Step 9 at a Big Book study in Winston-Salem, NC

It is a really good, really good to be here tonight. I was, I was traveling over last weekend. I got a chance to go up to Cape Cod where they had the Cape Cod Symposium on Addictive Disorders of a lot of the top addiction treatment specialist. People show up at this and rub elbows and then there's all these different, different courses that you can take to get Ceus if you're a professional,

different presentations. And more and more, the reason I'm bringing this up more and more, a lot of the presentations revolve around the lessons that have been learned in Alcoholics Anonymous. In other words, these psychiatrists and these psychologists have topics called of bottles,

booze and big books would be like 1 presentation. Another would be the efficacy of the 12 steps in addiction treatment. And another one would be you know what what US doctors should know about the big book that works. And you know, they're a topic after topic that these top high level

addiction ologists are, are presenting at this Cape Cod symposium on addictive disorders. And one, a couple of the couple of the presentations this year were very interesting because what they were doing was they were looking at the actual step process and how, how it affects the brain,

how it affects the areas of the brain that relate to addictive illness. And that, you know, they, I'll just give you one example.

Now, I'm not a big proponent in 90 and 90 because I don't find it in the big book, but it's not a bad thing to do. I'm just, I just, I just don't like people saying you have to do it because then they put unreasonable expectations sometimes on an individual who may not be able to make 90 meetings in 90 days. But irregardless of that, you know my opinion on that, they they're seeing that after 90 days of doing something specifically, it turns into,

it basically turns into a habit. So a lot of the suggestions, a lot of the processes in Alcoholics Anonymous that have been around for 75 years,

these scientists are defining now with the most modern

of scientific theory and application. So what they're discovering is things that we've known for a whole lot of a whole lot of years. And that is, is that this step process works for addiction. It's observable, It's now becoming measurable as science moves forward

and more and more these professionals are, are tending to embrace this spirituality that's very, very difficult to quantify or qualify. So I just thought I would, I would throw that out there because you know, this stuff, this stuff that we talk about here every week, this, this stuff works. This is important

material and, and more and more people are finding it. Finding it efficacious would be the term that the professionals use efficacious, meaning it's very effective. Now I'm going to, I'm going to read from a couple of places in the 12 and 12, which I normally don't do, but there's two, there's two short statements in here that I think are very, very apropos for what what, what's happening here on Tuesday nights every week?

ACE 12 steps are a group of principals, spiritual in their nature, which if practiced as a way of life, can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole. Now talk about promises,

talk, talk about a statement of hope. They're saying that these, these principles that are spiritual in their nature, these 12 steps, if we, if we try to practice them as a way of life, as our operational methodology, they can expel the obsession to drink. You will be safe and protected against alcohol. The alcohol problem will be removed while you are in the midst of practicing these principles as a way of life.

And that's really what we're looking for when we come into a A. But on top of that, it's going to enable us to become happily and usefully whole things that we really want in our lives. I mean, who doesn't want to be happy and who doesn't want to be whole and useful? Every one of us does. But,

but the more we drank, the further we become of, the further we move away from there, the more we cut, the more we practice these spiritual principles of the 12 steps, the more we, we head in the right direction and we start to really see what life is all about. Now there's a, there's a great warning in why it's buried in tradition 9. I have no idea. But this is on page 174 and it's in the 12:00 and 12:00, and it's in tradition

nine, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna read this. This is one of the most powerful statements I think Bill Wilson has ever written in his life. Unless each AA member follows, to the best of his ability, our suggested 12 steps to recovery, he almost certainly signs

his own death warrant. His drunkenness and disillusion are not penalties inflicted by people in authority. They result from his personal disobedience to spiritual principles. All right, if you have relapsed, you're going to have an idea of why

you relapsed. You're going to have a reason, you're going to have an excuse, you're going to have an explanation. But basically the only reason that is really valid for a relapse, once you've come into Alcoholics Anonymous and you've seen the steps up on the wall, the only reason that's of any value is

you disobey. You disobey spiritual principles.

That's why you relapse in Alcoholics Anonymous. You don't fully embrace this program. You know some people cannot or will not give themselves to this simple program. That's how you relapse by not giving yourself to this simple program.

Now

the dangerous thing today in Alcoholics Anonymous is many groups,

many groups have, have have moved away from the teaching and the practice of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and they've become more like the group therapy that you see in treatment centers. You know, the, the, the discussion meetings can resemble a whole lot the, the group therapy that you see in treatment centers.

And I'm not, I'm not, you know, I'm not criticizing discussion meetings. I think discussion meetings are very appropriate,

but what happened, at least up in the Northeast, is probably 9 out of 10 meetings in the Northeast, our discussion meetings.

And more often than not, when you don't have a literature base to a meeting, it can go way to left field. Has anybody in here been in a meeting where if you walked in in the middle of it, you wouldn't have even recognized it as an AA man? Okay, let the record show. All 400 people here tonight

raised their hand. This is being recorded.

Has anybody in here ever said, Oh my God, you know, will they please shut up? Please tell somebody who cares about that stuff. You know, the same hands I went up, folks. OK, now now again, discussion meetings are valid and appropriate.

Fan those literature based meetings because it's easier to bring them back on topic if you're using literature as as a basis for a meaning for topics in a meeting. I think the craziest thing we do in a meaning filled with people who haven't gone through the steps is ask does anybody have a problem?

Well, yes, everybody's got a problem. If you haven't gotten through the steps, you've got big problems. It doesn't help to talk about them. It helps to talk about the solution to them, you know, or does anybody have a topic? Yeah, Yeah. My Aunt Fanny did some brother, you know, I mean

this is this is these meanings are appropriate. They can be like beginners meetings where people are learning how to share and learning like what's appropriate in Alcoholics Anonymous. But to have nine of your meetings, discussion meetings out of 10, that's really pushing it. And, you know, I, I think that I think that you can, you can go so far to the left field that you can forget that the 12 steps are a group of principals, spiritual in their nature. If when practice is a way of life, can expel the obsession to drink

and enable us to become happily and usefully whole. And sometimes we forget that unless an, a, a member practices to the best of their ability, these suggest the 12 steps they almost certainly sign their death warrant. You know, so we need to remember this as Alcoholics Anonymous members in good standing, we need to remember this.

Well, the steps don't take long to go through and then you can then you can enjoy yourself in the fellowship. You can do service work. You know, you can attend meetings. It really doesn't take all that much time to get to the steps. But if we forget the steps, what we're going to do is we're going to ensure that whoever we're working with or whoever is in our meetings is, is going to relapse or is just going to walk out of a A

and just there's just not going to be enough in there for them.

Now, last week we started work, we started to talk about step nine. We got a little bit of a start into step 9 on page 77 for anybody that wants to follow along.

We were talking about how to approach the man we hate. You know, this is, this is a, this was a big surprise to me that I was going to have to go back to the, to these horses, Patutz, who I just hated. You know, I, I was walking around with hatred for probably about 20 or 30 different people. It was a surprise to me to find out

that you you actually

most times, most times. Sometimes it's inappropriate, but for most of the time, you are going to need to make direct amends to the people that you are really pissed off at. Why? Because resentment is the number one killer. It kills more Alcoholics than alcohol does. That's why it's an you know it. It corrodes your spiritual condition. It sucks the life out of your quality of life

and, and it's just, it's just, it's a, it's a relapse waiting to happen if you hang on to these resentments. So the best possible way to handle the resentment that just won't go away is to find out what your part is in this resentment.

Now, you know, I, I had a spiritual mentor for a long time. He's since passed. But he used to say even if the even if it's only 5% of the problem is yours, you need to take 100% responsibility for that 5%. So if somebody is 20 times more at fault than you are,

when you look at it on paper, you need to take responsibility for your 5%, your one out of 20. Why do we have to do this? To be free, to be free? Is that emotion, the emotional bondage to resentment? It ruins our quality of life.

The question you have to ask is maybe you're right. Maybe you're right. It's really their fault. Maybe you're right. Well, would you rather be right or would you rather survive? Would you rather be right or would you rather be happy? You know, these are questions that we need to ask ourselves because we're so stubborn. We want to hold on to this. You know, another guy I knew, you know, I had a a resentment against his neighbor. He just hated this guy for 20 years. He finally went out and made amends to the guy.

They ended up becoming best friends. You know, so often, so often, our perspective, our perception on life is just wrong. We're seeing things the wrong way. We're perceiving that we're under attack, you know, from the universe or from specific people, and when in reality,

they're not doing it to us, they're just doing it and we're in the way and we're taking it personal and we're suffering for it because we're taking it personal, you know, and when we start to see these things in step four, we start to see that there might be a way out of this. How about not having a problem with anybody on this planet? How about that? What would that feel like? What kind of freedom would that be

to just not have any hate in your heart?

And I think it's necessary for the alcoholic to at least try to get to that point because resentments are the number one offender. They kill more Alcoholics than anything else. And if you find somebody that that that disobeys spiritual principles, like it said in the 12,

it's usually somebody that has resentments, unresolved resentments, they're not willing to let go of them. And that's disobedience to these spiritual principles not hanging on to those resentments. Now we've looked at how do we, how do we approach the man we hate? And we talked a little bit about that. I'm going to pick it up at the bottom paragraph on 77

I talked about. We take a bit in our teeth and we just go to the person and we we go to him in a helpful and forgiving spirit, confessing our former ill feeling and expressing our regret like this is basically what they're telling us to do with the man we hate. Under no condition do we criticize such a personal or argue. Simply, we tell him that we will never get over our drinking until we have done our utmost to strain out the past.

We are. We are there to sweep off our side of the street, realizing that nothing worthwhile can be accomplished until we do so, never trying to tell him what he should do.

Let's look at this. If If we don't sweep off our side of the street, if we don't take 100% responsibility for our part, nothing worthwhile can be accomplished. You think they mean that? Do you think they mean if we don't do our immense nothing worthwhile in Alcoholics Anonymous can be accomplished?

What if that's true?

His faults are not discussed. We stick to our own. If our manner is calm, frank and open, we will be gratified with the results.

In nine cases out of 10, the unexpected happens. This has been my experience. When you're, if you're anything like me and you're facing some tough events, especially the man you hate, you know you're thinking this is going to go bad. You know I'm going to feel small. I'm going to look stupid. I might end. You know, he's going to call the cops.

You know, I mean, what I do is I predict dire consequences of this particular immense. And nine out of 10 cases I get a generous response. It goes way better than I could have imagined. And I think it's the alcoholic personality because today

if I'm playing, you know, I had to do it amends the other day and the other day, you know, I was thinking to myself, well, you know, the last 372 times I've done this has gone great. But this time I know it's going to be bad. You know, it's like that's just the way the alcoholic thinks. That's why he says we take the bit in our teeth. Don't worry about what the consequences are going to be. Don't worry about what the outcome is. That's none of your business. What's your business is taking the action, doing the

hands. I think God's in charge of the results. You know, we're so results oriented. We're, we've come from a very controlling place and we want to know everything before we do anything. And sometimes, sometimes these, these, these spiritual exercises are just that, they're spiritual exercise.

We need to do this with faith. We need to do this with faith and with courage.

Sometimes the man we were calling upon and miss his own fault. That's almost always happened. So feuds of your standing will melt away in an hour. Rarely do we fail to make satisfactory progress. Our former enemies sometimes praise what we are doing and wish us well. I can't tell you how many stories I've heard about people going back to former employers and that leading to some amazing financial thing, whether it's a job or a contract or whatever. You know, you think going back, you think going back to

employer and admitting that you were embezzling from the slush fund or something, you figure you're going to go to jail and you But usually what happens is the person is so impressed that you're being honest that, you know, they remember you, you know, and down the road you get a phone call because somebody that's that honest is trustworthy. And I want him in my new endeavor, you know, And I can't tell you how many times that that's happened.

Occasionally they will offer assistance. It should not matter, However, if someone does throw us out of his office, we have made our demonstration, done our part. It's water over the dam.

I've been thrown out of the office. Like I say, nine times out of 10, it's a generous response every once in a while. It's not going to be OK. Somebody is still going to be pissed off at you and that, and that's okay too. I had a boss. He was, he was literally my boss in my last two years of drinking. You know, he what he, what he saw. I remember this one time, it's a Christmas party, OK, And he's got all his clients there and we're in the shop.

And so he was a beer drinker. But every once in a while, if it was Christmas or something, he put out some hard liquor and he came up to me. He said, Chris, now you promised me, you're just going to drink a few beers. You stay away from the hard stuff.

Sure, Frank. Yep, Yep, Yep. So So what happened is, is he's playing crabs as a crap table. Everybody's having fun. Christmas trees and I

see a bottle of whiskey and I just grab it and I do one of these.

I drink about half of this quart of whiskey and now I'm hammered. I went from a little bit buzzed on a couple of beers to hammered and I, and I go outside and this is, I was an electrical contractor at the time and go outside

and there was this big huge post light that was sitting there. It was for their job the next day. And then when there were cases of beer like about 10 feet high and I go out and I'm really drunk and I lean up against this, this light post and it's not bolted to the ground or anything. So I lean against it and I fall with the light post and the cases of beer come down on me.

And I'm literally underneath these cases of beer. You can see a couple of hands and a couple of legs, like struggling. Then my boss is like, God damn it, you know? And he comes like yelling at me. I mean, it's just time after time after time. I do. I'm doing, I'm doing stupid things with this guy, blowing things up.

You know what I mean, You know, just causing them all kinds, all kinds of all kinds of trouble. Oh man,

so I've got it. I've got to make amends to this guy. So I stop over his shop,

you know, throws me out. About two or three months later, same thing. Stop over the shop. I know. What are you doing here?

Throws me out again. So all right, all right,

about six months later, I'm figuring this water over the damn, you know, I made my demonstration. I tried to go see this guy. I try, I tried to make amends. But what happened was I caught him at the Barber shop. I walk in, I'm going to get my haircut and there he is over in the corner. He's going to get his hair cut too. So I got him trapped. So I go over and I sit down with him and you know, I make Amanda, you know, you know, I said Frank, you know, here's what I'm here's what I need to talk to you about. You know, I made direct amends to him. I told him, I told him what was going on with me.

So how out of control I was. You know, I gave him the whole spiel and, and he, you know, he was cool about it. About a year later, you know, I'm, I'm doing really large scale project management and facilities work and I needed an electrician. I called them up and he, he became he, we, we're doing contracts

together, You know, I mean, and this was the guy that threw me out of the office. These things are very, very powerful. When when you do these,

you have no idea what the outcome can be. You have no idea what what the chain of circumstances of your amends is going to cause in the future for the healing of the world. So often when you make direct amends and you basically say what it says to do in here,

you know, I'll never get over drinking unless I try to set right on the wrongs and, you know, set everything, you know, try to try to, you know, make up for the things I've done in the past. People remember that. And you're going to get a call. You're going to get a call from some of these people saying, you know, my son is in trouble or, you know, I've got a neighbor or, listen, I've been drinking too much. Can I talk to you about it? What we do is we become part of the healing instead of part of the problem when we start moving into this step.

And again, remember, failure, failure to adhere to some of these spiritual principles is how we get drunk. You know, we don't get drunk because we change our mind so often. So often we'll come back in to AA after being an AA for five years and you get drunk,

you know, you know, you raise your hand. Well, I decided the other night to go out to the bar. No, you didn't decide to go out to the bar. Nobody goes to a A for five years and then decides to get drunk. That's completely insane.

What happened was you failed to, you failed to adhere to spiritual principles, and you lost the power that was keeping you separated from booze. You weren't. Your ego wants you to think you were there buying that drink. You weren't there. You weren't there because you were powerless.

Your ego wants to thank you. You change your mind. Yeah. Well, you know, I was in a A for about 5 years and life was really going good. I was back. I was back in the big bed. You know, when I was getting myself, I was getting myself out of debt. And I decided I would just drive down to the to the, to the bar and, you know, just blow my whole entire paycheck and, you know, wake up upside down with vomit in my hair, you know, not knowing what state I was in,

you know, because I just kind of decided to do that. You know, no, we don't do that with, with.

We're powerless if we're not practicing these principles. These principles offer us power. They call it the power of God.

When we practice these principles, this power works through us and can keep us safe and protected. If we think we're doing this stuff, we're going to be in trouble. You know, I don't know about all those stuff, stuff and all this other stuff and everything. I just don't drink. No, you just don't get it,

all right? Yuri's are not an alcoholic. Or you're a drunk waiting to happen, if that's what you're doing. You know, because every bit of the Alcoholics Anonymous literature stands against that kind of a theory that you just don't drink.

It's occasionally they will offer assistance

if someone does throw us out of his office. We've made our demonstration done our part. It's water over the dam. All right, let's look at money. We all okay, this is this is kind of tricky because I don't know too many Alcoholics that come into a a that don't owe money. We, we owe little bits of money all over the place usually,

usually we, we didn't have, we didn't have it together enough to like, oh, a lot. But one of the guys that I worked with, one of the guys that I worked with, here's his story. This guy was beautiful. He was stoned and drunk every day of his life. He was a philosophy major and during the boom years of the late 80s and early 90s on Wall Street,

he became a stock analyst. How did he become a stock analyst? Just because it could just because this guy was leaving the company and wanted to really screw the company. So he put this this like hippie pot smoking stock analyst and he hired him. And all of a sudden this guys in now he used to, he used to just figure out, you know, which companies they, this firm should invest in. And he started to hit, I mean, he started to really do well. He became the top analyst in this company, every single company. He picked

Fortune for these people. He was picking a lot of Canadian companies that were making auto parts for our auto industry and, and they were, everything was going really well. He had limousines picking him up in, in Basking Ridge like about an hour outside the city and bringing him to work every day so he could smoke pot on the way in. Now what happened was he got a resentment because his bonus wasn't big enough. He was getting $400,000 a year bonus as this guy. OK, Can you imagine?

He's stoned out of his mind and you know this Wall Street just doesn't do things like this anymore. It really doesn't. But for a while

was just wheelbarrows of cash just going back and forth everywhere. And you know, you weren't didn't even have to be smart to grab yourself one anyway, what happened was he got to resentment, you know, they they didn't, they didn't put his name on the bathroom door or something. And so he leaves and he's going to bring a bunch of investors with him. So

talks all these people that were investing in his firm. He goes, you know, I'm the guy they picked all the good stuff. I'm going to start my own first. So he starts his own firm at his own investment company and he signs a personal note to every single one of the investors. Now what that means is, is if there's a loss instead of a game, he personally

guarantees to cover it. So he he's still really stoned. He's out there, he's going crazy. He's like, he's like saying that let's you know, give me everybody's giving him millions of dollars. These people are giving this guy millions of dollars because he was really on for a while, but now he starts to tank. Now every single thing he picks is a dog and it starts to lose money and he and he throws a ton of money into a couple of companies to go bankrupt, which means these investors that put like

$4 million into stock of company A that goes bankrupt loses that $4 million. And this guy signed it personally. So when he came in and he started to work the steps with me and we got to the step, he started laughing.

He goes, he goes, you know, I'm on unemployment now. I owe like $7,000,000. How am I supposed to pay, pay these people back? And I said, well, let's just, let's just see what this says.

Most Alcoholics owe money. We do not dodge our creditors telling them what we are trying to do. We make no bones about our drinking. They usually know it anyhow, whether we think so or not.

Nor are we afraid of disclosing our alcoholism on the theory that it may cause financial harm.

So many people misunderstand anonymity. They think anonymity means secrecy. They think that as soon as you get sober, you, you've got to go underground and not tell anybody you know that you're an alcoholic. You know, where, where do, where does dad go every night? How he goes to, to the Rotary Club. You know,

I literally I had a sponsee. I had a sponsee whose father was 20 years sober and he didn't know his father was in a a I mean it. That's that's how, that's how stupid this guy was. I mean, you know, none of us is anonymous. Everything anonymous. No, it's not anonymous. I'm calling synonymous is anonymous at the level of press, radio, TV and film. How, how many times are we on TV?

OK,

now you can personally, you can personally take anonymity as far as you want, but you don't have to. OK, We can tell people we're alcoholic when we're making amends. As a matter of fact, it might even be helpful. It might not, but it might be helpful. We used to. We have to use good judgment, tact and common sense.

Approached this way, the most ruthless creditor will sometimes surprise us, arranging the best deal we can. We let these people know that we are sorry. That's what this guy did. He went back to these people and he said, you know, I know I owe you $4 million. I'm taking responsibility for it. I am. I can give you $10 a week,

you know, you know, get the hell out of here. They both of them threw them out. But but he stayed sober. You know what I mean? He stayed sober. If he would just like hide the rest of his life, he probably wouldn't have been able to stay sober. Our drinking has made us slow to pay. We must lose our fear of creditors no matter how far we have to go for we are liable to drink if we're afraid to face them. Here's another guy that I, I worked with for a while. I worked with him for 10 years. And so finally, you know, I, he and I just,

we, he had to go and, and he's been through every sponsor on the East Coast. This guy you ever know those people that jump from sponsor to spot as soon as it gets a little bit hot, you know, things are getting hot. He wants me to actually do something. I think I'll get another sponsor. Now. This is this individual was a painter

and from 1972 on, he never paid income tax. Everything was a cash maneuver, everything, no income tax. Well, he starts going through the steps with me and I say, well, you know you, you're going to have to deal with this

and it's better to go to the IRS and say, OK, here's what I did. Let's let's look at what we can do here. It's better to do that than let them catch you,

So he was unwilling to do that. He looked at how monstrous the number would be.

He probably owed 5-6, seven, $800,000. And if they put interest on that, you know, forget it. So he wouldn't do it. He wouldn't do it and has not done it. This individual hasn't seen 90 days and he's been trying for 20 years. OK,

we get drunk because we fail to adhere to spiritual principles. Making an amends and trying to set set this right, making the best deal you can at any given time is a spiritual principle.

I

All right, criminal offenses. How many people in here have done criminal offenses,

do some crimes, and the rest of you lying good for nothing? Okay,

perhaps we have committed a criminal offense which might land us in jail if it were known to the authorities. Oh my God, it might land us in jail if we go on to the authorities. We may be shorten our accounts and unable to make good. We have already admitted this and confidence to another person, but we are sure we would be imprisoned or lose our job if it were known.

Maybe it's only a petty offense such as patting the expense account. Most of us have done that sort of thing.

Maybe we are divorced and have remarried but haven't kept up the alimony to #1 She's indignant about it and has a warrant out for our arrest. That's a common form of trouble too. Any Alcoholics in here gets divorced? Any, any people that have gone through a divorce

that's that's pretty good up north. It's a it's a much higher percentage. The more heathen up up there.

All those of these reparations take innumerable forms. There are some general principles which we find guiding.

So remember reminding ourselves that we have decided to go to any lengths to find a spiritual experience. Remember that was part of Step 3, making a decision to go to lengths. So if you're working through the book with a spot C and they start balking, you can say, hey, you know, you, you said you were willing to go to any lengths and and I showed you what any links looked like. I had you read this book. What are you blocking for?

You know, put on your grown up pants and get out there and start making some amends.

We ask that we be given the strength and direction to do do the right thing, no matter what the personal consequences may be. That's a prayer directive. We ask that we'd be given the strength and direction to do the right thing no matter what the personal consequences may be. You know, I've heard, I heard one time in a meeting and I just couldn't believe it.

Sky raises his hand. He goes, you know, I got to Step 9. And I was talking to my sponsor about it. And my sponsor said, you know, if, if, if it harms others. And I'm another, you know, I don't need to do this this event.

One thing I am absolutely sure of an Alcoholics and

folks is that we eat others. You know what I mean? If it hurts us too bad, we have to be willing to do this or we may drink again. And for us to drink is to die. Sometimes the hairiest of men's out there is like kissing a baby's butt compared to to putting alcohol back in our body, you know what I mean? Do the amends drink a quart of whiskey? I mean, what's easier?

I don't know about I don't know about you, but it but I, I, I don't want to go back. I don't want to go back to that whiskey in that vodka

that took me to places I never want to revisit,

says here. We may lose our position or reputation or face jail, but we are willing.

We have to be. We must not shrink in anything. Now, I've seen heroic a man's time. You know, I always insist the people that I'm working with do every single one that they're that, that that they absolutely can do. I don't care. I don't want to hear it, you know, unless it really is going to cause somebody else harm or there's no possible way to do it. They're getting on a plane, they're getting on a boat, they're getting a taxi, they're taking a rickshaw. Whatever they need to do to go face, face these people, they're going to do it.

But I've only seen a handful of times people go to prison after they made a mess. Now, one of them was this guy. He's a friend of mine from California. He was in New Jersey for a while and he was going through the steps and he came to me and another guy and he said, look, I got some outstandings in Colorado.

I got multiple warrants in Colorado and they're not good. And we're like, OK, well, what do you wanna do about it? And he goes, well, I don't wanna be looking over my shoulder the rest of my life. I don't wanna be, I don't wanna be the type of person who has to stay underground all the time. And I'm worried about putting myself security number on something I I can't do that. So I'm gonna go do the immense.

And so we had him talk to a lawyer. The lawyer said, yeah, you're probably gonna do some time. And he went

and he went and he turned himself in. That's a good thing. If they catch you, that's a bad thing. He went and he turned himself in and he did about eight months, you know, for like 5 or 6, you know, felony warrants. He did about eight months, got the hell out of Colorado. And now he's surfing in Hawaii with, with, you know, a brand new wife. And he's living it up. He's he's just living it up. He's an, a, a member in good standing, you know what I mean? And it's behind him now,

you know, so a lot of us are going to have these things. A lot of us are going to have these things. I went, I went back and made direct amends to about 1/2 a dozen places where I caused, where I, where I did crimes that, that harmed them. And every single time it was, it was a positive thing. It wasn't like I'm calling the police a lot of times. It was like 30 years ago, you know what I mean? But, but I think that we need to do this. How free do you want to be is what you need to keep asking yourself. How free do you want to be?

Usually, however, other people are involved. Therefore, we do not be the hasty and foolish martyr who would needlessly sacrifice others to save himself from the alcoholic pit.

A man, we know it, remarried because of resentment and drinking. He had not paid alimony to his first wife. She was furious. She went to court and got an order for his arrest. He had commenced our way of life, had secured a position and was getting his head above water. It would have been an impressive heroics if he had walked up to the judge and said, here I am. We thought he ought to be willing to do that

if necessary, but if he were in jail, he could provide nothing for either family. We suggested he read his first first wife, admitting his faults and asking forgiveness. He did, and also sent a small amount of money. He told her that he would try what he would try to do in the future. He said he was perfectly willing to go to jail if she insisted. Of course she did not, and the whole situation has since been adjusted.

When other people are involved, there are amends. When other people are involved, amends are not to be done hastily.

What I always recommend is I recommend that you get spiritual counsel with someone with experience. If someone, if your sponsor hasn't done amends, if if your sponsors like the majority of people in a a who have, who's made, who have made cursory amends to their family and let and let the whole rest of the world, you know, go,

that's not the person you want to be going through this part of the steps with. You're going to want to go through the steps with someone who has some experience. And a lot of times those people with experience, if they don't have specific experience, they will point you to somebody that does. In other words, I have never had to make amends to the

yes, if somebody comes to me and there's an IR, there's an IRS immense. I will point him to one of my friends who's done so, or I will point them to an attorney that handles IRS claims because I don't know everything, you know, But if I have experience, I will share it with an individual.

You, you do not want somebody editing your spiritual program. You do not want somebody that will say, you know, I don't really think you need to go out and you know, that's a whole big to do. I don't know that you really need to do that. You don't want to be going through the steps with somebody like that. They're shortchanging you,

they're giving you their own experience. They've never done it. So that's what they're they're thinking that you don't need to either. But the fact of the matter is, is you may have to, you may be a real alcoholic and you may get drunk if you don't do this. So. So anyway,

I'll tell you a story about when others were involved. I think. I think I should

not sure if I shared here or somewhere else. That's at the time that I trashed the house down in down in Florida. Well, what happened was there were two other roommates that that were involved with this and you know, one of them was dead from cirrhosis of the liver. You know, big surprise. It was living with me, the other individual

around. He was, he was what he was a heavy drinker. He was somebody who dragged drink for drink with me. But when the time came that, you know, advice from a doctor, you know, a new relationship, he basically stopped and moderated the rest of his life. He was involved with this. And I told him, look, I've got to track these people down and I've got to make direct amends, you know, but I need to talk to you first. He goes, hey, knock yourself out. Just don't tell him where I live.

So. All right, All right, So. So

you know, when somebody else is involved, you know, if it's a felony, like a break in breaking and entering felony, you know, and, and you know there there's accomplice, you have people with you. You got to be careful. You can't, you can't implicate anybody else. That's not what we're about. We're not about causing harm to anybody else,

we're about taking responsibility for the harm we've caused.

Before taking drastic action which might implicate other people, we secure their consent.

If we have obtained permission, have consulted with others, ask God to help in the drastic step is indicated. We must not shrank, we we must take the bit in our teeth, and we must do it. This brings to mind a story about about one of our friends. While drinking, he accepted a sum of money from a bitterly hated business rival, giving him no receipt for it.

He subsequently denied having received the money and used the incident as a basis for discrediting the men. Now this is awful. This is like a business competitor. And what you've done is you've borrowed a bunch of money from them, and then when they want it back, you spread all over town that this person is trying to embezzle you.