Sponsorship at the 2nd Oswaldtwistle Gathering in Oswaldtwistle, UK

My name is Chris Framer. Very grateful. Recovered alcoholic. I'm grateful to be back. What a cool panel. I take any one of these guys back to Texas with me, you know, pack, let's go. So it's they gave their story, man, on a Friday night. They gave their story to talking about it. They all just riddled with solution. How can you get any better than that? You know, it's just the bomb.

Couple of things real quick. Here's what I want to do.

We got a couple more hours to go. The brakes are killing us because I know you guys are getting wore out. And so we're gonna, we'll do a short hour and and then we'll break real quick and try to get back in and we'll finish up the hour. So you guys, I know some of your times constraint a little bit, some of you are gonna have to leave. Don't worry about that guys, because by the end of the day, a lot of you guys, you got stuff to do and kids and things. And you know, I'm not gonna take it personal if you get up and leave. If you get up and throw me a finger and then leave, I'll take it real perfect.

I take it real personal, then yeah, I'll be worried about it. But I y'all have been so good and so well, I

some thoughts when the, the panel we're talking earlier, I've been accused of being a step technician. I might want to make one thing really clear. I think Bill Wilson, when he wrote the big boat, he got really clear about the steps and how open and roomy they are. I'm not really sure I really care how you work the steps. I miss. I know that comes as a surprise to some of you. You know, the book is specific and precise and I, I can appreciate that that's what it says. And I think my experience shows that the closer I can align myself to the way the book is giving me the,

the information, the better I'm going to do. But I think, I think we get, you know, is it the spirit of the law or the letter of the law? You know, we get a little so critical about some of the way we do the work. And I think it's open and roomy. You guys are not relapsing because you didn't, you didn't do a A4 column or a three column fourth step. You know, you got drunk because you didn't do a four step. You all understand that this, you didn't get loaded because you, you, you didn't get on your knees to do a 6th and 7th step prayer.

Rubbish. You, you, you got loaded because you didn't do a bunch of other crap. It's, it's not that critical. I hear people all the time out there. It's like, well, like I got, I, I, I know today 'cause I went over with my sponsor. I, you know, I, I, I forgot to pray this morning and that's why I got loaded.

Wow, What do you Manny? You need a different God. I, I, you, if you have a God, that's that vindictive that you forget to talk to him one day and he going to get you drunk. I mean you. You might want to borrow mine for a while.

We could help you out.

You'd you'd be kind of freaked out with mine. I got to tell you, maybe you better stick with the one you got. But mine's a little weird, but you all understand what I'm saying. You don't don't it's don't we, we freaked the newcomers out because we try to get too critical in the in the, in the, in the structure of the step. And I'm going to talk about that when a newcomer comes in, you know, the first thing we're going to talk about, you know, is again, we're going to qualify this cat. And I want to give you the little rundown I'm going to get. I'm going to run through the steps real quick. You think, Oh no, it's going to be forever, but I'm going to show you that this is really, really quick. Again, you're free to agree or disagree. If you

spend more time with one step than I'm giving it, rock on. I'm just showing. One of the biggest mistakes I think we make in our fellowship is that we complicate the bejesus out of this. We make this too hard to do, too time consuming to do. It was never intended to be doing that. If Bill Wilson was in Towns hospital on his 9th day, he was still detoxing. He was riding some immense letters when he had his his spiritual experience. He was doing the work in the treatment center when he had his barn burning spiritual experience.

Everybody thinks he had this experience and then started doing the work. That's not how it went.

This guy tried to get sober a gazillion times and was unable to do it until he finally got down. Little little knucklehead Abby good in there and 12 stepped his ass and drug him to the meeting. And they did got on their knees and did a third step prayer and they did a little quick four step in the treatment center quick. They didn't do it like some of you guys. Some of you guys. I see your four step. You got two big spiral notebooks. This is my fourth step.

I've been working on it for two years now.

Who are you, Satan?

I mean, I got a laugh. I mean, what? What did you did? You hate every person you ever came in contact with.

I just think we, we really make this way too complicated. So, and I'm gonna simplify it. So some of you that made this complicated, you're gonna be, you're gonna be cranky about it. I'm gonna guys, if that works for you, then just forget what I'm saying in and out one ear and not the other. I just, I'm just trying to give you some, some, some thoughts on this. That, that in order to get from point A to from point B, you don't have to climb necessarily Mount Everest. You can, but it's not really necessary.

Well, is it? There's, there's some selfishness to this folks, 'cause I'm, I'm telling, 'cause I'm you guys, what? You're stalling out out there. You're, you're dragging your feet working these steps and we really need you to finish the steps so you can help us sponsor people.

You'll follow Chris. You sponsor too many men. You need to hurry up. If you sponsored a few more, I can sponsor a few less. They'll say that's honestly how it works.

This'll be good.

I was looking in there earlier. Powerless. In the book is is is said two places in the 164, power is 30 places. God, if I never go into a meeting and listen to people talk about that more, I'm just powerless. I'm powerless over people, places and things.

Oh my God, yes you are and you should commit suicide today.

Come on book says like I'm just kidding like a power That's the dilemma. We want some power recovered is 31 places in the big book in the 1st 164 don't even go to the stories. It's dozens of places in the stories recovering again is only in in one time. It's over in chapters in the back about around with our families with my families. We will always be recovering through that. You know what I'm saying This is just a fact So but but with ourselves, we can absolutely recover and that's what we need to talk about My little brother was sharing it. We need to

hope from the podium. That's our one job, one job. If you've got nothing, no, no hope to share, then shut up,

take it to heart be quiet again. Let's go eat some BBQ. Y'all don't eat BBQ here, do you? Let's go eat some fish. Y'all eat a lot of fish here, Great fish. Let's go eat. Let's go and then let's hear about your day. But in the meetings, if you can't share some hope, just you ought to quit and I'll say this and move on to to talk about what I want to talk about. The problem is never an individual. I get calls all the time from people. We want you to come to Canada. There's this guy that's killing people up here, and I want you to, we want you to. It's like I'm going to show up with guns, you know,

here's the Texas boy. I'm gonna come up here. I'm gonna show you how to do it right. It's like this. Come on, guys. The problem in our fellowship today is not individual personalities. The problem in our fellowship today is meeting formats. As I see it, just my thoughts. The problems that we have is that these meeting formats that have not been effective and have brought about a whole tidal wave of piss poor recovery and lousy sponsorship, we're still using those same formats. We've been, we've been using it for 30 years.

I understand that. How effective has it been if you give a format in there that says

if you have something that you might drink over, we would like you to talk about it, Bring your problems. Guess what people are going to do?

They're going to bring their problems. I mean, you can't be mad at somebody that pukes all over the table because you've given him invitation to do that. We need to stop that. The 4th tradition allows us to have meetings any way we want. Intergroups get a little tweaky with it. Right now there's a lot of people out there with primary purpose groups that are using step study guides and oh, we can't do that. That's against the rules and that's against this and that's against guys. We're using tools to just study the literature. How is that wrong?

Have you ever been to one? No. Then shut up. How do you know it won't work unless you've been there? Y'all understand that any meeting that's got literature involved in it, it's it's got to be a pretty good meeting, pretty good format to share some hope with somebody. But if you leave a meeting open, this is open, this is your meeting, Who's got the problem? Oh shit. Pick me, pick me and we're going to hear about your divorce again. Here we go. And that's it. And if you want to listen to that, that's fine. But I'm telling you guys, after a while you get sick and tired of it. You'll follow some of you.

You're not there yet, you said. I love it when they share from the heart like that.

OK,

I like soap operas too, but I don't want to live in one.

Just just just a thought. Just a thought. One of the things that Mark and I used to laugh about is that we used to talk about what happens in a a when a newcomer comes in and he asked us to sponsor him. One of the things that we do with his cat is, is that that we always invariably ask him if they're willing to go to any links. Y'all ever heard hear that? And we read it. We read how it works. Are you willing to go to any links? And we ask them and the little guy, of course, what's he going to say? He's just in treatment or he's just walking in your group. He's all banged up, detoxing. Are you willing to go to any length? Absolutely. You,

my money, you got it. You want my kids here, you can have it. I, I'm, I'm I'll do anything to get sober. Boogers, snot, cry tears, every y'all with me At that point in time. The most important thing is to not drink or drug. Do what he did. Other outside stuff just I want to get sober more than anything. You'll follow

and it takes just sometimes a few days for this ego to rebuild. And we see it in treatment all the time. They come in and they're all banged up and then I'll do anything. I mean, lots of tears, lots of drama, lots of emotion. And then we get them detoxing. About the time they start wearing off that freaking Ativan, you know, they start doing, they're feeling their what was that on my face?

And it's called air, you know, and it's like

and they're looking. You can always tell when the egos starting to rebuild because the little guy that was at two days ago was crying and talking and asking if he could just hold your big book. Can I just you know, they just they just want to be near some recovery. Now all of a sudden, you know, little girl walks by, you know, detoxing little got the little paper slippers and he he looks up and oh shit, we lost Johnny already. We do took took three days and it's the next day you see him in the back of the room playing grab ass with this old girl, you know, and his I said, buddy, what happened to the urgency to get well? You know, I think I was making a big deal out of nothing. But I mean, I honestly,

I think this treatment has been really good. I think God brought this girl to me.

God meant for us to be. I mean, I saw her in those paper slippers and I just knew. I don't know how. I just knew. Buddy, you're hurting bad. You're looking for something to fix you. And then she's gonna, I guarantee you nothing will get you out of the spiritual malady. Then a good dose of romance and it lasts for 20 minutes. I don't know. I don't know. And then it's just gonna be a nightmare. You know, these people do it in treatment all the time. Then they go to family and they've got their wife of 30 years sitting right here. Everybody on campus knows they've been sniffing this girl for a month. Like

you look uncomfortable. I just I am, you know,

understood, but we don't tell him what it any willing to go to any links looks like we always have this conversation after they relapse, you'll follow. It's like our sane sound sex ideal. Why do we do the paperwork on sane sound sex ideal before we get into a relationship? What am I looking for in a woman? What am I looking for in a man specifically? We could do a workshop just on that and I do sometimes and it's fun to see what what's really important because the problem is you guys end up with women. He said. I don't know why I ever hooked up with her

ever.

No shit. Why didn't we talk about that before? You did it, you follow,

you keep doing the same stuff, you're going to keep getting the same results. Nothing changes, nothing changes. And it's this is not about dating date propagate. I'm all for that, but I'm just saying let's let's let's do it properly. There's a way to do it without taking a hostage in this deal. So what does it look like? What is willing to go to any link looks like? And So what I'm going to do with the guy that I'm sponsoring, I'm going to I'm going to explain to them. It doesn't take long 30 minutes to explain,

want to tell them what this whole process is going to look like. So that so that you know downstream when you start to crawfish with me that, that I'm going to be able to throw this back in your face. Remember 2 weeks ago when you said you were going to any length and now all of a sudden you've changed your mind because I'm going to tell you tonight what any links looks like. So they say, somebody said the other day they said, well, what if they say that they're not willing to go to any links? Like what do you say when they, when you win the lottery? It's like what? Rock on. How cool is that?

So what guys, our job, we're not, we're not salesman here. We're teachers. You want what I got? Do you want what I want to give you, which is sobriety? You want that? I'll show you how to do it, but you're not going to do it your way. You're not going to get sober your way.

Some of the other circuit speakers out there, they say it better than me. When you when you get ready to finally start doing some things that you don't flat want to do, we'll know that you're ready to get sober. You come to this program with a plan. You're going to execute the plan. What I want to do the first night that I get you when you walk into this room, I want to set you down and I want to make sure that you don't have a plan left.

I want to make sure that you that you're done with, with your little plans and designs and that you're willing to try what we're willing to offer. And then I'm going to show you how that worked really quickly. You'll follow #1 mistake that we make in this fellowship is that we go too slow. And a bunch of you will disagree. I'm from my observation point in treatment, we go too slow. We, we, we, we, we let them sit on their butts until they get absolutely crazy and then they relapse. Instead of spending the time getting them through the work as quick

possible, there is a sense of urgency to get through that spiritual window as quick as possible. It's also easier for us. If you're doing that, you'll follow you dragging this out. It'll take forever. This is one of the reasons we'll talk later in the second hour about piss poor sponsorship and why we end up in that spot

actually. But it's true. It's true. There wasn't anybody that ever came up next to me and tried to help me that wasn't trying to help me. They were. But I mean, lousy sponsorship allowed me to spin my wheels until I until I relapsed. First thing I'm going to do when the new guy comes in, the first thing I'm going to do, we talked about it earlier. I'm going to qualify this guy. Some of you all have come up and talked to me about this guys. This is a difficult conception to get your mind around this qualifying thing

because most of the world out there believes that we have a choice whether we're going to drink or not. And the big book is crystal clear. I'm going to say this real quick and I don't want to get long winded with it. The

everybody in here is breathing freely. There's nobody in here thinking, thank you God for that breath. Thank you God for that breath. We don't because we have not. I take my little Bony fingers around little brother's neck here and start squeezing down a little bit. And pretty soon it's it's going to start struggling and he's going to start paying attention to every breath he gets. We don't even notice it because the problem is not a problem. We have plenty of oxygen. It ceases. It only becomes a problem when we don't have it.

Y'all on that tread, that little thread there, OK?

It's the same thing. When the obsession to drink leaves you, you stop thinking about it. And it's not like every day you get up and you make a decision to not drink. You can verbalize it in a prayer if you want. You can talk about it if you feel comfortable doing that. I don't. I don't. I think, you know, bottom line, if I keep doing what I'm supposed to be doing that that spiritual path stays there and the obsession stays away. I know thousands and thousands of Alcoholics that have had the same experience as me on a daily basis. They're not worried about relapse folks.

That's the self help people. That's the treatment centers that want to foster that idea. You all understand that it's it's a very difficult deal. I wish we spent two hours just talking about that first step deal. But my job is the first thing is to set you down and find out if you're an alcoholic or not. Are you truly powerless? Little brother said it when he was sharing. Do you understand what unmanageability is about? Unmanageability hadn't got Jack shit to do with your finances. Unmanageability doesn't have anything to do with your external world. My life is just a mess.

We're not talking about that

yes comma it is what's going on inside here. Y'all understand that we're talking to a beautiful woman last night who's a gabillionaire, lots of money, beautiful clothes, plenty of everything you follow and how we going to go to her and talk to her about being powerless, her life being unmanageable. Her life is not unmanageable. She has people taking care of everything she wants to commit suicide. She's crazy inside. Y'all understand that's the unmanageability that the big book is talking about. That's the bedevilments on

52 sitting in the rooms many years sober, just not really happy. That's the unmanageability we're talking about. And if you can see that, then you can get well because you can start doing the things necessary to get connected again. That makes sense. We stop looking at the drama and the unmanageability, then we'll, we'll, we, we, we keep walking into land mines when we do that. Lots of people have lots of money and they don't have lots of the drama. So stop trying to to make that a part of this diagnosis because it's not

internal condition. I sit down and I qualify this cat,

let's say that the guy who decides that he is, he said, Chris, I am and he gives me some examples of lack of control and no choice. You follow. We're we're at step one. Somebody in the in the in the in the panel said it so beautifully earlier because treatment centers, you had your first step when you came to treatment. That's so much bullshit. It's not even funny. You just got your butt in a ringer and decided to come. Now you're here, but you still don't understand what it is to be an alcoholic. And that's my job is to teach you so that you can turn around and teach the newcomer. That's what that's about.

Lot of you guys have got my business cards and it got a lot of heads that are looking like this not understanding what I'm saying. I would love the opportunity to make it clearer to you. You must understand that the rest of this is just dribble, but you must understand what it is to be a, a, a diagnosed alcoholic and I can help you with that. A lot of people in this room that have already there got there can help you with that, but there's a lot of treatment centers that don't teach it because all they want to do is look at the drama.

Well, you can tell by looking at your life you're an alcoholic. Got nothing to do with nothing clear. OK, He says, yes, I'm an alcoholic. She's yes, I'm an alcoholic. Then that's great. What we're going to do is that I'm going to set you down now and I'm going to talk to you specifically about what we're going to do. I'm going to qualify you one. I'm going to find out if you're in the right room or not. Is the alcohol your real problem? Every time you relapse, you smoke crack. Every time you went out, you ate pills. That was why you went out. So maybe you're a drug addict and not so much an alcoholic.

You follow. You're welcome in our fellowship. I'm just not sure why you want to hide out in a fellowship that you have nothing to share.

You, you follow. If you have a problem overeating, you can go help other overeaters. If you don't have a problem with overeating, you can't do that. Theoretically you can, you'll follow, but unless I've been there, I don't understand what that's like. I don't have a problem gambling. I got a friend of mine that's huge up to his butt. He's lost more money gambling than he ever did drinking or drugging. He'll follow. He's he's in a lot of trouble around it now. I don't have a problem gambling. I can go to Vegas and make $50 last forever,

and when the $50 is gone, we're going to go to the buffet. Let's go rock on. I love it. Absolutely love it. He

y'all understand what I'm saying. How arrogant of me to think that I can help him having had no experience with that.

That's what the singleness of purpose came down to is our primary. We're going to try to make sure we're teaching the right thing. OK, I don't want to waste your time with that. I'm going to, I'm going to absolutely qualify and I'm going to see make sure if they're in the right room and I'm going to explain the urgency if they understand really where they're at with that. We're going to get you through the steps in a quick line. Number one question I get is how long does it take to take somebody through the steps? God is going to be different with everybody a little bit. It shouldn't ever take longer than a maybe a couple of months at the most. I'd say 30 days with most of the guys I sponsor.

The early guys did it in a few days, a couple of weeks at the most. Bill Wilson again was working on his night step and nine days in Doctor Bob, two weeks, Bob DA little less than two weeks to work the steps archively. They, they, you can look at the history of it. Nobody took longer than 30 days to do the work. Nobody. The absolute arrogance of us to take longer than that. You with us. Obviously you don't understand the first step. Here's why that's so tough, and why some of you are grinding your teeth right now is because we've complicated the bejesus out of it.

I'm not saying that you can do this.

I hope that's not hurting.

I'm going to give you the rundown real quick and I'll show you how that's it. If I sit down and I qualify somebody, there's not a person in here that I couldn't sit down with in 1020 minutes most and qualify you with us. Second step is one question. I know it's some several pages in the book I can show you. I can e-mail you be glad to a little place where to buy the steps up for you. What's what pages they're on? But I can just tell you point blank,

I Do you have a problem believing in God? Are you willing to believe there's something out there bigger than you?

Well, I'm not sure. Well, let's talk about it. At that point, if you say yes, we're not going to have another bit of conversation about it. I'm not going to waste your time. Chapter the agnostic says 50% of us had trouble with God, 50% didn't. So, so if this guys been in the church all his life and we're going to talk about says no, I don't have a problem with God, then let's move on. Why do we want to talk about it? Here's where everybody starts to slow down. Well, I want you to read these pages and we're going to talk about it. Why read the pages? Let me show you where the second step is in there. I want you to read it, but we're not going to mess with that. I'm going to cherry pick through this.

You know what the word triage is? You know, I got a bicycle accident with a, with a deer one time and some of y'all heard that tragic story. But when I went to the emergency room, you know, I was, I had Rd. rash everywhere. I had gravel in my ass a mile deep. But but the triage what happened is they were checking my, my, my Airways and the bleeding and they wanted to make sure that I was stable. And then sometime later, way later, two hours later, as a matter, they started pulling gravel out of my butt. You'll, you'll follow. First things first.

I don't want you wasting time spending three days reading those pages when you don't have a problem with that. Let's move on. 3rd step. Third step. Were you willing to let that power be part of your life? Yes or no? It's not a discussion. It's it's not

a are you willing to let this power? Well, no, I think. I don't believe in God and I don't believe in any power other than myself and I'm

really not willing to believe in anything like that.

Bye, bye, bye bye.

I'm going to get my coffee and go with my brothers, sisters, go have a good bye bye bye.

It's not my job to talk you into believing God. You all understand that Alcoholics Anonymous is a spiritual program of action. The solution to our problem is a spiritual experience. That's only thing we have to offer.

I don't believe in the spiritual experience. Bye, bye, bye, bye.

And you, some of y'all are grinding your teeth. They worked with me for six months to make sure that I understood that I can appreciate that. Good for you, Go get another one. But I'm not going to waste my time talking to somebody that's that arrogant. You don't think you're one of us? Go drink, go drink. You come back in a little bit open minded, a little more, a little more willing to believe. The guys, the books, not asking you to believe like me. It's not saying you got to be a Christian. It's not saying that you got to be anything. You can pray to Mr. Magoo if you want to. All it's saying is, are you willing to believe there's something bigger than you?

Well, but, but I don't like Jesus. I did I

what's this? What's this look like guys, I'm 23 years sober and I think I know God a little bit better than I did when I first got here, but I'm still not real sure I got it all figured out. How cool is that? What a journey that we have here. Open your mind, guys. There's a power that keeps us sober. Are you willing to tap into that power also gives us enough power to do with everything else we want to go do manage my finances and take care of my health and and and to do the cool things I've wanted. Let's are you willing to to buy into this a little bit? Yes,

let's go.

He explained the third step prayer to me, my first sponsor, and I do the same thing with my guys. One of the tenants in the prayer is that God is going to remove my difficulty so victory over those difficulties can bear witness to God's power in my life. It means that I'm going to have some ammunition here so that I can go back into meetings and talk about and God's given me my my marching orders. The third step compels compels me to go back into a meeting and share hope with the newcomer.

Y'all understand you may have a world just that's crazy right now. Do you have anything that you can be grateful about?

Any hope to share and all that craziness? Are you staying sober? Uh-huh. Then going to a meeting and share that. That's what the book is asking us to do. It's telling us that the, that the, that our, our, our, our problems are going to be solved. Our problems are going to be taken to a different spot. If you'll be willing to do that Makes sense. How do you keep that going? You go back in and share that hope. God damn, guys, that's all we got to do. That's, that's the, the gist of, of, of our shares is sharing hope with that newcomer in 1987 after that suicide attempt, I didn't hear need to hear one more

story, drunk story. I didn't need to hear one more junior therapy session. I needed somebody just look me in the face and say, Chris, in a few days you can wake up and the obsession to drink will be gone.

Not perhaps, not maybe gone.

We got on a knees and did a third step prayer. We got up, dusted our knees off. I'm looking around to see if anybody saw me get on my knees with another man

ever. Ever self-conscious

and I and I got and I got up and he says, OK, so we're going to lunch and he started talking to me about the four step and I said, but we're going a little fast with this, don't you think? And he showed me in the book says next, next, next. We launched on the course of vigorous action in the next few pages talks about the 4th step and how we do it. And we got back and he had just happened to have a spiral notebook in his truck and he opened it up and handed me a notebook says Chris start writing the people that you're pissed down. And we told you about that earlier. And I started working on a four step and within two weeks I've got a completed four step. I've done it. I've done a fair inventory,

sex inventory. The difference is, guys, we're just flat not making this a big long process. Treatment centers glommed onto this because it takes all 30 days to work on. It gives you something to do when you're not doing anything else. You can work on that old four step. Oh my God, You know, it's like some of us in here are going to have some a lot of resentments and some of these we're just not going to have that many resentments. It doesn't make any difference. The cat in here with the most resentments is not doing the most successful four step. You're just evil to the freaking core. And what we're I don't know,

I don't know. Let's go. The the deal is, is I would I would rather see you guys as my buddies. I would rather see you deal with the top ten resentments that's grinding your ass then to see you work 6 months trying to come up with somebody you haven't thought of in 40 years. You'll understand because you're going to have to do some writing on this. Why put something on there that you're this is an inventory. It's not therapy. You all with us. It's an inventory, not therapy. So you put the little names down. We're going to slide right across second column. What they did to us, how it affected us in

column victim, victim, victim, 4th column, we stop now. We stop looking at them and we look at our shit. Where we've been selfish and self-centered, where we've been dishonest and fearful. You'll follow. We can all see if you can see a part that you played in that even a little tiny part you've been carrying it for 20 years, that that's your part.

Selfish to the core. Y'all understand that most of the things you're judging somebody, well, he's a bastard.

Anytime you're judging somebody, you can put selfish on there because because that's what it is. You all understand that's we we we knocked that out. As soon as I'm doing a fist step with a guy and as soon as I see my truth in that 4th column, I'm going next, Next. Get the next one. You're with us. I stole that money from the store and they caught me and. Yup. Did you see your part? Yeah, I stole the money next. I was molested as a child. Yep. You go across here. You see this? You see your part here? Yeah. You, you carried that. You didn't tell anybody. You, you, you the weight of the world that that was not your deal. Can you see the dishonesty? Right. Because you didn't talk to anybody. Let somebody help you with that.

Joshua can next. We go right next to the next one. We're not going to see her and talk about this for two hours. Let a therapist do that. I just want to see you the truth. So in the fourth column so you can get free of this. If you don't get free, you can't help anybody else get free.

All of this stuff in our lives, these perceptions, everybody's been out to get us. And the truth is, golly, I've just been a volunteer. You know, I mean, somebody said it earlier this morning, the nice lady that shared the deal. Guys, I'm going to be a victim all my life. I can walk in the room of the absolute finest people and work in the earth and I'll find the the one psychopath, the borderline psychopath in the room. I'll find her. Walk over you to get to her back in the back

God,

and I get to see this in my four step Boom, boom, boom, you wear this. I continue to do this. I do a little two column theory inventory, not 8 columns, 2 columns. What's the fear? Why you think you got it? I do an inventory around my sex. My sex inventory's got nothing to do with pokey pokey. It doesn't. Nowhere in the book does it say give me every sort of detail about every position and every way that you did that. I don't. I mean, I've done this steps like this. It's my behavior. How do I treat the opposite sex? Am I overly flirtatious? Am I am improper with you? Do I

don't answer that because

because I do sometimes and I but I look at this whole I look at my behaviors. If I was doing a proper four step, I could go down with any one of you women and do a fist step with you and that neither one of us would blush. It would be quite humbling. I've done fifth steps with women before, guys, and I got to tell you what you think you're a big, big Don Juan stud. Sit across from another child of God, one of our sisters, and tell them how you've treated their sisters.

That old, that old inventory goes pretty quick.

You know, we're not so interested in talking about all the little sort of details at that particular point. And I think that's pretty cool. I think that's pretty cool. I'm going to, I'm going to get this stuff done, guys. It shouldn't take when I sit down with a guy, I'm going to give him a week. That's what I do with my guys. I'm sit down, we get up, we do a third step prayer. I'm going to give you a week to finish the steps, the, the, the 4th step and then we're going to do a fifth step. I got my date planner out. I set it out. We're going to set up and we're going to do that. If you miss it, I'm going to give you an opportunity to reschedule within a couple of days. If you missed that, we're done.

Bye bye.

Go go go eat with atheists because I don't have time to mess with you. I don't have my nothing yelling. OK, if you give the cat six months, he's going to take six months. You with us? Just finish it. Let me know when you're finished. You just this is coming from sponsors that just don't have time to mess with us. Y'all understand that? No, no, no, you're not. You can't possibly be finished. Take another six months because they don't want to have to sit and listen to this nonsense. But if you give them the instructions, it's going to be slow and quick.

No, this step should take longer than a few hours to do. If it's, if it's a good healthy 5th step, sitting there talking to a sponsor, one of your sponses, when you're doing it, it shouldn't take longer than even your first one. It shouldn't take longer than a few hours because we're not living in it. You'll follow. We're going pretty quick. When you're doing a fist step with me, I've got two pieces of paper in front of me. One paper's got eight step stuff on it. One paper's got six step on it. As I hear you, chair, I'm going to be writing your character defects down because I'm fixing to throw them back at you in a few minutes.

I got the eight step list because the book says from our fifth step we took the list of the people we owe amends to. You follow So and basically this gives us sponsors something to do while we're trying not to fall asleep listening to your crap.

Some of you knew guys, you don't know what I'm talking about. After you've heard a couple of fish steps, you've heard it all guys. And that's like, that's our prayer. Please let me hear something cool this time

because this that's just truth. You're sitting down and we get together and we, we usually explain what we're going to do and, and, and we sit down and we get this and I'm going to go through it. I'm going to guide them through this 4th step, this fifth step process. And I'm going to hear their stuff. And if they're seeing their truth in the fourth column, we're going to move on and we're going to do fear and we'll do the little sex inventory. You'll follow at the end of that. We're going to get close together and I'm going to talk to him about these character defects because the book says we're going to go away for an hour. We're going to look over there. The 1st 5 proposals. Do I really understand the physical craving in the mental obsession? Do I really

have any reservations about this God thing? Maybe I need to talk about have I left something something out of that fist death that I need to share with that sponsor? And they usually come back, tell me about the chicken at that point, and we'll then we can move on.

Maybe that's just a Texas thing. Who knows?

We and we, and we talked and then I give them the information and then, then they're going to get quite for an hour. And I, sometimes I sit with them and then they go into another room and get quiet. And sometimes, and I don't think it's, they're watching the clock. I don't know, 45 minutes. I don't know how to spend some time with it. And then at the end of the hour, they're going to do the 7th step. You guys can grind your teeth and go to these workshops all you want to, you know, I know what Bill Wilson says in the 12 and 12, you know, about this being the, the step that separates the men from the boys. It's two paragraphs

guys. I don't know what to tell you. It's two paragraphs. I'm not the one that does the the changing of my character defect. I go to God and ask him to remove the character defects. God, please, please help me not cuss from the podium as much as I used to. He's been successful with that, fairly successful. You should have heard me five years ago. Come on guys, you have been giving me standing ovation at this point. Y'all understand I'm painfully shy. Some of y'all that know me really well know how shy I am and sometimes that shyness can get in the way. I want to scoot out the back and not get to know you. And