Introduction at a Big Book study in Winston-Salem, NC

All I've been asked to do basically is come up and bring up, bring a workshop, bring up a big book workshop up to this group. And I'm, I'm always honored and privileged and, and grateful to be offered an opportunity to do that. I, I do this quite a bit

around, around the country and, and other places. So I've got some experience doing, doing big book workshops. And you know, one of the things that's very, very true about a big book workshop is the learning and studying of the 12 steps. And the learning and the studying of

the book Alcoholics Anonymous is is near worthless without the motivation and the actual application of the specific instructions in it. What what the book Alcoholics Anonymous is really designed to do is to is to offer

the individuals who are going through it and following directions and actual recovery experience

an experience that that brings about a transformational personality change. You go from being a hopeless alcoholic, which is basically someone who does not have the ability to, to predict or have the power of choice and control to

with alcohol

to be able to stay sober and and move forward with their lives. You go from a hopeless alcoholic to someone in a state called recovered when you follow the follow the guidelines in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. And I think it's very, very important for all

to know that, but knowing it doesn't generate the experience. Doing it generates the experience. One of the sad things that's that's happened in Alcoholics Anonymous today, not so much below the Mason Dixon line as as I've, as I've learned, more so in

in the Northeast where I come from, one of the sad things that's happened is Alcoholics Anonymous has become a place of gathering and sharing,

which is fine unless you're in real trouble. If you're in real trouble with alcoholism, you need a vital spiritual experience,

and that's not going to happen by gathering and sharing. Going to meetings does not treat alcoholism. What going to meetings does is it provides an atmosphere where someone can hopefully stay sober long enough to be able to find a recovery experience.

So you find recovery in the fellowship if you're lucky today. But there are a lot of places and there are a lot of groups and there's a lot of individuals who never find recovery in the fellowship. They find fellowship in the fellowship. And I believe that's why there's a huge, a huge difference in recovery rates and and long term sobriety rates today. Then there has been there, there has been in the past.

One of the things that that

I believe very, very strongly in is maintaining the primacy, maintaining the importance of this book. Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm from the New York area and I I sponsor a great fine editor. I'm personal friends with a number of trustees on the board of directors of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I've, I, I, I'm invited every single year to the to the the service conference on Times Square. I know a lot of these people. I've been invited to be a board member on on Alcoholics Anonymous as a Class 2 trustee.

I know what goes on there and

and sometimes, sometimes the good is the enemy of the best. This is a statement that Bill Wilson used to used to say quite often, the good can sometimes be the enemy of the best. And I see that there's a lot of good that's that's coming out of New York. But when you put it up against this book, the transformational experience that you get when you go through the 12 steps, when you put some of their other literature

up up against it, you'll see that it's, it doesn't compare. You know, books like

books like Living Sober, some of the pamphlets, they're good, there's good information in them, but they do not offer a transformational experience

called the State of recovered that the book Alcoholics Anonymous does. So there's a lot of things that go on, There's a lot of stuff that happens that contributes to the watering down and, and the pulling away from some of the principles and practices that have

that have really, really worked well in the past. Every once in a while someone says, you know, Chris, you, you and that newfangled stuff that you're talking about. You know what, what I talk about is not newfangled. What what I basically share is first decade AA. You know, back when back when they were running around and they were pulling, pulling people off a bar stools and they were going into the insane asylums and, and they were pulling people out of the hospital detox units and they were offering them,

offering them a ride to a meeting. They were offering a ride through the steps. And back in those early days, that's when that's when this whole thing was built. And that's, that's when a lot of the miracles that you know, we're, we're here because of happened. And,

and you know, I am a traditionalist and I, I am a, I'm a big book guy And I, I make no, I make no apology for that. I've been around long enough. I've, I've worked with enough people, I've seen enough people go in and out of this fellowship that you can't even imagine.

And I know, I know a few things. One of them is, is the people that pay real strict attention to what's in this book and really try to follow practice these principles. Those people stay around and they're here year after year after year. Card carrying members of Alcoholics Anonymous in good standing,

working with other Alcoholics and their quality of life gets better every single year. The people who come in and believe that this is a sharing program, you know, I'm just going to come and share and, you know, I'm going to throw a dollar in the basket and, you know, I'm going home and get, you know, jump right back into the dysfunction of my life. Those people usually aren't around five years out, 10 years out. And if they are, they're cranky. You know, they're the type of people who don't get better.

They, you know that that's life is still, you know, a veil of tears. And, you know, they still struggle with the same things they were struggling with five and 10 years before.

So that's what I see. I see that we're offered and not only an opportunity to recover from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body, but we're we're, we're the recovery process itself brings about an incredibly improved quality of life. You know, that's that's really the good news of bad news is we suffer from a progressively fatal illness,

OK, it always gets worse. It never gets better. That's the bad news. The good news is if you put it in remission through practicing the principles in the in the book Alcoholics Anonymous,

year after year after month after after decade, what happens is

spirituality becomes more important. You start to develop a better self esteem because you're doing esteemable acts. You start to you start to outgrow fear. You start to lose your resentments. You you start to become more effective with life. You start to get out of your own way and stop shooting yourself in the foot all the time.

And as this, as this happens, your life gets more valuable. It gets it gets better

You, you become, you become more of what God intended you to be and more of what you the potential that you have. Is anybody in here ever been told back when you were drinking her in school you had a lot of potential? You know,

we do. We've got a lot of potential, but we're shooting ourselves in the foot all the time because we're alcoholic.

Another thing, another thing that's important as we start moving through this book is we're going to spend probably the first four weeks on step one. Why are we going to do that? Well, because Bill Wilson and and the 1st 100 as they put this book together understood that we don't get step one. We don't get it. It's, you know, instincts book at investigation. Who among us wishes to admit complete defeat?

Glass in hand? We've warped our minds to such a state that only an act of divine Providence can restore society. You know, that's that's out of the step book. Who among us really wants to go there? So what we do is, is we half measure step one. And if you look in the big book, the 1st 40,

some pages including the including the Roman numerals are all covering step one. And really step one moves right up into the chapter we agnostics. So if you look at it, at least a third of the working part of the book, Alcoholics Anonymous is concerned with step one.

That's why we're going to take about four weeks on it as we move through this work because I'm going to, I'm going to include myself among us. We don't get it if we had a alcoholism does not allow you the dignity of an accurate self appraisal. And that's, that's long after you've gotten sober.

It, it is an illness of minimization.

It's an illness of rationalization, and it's an illness of spiritual laziness. That's just really what it is inherent in the illness. So this is what we need God for. This is what we need the fellowship and, and each other for. We need to continue to try to develop enthusiasm,

the enthusiasm to recover, because that enthusiasm is usually not there. That's one of the things that kills Alcoholics more than anything else is a lack of enthusiasm to recover.

Has anybody in here worked with people who, you know, their their life is on fire and all you're trying to do is get them to go to some consistent meetings and they're too busy or they've got other ideas or, or, you know, you know, all these, the steps and all these meetings, You know, it's kind of an overreaction to a problem. I really think I got under control. It had nothing under control.

You're living in a car, You know what I mean,

That sometimes you got a hospital wristband on here, You know, on your wrist you've got nothing under control and you won't for years. You know how many people really get it? I know, I know when I first, when I first wandered into Alcoholics Anonymous, I knew alcohol was killing me, but I didn't have a clue about how damaging alcoholism was. I thought my problem was drinking too much

because my problem really was drinking too much.

Stopping drinking too much would have solved my problem. That's not what happened with me. When you're alcoholic, alcohol is a treatment for alcoholism, so one of the reasons why we drink. It's a bad treatment. It backfires on you.

It's not recommended, but it's a treatment for the spiritual malady known as alcoholism. And it talks about all of this in this book. It talks about a lot of things that you just don't hear in meetings anymore. It's become

it's become unpopular to talk about powerlessness. It's become unpopular to talk about adherence to spiritual principles and it's become unpopular to talk about reliance on God has become very, very popular to share your whatever your, your drama du jour, you know, here's what's going on in my life today.

Oh, and if you were here last week, you know, let me catch you up on, you know, the drama in my life.

Tell somebody who cares. You know what I mean? I'm dying from alcoholism. I need an experience. I need a recovery experience. I'm not interested. OK? If you're going to complain week after month after, you're about the same stuff. You have work to do.

There's a recovery experience that you that you're not, that you're not allowing yourself. Because if you were, if you went through the steps, you wouldn't be whining about that stuff week after month after year. You would be interested in helping other people. You would be you would be interested in in broadening and deepening your spiritual life.

So it's become unpopular to recover in Alcoholics and not so, which is really amazing. Certainly in my area up in North Jersey where I got sober, you know, if somebody came into the group and said, you know, I've blown myself up, I'm really stupid. Here's all here's a list of all the stupid things I did this week. And man, am I an idiot. Thank you for letting me share. Everybody's like,

and then if somebody raises their hand says, dude,

you know, there's a recovery process. And if you would pay some attention and spend some time with an experienced sponsor and go through the steps, you wouldn't be confronted with that crap anymore. You know, you, you would, you would be able to outgrow all of that stupid foolishness, you know, get a clue. If somebody shared something like that, it was

whoa, you know, stay away from that guy. He's a Nazi. You know, just become it's become unpopular to, to to to talk about recovery in some areas of Alcoholics Anonymous. That's why I like to book Alcoholics Anonymous. I swear that, you know, there's half of the fellowship would really wish this would go away. You know it's not,

but you know it's got some inconvenient truths for for for half measured fellowship people.

But but I'll tell you, it's got the answer for survival. Further for the real real alcoholic, the hopeless alcoholic. So, you know, it needs to be, it needs to be understood

in this book. You know, I don't have a, I don't have a dust jacket on this. One of the, one of the crimes

one, you know, one of the things that New York, you know, did was they're really not supposed to mess with the 164. You know, there's, there's a policy and a procedure that you really leave the 1st 164 pages alone, you know, and it's been voted on and it's, it's, it's become very, very difficult for anybody to get in there and monk with it. That's why the, the, the language is still sexist and archaic. It's because

enough people who care really don't want anybody in their messing with this, especially the mutton heads from New York,

you know, so, so I'm glad of that. One of the things though, that they allow people to do is change. Change the change the change the forwards to the additions, the different editions and the dust jacket. OK, that's fair game. So what happened when the 4th edition came out

on the dust jackets? Anybody has a first printing of the 4th edition? You'll be able to read the dust jacket where it basically says the text Alcoholics Anonymous, which was the basis of recovery for Alcoholics in the past, you know, has remained unchanged. They basically were saying, you know, those poor old Alcoholics back in the day had to use this to recover. And enough of us freaked out

about, you know, how stupid could you be to put that on the dust jacket that they changed it. So, you know, if you can find one of the first, first printings of the 4th edition, you'll see that. And that's when they allowed just somebody, whoever, to write up the dust jacket without passing it by anybody and publish it. The same thing happened with the forward to the 4th edition where they basically said modem to modem face to face.

You know it's the exact same thing, one alcoholic talking with another.

Well, I got to tell you something modem, the modem is not the same thing as working face to face with another alcoholic. OK, I can, I can be a 14 year old beautiful girl modem the modem if I wanted to be. You know what I'm saying? How do you know what what I what I'm telling you is true if I'm modem to modem

face to face is how we engage the alcoholic face to face is how we convince them that we, we understand how you feel and where you've been. We, we, we've we were there. We've experienced what you're going through right now and we're

recovered. You know, we found a way out and we would love to show you that way out. You know, that's what you do face to face. So enough, enough of us who cared freaked out about that, that forward to the 4th edition that they changed it,

you know, So again, in Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, I'm a, I'm a fundamentalist, I'm a conservative. I believe in, in this book because there's magic in the 1st 164. You go through the 1st 164 and you do it like a textbook because it is our basic text. When you get to an exercise, you stop and you take it before you move on,

you will have a recovery experience that will rocket you into the 4th dimension of reality.

It happens with everyone who does it. That does not happen with the step book. That does not happen with the book Living Sober. It does not happen with the pamphlets.

You know, this is our basic text. This is what what transforms us if we pay enough of attention to it and we're rigorous about practicing the principles in now I'm going to get I'm going to get started reading it. The title page. I don't know about down here. Like I said,

I am well pleased I show. I showed up about a month and a half ago in Statesville, you know, about 45 miles.

Southwest of here

and I came from an area in North Jersey where the big book make meetings were few and far between and the experienced sponsors were few and far between and everything was just, you know, going and share like it was a bad Bob Newhart, you know, therapy group, you know, without, without a trained counselor, you know,

so we would, we would literally we'd have to drive 45 minutes, you know, to go to go to a big book meeting and, and we'd show up at the other meetings and that we, we weren't the most popular people in the room because we'd be talking about recovery. You know, I come from that area. I moved down here. I start going to meetings in Statesville and everything is a solution based meeting. I'm like, I'm like, you know, this is what I've been, this is a fellowship I've been craving for my whole life,

you know, So I really, I really don't know what, what goes on. This is really my first meeting in Winston-Salem,

you know, so if I sound a little condescending and, you know, you all get it, you know, you're all big book people, please, you know, I apologize. I'm just used to doing it the way I do it because there's just such a lack of experience and understanding where I where I come from.

Anyway,

there is a controversy about recovered recovering up where I come from. You're looked, you're locked, looked on is very, very arrogant. If you, if you share you're a recovered alcoholic, you we're supposed to be recovering. People say

now

on the on the title page here, Alcoholics Anonymous, the story of how many thousands of men and women have recovered from alcoholism, 4th edition. Okay, that's what the book says. The book uses the term recover. And here's here's how I justify that. And here, here's how I can I can accept that pretty much 100%.

If you're cured of an illness, the illness is removed. If you're recovered from an illness, the symptoms of the illness are removed.

The best we can have with alcoholism is is to have the symptoms removed. We're always going to have alcoholism with us. Anyone in anyone in here who's been sober a long period of time and went back to drinking experienced one thing and that was you didn't go back to where you were when you stopped. You went back to where you would have been if you kept going with the progression. OK, I'm seeing some heads nod in here. That's because over any considerable period of time,

alcoholism gets worse. It doesn't get better. It gets worse whether you're drinking or not. And the science behind that is basically your liver and your pancreas get to a point where they start to deteriorate in their ability to process alcohol.

So what happens is even though you've been sober 10 years, 20 years, 30 years, your liver and your pancreas are still deteriorating in their ability to be able to process alcohol. That's why when you pick up a drink after 1020 or 30 years, you're rocketed back into out, you know, acute alcoholism like you've never experienced before. And that's true with most, most Alcoholics.

So we'll always have the physical part of alcoholism.

There's two things. There's two things that can happen. One is you can die with alcoholism. The other is you can die from alcoholism,

all right. I I want to die with alcoholism. I don't want to die from alcoholism. So yes, I am an alcoholic, but I'm a recovered alcoholic. The symptoms of active alcoholism don't manifest in me today because I've gone through the steps and had a spiritual awakening. My spirit has been awakened.

I don't suffer emotionally, mentally or spiritually from the things that I suffered from prior to a recovery experience. So

recovering, here's another way to look at it. Let's say you're in the hospital and you're in the recovery room. What does that mean? That means that, you know, you're better, but you're still, you still need to be observed, you still need to be in the hospital, you're in the recovery room.

When you're recovered, that means you've taken up your bed and you're walking again. That's the way they talk about in the book. All right, you can leave the hospital and you can go about your business and your daily affairs. So that's why I think we're recovered and we're not slowly recovering or whatever. What I've seen is the people who who share their slowly recovering usually aren't. You know, that's just kind of what I've seen.

Let's see what else we got in here.

The preface

all right, this is this is from the preface in the 4th edition. This is the 4th edition of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. The 1st edition appeared in April 39 and then the following 16 years, more than 300,000 copies went into circulation. The 2nd edition, published in 1955, reached a total of more than 1,150,000 copies.

The 3rd edition, which came up the press in 1976, achieved the circulation of approximately 19,000,000

in all of its formats.

The book Alcoholics Anonymous is a real good seller. There's a lot of money to be made off of the publishing of this book. As a matter of fact, Alcoholics Anonymous basically basically uses this as a stopgap of the, the, the sales of literature as a stopgap. If they're not doing good with, with group contributions, they'll raise the price on literature a little. And that's how that's how they they, they manage to to do their break even stuff.

Because this book has become the basic text of our society

and this helped such large number of alcoholic men and women to recovery, there exists a strong sentiment against any radical changes being made in it. Therefore, the first portion of this volume describing the AA recovery program has been left untouched in the course of revisions made for the 2nd, 3rd and 4th editions. That's not entirely true. Most of the changes were, mine are,

but I've seen, I've seen reports on all the changes as a whole ton of them, you know, like been 100 changes, but they've all been very, very small and usually, usually grammatical.

Umm, the section second edition added the appendices, the 12th traditions, and the directions for getting in touch with AA. But the chief change was in the section of Personal stories.

You know, on the dust jacket, on the dust jacket of the 4th edition. You know, you some people have it right now. They basically spend about 1/3 of that dust jacket explaining why the personal stories are so much more important than most people give them credit for.

All right? I see the personal stories as being great for identification. I think if you're wondering if you're an alcoholic or you're first being exposed to AA, I think reading the stories are great. Okay, but very few of the stories, there's some exceptions. Very few of the stories talk about a recovery experience.

They talk about how drunk they were and how they were exposed Alcoholics Anonymous and how life is pretty good today, but they don't really explain explain the details of how they had that experience. And I'm not a huge fan of of of the stories. There was a story. There's still is a story in this book. The the in the 3rd edition was called doctor alcoholic addict and it became a favorite among among people in the fellowship. It's a great,

you know, it's doctor, Doctor Paul was, was the guy who wrote it and he was, you know, three or five years sober when he wrote it. And it was a great story. And it was all about his narcotics addiction and his alcoholism. And and you know what, what it did was it it it it brought, it brought a kind of a holistic look at, you know, addiction into the book Alcoholics Anonymous. And it also talked about acceptance. You know, acceptance is the key was in was in was in a, you know,

a story and people really kind of went to these things because they they felt all warm and fuzzy. But when the book, when the 4th edition of the book was was being hammered out, when they were making decisions on what stories to to keep and what stories to get rid of, they were trying to get rid of Doctor Alcoholic Addict in a big way.

And that's basically because they saw it as a threat to the primary, primary purpose.

I think the stories are important. I think they should be in the book, but I don't think the dust jacket should say that's, you know, that they're that important. They're important for identification after we've identified after it's Ollie, Ollie oxen free. Okay, I'm all in, you know, tell me what to do then you don't need them anymore. What you need is the 1st 164. Now I've been to up in New Jersey. There was one big book meeting when I first got sober

back in the late 80s.

There was one big book meeting and I had to drive 4 towns away to get to it. And in that big book, meaning, what they did was they read every word in this book

and they would read a paragraph and share, read a paragraph and share. What that meant was because because of the length of the 3rd edition, it meant that 3/4 of the time we were reading a story and we weren't paying attention to the recovery instructions in the 1st 164, we were reading

paid, you know, some story on page 438.

So,

so, you know, I, I believe that the stories are important. I think that a lot of us have found identification there. Sometimes we've even found little tips and, and help for, you know, staying sober a day at a time. But they're not the heart of the book. The heart of the book is, is the 1st 164

and what they do in, in the different editions is they try to put together stories that newer, you know, newer Alcoholics Anonymous members can identify with

and you know, to 1° or another, they're successful. Who knows, You know, it happens. You know, I, I don't really even know what the process is for, for choosing the choosing the stories

forward to the 1st edition

weave Alcoholics Anonymous are more than 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body

to show other Alcoholics precisely how we have recovered as the main purpose of this book.

That's something that's really good to remember. The main purpose of the book Alcoholics Anonymous is to show you precisely how to recover precisely. So much, so much time is spent in meetings these days without, without covering the exact mechanics of that recovery process. You know,

I sponsor a great fun editor and I love this guy. He's, he's really my first fancy. I've been sponsoring them for 20 years. And he's, he's a, he's a great fun editor

and the grapevine's pretty much in trouble right now. And it's, and it's in a Catch 22 situation. What's going on with it is that every year

it's circulation drops a little bit. Really more and more groups are trying to help by, you know, groups subscribing to multiple copies and things and that that's helping a little bit. What's happening is it's it's becoming less and less relevant. When you look at some of the studies that's being done on the Grapevine, you find that the median age of a Grapevine reader is getting older and older. It's basically up in the 60s now.

The median age of a Grapevine reader is in the 60s and it hasn't changed in a long time. The way it lays out stories, you know, it's, it's formulaic. It's really, you know, if you pick up a Grapevine from 1962 and then one from last month, you're going to see that there's not really a whole lot of change in it.

And this is making it less and less relevant to the newer members who are coming in.

But the Grapevine board don't want to make any significant changes in format because they're afraid they're going to lose those subscription base that they have. And if they lose anybody else, you know, it's going to become an, a, a decision to close it down. So you know, I get, I get this from from my guy who, who sits on the board at the Grapevine all the time.

And,

and one of the things that drives me crazy about the magazine is it is when you, when you read the statement of purpose in there, it basically says that the message of alcoholic synonymous is basically anything anybody wants it to be. The the message of Alcoholics Anonymous is anything any group wants it to be.

We're so

we're so concerned about freedom of speech. We're so concerned about personal freedoms in Alcoholics Anonymous that were that that were making statements that go contrary to the recovery process in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. And, you know, I see that as divisive. I see that as really a threat to unity. If if you know one book is saying this and another book is saying that, that that really goes against unity

anyway.

Umm. For them. We hope that these pages will prove so convincing that no further authentication will be necessary. We think this account of our experiences will help everyone to better understand the alcoholic. Many do not comprehend that the alcoholic is a very sick person. And besides, we are sure that our way of living has its advantages for all.

One of the things I know about Bill Wilson, you know, he's not not a perfect person. You know, one of the great sayings is we are not Saints and, and Bill certainly wasn't. But what he was was he was a visionary. He could see problems coming before anybody else could he? He had the best perspective on the alcoholic personality,

was able to to basically put the architecture together for the recovery process. He was the principal architect for this book and there was some amazing work being done when he was about four years sober. That is amazing to me today that that that when this book was published,

there really wasn't anybody with five years of sobriety. For some of the older members in here, some of the people who have been sponsoring for years and years and years, you kind of understand what that means. I still have have problems, you know, leaving people alone in the house, you know, with less than two or three years,

you know, you know, I'm saying and, and, and these people put together the architecture of a, of a recovery program.

It is important that we remain anonymous because we are too few at present to handle the overwhelming number, number of personal appeals which may result from this publication.

One of the things that they got wrong was they fought with publication in this book that this book would spread like wildfire and all of a sudden they they would be inundated with requests for help and they just weren't going to be able to to provide it because there are only 100 people. They thought 10s of thousands of people would be would be instantly asking for help because they figured there had to be millions of Alcoholics in America.

But what really happened was

they put some ads out. They threw some ads out there to doctors and, you know, mailed a bunch of of postcards and really tried to sell this book. They, there was like a direct mail campaign and they sent out all these postcards to practically every doctor that they could find an address on,

you know, in America. And, and they gave it about a week. And then they figured, okay, by now all those requests for books have to be in the, the post office and what we should go down and we should go down there with three big gunny sacks because there's just going to be absolutely tons of these, of these return postcards requesting the book. And they went down there and there was 3.

They went down there with gunny sacks expecting, you know, that this is going to sell off the wall. And there was three cards

written by doctors who were so drunk they couldn't even they couldn't even tell what the address was. You know, the the writing was so bad. So it was they got it wrong. This did not become a mail order sobriety, mail order recovery thing that they expected it to. Yes, there were people who got this book and were able to put it into application just by reading it, but that was really few and far between. What what they found happened was one alcoholic needed to carry

message to another. This is a textbook and as such, it needs to be taught. Let's say I gave you a textbook on how to fly, how to fly one of the Blue Angel jets. Okay, And it's this thick and I give it to you and I go, OK, read it, you know, and you read the whole manual and

OK, OK, let's sit in the cockpit. Now fire this baby up and let's take it around the block.

You're going to be whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, you need to you need to be taught. Textbooks need to be taught. There are there are examples and instructions and questions that need to be asked and things that need to be elucidated a little bit and explained a little bit. So this is a textbook and they found it really did need to be taught for one alcoholic really did need to be carrying the message to another for that for for

synonymous to spread. And that really is what happened. So you have to remember that anonymity in the beginning was designed to keep these keep these guys from from, you know, having no life. They figured if there was 10,000 people that needed help, you know, we're not going to be able to sleep. I was running the main reasons for

anonymity. There's other reasons for anonymity, and they're all valid reasons, but we have to understand anonymity today. In this day and age, nothing is hurting Alcoholics more out there in the world than a misunderstanding about anonymity.

People think anonymity means secrecy. I'm sober. I need to stick my head in the sand. I need to be below the radar. You know, I don't want anybody seeing my car in the, in, in the parking lot out here, you know, You know,

yes, they've seen me projectile vomit up and down the supermarket,

the aisle, but, but I don't want him to see my car, you know, in the clubhouse parking lot. You know, there's a misunderstanding about what anonymity is. What, what anonymity is, is we, we do not, we do not identify ourselves as members of Alcoholics Anonymous with a picture of our face.

Or our last name, if we're saying we are a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, OK. We also do not speak for Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole. This is really the principle of anonymity. Should we be telling people we're in, you know, we're, we're recovered Alcoholics that that

you know, that we went through treatment and you know, we, we've, we've done some support group work or yeah, you know, we've, you know, we've, we've participated in our own sobriety and recovery. Should we be saying that yes, we we should because we want to put ourselves place ourselves at A at a place where we're of maximum benefit to our fellow man, especially Alcoholics. And if we're hiding the fact that we're in a A or that we're sober alcoholic,

how are we really doing that?

You know what I mean? So, so this anonymity thing really needs to be looked at. Each of us has to come to terms with what it means. How do we apply the principles of anonymity to our own lives and still be effective carriers of the message out there in the world?

Look, we can all come to meetings, you know, we can all come to meetings with the same 12 people every single week. And you know, we can, we can, we can heal the healed and we can save the saved if we want to. But what we're supposed to do is we're supposed to be carrying the message to the still suffering alcoholic. So we need to somehow internalize our relationship with anonymity to include, you know, being of service, being able to, to help other people.

We are not an organization

in the conventional sense of the word. There are no dues or fees whatsoever. The only requirement for membership is an honest desire to stop drinking. OK, there's another piece of very controversial, very controversial thing. There's been times up in our area. I was the the treatment facilities chair

for a while with our, with our inner group, with our general service office. And one of the big complaints from meetings was the places were putting people on the bus and sending them to the meetings and they were drug addicts and they, they were being coached by the, by the treatment facility to identify themselves

as having, having a desire to stop drinking. I'm Harry. I have a desire to stop drinking. And this was causing a lot of controversy. And there were group members that were really pissed off. And you know, they, they, they wanted, they wanted this to stop. And, and, you know, all kinds of controversy groups exploded over it. You know, I've seen hostile group conscience meeting

where there's half the room is on one side. You know, let's help everybody. Half the room is any other side, the primary purpose and you know, it just it just got really, really ugly. I,

my personal belief is, and, and I don't think any of us should be a, a police. I, I, I really don't, to be able to look into someones soul and make a decision on whether there really should be here or not is playing God and, and, and we're really not supposed to play God anymore. That's, that's one of the requirements of the third step. Now how I feel about it is this.

If you have a drinking problem

and a drinking history, or you abuse alcohol and you come to Alcoholics Anonymous, you may not be what this book would describe as a real alcoholic. You may not have lost all power, choice and control in drink. You may not have gone down the scale like some people have,

but is it right? Is it good for you to be addressing your alcohol problem with a support group? You know, I have to believe that it is. I have to believe that it is. I, if it takes one more drunk driver off the road, you know, I'm, I'm all for it.

But what we need to do, what we need to see, and it comes from studying. The first step in this book is we have to see what the scale of alcoholism is when it says no matter how far down the scale we've gone, we'll find that our experience can benefit others. There's another section in here that says our ability to quit drinking

on a non spiritual basis will depend upon how much choice in drink we've lost, how much power in drink we have lost. So this is scale. One of the things that you hear all the time. Some are sicker than others. That's absolutely true. We get everybody from alcohol abusers

to hopeless, real low bottom Alcoholics and Alcoholics Anonymous today. And again, I'm all for that. I, I think it would be foolish and it would be selfish to, you know, try to carve out a pure alcoholic, you know, from from the, the milieu of people that show up here. You know, who am I?

But what we need to understand is we need to understand that if, if we've gone down the scale further than some of the other people, we're going to have to be about the business of recovery a little bit more strenuous than others. I don't know about anybody else, but when I first got sober I was going to some meetings where people were not. They did not go down the scale as far as I went.

There were there was a meeting I went to, it was called a duffer meeting where they talk about golf.

They should do through a bunch of light upper middle class, you know, Republican kind of guys who all got together, you know, and, and had their little click and they didn't like a bunch of outsiders. And they came and, you know, they had, they put their dollar in the basket and they drank their coffee and they talked about