The topic of "Evolution of the Big Book experience" at the Nosara Big Book Workshop in Nosara Playa Guiones, Costa Rica

Good evening everybody. My name is Kristen. I am an alcoholic,

very interesting topic. I think I've probably spoken a little bit about it before, but you know, having it as a topic made me made me think, you know what really what really has happened. I believe we're in the middle of a of a renaissance. I believe that there are groups springing up all over all of the world that are literature based, meaning solution based meanings that are

using the book Alcoholics Anonymous as

a recovery tool for, for

experiencing the, the freedom, freedom from alcohol,

the spiritual transformation that's inherent in working the,

the exercises and the steps in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. And so it is an interesting topic for me, you know, like, like, like the other two speakers, Scott and Jonathan, My, my experience showing up in the rooms of, of a, a was an insufficient experience for me. Just showing up in the Fellowship

I, I believe, I believe very, very much in what

what you find in the Big Book. The explanations in the Big Book make good sense to me. They're not necessarily scientific, but they're observable. And one of the things that is observable is there's a scale in alcoholism. No matter how far down the scale we've gone, we'll find our experience can benefit others.

Ones ability to quit on a non spiritual basis will depend upon the amount of control one has lost in drink. There's a lot of references to this scale in in the book. If you look in the chapters of Wives, it's got the four different kinds of drinkers, Alcoholics, and each one is progressively worse.

And I believe that that the fellowship itself can be a solution to some people who show up in Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's, that's a good thing. But I think if you've, if you've gone down the scale as far as some of us had, you'll find that a fellowship experience by itself is is going to be insufficient.

Hence, you know, the big book workshop that we're having today. Now there's there's some controversy rolling around the different conferences and different speakers and Alcoholics Anonymous today. And many of them see the Big Wick movement as as radical, as newfangled, and as

as as kind of a threat to to the unity of Alcoholics Anonymous. I've heard this from multiple fronts.

I want to talk about where personally, you know, this big book thing came from me

and I want to liken it to something just to give us some perspective.

I've, I've, I've been a kind of a historian of religion, a a scholar of religion for a long time. And I've done much biblical study, especially New Testament study. And one of the things that I found out was I think what we all know, we all know the experience of being a born again Christian

experience of believing the Bible is the inerrant word of God, that if it's in the Bible, it's true. We all know people who, who believe this. And there's areas of the country where they're basically in the majority, you know, the, the born again brand of, of Christianity. Now what a lot of people don't know is that did not exist until about the 16th century.

Up until that point in time, people use the Bible in a historical, metaphorical

sense. In other words,

they believed that there was some history in the Bible and they believed that there was the some of the stories in the Bible were meant to be understood metaphorically. Like these were stories that were, that were designed to be read in congregations that would tell a lesson in how to live a moral and spiritual life. And then around around the 16th century or so, I'm never good with numbers,

a man named Tyndale came along and

and he came up with the idea that if it's in the Bible, it's true. If it says this, this is exactly what it says. This is exactly what happened. And he's basically the guy that started pushing out the idea that the Bible is inerrant and it was the word of God and it was to be understood literally. So we went 16 1/2 centuries without believing that, believing that it was metaphorical. And now there's a huge section of people who believe it's literal.

Now, why I tell the story is because when the book Alcoholics Anonymous was written, there were some things in it that said things like these are the steps we took. Well, how could those have been the steps we took? You just wrote them.

You know what I mean?

Now we need to understand, we need to understand this a little bit metaphorically, what Bill was talking about, what he, he changed the steps and he numbered them. There was a reason he did that. Number 12 is a, is a very spiritual, practically religious number. The things in the steps were things that they were doing back in the Oxford Group and they were certainly things that they were doing

in the early A A groups.

But a lot of the things in the Big Book that Bill talked about that they were doing, they really hadn't done yet. He was, he was very prophetic and he understood what was going to happen better. He was prophetic. He understood what was going to happen better than we can imagine. There's some promises in the Big Book that hadn't even happened to anybody yet.

There are valid experience or promises that happened to us

when we experience the work in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. Now,

looking back at some of the history, I studied some of the history of AA long enough to know that I wasn't interested in studying anymore.

That happened to me about 15 years ago. I kind of stopped studying it and went on to other things. But what I believe is that I don't see that the book Alcoholics Anonymous was used in a very literal way for a long time. I think they used some of the principles and some of the exercises certainly, but they didn't open up the big book and go through it page by page, sentence by sentence and take the take every single instruction

the way we sometimes do today. Where the big book movement came from that I understand today from from the recovery masters that I have studied came out of a group in in Canada called the Golden Slippers. Does anybody in here ever heard of those guys? Some people have.

The Denver Young People's Group is probably the genesis of the modern big book movement that I'm a part of now. There may be other genesis and other experiences, but the people I have listened to and basically studied under came out of the Denver Young People's Group and what happened was this. There was a group in Canada who could not stay sober

that and these guys, you know, listen, just because somebody drinks, we used to think that somebody got drunk because they didn't really want it or they weren't really trying. I know that is not the truth. Some of us are absolutely desperate to stay sober and can't. Now these these these group of people in Canada were were of that mold. They were real Alcoholics like the book talks about. They were low bottom,

tragically pathetic type of Alcoholics that had lost most of the things valuable in their life

and continue to drink, but continue to go to Alcoholics Anonymous hoping for for some miracle, you know, but just going to meetings for them was not sufficient for for sobriety.

So what happened? One of them came up with a really wacky idea. He said, you know what, there's this book called Alcoholics Anonymous in it and it says on the cover that it's the basic text of the fellowship. Why don't we, why don't we all meet and open this book and read it from the very first page on. And if it says to do something, let's do it. There was a group, I don't remember it because I'm terrible with numbers. I'm numerically dyslexic. There was 20 or 30, these guys

who did this. They made a deal, they made a pact with each other that they would start to meet together and go through these pages and do

the things that the book asked them to do. And the people who made it through that out like 90% of them, 90% of them stayed sober for good and for all. And that got their attention because again, they've been going to meetings and trying not to drink for a long time. All of a sudden they action. They actually do the third step prayer. They actually do a fourth step. They actually do a fifth step. They actually put an 8 step list together. They actually go out and make amends. They

start to pray and meditate and they actually start to take other people through this work. And what catches their attention is they stay sober. Now let's go to one of the Denver conventions in some somewhere in the mid to early 80s, Don Pritz is there a number, a number of a number of our heroes, a number of the people that come from my spiritual lineage were there.

And, and Max Jeter, one of the golden slippers, comes down from Canada to speak. Now, instead of telling his drunken log, as was many of people's wants back in those days,

he starts talking about his experience with this group and getting together and opening up the big book and doing the big book. Now he gets some attention from some hardcore dudes in the Denver young people's group, like Don Prince. I think Gary Brown was there, Big Frank. There's a number of, I don't really know who all was there, but these guys then decide to do the same thing and they get a group of people together and they open up the book Alcoholics Anonymous and they start to go

through it like it's true. Like the born again Christians of today will go through the Bible like it's true. They start to go through the book Alcoholics Anonymous, like it actually is a textbook and it's not some metaphorical historical document from the past. They start to go through it and they have the same type of experience. And some of these guys are still alive and some of these guys are the best people that you can listen to today because they speak from recovery

experience. Now, what happens after these guys get sober in the Dunk Denver Young People's group, there's a number of guys that are younger who get exposed to these people as sponsors. Mark Houston, Joe Hawk, a number of other people that I've found very influential in my own recovery. And they they get it secondhand from these old timers at the Denver Young People script. Now,

this is where I first heard the message. I first heard the message,

the very clear, very concise recovery message from, from these, these second generation speakers. And I'll tell you what my personal experience was. I, I drank a lot of alcohol, OK, When I started to drink, I was going to get the job done. If it was your experience to sip some wine and have some beer and maybe go home and watch TV or something. My hats, my hat

off to you. When I started drinking, within two hours I was in a blackout. Within 3 1/2 hours, I was passed out. Wherever I was unconscious, alcohol poisoned out gold. You couldn't wake me up. If an ambulance saw me, they pumped my stomach and tell me that I had died

kind of drop every single time I drank, every single night. So if you drink like that, some bad things end up happening to you, you when you drive. It's really a bad experience

when you travel. It's a really bad experience when you try to date women. It's a really bad experience. They just hate it when you pass out on them at 8:00 at night on the date. You know what I mean? I mean, I was,

I was relegated to a room in my mother's house because that's the only safe place I could drink, because I could pass out on the floor, wake up, crawl into bed about 1:00 in the morning, shake it off, come to the next morning, try to struggle to work. And it wasn't a big to do.

You know, I had zero social life. I had zero quality of life. I was drinking for that oblivion, that that sense of peace and comfort that came at once after 13 burbons. You know what I'm talking about.

Now

I get sober because I started to get violent. Listen, I, I'd lost my drivers license three times. I crashed 13 cars in totals. You know, I, you know, I didn't have a friend in the world left. I was damn near unemployable. I was 125 lbs soaking wet with yellow eyes because my liver was going into failure and none of that crap bothered me.

I always thought that people that showed up in rehab because of things like that, you know,

that was pathetic. How do you let cops, like, force you to get? So what got me sober was I started to get increasingly violent. I started to try to kill people and threatened to kill people. And that really got my attention for two reasons. One of them was I usually was fond of the people I was going to kill

and the other was I really didn't want to be in a cell the rest of my life,

you know, with like some big, huge, you know, bank robber, you know what I mean? Wearing some pink dress and doing a dance. That was not something that was that was on my list of to dos. So this got my attention that the insanity got my attention. Listen, a normal person, you know that book that that I think Robert Louis Stevenson wrote called Doctor Jekyll and Mr. High.

Do you know that Robert Louis Stevenson was an alcoholic?

Read the book next time you read that book or look at the movie, think about that. Because that's what I was. I was, I was, I was Doctor Jekyll during the day. I was a bad electrician who tried to keep out keep out of trouble. And you know, you know, just like like really filled with self-centered fear and really bad self esteem. You you give me a quart of bourbon and I'm Mr. High and

psychopath carrying around a 38 handgun. You know, it was it was that different. It was and there was a level of insanity that was terrifying to me because I didn't want to be this. I was scared to be this, but I but I was so obsessed with alcohol, so driven to alcohol for that that escape that I so needed because the burden of living within my own

so great that I was driven to it night after night after night. Now through some, through some different experiences, I, I, I signed myself into a 28 day rehab

because I knew I, I, I couldn't stay a day away from booze. I was so critically, toxically alcoholic that to stay away from boost for a 24 hour period of time would throw me into delirium tremens and raise my pulse to a very unsafe level, throw me into hallucination

and you know, the, the pink elephants and the maggots and all that stuff. So I, I really couldn't, I really couldn't go through, you know, sober periods of time very well. So I saw myself into a rehab and I remember just showing up there and you know, this, this, this old council, he was a grizzly old a, a, you know, Skype Charlie and I go CC, you know, I'm really, I'm shattered. I mean, that's the only word I could. I'm shattered because

that morning, you know shaking myself to pieces and I knew that I wasn't going to drink that day. I was signing myself an area and he immediately that's, that's back when counselors,

untrained counselors could write you a prescription. This guy wrote me a prescription for Librium and they started to double me down on this stuff. And, and they got, I was on Liberian for about 10 days during, during the detox and, and I, you know, I started to experience treatment.

It was a lot of fun. I remember the Father Martin movies. Oh my God, you know, I Father Martin movies. Oh my God, if there's somebody on this planet that has no idea what I am like or what my experience it is, it's a none. It's a, it's a priest in a movie for God's sake. And I thought, you know, I just, I had such contempt for that crap. And then they then they had this movie about cocaine where, you know, your your head explodes.

Then this stuff, you know, you cannot scare somebody that was pulling handguns on their family 24 hours ago. You know what I mean? It's just, and they had group. Anybody in here ever been in Group? You know, you sit in a big circle and you talk about the day.

Chris, what are you feeling today?

What kill you? It's what I'm feeling.

So I did, I did this treatment and I had 1/2 an hour meeting with a counselor in 28 days. That should be malpractice. You, you know what I mean? I mean, they threw me into the population and just left me in there to well, I started to organize everybody. That's right.

Start to organize, you know, we want, we want better coffee, you know, I mean, you know, really I tried to unionize all the inmates.

Oh God, Anyway, but I would I guarantee I was the person most serious about not wanting to drink. I mean, I listen, I wanted to stay away from alcohol the rest of my life. I get out of treatment and they said you might want to go to a A but you should really go to outpatient.

So So I'm going to two outpatient meetings a week paying $85 a session and guess what we did in the outpatient

move? That was fun. Listen, it's some boneheaded truck driver hog the whole 2 hours talking about the pathetic nature of his life and why and and why it's filled with tragedy and misunderstanding. I couldn't wait for him to drink. You know what I mean?

Just one moron after another had to listen to but I was doing it because I was told to, you know, and I was even paying money for the privilege of being completely disgusted. That's

so much. I didn't want to drink.

And I went to two a meetings. I went to two a meetings. They weren't a Home group that, you know, they were just at the top of my street. And so I really, you know, I had no idea of what what was what. I thought I was doing what you were supposed to be doing. The people were staying sober and aftercare doing what I was doing. You know, I was going to two a, a meetings, two outpatient meetings.

What more do you guys want? You know, I mean, I'm here. I was willing. I was, I was willing,

but I didn't understand alcoholism. I didn't understand that the meetings were filled with heavy drinkers who all they could, they all had to do is decide not to drink and everything was going to be fine. You know what I mean? They could take a coffee commitment and feel part of

and everything was fine. You know, I was so in my head, I was so filled with resentment, some sort of fear. You know, I'd walk into a meeting. I'd just be thinking, oh God, I'm in a meeting on the meeting. Oh, there's somebody. Oh, she's not going to share again. Is she out now? She's going to raise her head. No, how she raise her. Oh God, I'm going to hear all about her family again.

Oh, tell somebody who cares, lady, please. Oh,

I mean, this is what's going through my head while I'm sitting in the meetings and you know, I think, I think, oh God, I gotta go to the bathroom. Oh, if I go to the bathroom and get up and walk across room, everybody will love you. Where's she going? You know, I look small. I mean, all this stuff is going. I'm nuts, okay,

But I think, I think going to the meetings and going to the outpatient is the treatment for alcoholism, you know, and nobody came up to me and explained the difference between that hard drinker and the alcoholic. I don't think they knew, you know, no one came up to me and said, Chris, you're not treating your alcoholism. All you're doing is showing up, showing up at the waiting room, you know, so you're doing. And nobody took. Nobody told me that I didn't know.

So one day on the way to an A A meeting, the thought crossed my mind that I, I probably wasn't doing this a, A stuff all that. Well,

you know, I'm not, I, I don't feel like I'm giving it 100%. People are saying, you know, you got to give it 100%.

I know if I if I buy a gallon of vodka and I drink it, I'll be able to come back and really do this AA stuff, right?

So I buy a gallon of vodka to improve my sobriety.

Can I tell you it went wrong?

Does that surprise anybody

now looking back on it? Because, you know, you usually know things in hindsight, you usually a clueless more on before that. I recognize the fact that I was suffering from an obsession of the mind.

In the first step, it says we admitted we were alcoholic. You know, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol. Being powerless over alcohol means lacking the power to choose when you're going to drink it and lacking the power to control it once you're drinking. So you really only got those two problems when you're not drinking or when you're drinking. If it wasn't for those two problems, everything would be good.

So so

I experienced a suddenly in the book I'll probably sit on says Suddenly the thought crossed my mind it's a whiskey and some milk wouldn't hurt me on a full stomach. So here's how well I experienced this. Suddenly I know what they feel like. Suddenly the thought crossed my mind if I buy a gallon of vodka and drink it, it'll improve my sobriety. So I did it on the way to an alien.

Now 3 glasses into this vodka.

All of a sudden I realized the enormity of my mistake because I started to get drunk and I opened the cage door to the beast. And the beast is going to fling open the the cage doors and and ram his hand up my ass and move me around like a puppet for who knows how many months. Because I'm not going to have any control over that. I'm just going to be puppeting like this. So that's what happened.

And seven months I drank

almost continuously. It was really ugly. It was really ugly.

The obsession of the mind doesn't care if you're going to meetings.

Obsession of the mind doesn't care if you've got a coffee commitment. The obsession to the mind doesn't care if you're on the Grapevine committee or you're the cookie boy.

The obsession of the mind is one powerful some bitch if you're an alcoholic and it is aggressive in its nature. And to fight something so aggressive as an obsession of the mind you need an aggressive recovery process. And watching Father Martin movies and going to the close minded discussion meeting at the top of my street was not aggressive enough.

So

after seven months of absolute hell,

it all culminated in a terrible scene at my house. Everybody split and I come to after being in a drunken blackout for days and the the pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization was so thick you could cut it. Terror, frustration, bewilderment, despair. That was the good part of what I was experiencing.

I was seeing demons and flopping like a fish. It was not good.

I didn't, I didn't sleep for about 5 days during this detox and at the end of five days I thought I had my wits about me enough to get to a meeting and I did. I got in my car and I drove to a meeting just ringing, ringing and shattered with, you know, the, the, this, this detox. Now, I knew that I was going to die. And you know, death didn't really scare me, but killing people I would. I

did scare me. And it became very apparent that in my last black eye, threatened my family with a gun.

And it was just by the grace of God that I didn't shoot them all because they said something to me. You know how we are.

And that terrified me more than anything. You know, death is almost welcome to Alcoholics at different points in our time. We don't. We're not afraid of death. I mean, when the doctor said, you know, if you don't quit drinking, you'll be dead in five years, You usually walk out there going, I got five years. You know, you're not like I'm going to die.

You're thinking, man, five years party me with. You know, we're not, we're not scared,

but when, when you can, when you can tragically alter the people's lives about you, that you, you, you're actually quite fond of that. That certainly got got my attention. Now. I go back to meetings with a vengeance. Now

you know. I know somehow, deep inside that I didn't put enough into what I was doing for it to work. It would have worked if I did.

So instead of going to two meetings a week, I'm now going to anywhere from 7 to 14. You know, I mean, I'm, you know, Saturdays I'm going to three meetings and,

and I'm plugging in as much as the self-centered fear will allow me.

I'm doing as much as the self-centered fear will allow me. Like for a while I was rendered mute in AAI had to go to meetings where they would call on you to learn to share because I could not raise my hand. That was too much for me to bear. But I was going to a bunch of meetings and I, I got a sponsor says get a sponsor. I got a sponsor. My sponsor had a service ethics. So he was asking me to do things

like, like be a coffee maker, help out at the treatment center picnic, you know, drive the boobies from the Hatch to the meeting and, you know, go out to go out to the diner afterward. And I started doing all of this fellowship stuff. Now, nobody ever came up to me and said, Chris, none of that is treatment for alcoholism.

That's participation and recovery fellowship. That's some service, but that's not the treatment for alcoholism. Nobody said that to me. Well, this guy, this guy RadioShack M1 Day came up and and gave me a set of tapes. He was my first friend in AA. He was just nuts enough to hang out with me. How we first met was he came up to me and how we first became friends. He came up to me and he was really freaked out and I said something like what's going on?

They said oh there was a big fight at my house. I live with 2-3 other guys and one of them beat the crap out of the other and I'm really scared to go home.

You know, I go, would it help if I go with you and he goes, yeah, would you do that? And I go, yeah, we're just gonna stop at my house first on the way home. So we stop at my house and I, I got this big buoy knife about this long, and I strap it to my belt buckle and I come back out to the car and I said, OK, let's go. And that's how that's how we made friends. I mean, you know, looking at me today, you would think that that's not something I'd be capable of, but I certainly was then. I was hoping this guy

gives my new friend trouble, you know? Anyway,

anyway, so he,

he was one of these guys who would go to the new age bookstores and he was very pious. What that means is, you know, whatever he's reading that week, that's the thing. That's the key to existence. You know, I'm reading this book on crystal therapy. You know, we got to go out and get you crystals. You need the blue ones. And you know, the next next week, next week it would be the Kabbalah. We got to do Kabbalah stuff. I mean, just from one thing to another. He would just, he would just run through the New Edge bookstores like,

like a drowning man seizing a life preserver. And, and this one day he hands me a set of tapes, 890 minute tapes, and they're a big book workshop.

And they were Joe and Charlie. I, I put him in and I listened to him because I got kind of a long ride to work and I told him I would. And they immediately gave me a resentment because they were a very, very strong big book message. These guys were classic. They were. They were part and parcel of the early

renaissance of getting us back to

paying attention to the recovery side of the triangle. They're very instrumental and I listen to these tapes and they pissed me off. But the truth in them haunted me. They spoke with authority and they used our basic text

to bolster up any arguments or any positions or any philosophy they had. They could show in the book where it would say anything they talked about. So that kind of haunted me. Like the reason it haunted me was I was not hearing that at meetings in, in the in, in the late 80s in my area, there were sharing meetings. OK, go and dump. And if you dump all your problems at the meeting, you'll leave half his life or whatever they would check.

So, so some of the meetings I was going to were quite toxic. If you were in real trouble, if you were a heavy drinker, they were home sweet home. But for somebody who is in real trouble, they, they were like trying to stop a semi with a cobweb. Now, So I start, I start listening to these Joe and Charlie things again and, and I, I start to buy into the theory

that if you pay attention to the book Alcoholics synonymous and do the things that are in it,

you will have a transformational recovery experience that will offer you a new freedom, a new happiness, a new perception

will begin to eliminate that self-centered fear, that resentment, that inability to make good decisions, the defective relationships will start to fall in place. All these things were basically basic promises and out of no sense of virtue, I started to do this personally. I started to go through the book because trust me, there was nobody talking about this in the meetings I was going to. I couldn't go to somebody and say, could you take me through the book? They, they pull out at 12:00 and 12:00,

say read the first step over and over 100 times each day for 12 weeks. And don't call me. I mean, you know, that's about what you would get. So, so I started, I started going through the big book and I started to try as best I could to do do the examples in the big book. This is somewhere around 199192 maybe I don't really remember. Anyway, what happened was I started to heal. I started to participate in a in a process

they would allow God to heal my spirit, to allow enough of me to get out of my way for my spirit to be healed. Now, I quickly, because I loved, I started to love these Joe and Charlie tapes. I quickly started to go through the catalogs of big book workshops and I got a hold of a bunch of them. David Aronofsky from Texas. You know, I had got the sandy beach one. I got the Bob Bazazz 12 steps to success. You know, I, I and, and I'm

this, I'm looking in this catalog and I see Joe Hawk, Salvation Army Big Book study. And I say to myself, I wonder what an Indian could teach me about the steps. Now, when I told this to Joe, he laughed. But I thought, Hawk, that has to be, you know, an Indian name.

So I send off for the Salvation Army tapes and they blow me away.

Never had I heard the recovery mechanics put in such detail. He was meticulous in his instruction, you understand. He was giving instruction to people in a Salvation Army. Has anybody ever had a Salvation Army commitment?

I have. You're talking to the living dead at a Salvation Army meeting. OK, They're, they're there to get off the streets, get a cup of coffee and try to find somebody to rob, You know, so to, So to try to instruct them on the big book, you had to be pretty specific,

pretty sophomoric, pretty clear. So that's what these, that's what these tapes were about. And, and they blew my mind. They, they started me on a recovery trajectory that I'm still on now. That's, that's my, my personal experience with, with, with big book recovery. Now, I really don't want it to sound like

I'm critical of meetings or critical of sharing or anything like that. I know it sounds that way,

but I want you to. I want you to believe that I think that every meeting out there should be out there. I think that every sponsorship style is appropriate for certain people.

I, I definitely though, believe that if you're in real trouble with alcoholism and you've grown chronic and advanced with your case of alcoholism, your best hope is a recovery experience similar to the one that they talk about in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. When Bill was describing this in the book, he was describing some of the tactics that they used with very low bottom Alcoholics.

And the first five years or so they were going after people that were in straight jackets.

I mean, they were going after the real hardcore low bottom lost everything. Pathetic, you know, pants, pissing alcohols. And that's who they were working with. So a lot of times the instructions in the book are about

powerful enough and transformative enough to help those that are really, really sick. That's why when the majority of AA members read the book Alcoholics Anonymous, they see it as a historical document that was an overreaction to something that they've learned a lot more about today. Because we go to meetings and we share and that's that's their truth. That's what they see and that's what they experience.

Again, I want to make very, very clear that there's a scale of alcoholism

and this big book movement that is afoot. I don't really think that we're about, we're about, you know, hurting the unity of AI. Don't think we're about making the old timers that wouldn't know a step if it bit him on the ass look bad. That's not what this is about. Although many of them think that what this is about is finding the people who are critical, who are chronic

and offering them, offering them the set of tools that's going to be sufficient

for their recovery. Because we lose too many people today. We lose too many people today. I, I was dabbling in, in the professional treatment community. Marsha has actually been to some of the, some of the convention, some of the conferences and stuff that I was a board member of, of this organization that would put these conferences on. And I did some web broadcast for a while where I interviewed treatment.

And I gotta tell you, I played in a deep sandbox with some of these guys. I mean, I've met, I've met the, the, the shining examples out there of addiction treatment in the world today internationally. I I've met many of them.

And, and some of them get it. Some of them understand that there's a scale in alcoholism, and some of them are even honest enough to admit that there are a group of people who, like Doctor Silkwork says, in the doctor's opinion, are hopeless. They're not. They're not people that that professional treatment can help.

They're of the hopeless variety and and some of them don't get it. Sometimes it's inconvenient for them to separate the heavy drinkers from the Alcoholics because they're both paying customers and they only got the one van. You know what I mean? They only got the one counselor at 2:00. So it's it would be inconvenient for them to mold the treatment process, one for the alcoholic and one for the the disco driver. So they don't do it.

They give you the disco drug version and if you're a real alcoholic, you're drinking in 30 days. If you get through the treatment

and they like to like to tell you it's your fault, it's not. It's their fault because they weren't honest with you.

But, but I got this argument just recently with, with a treatment professional. I, I made the mistake of blogging on LinkedIn professional groups, which I'm probably not going to do anymore because I don't go over well in the, in the professional treatment community and probably for good reason. I, I can be, I can be arrogant, whether you guys believe that or not. I know, I'm, I know I come off as very humble,

but I can be arrogant on some of these things.

And this one guy really pissed me off. He was, he was an addiction professional. And what he wrote was I don't send anybody to A or NA anymore. My God, their statistics are so bad. They're around 6%. I can get better results from a placebo. Why would I send anybody to those groups? And this guy was serious. OK,

now I had to think long and hard about a response because

it's true

that our our our survivability rates are around 6% if you take your census at the door.

However, what is also true is rarely have we seen a person fail who is thoroughly followed the path.

So my my instructions. My instructions to what I put in my reply to this guy was as a medical professional, if 100 people came to you for a specific operation and 95% sent of them sat in the waiting room but would not go in for the operation, should I hold you accountable to a 5% treatment rate?

And he wrote back, No, well, I said, you're holding us responsible for

a recovery statistic for people that are sitting in the waiting room.

Rarely have we seen a person, Phil, who's thoroughly followed the path. Ask those people, did they do a fearless and thorough four step inventory? Did they do a four column resentment inventory? Did did they, you know, did they share everything holding nothing back in a fist step? Did they put a list together of all the people in institutions they harmed? Did they go out and actually make amends to all those people that and institutions that they harm? Do they have a prayer and meditation regime that they practice consistently on a daily basis, Morning

during the day and at night? And are they working with other Alcoholics, taking them through the 12 step? Because that is thoroughly following the path that is our operation.

The waiting room is the meetings

and after rebutting him like this I never heard from him again. I think he probably saw, you know, my my my particular response is inconvenient to his pet theory that AA sucks.

But anyway, you know, both of those things are true 6% and rarely have we seen a person fail. They're both true.

I don't know if I've talked on the the history of the big book movement again, I always make this disclaimer anytime I talk about history of please understand that history is a movable, movable science. No one can actually go back in time with a video camera recorded as it is. Many of us bring our own perceptions and our own pet theories into the study of history and thereby skew it a little bit to the left or a little bit to the right. And I make no.

I make no claims as to accuracy in numbers or

events or anything like that. It's basically

doesn't make it not true. Just because it didn't happen that way doesn't make it not true.

It's true. It's true in the fact that these things, these things happened and were, were experienced in one way or another. And today we have we have the, the recovery movement, the big book thumpers, whatever you want to call them, alive and well in the English speaking world today. And that's a good thing.

Should everything be that way? No. We're only a small, a small minority of AA members are the hardcore, hopeless, real Alcoholics. And and we should recognize the fact that there's a there's freedom and there's traditions in alcohol. It's not us to allow Alcoholics Anonymous to be what it wants to be.

And I think that that's right and good. And I think that as Alcoholics who are recovered Alcoholics, I think it's our job to go into meetings, not to piss off the old timers and make them feel small, but to try to find the Alcoholics who are struggling, trying to stay sober on fellowship or fellowship and source and service alone and single them out. You know, Scott talked about going up to somebody.

Jonathan grabs people. That's what we should be doing. We should be finding the people who are in real trouble

and offering them a solution and never trying to stand above any other alcoholic. You know, because we're big bookers does not make us better Alcoholics than the oral tradition version. It doesn't. It just means that we're a little bit sicker than some of the other people. And we might, we might need a little bit stronger medicine. Our medicine is, is recovery. And I want to thank Dave for coming up with this idea.