The chapter We Agnostics at a Big Book study in Winston-Salem, NC

It's great to be here tonight. Tina mentioned the the smoking and that I'm a non-smoker. I want, I want to share a story with you so that you know, I'm not one of those holier than thou nonsmokers. I was two years sober and I had been trying to quit because here's here's how I smoke. I don't know about anybody else, but I smoked like with a vengeance. Same way I drank, I smoked and I, I mean, I would suck on the cigarettes so hard. I would, I would smoke a cigarette

seconds and the, the red burning end on the end of the cigarette was usually an inch and a half long, you know, you know, I'm trying to get so much in my lungs because you know, I've, I've, I've got attic tendencies, you know, and so you can't really smoke and you can't really enjoy smoking if you smoke like that. And so, so in 19, in 1992, February of 1992,

I was able to finally separate from cigarettes after trying 7000 times, I was able to, I was able to quit and, and for 15 years I was absolutely nicotine free. And then I'm over in Copenhagen. This is about four or five years ago walking down the streets

and I'm looking in the window. So all these stores and they've got Cuban cigars for sale everywhere. OK, Cuban cigar. Doesn't that sound good? Like if you're a smoker, a Cuban cigar, you know, they're, they're illegal in America because they're so good, you know, and, and so

I just, I'm going to buy a Cuban cigar. What could go wrong? And I found out what could go wrong because it means about two months later, I'm doing 2 packs of cigarettes a day again. And, and it was another two or three-year struggle separating. I found out what it is, but only after the fact. What happens with with nicotine is you develop nicotine receptors, the amount you smoke or, or your relationship with nicotine, you develop nicotine receptors in your brain and they're tied in with the endorphin and

systems and all the natural feel good chemical systems in our bodies. And what happens is when you quit those, those receptors don't go away. They just go dormant and they're just waiting for you to activate them again. And that's what happened. 15 years later, I smoke a Cuban cigar

and I activate these nicotine receptors and they're like, Oh yeah. And, and in a very short period of time, I'm, I'm smoking again. So yeah, that's my history with with nicotine. I think if I think if you can become addicted to something, I'm a candidate

anyway. We are, we're moving into Step 2 tonight. I mean, we were what, five weeks on step one?

Again, five weeks on step one. We covered the material in depth. I hope that everybody in here is is able to see what their truth is as far as their alcoholism is concerned. You know, if you're in another fellowship, hopefully you can see the truth of what you're powerless over there. Also, if you're here tonight

in this first paragraph, it basically breaks down a lot of what we a lot of what they made clear in the previous chapters

is is a thumbnail in this says in the preceding chapters, you have learned something of alcoholism. We hope we have made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non alcoholic. You know,

we need to know whether we're an alcoholic or whether we have a drinking problem

for an alcohol abuser. That's different than being alcohol dependent. The alcoholic is alcohol, alcohol dependent. We there, there are times when, you know, we just don't function well without the alcohol. Hey, Chris, what page are we on? We are on page 44.

This is a 4th edition,

so hopefully you've been here enough and we've gone over enough material so that you're able to see your own truth about step one in your case, whether you're an alcoholic or non alcoholic. We do get non Alcoholics in AA and there's really nothing, nothing wrong with that. You know, I mean, if you have a drinking problem, I think it's a great idea to address that drinking problem. The people who tend to stick around year after year, though,

are usually the people who

are alcoholic, because they come to the conclusion that they need consistent spiritual practices to be able to stay abstinent and to be able to heal emotionally and spiritually. So they stay in AA and they participate in other spiritual stuff. That's just no

normally What, what hopefully, hopefully what happens with most Alcoholics.

So here's where they described it says if when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely or if when drinking, you have little control of the amount you take, you were probably alcoholic. You know, that's the question. You know, AA loves putting together pamphlets and there's, there's a pamphlet on everything now. And I don't know, did anybody in here familiar with the 44 questions or the, the 22 questions or whatever? They you don't need 22 questions. You don't need 44 questions. You you need really 2

If when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking you have little or or or no control of the amount you take, you're probably alcoholic. Those really are the questions. I heard a guy say one time that he made-up his own questions. Some of the questions were like this.

Did you ever have a problem operating your own pants zipper?

Did you ever get it rested while in jail?

Did you ever? Did you ever sunburn the roof of your mouth?

Did you, did you ever come? I mean, he just, he goes on and on and on with these. It's, it's, it's, it's absolutely beautiful. Did you ever run yourself over with your own car? Was one of them? You know, if you have, then you may be alcoholic. That's an important warning sign,

huh? So, so if if you can't quit entirely, even though you really want to, and believe me, you're not changing your mind every time, OK, if you make an honest decision to quit, you know, hopefully you're able to do that. If you're not, that's, that's a sign of alcoholism. And also

when you start drinking, you have little, little or no control of the amount you take. That's also the other sign of alcoholism. And if you have both of those, you're full blown you, you are, you are a textbook example of a, a walking Alcoholics Anonymous member. You know, you, you're, you're, you're a textbook case. So you're going to need a textbook recovery. One of the things that so many of us just need so desperately is to be different than everybody else.

My case is just a little different. Yeah, I drink alcoholic, Lee. And I've had all these DUI's and, you know, you know, I'm on my fifth family and, you know, you know, but, you know, but it's I'm not really alcoholic. I know it looks that way,

but I, you know, I've got different problems menu and and you know, we need that. We so desperately need to, to, to be different. It's really good if you can just, if you can just admit to this and say, all right, you know, I'm an alcoholic, I'm in the right place. Let's let's get about the business

recovery.

If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer. Now, now, now, take it from Meg. There's a scale in alcoholism, Okay, No matter how far down the scale you've gone, it says in the promises. There's also another line in the book that says your ability to quit drinking on a non spiritual basis will depend on the amount of control you've lost and drink. The amount of control you lose and drink is the scale in alcoholism.

It's not how much you drag or how much trouble you got in or how many years you drank. It's how much control have you lost and drank. You know, you remember, you always, you always get drunk when you're sober. You know what I mean? You, you always take the first drink sober.

So, so this is, this is very, very important stuff to, to be able to, to, to identify with. Now I, I work in and around many professionals, really, really good professionals and addictive illness treatment, alcoholism treatment. And

you know, they, they, they struggle. They struggle because they can't give you the magic bullet that's going to enable you to just stay sober the rest of your life. They'd love to, but it's just too difficult. What they can sometimes do is break down the resistance that we have

from fully accepting our condition and then fully engaging in the recovery process. That's really what a good treatment modality will will do. It'll educate you and it'll it'll help to convince you that you're you're in trouble and you need to pay attention to this chronic illness.

Now the solution is spiritual.

That's why Alcoholics Anonymous works when when you work it. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed the path. You know that That pretty much says it all for people whose main problem is they can't stay separated from alcohol

when they engage in the 12 step recovery process. The power to stay separated and abstinent

materializes. It it it materializes and all of a sudden that power is there. Now the only way to describe this is spiritual because it's really not psychological. The, the difference between a spiritual and a psychological process is this, if, if you were to get sober from a psychological process,

you would learn how to change your thinking so that your behavior would change. Because that's kind of what you do in, in, in psychology. You learn all kinds of stuff about, you know, your issues. You know what I mean? Everybody's got issues. So you, you, you go back into your childhood, you, you find out where the issues started and all this and you're going to learn a whole lot about what's going on.

But it's not our understanding, it's not our belief systems that keep us sober.

So we don't get sober from psychological help. We get sober from spiritual help. And the reason it's called spiritual, I believe, is because it's in our actions. It's

we learned to change our actions sometimes before we learn to change our belief systems. When you come into a A and you get yourself a sponsor, one of the first things they usually do is, kid, you're cleaning up the ashtrays and you're washing the coffee pot. You know,

you know, And the first thing they try to do is they try to change your behavior.

You know, there's a lot of sponsors that don't really care very much what you think, you know what I mean? Like my sponsor once said to me, Chris, if I cared what you thought, I, I, I go over to your house and knock on the door and ask your mother if you're free. You know what I mean? You're living with mom, okay,

Why would I care what you think? You're 33, you know what I mean. So he he wasn't real interested in what I thought about. Well, look, let me give you my opinion on that. Don't bother, okay? I'm really uninterested in your opinion. What he was interested in is where I was going to be that night, what meeting I was going to go to, you know, was I going to be helpful?

Could I help with the, the recovery picnic on the weekend? You know, he was, he was involved in changing my behavior. And I believe we have to do that before our thinking and our belief systems change in many, many cases.

Uh, here's a great one. To be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live life on on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face. Okay, we just told you, you are totally hosed in the chapters in the, in the chapters covering step one, we painted a picture. You're, you're, you know, it's Custer's last stand and there's more Indians coming. OK, If you have an obsession of the mind that's going to force you to pick up booze,

you know, even when you don't want to, and you have a body that's going to crave it once it's in there until you're you're, you're just passed out drunk, that's a death sentence. It's a slow death sentence sometimes, but it's a death sentence. So they painted a very, very bad picture. But there is a solution. There is a way out,

but to be doomed to an alcoholic death or live life along spiritual lines doesn't doesn't always make that

easy to accept. You know,

you start looking at the steps, turn my will, you know, make a decision to turn my will over to God to go back and pay back all the money. What is that alcoholic death look like again? You know, you know what I mean. I'm really good friends with somebody who went in. The doctor said, man, your liver, you're only 22 years old. Your liver is three times the size it should be. You know, you're going cirrhosis.

You're not going to live very long if you keep drinking the way you're drinking. And he said, well, doc, how many years? The doc said, I don't know, five, maybe 10. Right on. He goes, OK, it goes to the bar that night. He goes, I got 10 years. Pour me a. Pour me a I mean,

this is the way we think we're nuts.

So the spiritual basis is not always easy, easy to face.

At first, some of us tried to avoid the issue, hoping against hope that we were not true Alcoholics. I think, I think a lot of us go through this, yes, what a lot of you people are saying is true. But I don't think I have to do a fourth and a fifth step. I don't think I have to go to meetings, you know, consistently.

I don't think I have to get a Home group or pay the money back or sit around praying and meditating or, you know, working with other people. You know, I don't really think that I need to do that. I'm just going to go to meetings. That's probably going to be fine for me. You know, that's that's hoping against hope that you're not a true alcoholic. That's what that is.

But after a while we had to face the fact that we must find a spiritual basis of life, or else something like half of us thought we were atheists or agnostics. Our experience shows that you need not be disconcerted.

It's a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism.

Many of us have recovered long ago, but we found that such codes and philosophies and peace did not save us no matter how much we tried.

OK, codes and philosophies, we may understand how to live spiritually.

OK, we, we may be very, very religious people. I, I sponsor a handful of men of the cloth. OK, I do and they come to me. These are people who preach in front of huge congregations and they come to me to take the exercises to so I can show them the exercises that are going to get them closer to God. The faith that works, you can have, you can have faith, but it can be a faith that doesn't work.

You know, one of the things that I saw early on

in, in my area in a, that was very, very disconcerting to me was there, there were sometimes religious contingents that would come into the beginners meetings and try to pull the Alcoholics out saying really all you need is Jesus come to our church.

And almost invariably these people did not get sober. It's not about that, that, that that particular church didn't have a really strong faith system that they really didn't know what they were doing. They didn't know what they were doing. But as an alcoholic, we need a faith that works. And that means there's got to be certain aspects of the step process in our faith system. That's why things like Celebrate Recovery and a number of other organizations

that are really, you know, inside the religious institutions are doing really well because they're incorporating some of the things that work in Alcoholics Anonymous.

Umm, would you wish to be more? We could wish to be philosophically covered. In fact, we could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn't there.

Remember, power is our problem. For admitting in step one that we're powerless. It would make sense, then, that we need power.

Our human resources, as marshalled by the will, were not sufficient. They failed utterly. We could not recreate our life and we could not stay abstinent from booze, and we could not control it once we started to drink.

Lack of power. That was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a power greater than ourselves, obviously. But where and how are we to find this power? But that's exactly what this book is about. Its main object is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself

which will solve your problem. That means we have written a book which we believe to be spiritual as well as moral.

And it means, of course, that we're going to talk about God

now, you know,

this is, this is a, this is a hub that you kind of got to get over. I so many people when they come into Alcoholics Anonymous has have unreasoning prejudice against spiritual concepts and especially against organized religion. I mean, it, it, you know, more than half of the fellowship will, will have those type of prejudices. They'll have, they'll be certain about certain things about religious people or religious institutions,

God thing and they'll be certain that they understand it, but they they really won't. So what has to happen is there's got to be a convincing argument that you need to be open minded about this. And the best argument is, is if you're not open minded about this, you're going to die of alcoholism because you're not going to find the needed power.

The good news is, is there's a whole lot of latitude about what God, the God of your understanding can look like to you.

The relationship that you can have. There's a lot of wide open space in there. But the fact of the matter is, is if you don't develop some kind of a relationship with God, the Spirit, you know, whatever you want to call it, you're going to be in big trouble because because the power is going to going to be elusive.

If you're going to continue to just do it yourself,

All successful addiction treatment processes of the last 200 years, all of them had a spiritual part, if not a direct, direct linkage right to right to God or Christianity. A lot of people don't, don't, don't understand this, but probably the most successful treatment for alcoholism,

if you add up all the statistics, believe it or not, is the Salvation Army. They have been treating Alcoholics through spiritual practices since 1880 or something like that, you know, and a lot of people have gotten sober through there. If you look at where and how people get sober, you're going to find that the people that get and stay sober, there's a spiritual piece, there's there's some type of getting a

into a comfortable relationship with God. It's you know, why is that necessary? You know, sometimes knowing why and Alcoholics Anonymous is the booby prize. You know what I mean? If it works,

you have to look at what works,

you know? I know as soon as I really made a decision to do this a a stuff, seriously made a decision to do this a a stuff and then started to do it, then I was OK.

You know, I was OK. From that moment forward, I was able to stay separated from alcohol.

We've shared honest doubt and prejudice. Some of us have been anti violently, anti religious.

I, you know, I was spinning dry in the late 80s, you know, trying to figure out how to get sober. I was going to treatment and outpatient, all this stuff. And that was right about the time that Jim and Tammy Faye Baker were selling, you know, 25,000 heavenly condos when there was only 10 and, and Jimmy Swagger was, you know, calling everybody a Sinner. And then he got caught in the Texas motel with the prostitutes.

And I remember saying, that's God's front three, you know,

I knew it, I knew it. Hypocrites, you know, and, and I was caught up in all this stuff. All right. Now it says in here, it says in here that you have to abandon that type of prejudice. We beg of you to lay aside prejudice

against spiritual or religious practices or institutions. It begs you to lay aside prejudice. And I had to. And, you know, when I was able to lay aside that prejudice, I wasn't viewing, you know, I wasn't viewing people of God

that way anymore. You know, I was seeing it differently. I was seeing that you can access a power and a courage that you don't have. If you think you're alone out there in the universe, that you're, you're you're attaching yourself to a faith system that not only is going to work for you to be able to overcome alcoholism, but it's going to work to add quality to every single aspect of your life. You're going to become the type of person you've always wanted

big. You're going to be the person that's there for other people. You're going to be the family member that everybody comes to for advice. You're you're going to you're going to be effective in your personal relationships. You're going to be promotable at work, maybe for the first time in your life.

You know, a lot of things happen when you access this power

that they say is a direct power of God. A lot of things happen

here, it says. We saw we found that as soon as we were able to lay aside prejudice and express even a willingness to believe in a power greater than ourselves, we commence to get results, even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that power which is God.

Folks, the last 18 years I have read more spiritual books than you can, you can shake a stick at. I mean, you can, you can ask Andrea the live. My, my library is 90% spiritual books. Most of them have God in the title. They don't have God in the title. They have Jesus or, or, or Buddha or, you know, or somebody like that in the title. And I, you know, I read these things because I get a lot of comfort from them,

but I'm also curious. I'm, I'm also trying to fit a lot of puzzle pieces together.

This God thing in the spirituality. I kind of want to know and I've got to tell you, you know, there's still way more I don't know than I do know. But the important things I do know, one of them is, is if I continue to seek this understanding in this relationship with God, I believe it's pleasing to God and I believe it's comforting to me, so I should continue to do it. I don't come up with any definitive answers

with this with this stuff. And I believe that the people that come at you saying they've got all the definitive answers are, are usually in my, in my experience, to be avoided.

But I find through seeking this connection, seeking, seeking this one neness with my creator is what is what keeps me, keeps me doing good, you know, So I continue to do it

and I pay attention and I listen and I try to learn. But I've, but I've also been able to figure out that there are certain practices that we, there's certain practices that we have to do, you know,

and the people that I've respected the most, I've had some great teachers and Alcoholics Anonymous, I've had some great teachers. You know, one of the guys who was my teacher, get this, he was, he was an experiential spiritualist. He spent five years with the Dalai Lama's principal tutor and Dom Sala India. He spent five years with an an American Indian, a Native American Indian wise man.

He spent five years with a Zen master in California, is one of the top Zen masters

on the planet, and he spent five years with Thomas Merton's principal of principal protege. Thomas Merton was the Christian spiritualist. And then he started to, to, to work with me. And this was one of this, this guy was so at peace with himself

and he understood things on such a level that there were some amazing things that would go on with this guy. I mean, he knew things that he shouldn't know and he saw things that he shouldn't see. He was, he was really, really in tune with the power, you know, and, and he taught me,

he taught me so much. He taught me to question my beliefs,

to question my belief systems, to keep me open minded. He would continually question me about my belief systems. And one of the things that he did when he took me through the steps was he beat me up so bad in steps 1-2 and three that when I walked out of steps 1-2 and three, I understood at an absolute molecular level

that I couldn't even take a breath without God's help, let alone stay sober. You know, and, and, and it was an amazing, remarkable experience. Do we all have to go to Dharamsala, India, you know, and sit up on a mountain with, with, with, with the wise men?

You don't know, You know, it's very simple. The things that we need to do to grow spiritually are very, very simple.

But sometimes there's an attraction to go a little bit deeper. And some people, some people do and, and that's fine too, as long as they don't lose sight of the practices that keep you connected. It's very easy to get so heavenly. You're no earthly good, you know what I mean? And you, you have to make sure, you have to make sure that that doesn't happen.

Much to our relief, we discover we did not need to consider another's conception of God.

Our own conception, however inadequate, was sufficient to make the approach and to affect contact with Him. As soon as we admitted the possible existence of a creative intelligence, a spirit of the universe underlying the totality of things, we began to be possessed of a new sense of power and direction provided we took other simple steps.

So again, you don't stop at Step 2. You need to continue to work the program to get in touch with.

We found that God does not make too hard turns for those who seek him. The hope that you have to jump through is bigger than you think. The sponsor will say to the spot. See, that's that's in the step book.

To us, the realm of spirit is broad, roomy, all inclusive, never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek. It is open, we believe, to all men. And again, as long as you're open minded, you're honest with yourself to a certain degree,

you're willing, you know, to do certain things, you are going to have a spiritual awakening. You can be a complete atheist or complete agnostic and do this work,

sometimes acting as if there's a God. And if you do this work, you will have a spiritual awakening and you will get connected to God.

Why do you think so many churches on this planet invite us into their basements to have a, a meanings? They know what we're about. They know what's going on in those AA meetings. Sometimes it's the first time somebody is going to get connected to God in their life and there's just not a chance they're going to walk through the big doors upstairs. So we are supported by churches almost universally because they understand

that we're about the business of connecting people to God.

I do not lend any prejudice you may have against spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you. So spiritual terms, don't let somebody read your big book. Don't let somebody tell you what type of spirituality you need to have. Always be open minded, be willing to learn and be asking yourself what exactly does this stuff mean to you?

For you to have a faith system

this really, really strong and really internalized, it needs to be yours. You can't just take somebody elses and plug it into your life. You need to be fully committed. You need to, you need to be fully invested in this spiritual life that you're living and the spiritual practices that you're doing

in your relationship with God as you understand them. For it to be meaningful, it needs to be personalized

and it needs to be yours.

We needed to ask ourselves but one short question.

Do I now believe or am I even willing to believe that there's a power greater than myself? Let's all answer this if we can. I'm going to I'm going to ask this question and every everyone who wishes to join me, please answer.

Chris, do you now believe or or are you even willing to believe that there's a power greater than yourself? Yes,

as soon as a man can say that he does believe, or is willing to believe, we emphatically assured him he is on his way. Has been repeatedly proven among us that upon the simple cornerstone, a wondrously ineffective spiritual structure can be built.

This is one of Bill Wilson's construction references they get. They get more and more interesting as we move forward.

One of the things that is interesting to interesting to study in, in a, a history is, you know, how did they come up with this? How did they come up with a spiritual solution? Well, the spiritual solution really for Alcoholics Anonymous came out of the Oxford Group. Both Doctor Bob was, was going to Oxford Group meetings with his wife Anne in Akron, OH before he met Bill, and Bill was going to Oxford Group meetings at the Cavalry Cavalry Mission

in New York City prior to meeting Bob. And they both somehow intuitively understood that there's got to be a spiritual solution to this because they, they, you know, they just run out of options. They'd run out. They'd both been to, to, to, to treatment, you know, for whatever it was.

They both, they both tried to separate from alcohol many, many times and found that they couldn't. So they were both ended up in this Oxford group. Now, now what has happened over the the the course of the past, you know, how many ever 100 years is the only time a hopeless alcoholic had ever been able to be restored to to sanity and to abstinence was when they had a religious conversion experience.

This would happen in the Salvation Army. There there was

in the 1880s and 1890s, there were treatment sinners all over this country that you know, some of them, some of them were pretty amazing. A lot of them were were, were religiously affiliated. Some of them weren't, but, but most of them were. And what would happen was when somebody really plugged in and really started to do a whole lot of stuff,

whether it was religious or spiritual, they were able to stay separated from alcohol.

You know, so a, a didn't discover this. What, what they did was they, they plugged into it and they refined it. So, So what they did was they took what worked out of all of these processes and they built them into the steps and the principles and the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's really where we came from

because the medical, unfortunately, the medical establishment couldn't help us,

neither could the psychiatric like today. They'll give it a good shot. You know, they'll really, really try. And a lot of times they'll help us with problems other than alcohol. They'll help us with perspective. They'll help us with health issues,

but it's a bigger problem. It's a more aggressive problem than really can be handled by a couple of visits to the doctor's office or a couple of pills or a couple of couple of sessions on the couch. It's a, it's a more aggressive problem. So,

so the early AAS discovered these principles and discovered that you needed to develop a relationship with God through the Asha group.

So now

there's some warnings in here. Besides the seeming inability to accept much on faith, we often found ourselves handicapped by obstinacy, sensitiveness, and unreasoning prejudice. I don't know how about anybody else, but those were those were my war cries.

Many of us have been so touchy that even casual reference, the spiritual things made us bristle with antagonism. Is anybody in here when they were new? Where they touchy

remember being touchy? You know he's thinking at me.

Yeah, he's, I know what he's thinking,

you know, what did you say? What did you mean by that, What you just said? I mean, we were, we were touchy,

unreasoning prejudice. You know, I was so crazy. I, my first friend

in Alcoholics Anonymous was a guy named RadioShack Mike, and he was just crazy enough to wanna be my friend. I mean, I, I was, I was the kind of guy who people didn't say hi to There, there were people who, you know, hugged everybody and shook everybody's hand that stayed away from me. I just, I, I was like,

I described myself like, like a garage door spring, you know what I mean? Like with 200 lbs of repressed stuff just ready to snap off the hook, you know, and, and that's, that's the, that's the way I was. And he, he hooked up, you know, and we hooked up together and we started going to meetings.

Remember leaving the meeting and this poor guy the whole way home, all I would do is criticize what people had shared.

Can you believe that, Harry? What a hypocrite. Can you believe that He's in there talking about how grateful he is. Well, I'm going to slash his tires the next Tuesday. I will see how gratefully is that, you know, and I I would, and and this poor Mike, I would just sit there like this and because I would have to do my 15 minute tirade on all that in shirks in that meaning, you know, I mean, you can't live like that. You can't

can't be effective in a life when when you're when you're like that, you know so, so much, so much. We have to change so much.

Uh, faced with alcoholic destruction, we soon became as open minded on spiritual matters as we had tried to be on other questions. In this respect, alcohol was a great persuader. It finally beat us into a reasonableness. Now, I don't know. I don't know anybody in here familiar with the warranties in I believe

they're in a concept for World Service number 12. One of the warranties is

A. A can have no punitive action against a group or member. What does punitive mean? Punitive means punishing

we and Alcoholics Anonymous. One of our principles is not to punish and Alcoholics Anonymous member or an Alcoholics Anonymous group for doing something wrong. Now, we can sometimes ask people to leave if they're dangerously antisocial. You know that will happen.

But, but, but we're not about. We're not the judge, jury, executioner's OK. You know who is alcohol? Alcohol is what will beat us into reasonableness. Alcohol is what will punish us for our refusal

to be open minded on spiritual matters. That's what will That's the punitive action of a A and it's not inside the rooms, it's outside in the bars and the liquor stores.

Okay,

we beg of you to lay aside prejudice even against organized religion. We have learned that whatever the human frailties of various face may be, those face have given purpose and direction to millions. People of faith have a logical idea of what life is all about. You know I am a fan of religion today. Now I got to tell you, when I was brand new,

I wouldn't have liked me. Does that make any sense? I'm not the type of person today that I would have liked when I first walked in to Alcoholics Anonymous.

I was mad at everybody and I had an opinion about everything. And I've gotta tell you, I'm a I'm a huge fan of anything that is a positive influence in the world today. There's enough negative influences. I need to be a fan of anything that's that's positive. The same thing in, in,

in my professional work, I have to, I have to be open and inclusive, not exclusive. There are a lot of other recovery programs and processes out there, and I can't be, I can't have unreasoning prejudice against them.

Not every tool works for every person. I'll give you an example. OK. Does anybody in here know what harm reduction is? You know, methadone maintenance? I mean, you know, we've all heard about this now. Now, for a long time I was vehemently against all that stuff, OK? You need to come in here and become willing, OK? And that's just the way I believe. I believe that, Well, you got to hit bottom and you got to come in here and

be willing. Let me tell you, there are people out there that would rather die than go to a 12 step meeting. They would rather die than go to a 12 month. Should we let them die or should there be another option? I believe that there should be other options. I believe that there should be harm reduction options.

You know, I do. Are they ideal? I don't think anybody would argue that they are. You know, as far as addictive illness is concerned, abstinence and recovery, that's it. That's the that's the best you're going to get. But there are people who cannot

or will not give themselves to this simple spiritual program, and we shouldn't unilaterally turn our backs on them if they're if we can be of help. We're supposed to be at the place where we're a maximum service to God and our fellow man. Now, listen, you know, Alcoholics Anonymous, this is my family. This is this is where it all happened for me. And this is this is where I spend a lot of my, a lot of my attention.

But we need to be open minded because the more open minded we are, the more helpful we can be. And I got to tell you, AA is more about being helpful than it is about getting help. AA teaches you how to be helpful. That's really the whole plan. The whole 12 steps are about teaching you how to sponsor, not about how to be sponsored, you know, and how to get it.

What about how to get it quickly and then give it away the rest of your life. You know, that's really what this this program is about.

So, you know, my mind has been opened over the years if what I'm saying makes any sense at all. You know, I'm, I'm much more liberal and, and a lot of my thinking than I, than I was, you know, when I first came in.

Now here's what the 1st 100 discovered on one proposition, however, these men and women are strikingly agreed. The 1st 100, every one of them has gained access to and believes in a power greater than himself. This power has in each case accomplished the miraculous, the humanly impossible.

Here are thousands of men and women, worldly indeed. They flatly declare that since they have come to believe in a power greater than themselves, to take a certain attitude toward that power and to do certain simple things, the steps and principles, there has been a revolutionary change in their way of living and thinking.

Now that's a, that's a nice little snapshot of the spiritual awakening. You want to jump to step 12 if you're, if you're, if, if you're one of those people that like to read the ending of a book before you waste your time reading it, you know, you jump, you jump to step 12 having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps. That's the whole point of this, this fellowship, to encourage you to do that because this is a 12 step program with a support fellowship.

There's been a revolutionary change in their way of living and thinking,

but don't make any changes in the first year. I love that

in the face of collapse and despair, in the face of the total failure of their human resources. And isn't that where we were before we came into AA? I mean, who comes into A Because there's nothing on TV that night. I don't know about you. I didn't say, oh, geez, you know, life is getting a little, little Gray around the edges. I think I'll journey up with the mayonnaise.

That's not how I felt. You know how I felt. Here's how I felt.

Alcoholics Anonymous.

Oh no,

it's come to this

a heaven and guy like me

join it up with the lamos.

Every single night I'll be in a church basement talking about God

with somebody. Just put me out of my misery and kill me Now

that's, you know, that's how I came in here. I don't know about anybody else. Oh, I wasn't. Oh boy. A new social group should join up with

no way.

So in the face of collapse and despair, in the face of total failure of my human resources, I found a new power, peace and happiness and sense and a sense of direction. I don't know about anybody else, but that's what I've found, a power, a piece, a happiness and a sense of direction. And those are good things to have. You know, you can't have those when you're out there tearing around the universe, you know, smoking crack and shooting heroin and drinking whiskey,