJS is my sponsor,

but you know, it's but, but The thing is, is that he said. I only sponsor the next person that's on the telephone.

I only sponsor the next person that I'm talking. Yeah. Well, that way I'm not carrying the weight of all this type of baggage, you know, I mean, so

this is a very heavy look. And so. So what is it that I'm doing in this thing? OK. Now Bill Wilson, when he had his experience in the hospital, goes run into the Oxford Group and starts running around looking for drunks in the Oxford Group. When he was not in meetings,

he was running up and down Wall Street looking for other guys that were like he was. And then when that didn't work, he was pulling people off bar stools and talking to him, shaking his finger at him. He did that for six months with hundreds of people.

Nobody got sober.

Nobody got sober. One night over at dinner, he looks at his wife and said this is highly overrated. I don't think this this running around telling people about how to do stuff is going to work. And she said, Bill,

you haven't had anything to drink.

You know, all that I'm responsible for is carrying the message. And it's the message. It's not the messenger. Now, last night I explained to you about the guy. The 12 stepped me.

OK, That man, when he talked to me, he was not a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. He'd had a period of 10 years of sobriety at one point, and at another point in his life he had a period of 15 years of sobriety.

And yet he wasn't an AAA member when he talked to me that day.

But that man saved my life with that message,

with that message. So all I'm responsible for doing is carrying the message.

And you know, I got to a point in my life where I was very busy and I started doing groups of guys doing the steps together because that way the time got another thing. This is really, if you really want to be cruel, here's a great trick. Now what I do is when a guy comes up and asks me to sponsor him, I always say, you know, yes, at first. I, I, I say, well, we, we need to get together and talk about it. And what I do is I have them go and read

Bob's Nightmare, pay really close attention to the last four pages and then call me and we'll, we'll, we'll talk about it. And,

and then what I do what I, because I always say yes, is that I say, OK, now what I want you to do is we're going to pray for God to send us another alcoholic.

And we'll keep doing that. And what happens is somebody else always shows up, usually rather quickly. One of the funnest stories was I did that with guys showed up at my, my door 15 years sober in crisis, wasn't going to a a very much hadn't sponsored anybody in a while. They bring him in. We talk a little bit, OK, we're going to go back to meetings. We get down on our knees. We, we, we, we pray God sent us drunks. We go out to the meeting. A guy sits right down between us.

I participate in the meeting.

Guy writes on a piece of paper. Will you sponsor me and hands it to me,

you know, and then I passed the paper to my buddy and he just fell out, you know. So, I mean, and, and then the other important thing then is that see the sponsors important, but what's really more important is the sober friend, 'cause you always tell the truth to them before you tell your sponsor, right? I mean, 'cause you never really, because you know what they're going to say to you. You don't want to hear that. So you want to talk to your friend about it first, right?

But then So what happens is, is that I got two guys that I'm working with because what I'm doing it with two guys, they have something that's really important, a common enemy me. And they work as, as they, as we're going through the book and going through stuff, they're able to share honestly about what it is that they're going through, not just about, you know, what it is that they feel like they can share with me. So it's a really good way to

get them more involved in a a, but also,

you know, to have them from the beginning. Watch the miracle expand.

So I only sponsor the next person. I have no idea how many people I've said yes to. I have no idea how many people are sober and how many are drinking. You know, I, I gave you the, the thing about the guy that that called me off of Facebook, you know, it had been 30 years since I talked to the guy and he says, is this my sponsor now? He hasn't been what I'd call an A A member for a long, long time,

but yet he's not drinking. He's got a wife that still speaks to him. He's got children that like him.

You know, who am I to say what that is? So, you know, it's not about me keeping track, me keeping score. It's always going to lose. And remember that these guys that founded this movement that were part of Alcoholics Anonymous, they all

worked with lots and lots of people that didn't stay before the Jack Alexander article came out.

In the first five years of this program,

there were 150 people sober in a total in the country,

so why should it be any different for us?

All that we should be doing is just saying yes and trying to carry the message as best we can.

I don't feel I have anything to offer. I, you know, I've got a therapist and they tell me it's time to take care of myself now. You know, I really, I just don't have time to go sit down.

I love doing that.

I have. I was at a meeting. I was in a meeting in a room where we sit in a circle. There's a men's stag noon meeting and a guy, this actually happened. And the guy said, you know, I've got 16 days. I'm nervous all the time. I'm lonely. I'm crawling out of my own skin. I got a million problems that I don't think I'm going to be able to solve. I don't know what to do

and the next guy in the circle, because we share in a circle, said I've got 17 days. Keep coming back, man. It gets so much better.

That actually happened

and I hear this. I don't have anything to offer. And I think,

I think the thing to remember for me is that the Big Book and the promises says we will not regret the past nor wish to close the door on it. But a little farther down it says because no matter how far down the scale we have fallen, we will see how our experience can help others. So one of the reasons I stay clear on the ways that I behaved as an alcoholic is so that when I talk to you, you trust me.

And I think that Bill has been really clear with me and my sobriety when things have happened that have been wonderful,

had wonderful things happen. And when things have happened that have been awful, he has made a point to tell me to pay attention because I have a message of depth and weight that continues into my sobriety. So when someone thinks they have nothing to offer, maybe it's like this. Maybe they got sober and they didn't get a job and a wife and a house right away. Maybe they got a lame job and they worked it for two years and maybe they live in a little apartment and and maybe they feel boring, you know? Well, I guarantee you that that experience

will help others, that there's somebody else that feels that way. And the thing that we rob ourselves of or each other of is telling the truth about our sobriety. You know, I, I had a moment in a meeting where I said I was going to talk about how wonderful a a had made my life and our men stag meeting and it came to me and I just couldn't do it. And I said, you know, quite frankly, I think a A is bullshit and alcohol is harmless and I hate you guys.

And I was five years sober

and I went home to my house and there was a message on my machine from Jane. He goes, hey, it's Jay. A A is bullshit. Alcohol is harmless, but you can't drink any.

And I guess I told the truth, right? And maybe I helped somebody. I know I helped me. But I want you to think about it this way too. If you're newly sober, or if you're sober for a little while and you couldn't stop drinking before you came to a A, you have a higher power by definition in my heart and in my eyes, you have to have one or you wouldn't be sober. But you may have a higher power that you sometimes think isn't really big enough for your finances.

You know my higher power, I pray and I got sober, but man, I got financial problems. But your higher powers may be a little too small for that

or my higher power doesn't really isn't really going to. I can't turn my marriage over to my higher power because, man, it's complicated and it's weird. And there's some stuff I did that I haven't said and some stuff she does that I can't tell anybody. And you know, my higher power is too small for that.

So if your higher power is too small, my question to you is what are you feeding him?

Are you feeding him interaction with Alcoholics?

Are you getting the spiritual food of rolling up your sleeves with nothing to offer and sitting down with the book and reading with somebody who's just trying to hang on even though you have nothing to offer with? Five years sober or two years sober or six months sober or 17 days sober.

Because for me, I found when I went out and started working with other people and Bill always reminds me, you don't have to like these people. You just have to work with them. So the guy that you hate most in the meeting will come up to you and go, will you sponsor me? And you go, yes, you know, and you know what? I go sponsor that guy and I grow to include. I don't shrink and exclude.

I grow and I include and my higher power suddenly gets bigger and he's up for the heavy lifting.

So if you think you have nothing to offer, there's two things. One is that you absolutely do. And the second thing is you're probably starving your higher power.

You know, one of the great things about Alcoholics Anonymous is we don't give advice in AA. We just stay with our experience. We don't. We don't have anything to do with outside issues.

That is fun.

One of the great

lies is that we don't give advice.

It goes right along with that. We don't express our opinions.

If we didn't give advice and express opinions, we wouldn't have a damn thing to say to each other.

I'm a new guy in a a I come to Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm 37 years old. I'm married, I've got 2 little kids. I've got a business that's in distress and I've got stress in in all areas of my life. I'm going home, my wife is not happy to see me. My kids don't really know me. I go to work and it feels like everybody's talking about me behind my back

everywhere I go. I'm uncomfortable and I don't know how to deal with the situation. And I hide that because I can't let you know that about me. So I'm just a neurotic ball of shit, you know? Go into meetings and trying to go to work, trying to get along every day. I need some advice.

When I come to you with a problem that I'm having, I'd like to have a response to that. I'd like you to talk to me like another man trying to help me through each day.

I don't necessarily need you to tell me what to do, but I would really like some advice.

Some of the things that Jay has said to me, Jay and other people as well as the years have gone by, he's told me things like I shared last night when I I came and I said I don't babysit. And he informed me it's not babysitting, They're your children. That's advice. It's like, wake up, man. Wake up. You know, you're acting like a child.

Stop it. Can't you see what it is you're doing? You're acting like a frightened little boy. Now, you can say that to people in a lot of different ways without using those words. You just share your own experience, you know, and my own experience. If I I'm, I'm 24 years sober, I'm 62 years old. I've had 24 years of sober life experience and I was paying attention some of the time in the years prior to that. So at this point in my life, if I don't have some advice,

if I don't have some wisdom, there's something wrong. You know, if I've been paying attention a little bit, I can really help you in a very practical way. I believe that I have some practical spirituality that I can hand you. I can say more to you than we'll just pray about it. You know, I can say, well, let's pray about it and think about this, you know, now what kind of advice do we give? An A A

the guy comes to you and he says I think I'm going to marry the new dancer.

And you look at him and

from Lafayette,

you know, Yeah. And

or the barefooted fiddle player down on bourbon. She's for me, you know? And

so you say to the guy, probably not a good idea,

but if you do, I'll come to the wedding. You know, I mean, people have to have their own experience. I can't just like raising children. I can't protect you from having the experiences that you need. But if you sit down and you talk to me about a problem that you have in your life, I will listen and I'll respond and I'll ask you questions maybe to help better identify or define the situation that you're in.

You know, I've been in business a long time. If you've got some financial problems, if you express it to me, if I know something about it, I'd be happy to help you.

If you would like to come to my house and I'll help you sit down and fill out a budget for you, you know, to help you save some money and get out of debt. And if you got a bankruptcy problem or something like that, if I know something about that, I'd be happy to help you with that. I'd be happy to spend time with you. If you have other problems and I know somebody that knows something about that, we'll go to that guy and we'll get some advice from a real banker. I know several failed bankers in a, a that would be, you know, have a lot of life experience. And in the realm of finance, you know,

I know a handful of lawyers.

We have a list of the good lawyers and the bad lawyers. You know, it's like, and I'd be happy to send you to Andy for some advice on you something legal advice. You know, of course we give advice. Do we tell people how to live? I think is what that alludes to when this is we don't give advice. No, we don't tell people how to live. I've tried that. I will report to you that they do not listen. You know, if Jay gave me some really good advice, one time I had a guy that was going to

this woman and she was a nightmare. I mean, literally, I mean, she this, she was a nightmare. And I couldn't believe I thought, oh, he'll get over it. It won't really continue. And he's like in love with this woman. And I'm looking at her going, my God, he can't do this. This is a mistake. And I went to Jay and I said I think I should tell him not to do it. And his advice to me is never get in between some guy and his woman.

You will lose.

Don't say it, don't do it. I couldn't help myself.

I mean, I was. So I wanted to save this guy, you know, from her, you know, And I went to my son Mike. Don't do it, man. Don't marry her. You shouldn't do this. This is not a good move.

And he married her

and, and I lost my relationship with him for a while because of that. I mean, we, we eventually got back together, but it mean it, you know, it was difficult. And of course he told her that I said that, which really didn't. She has stronger than me. She was stronger and it was a disaster. You know, they were married for a while and it blew up and it fell apart. He met another woman. They've now been married for quite a few years.

I bought a house together. She's a school teacher.

This guy living the dream. I mean, he's living the dream. And it became apparent to me he could never have had this relationship he's in if he had not married that other woman. He'd have nothing to compare to because these two women are polar opposites. And he had to have the experience with the hot one, you know, the one that's that lunatic fringe, you know, the exciting one, you know, you know, to really have one that was truly fulfilling.

And they added something to each other's lives, you know, and you learn from that. So my advice to you is don't ever get in between some guy and his woman.

Yeah, I've had these. I had to sponsor, you know, and he wouldn't call me every day and he wouldn't do what I said. So I fired him, Right. I mean, if they don't call you at 6:00 in the morning, that's the time I have to talk in adventures.

Get away from

sober, man.

They don't. We don't hire them, they don't hire us and we don't fire them.

Who am I to send someone away?

What you mean? Oh, and alcohol. I remember Bill called me one time. One of his sponsors was drinking. Should I go over there

Bill live mini Cam report an alcoholic not following directions. I mean, come on,

my job as a sponsor is to be available now. I was

I'm taking a cake for 10 years of sobriety in a meeting and my father comes to give me the cake drunk.

And instead of giving me the cake and letting me talk,

he starts talking to the group about a wonderful

boy, how great you are

weaving.

It was a guy, Pat Kelahan, who was at that meeting who was so impressed that he asked me to sponsor

and and we started out together. Now, Pat was

my wife at the time. Jacqueline said that he was the sleaziest man she ever met in Alcohol Anonymous.

He would he hadn't said a lot. And and that was a he was, his parents were Irish immigrants and went to Mass every day and were, you know, they were like Matthews folks and absolutely baffled that they had this

flaming alcoholic and drug addict in the car. I mean, in the in the home. And, and Patrick was just a,

so the kind of guy that he was,

he, he traveled a lot. He was in the freight forwarding business. And so he traveled a lot. And so he had a flexible sobriety date and he'd never let us know. Occasionally things would blow up and, you know, he'd get unmasked. But he would do things like

we go on retreat the first weekend in December every year. And he'd say, well, I'm going on retreat. He'd tell his wife I'm going on retreat and tell a sponsor I'm going on retreat, tell his friends I'm going on retreat. Wouldn't tell Matthew because Matthew won't go with us yet, but it's still early

and we're, we're and, and so we're all waiting for Patrick to show up. And

Patrick doesn't show up. And you know, so when I get back, he tells me that he was a little busy. I didn't realize that he'd been on retreat himself. He'd gone and bought a couple 8 balls and gotten a couple professional women and gone to a motel room for the weekend in order to get closer to his higher power.

Who knew when his wife. One of the things that that we always do on the retreat is we take a picture so that, you know, in case of emergency, we could always say no, sweetheart, I really was there.

And this was before Photoshop, of course. But,

you know, they're always using the technology. It's amazing anyway. But Keelhan would say, oh, well, Jay didn't have it. I gave Jay my photograph and all this stuff. And I mean, the guy was his mother actually called him the devil of all liars.

Think about that one. So anyway, I work with this guy for

years

and

anytime he's, you know, wants to get sober again, we start doing it. Well, turns out one time he he finally gets sober, he reaches a crisis he can evade and he finally gets sober. And

still, we're kind of a shitty program.

But he wasn't drinking. He was coming to meetings occasionally and he was doing some of the things that I suggested to it

and which is wonderful.

And then he sober a couple years and he calls me up and he says I'm gonna die.

What this guy at the time was 40 years old, president of his own company, had a boy 7 and a boy 9. And, and he had a, a lung cancer that was way up high here. So the, the, the normal X-rays didn't get it. And the reason he had it high up here was that he'd done so much cocaine and he was trying to be good to his health. And he was

smoking

light cigarettes. And you draw on them so hard that the heat screwed him up here. And that's where the tumor came and they didn't find it anyway. So he started getting sick. And what happened is, is that I found out that

that I was

a real man.

I finally learned that if you need me, I can show up

because what happened is I started going to this guy with this guy to the doctors go to with him when he went to the hospital, we'd go when he'd have the operations. And what happened is, is I learned and a number of us learned because we started doing for him what we learn in a A, which is we don't have to solve problems.

All we have to do is show up and be there

just just by our being there, we are being on support. And so we start showing up one time. I mean, he's really getting sick now and he's, we came to visit him at the hospital one time and he's obviously throwing up a lung in the bathroom when we get there. And you know, I'm, what do you do? What do you do? So luckily I'd meditated that morning and I was available for inspiration. So I said quick Bill, and we jumped into the hospital bed.

We pulled the covers up so that when he came out with his tree to climb back in his bed to get a little rest, he looked and he saw the two of us and he started screaming. Nurse, come here. Get these creams out of my man. They're horrible. They're killing me, you know, But I mean, you just fuck with them. I mean what I mean? And we brought this guy to the meeting every week,

you know, and and he ended up passing with dignity and grace

and sober as a member of a community, not alone and desperate. And

and if I would have fired him, see now in the meeting, like we, we those of us who were close to him knew what a what a what a horrible guy he really had been. But like when we talk about Cat Pat K in the meeting now, people think we're talking about some a a St., you know.

But the reality is, is that this man changed my life and taught me that I did not have to be afraid in the face of death,

that I could go anyplace that I was asked, that I didn't have to have an answer. I was just able to show up. And if I would have fired him for being an irresponsible a, A member, I never would have had that experience. So that's why I don't fire him,

yeah.

I think, I think we got a few minutes for Q&A, do a couple, do a couple of questions.

What's your opinion on outside issues during shares at an AA meeting?

I think that's that's a good. I mean, I think first you have to define what's an outside issue. I have a really good friend in a A that's also a member of CA,

Jim H and

Jim says that when he's in an AAA meeting that his use of crack cocaine is not an outside issue, it's an inside issue.

And

he speaks around a lot in a A and in California,

as I do. And when I'm in an AAA meeting and I'm speaking at an A, A meeting, I'll talk about the fact that I did heroin and acid and stuff like that, but I don't dwell on it.

I don't spend a lot of time. I don't tell you my drug log, but I'll tell you that I did that so that you'll know. So if you want to talk to me, you can come and talk to me. You can feel safe to talk to me, but I don't dwell on it. But I'd also don't not mention it

if I'm sharing in an A A meeting.

This is my belief about I believe my sponsor and I still to, to this day that an, A, A meeting is for recovery from alcoholism, not about how my day went.

So what I will share about in an, a, A meeting generally is whatever the leader has picked as a topic or some thread that I'll pick up in the meeting. I don't normally share about what's going on with me specifically. I'll talk about the step we're sharing on or some aspect of recovery or something of that nature. And in that, I'll talk about my experience with that recovery process,

not so much about what happened in the past. A A to me is about now,

you know, I'm not, I'm not that interested in where you came from. It's what's going on with you now, what's happening now and where are you in the process now? I've come to a meetings before when there was a real crisis going on in my life.

I've been through interferon a couple of times, if you're familiar with that. But it's like chemotherapy. It's, it's horribly distressful. It's it's very painful. And I went through a lot of emotional crap over that. For a year. I was on this stuff and at one point they gave me Xanax to try to help me sleep at night. And I walked into my Home group and I go. I got drugs on me now and I'm afraid.

You know, is that an outside issue? No,

I'm an alcoholic with a bottle full of drugs. And I want you to know that so that I'm not being a secret. It's not an outside issue. It's what's happening with your brother right here, right now. I would want to know that from you. So I think it's the context in which this stuff is shared. It's how you share about it. You know, if you walk into an, A, a meeting and you've got an Nat shirt on and you start talking about shooting heroin and mixing it up in a spoon, well, that's just stupid.

You know, you need to talk to somebody. Why would you do that? Why would you do that? One thing about sponsoring guys is you'll sit down with a guy and you find out what his real problem is and you're sponsoring a guy 'cause I'll sponsor anybody. I don't care what your problem is. It's irrelevant to me. It doesn't matter to me. I don't need to identify with you, by the way. And, and hopefully if you pick a sponsor, it isn't somebody that you identify with. They're probably not the right person for you if you're identifying with them. I need somebody that can help me.

And if you're sitting talking to me and I come to find out that you're primarily a crackhead, you hardly drank at all, You need to go to some CA meetings. You know, you need to go to Cocaine Anonymous and you're more than welcome to come to my a, a meeting. But let me tell you what the rules are. And we're not going to change for you. Don't think that we're rigid, you know, because there's lots of places you can go with your specific problem. So don't come in and poke holes in my lifeboat. Well, you did drugs too. Yes, but I know where I am too. This is Alcoholics Anonymous,

this isn't Narcotics Anonymous, it's not Cocaine Anonymous, it's not Overeaters Anonymous. You know, it's, it's a A and our solution to singleness of purpose is to help anybody start their own program. We will come and help. We will help you do that. So the whole idea of outside issues is the context in which this stuff is shared. If I'm talking about what's going on with me now, I don't really believe there are any outside issues because you're talking about you as a person and I'm interested in that

and recovery process and Alcoholics Anonymous can combine a lot of different things

and I'm not one that tries to limit that. You know, I want to know what's going on with you. A lot of it can be shared one-on-one. It does not have to be shared at a group level. There's a lot of stuff that it just doesn't need to be shared at a group level, doesn't do any good to share it at a group level. But if you've just come from the doctor and he gave you a prescription for Vicodin and you want us all to know, please tell me 'cause I'll take the bottle from you.

Somebody gave us a question. What are your thoughts on step six and seven? And again,