An Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book workshop in Plymouth, UK

All right, welcome back. My name is Jordy. I'm a member of 12 Step Fellowship.

Today's not fellowship specific, but rather an experience of the recovery and fellowship contained in the big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous.

Can I just remind guys that there are papers and pens at the back? If you've got any questions for Tim, we're going to do a question and answer session at the end. Just can you bring them forward rather than leave them on that table? That would be great,

yeah. Can you just join me in a moment? Silence.

I can't take a reading from the Big Book, page 14 to 15.

My friend had emphasized the absolute necessity of demonstrating these principles in all my affairs. Particularly, it was imperative to work with others as he had worked with me. Faith was up. Faith without works was dead, he said. And how appallingly true for the alcoholic, when if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self sacrifice for others, he could not survive

the certain trials and low spots ahead. If he did not work,

he would surely drink again, and if he drank he would surely die. Then faith would be dead indeed. With us is just like that.

Yeah, we're going to go for about an hour, have another break and then we'll do the last hour. So I'll just hand you back over to Tim. Thanks. Thanks

my name is Tim and I'm an alcoholic

having a post lunch coma.

But they sometimes they call the the the last three steps that the maintenance steps. And

I had someone at a convention last year saying that by the time you get to 9, there's nothing to maintain. All you've done is wiped away the old life. You're actually at the starting point then

and we're the real business becomes it. Where the real business starts is for me 1011 and 12 and I'm going to start with 11 because

when I got to a A again, I was typically reading the

steps off the scrolls rather from the book and said in step 11 prayer and meditation. And you ask dozen people what meditation means in 2010. It was the same in 1993. People talk about Buddhism and mindfulness and concentrating on breathing and emptying your mind of thought and

all that sort of stuff. Is nothing wrong with any of that. It's all it's all good stuff,

but

I don't know what your mind is like when it's left to its own devices.

Mine is frightening.

I heard someone say once that they're accused of having a split personality, and his response was, if I could get it down to two, I'd be all right.

But the truth is there are a lot of a lot of different people out there

and each ones got an opinion.

They talk about the committee in your head,

and that's not a figure of speech that I've literally got a committee of voices in my mind.

There's the voice that wants to do well at work and then loads of money.

So I go to a meeting and it's looking at its watch the whole time saying when are we going to be done doing this? I know we have to go to meetings, but do we really have to go to this many? I need to be at work right now. What are they going to say about me that everyone else is there till 8:00? I, I had to leave at 6:00 to get here.

And you go to meetings and you got your spiritual voice.

And it's the one that when you've spoken, you've shared and, you know, people have been nodding away anything I've done really well. And then someone else shares and they blow you out of the water and it starts talking to you. And whatever is going on, there are all of these different voices all competing with each other.

And I went through my life following the loudest 1

and trying to keep the other ones quiet.

Step 11. Well, I tried all sorts of things in the first few years, just following the the step on the scroll. And I, I tried a sort of meditation where you sit in a room on your own, you turn the lights off and you may or may not have a candle for this.

And you close your eyes and you think, right, What I'm going to do is watch my thoughts as though they are but clouds passing by my window.

But I don't know what your thoughts are like. My thoughts are not like clouds. They're like ravening beasts.

And to lock myself in A room

with my, with my own thinking, with absolutely no input from the outside, in the hope that one day I will see through the folly of my own thoughts

and there'll be a loud pop and I'll be enlightened and I will finally be at peace.

I. I would be suicidal at five years sober. Six years. So within 5 minutes

of sitting down to try and do this, I thought, OK, I'm, I'm a thought I come to a A and you know, with drinking,

I turn my will and my life over to you. So I did what you said. So I had to do prior meditation. I need to get a book on book. I get a book on it. So you go to, you go to the local bookshop and you go to the meditation shelf and you get this book with a sort of picture of a flying horse on the front or something, or, or, or a still pool with beautiful trees. And you think this looks like very, very good and, and, and

this will do the trick.

And you read it and it starts to say things like

students of meditation may find they are sitting. I think sitting was one of the terms a sitting for 10 to 20 years before they achieve enlightenment. I'm like, OK, I have to be, I have to be at work at 9:15.

And right now I'm thinking of, you know, if if I had an Uzi machine gun, none of you would be here.

I I need something a little more

instant than this. I need something that's going to help me get through the day without detonating a nuclear device in the presence of other people. I I need to get through the day without setting fire to something. Do you have anything on that?

Oh, so I'm really glad that when I look at the book, I open it up

page 86 and it says on awakening. And I'm bit of a literalist, so I take this to be when I wake up in the morning

or when you go through the day and you discover your emotionally bleeding and on fire and you wake up and realize you haven't prayed in a month. That can be on awakening as well. Let us think about the 24 hours, 24 hours.

So I don't need to worry about next week, OK. I don't need to worry about where my recovery is going. Marvellous. Just 24 hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day and you're off already.

And then it says, before we begin, O, we ask God to direct our thinking. And I don't know about you, but sometimes on the way to the kettle, it's like they've been waiting all night for you to get up. They've been pulling at the duvet and you're up and you're not even awake, but your mind is and it's at you. And sometimes I I will have to say, God, please direct my thinking about 50 times.

But eventually, eventually it starts to calm down,

especially asking that it be divorced from self pity, dishonest or self seeking motives. And that can be another 50 times as well. And if all I do is say God direct my thinking, God direct my thinking, God direct my thinking,

that's actually going to be better than anything I'm going to think myself. Even that is going to be better.

And we consider our plans for the day. And this is where step three comes alive. You know, it's at the top of 63 that all we have to do is stay close to God and perform his work well. And there's nothing fancy there. We consider our plans, say, say God, what am I going to do today for other people? I engage you. I'm going to go to a meeting. When the phone rings,

I'm going to answer it.

I'm not going to have something more important. I'm going to answer if I genuinely can't. I'm going to get back to people as soon as I'm free. I'm not going to leave it till tomorrow.

Turn, turn around the e-mail straight away. Turn around the texts straight away. What else am I going to do? I'm going to think about the people around me. I'm going to say, well, what could I do for them?

And

in all of this, as soon as I start thinking about the day, I start to get twitchy and frightened that I won't be able to cope. And

I used to pray a lot for relief. I've gone through a lot of my recovery praying for relief. God, please take these emotions away.

And then they don't go and you think, well, thanks God,

what Sound said to me, it's made a lot of sense.

Don't pray for relief, because sometimes relief will only come in a bottle.

Pray for strength, and you'll always get that. And sometimes it's strength to do the next thing. Even if the next thing is wrong, have the strength to do the next the next best thing you can think of.

But the greatest, the greatest thing is

the answer to fear. You go. You go to enough meetings, you'll hear people talk a lot about anxiety and fear and worry and they're all, they're all the same thing.

And you turn to 68 and you think there's going to be something fancy about fear.

How does it say

is the line?

So this is what we do. So when you got fear,

we ask Him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what He would have us be.

You mean you just just off? You just ask for it to be removed. OK, so you don't need to analyze it. No, you just ask for it to be removed.

And this makes a lot of sense to me now,

because my natural state is to look at the world through a straw.

What my mind is looking for is threat. And 100 people will be kind and pleasant and civil to me on one day. And one person's got it in for me and they get all the attention.

My mind is, is, is its default position. It is preset to look for danger. And the danger may be this tiny possibility 100 miles away, but it's like that. It's right up against my face. And it's gonna happen in the next 5 minutes. That's how it always feels. Or it's like looking at all of these sort of distant things through a telescope and it looks, it looks as though it's right in front of your face. And I'm not seeing the big picture. I'm just, I'm just seeing what I've been looking for

and fear is the product of seeing what I'm looking for.

And there's no way I can't talk my way out of it just doesn't that doesn't work.

But I'll simply asking for and it's a funny, it's a funny thing,

this line. We ask him to remove our fear and direct our attention.

I don't believe meditation is is emptying my mind of thought. I my Home group we've got a 1930s American dictionary so we can get the definitions of the words as they were understood by the people that wrote the big book. And it really helps because some words are exactly the same as they are now, and others are entirely different.

And one of the definitions of meditation is concentrated thought.

I I've rarely succeeded in

emptying my mind of thought, so I don't even bother anymore. I figure it's going to be thinking about something, so why not change what it's thinking about rather than trying to? I can't. Also, I can't stop myself from thinking about something. As soon as I try to stop myself from thinking about something, I'm thinking about it all the time, fighting it. And that I I can't. I couldn't fight. Alcohol

didn't work. The more I thought it, the more I drank. I can't fight you. The more I fight you, the more irritating you seem to get.

It doesn't. Whatever I fight, I aggravate. I can't fight my own thinking. But what I can do is. So let's look over here instead. Let's look over here instead. Let's look over here instead.

We ask Him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what He would have us be. And

I have real difficulty at times seeing what I should do in a situation

because the ideas that my mind comes up with are things like punch their lights out, take charge, tell everyone what to do, pay very close attention. I just I don't come up naturally with with with good plans. This idea direct our attention to what he would have us be.

Umm all through the book there are spiritual principles

in step nine it talks about being calm, frank and open, having a helpful and forgiving spirit, tact, consideration are being humble without being servile, without being scraping. So I can pick them from there. All through chapters 8:00 and 9:00, it talks about avoiding anger, treating, remembering that other people are sick. It's got

wonderful things all the way through. There's no mystery as what I should be

and what I will do. If I've got a stressful situation, I'll say to God, well, what? What would you have me be in this situation? And then words come

that calm, trusting, diligent. As I'm off to work. I'm going to be calm, trusting and diligent.

And a lot of my life I've prayed.

I prayed like you would buy a lottery ticket you'd like, you'd love to win. You know you're not going to, but you're going to have a go anyway,

and this is not helping God out. If I pray like there's only a tiny chance it's going to work, it won't.

My sponsor talks about a bloke who who said he didn't believe a A would work, so it didn't,

which is quite frightening. If you believe it won't work for you, it won't because you'll talk your way out of it, you'll think your way out of it, you'll find a reason for it not to work, and you'll be out the door.

It says. I think it's on 133.

We are sure God wants us to be happy, joyous and free. Either you believe that or you don't. If I've decided I'm going to believe that,

and I've decided that God has everything to offer

to make that come about, I've gotta pray like I know it's due to me. So when I say to God, I'm gonna go into work now,

you're gonna give me the strength to be calm and diligent and trusting or whatever 3 words I've chosen. If you pray like it's already happened, like it's already been given, it's already inside you, it's just waiting to come out. That's totally different than imagining that it's kind of 1,000,000 miles over there and God has to DHL it to you

and hopefully you'll get a delivery at some point.

I have to believe that everything I need, if God is inside me, everything I need to be totally OK here and now is within me, just needs to be let out. Whatever I look at, it's in one of the stories. People are very down on the stories. One of the stories is very good about the magic magnifying mind. Whatever it looks at gets bigger, with one exception.

Sadly

so. So I was going to keep it clean, but I can't.

But whatever I think about gains more significance in my mind. There's a funny line. We cannot subscribe to the belief that this life is a veil of tears

that once was just that for many of us. But it is clear that we made our own misery as meeting last night. They had a little slogan up. Misery is optional. I totally believe that it says here, avoid them. The deliberate manufacture of misery.

And you think, well, no, no one would. No one would deliberately manufacture misery, would they? Well this is how I do it.

I was trying to think of a good example.

Oh someone came to one of my home groups last Monday.

Bloke came in an hour late, as soon as there was a gap he shared

and then he what he shared was all about how we were getting it wrong. Just everything about how we were running the meeting was wrong and how he'd been telling us for years how we'd been getting it wrong, but we wouldn't listen, which is why he wasn't coming anymore than he left.

And immediately, I mean, I've been, I, I find it very easy to be spiritual in a meeting where I agree with what everyone is saying because they're saying the same thing as me.

But you have someone pulling that kind of stunt in your Home group. And immediately I have, I have this major personality change. It talks about Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and I have judged.

Well, I'm the prosecutor, the judge, the jury and the executioner. And I start to run through my mind everything I'm going to say to him. When I share, no one will know that I'm putting him down, but I'll do it in such a way that he understands what a mistake he's made.

But I'll I'll and so planning. And the more I think about this, the worse I feel

and I don't notice how bad I'm feeling because I'm kind of getting a kick out of being judgmental, out of being the prosecutor, the judge, the during the execution of which are delicious roles. But whilst I'm whilst those are going on inside me, the bitterness, the rage, the discomfort is growing. And then over the course of the next two days, every time he comes into mind, I think, oh, Goodyear, I'm going to have another good old think about

sadness. And then I start phoning people up and I tell them about what what he did. And every time I repeat the story, it gets a little bit more elaborate until I have a story which has nothing to do with what he originally said.

He's fine. I don't know what he's doing now.

That's how I deliberately manufacture misery

or when I'm scared about something, repeating the scenario over and over at what if he slips? What if he slips? What am I going to do if he slips, how am I going to handle it? What is everyone going to think of me if he slips? I just over and over and over again. And the more I think about it, the worse I get. Whatever I concentrate on gains more significance. And then if I go through life doing this, I've I'm not seeing the world, I'm seeing my stories. I've been retelling myself about

world. I've filled the world with my stories about the world, and I'm not seeing anything as it really is. But I think it's reality.

And I thought for a long time that the contents of my mind were a reflection of everything around me. And it's the other way around. What I see is a reflection of the contents of my mind.

In the material world, if you want to get rid of something, you get rid of it. If when you take the rubbish out,

it doesn't find its way back,

you may produce more rubbish. But whenever I empty the bin and the kitchen, you take the rubbish out, you come back and it stays gone.

In my mind, if I try and get rid of something from my mind, unless I substitute something in its place,

bang it, it's back. It's like if you dropped a ball and the and the ball just bounces back into your hand and you can't get rid of it. Wherever you throw it, it bounces straight back. The only way to get the ball out of your hand will be to pick something else up in its place. Which is why this this line, what would God have me be? We turn our attention to that. My attention is going to be on something. So, and there are times when all I can do in a situation is say, is repeat whatever words I've chosen.

God is giving me calmness. God is giving me strength. And to treat it like it's happening, not like I want it to happen.

So my plan for the day, often it'll be a list of things to do. And if I'm troubled by any of these things, the spirit in which I'm, I'm going to do them.

So there's nothing, there's absolutely nothing fancy

in this.

Umm,

it does say

if not members of religious bodies, we sometimes select and memorize a few set prayers which emphasize the principles we have been discussing.

And I've gone through periods of having long set prayers. There was a time when I had like a 20 minute spiel in the morning and sometimes you, you, you know, people are very down on religion because they said, well, they're just repeating the same idea again and again and again. No one means it, but I've tried this. This set prayers and the thing that it does

sometimes. Some days you mean it and some days you don't. Some days it means something to me and other days it's just words. Some days it's just sounds. But it's certainly better sounds than anything I could come up with. And a funny thing happens, the days that it works

and I am taken somewhere, it talks about being lifted above. I spent my life fighting sharks and what step Aladdin has done, it's lifted me above the sharks so there's nothing left to fight.

The world no longer looks dangerous to me

when Step 11, when those set prayers have worked.

It's almost like they create a space in which I'm safe

and then there are other times like weeks later, all I have to do is say the first few words and vroom I'm there already.

So this space that I can create with prayer is somewhere I can always go back to. And at the moment,

my set prayer, I have one and it's there's three words, God is love. And I've been saying it's such a lot the last few months. If I'm tense, as soon as I start saying God is love, immediately I'm back to that safe space.

I don't know how it works, but this is what I do and it's worked. And the other thing is it says there are many helpful books also. There are several understatements in the book and this is one of them. There are many helpful books also. And I believe that I spent a while treating step 11 as a little sort of hygiene exercise in the morning, like brushing your teeth. You do your 5 minutes and then you're off running

and if you're lucky, you'll pray once during the day.

I've discovered that step 11 is like AI need my own adventure with it. And I can point people to what books have helped me. I don't know what's going to help you. You're going to need to find your own path. And it may involve a religion or it may not involve a religion. It may involve really rigorous meditation techniques. It may be slapdash and

primitive and

hit and miss, like my attempts at meditation,

but you're gonna need, if you're anything like me, you're gonna need an adventure with it. And the reason why these books are so important is because

Doctor Young on page 27 talks about ideas and motions and attitudes which were once the guiding forces being cast aside. And if you're lucky, they will just be cast aside and you're made a new person. With most of us, we're going to need a little bit of work to cast aside the old ideas. So reading stuff, reading spiritual literature.

My friend Saskia says that she's really glad they wrote this stuff down because it comes in handy for me on a daily basis. And it's the same with all of these other spiritual writers. I'm really glad they wrote this stuff down because I need to. I can't get rid of my old thinking, but I can substitute new thinking. The more I practice it, the better I get at it. The more I build these ideas into my life, the more they become real

and what I do. It's got a lot simpler at the moment. I'm kind of allergic to too many words and I can't read very much and I'm two lines into a spiritual book and I've got indigestion I can't cope with anymore. Like one line a day is enough

me right now. There are other times when I can read book after book after book. It changes over time.

In some parts of a a, there's pride in how everything stays the same. You know, we've been at the same venue for the last 800 years and Jerry's been doing the, the, the tea since the Callaghan government and, and, and everything is exactly the same. An old Frank sits in old Frank's seat and,

and, and I can be like that. I can be like that with step 11, the idea that it it has to be fixed and stay the same everyday for it to be a good thing. And, and I'm just not built like that. I've got a shelf full of books and the advice I was given. Go to the book that helps. Go to the book that you are drawn to. Don't force any of this. It won't work through muscle and you just leaf through until you find something useful and to read this stuff and say not just reading it as though life is over here. Spirituality

is over there and as though they're separate things and hoping that one will leak into the other one day. No, to take whatever problem I've got say to the book that I'm reading. How could you help me with this? How could this apply to the problem with my partner? How could this apply to the sponsee? I do not want to call because I get furious every time he opens his mouth. How am I going to deal?

How am I going to deal with this practical stuff of the day? Give me something concrete to work with here,

and then stuff will just jump out at me

during the course of the day. Step 10 in the book is about watching. I'll just read out one, one line.

Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we analyze them in enormous detail and sit on the Oh no, sorry, I just went somewhere else. Then from when these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. You mean I don't get to think about it? I don't get to analyze it? I don't get to ask, oh, why have I done this again?

No, unless I particularly want to.

Unless I particularly want to deliberately manufacture my own misery.

If I want to deliberately manufacture my own misery, I can think about my defects of character,

my understanding of inventory in a a if as I'm going through the day, I suddenly notice I'm thinking about tomorrow or yesterday or last week or what Jennifer said or whatever it is that is not right here, right now.

Let's ask God to bring you back. Let's ask God to bring you back. So it's like adjusting the steering wheel. Even if you're on a straight Rd. you're constantly adjusting. I don't drive, so I mad I, I've been told this is true, that you're constantly, they say to speak from your own experience and to be honest. So I have to be honest here. I've I've had some driving lessons, but that's about as far as it went.

You're adjusting the steering wheel constantly and I think step 10 is that just spot the weirdness that your mind is not is up to and I'm not my own mind.

I mean, sorry, thank God I'm not my own mind.

Spot what it's doing, bring it back. Spot what it's doing. Bring it back. Spot right here right now. May you find God now.

And so if I'm not in now, I can't. God won't go. This is why thinking about fear is a pointless activity. If God is now, fear is about the future. God cannot follow me there,

so am I asking him to?

I can't do that. I have to come back to now. So step 10 is about coming back to now. So that's one form of inventory. So continue to take personal inventory form number one. Spot it as you're driving along, spot it as as it's happening. Adjust the steering wheel and then it talks about a step 11 review at night

when we constructively review our day. And if this were a car, you'd be getting out of the car and examining the bumper for blood and fur and other signs of Rd. kill. You know, when you go, the bumps that you felt during the day, let's see if they've left. Let's see if I have actually killed anything

and to go through and to quickly review the day

and share it with some other people. And at the moment, I mean, you asked me at different times, I'll say different things, but at the moment I'm getting a lot out of writing this down. There are times when it's actually made. It hasn't helped to write things down. At the moment. It's helping to write things down and send it out to a bunch of people because, and those people, by the way, sometimes they're people who are 20 years sober. I get new guys that I'm working with doing a little review at the end of every day,

right from the beginning if I need to. Why wouldn't they? How they gonna, if I need to do that to be OK? How are they supposed to manage without doing that? So I get people doing this straight away. And the marvellous thing is if I let what I've done during the day go without talking. But telling other people doesn't need to be a great big discussion. Just tell them what you did

doesn't need to be pulled apart.

If I don't do that, it stays. It lodges in my mind

and I start to imagine that I'm the only person that pulls this kind of stuff

and that you don't have crazy thoughts. You, you're not aggressive. You're it's, I'm full of this rubbish and it's, and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger if I share it with someone else. And every morning when I get up,

you know, there are half a dozen step 11 reviews from the night before. During the first few hours of the morning a few more come through. And when I'm hearing step fives, I think the most valuable 2 words I say are me too.

They say I've done this, I've done that, I've done me too.

Fancy a top up

poor cup of tea? Identify. You're done.

Um when I did my first Step 5

my sponsor said should we go for a pizza? I thought he was going to say get out of my sight

and him saying should we go for a pizza told me that nothing I had said had affected him. And the ego is so powerful, it will, It doesn't care whether I'm good or bad. It wants me separate.

So anything which reduces that sense of separation. And there's nothing like reading the review of someone three weeks sober and saying to yourself, my God, I identify with all that stuff. And then saying the same back to you for levelling that and making me realize that I'm just like I'm just like the rest of you.

So this is this is the little Circuit of the day is plan in the morning,

Um, stay on, try to stay on the road as I'm going through the day and a review at the end of the day.

And I haven't found anything like it for actually living this program. One thing I'd say as well is

I make a lot of mistakes.

Every day I make a lot of mistakes and once in a while, out of a blue sky, I will make a cataclysmic mistake.

And the way I treat these is I was always going to make this cataclysmic mistake. Today happened to be my turn. Everyone gets to have a turn.

Um, so in step 10, it says when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. Not if we were wrong, promptly admitted it. So making massive mistakes is not a sign that I'm not working a good program, that I'm not going to the right group, that I'm not studying the big book in the correct way. It's a sign that I'm still alive.

It's possibly a sign that I'm doing things which are outside my comfort zone because I'm being LED to learn.

I don't think there's anything wrong with making mistakes.

Where I can go wrong is when I deny I've made them

and justify them. That's the problem.

Keep them secret. That'll kill you. I'll kill you. More than anything. There's a little line on 7072 about a Step 5. If we skip this vital step, we may not overcome drinking. Time after time, newcomers have tried to keep themselves certain facts about their lives.

Trying to avoid this humbling experience, they have turned to easier methods. Almost invariably, they got drunk. Having persevered with the rest of the program, they wondered why they fell.

If we're all Alcoholics and addicts, if it says time after time newcomers have tried to keep themselves certain facts about their lives and they drink, why wouldn't that be true? How long you're sober?

I can't. I can't keep anything

secret. I was in

meeting about three years ago

and I've written a step four and I had three-step fives lined up with people. And there was something in there which I I hadn't, I hadn't told anyone.

And it was one of those annoying meetings where the topic was honesty.

And if you want to screw up a room of Alcoholics and addicts, you propose the topic of honesty. Because instantly everyone starts obsessing about the thing that they're keeping secret right now, which they're planning to tell someone anytime soon.

So you're going to have an uncomfortable meeting with lots of silences because no one wants to speak because if they do speak without saying the thing, they're being hypocritical. So it's a it's a deadly topic to choose. I would never propose at a meeting.

And there was this three minute silence and this fly was buzzing around the room. And it was one of those sort of tired Sunday afternoons when the, the, you know,

and I thought a thought came to mind, Got to watch those,

a thought came to mind, which was, do I know that I'm, if I, when I leave this meeting and go home, that I'm going to get home sober carrying this secret that I can't stop thinking about?

I thought, you know what? I don't know. I don't know for sure that I'm going to

do it.

And so I shared and I told the group. No one took the blindest bit of notice. Fly carried on buzzing around the room.

I thought the A A police were going to storm through the windows and the doors like a SWAT team and take me away. But nothing happened. Everyone was still obsessing about their little secrets

and on the way home I thought,

I'm not going to drink today. I know that now

secrets will separate me from from other people quicker than quicker than anything.

Step 12.

As long as people ask me how many people I sponsor and the answer is this, right now I'm talking to you. I'm not sponsoring anyone.

If I'm with someone who's a sponsee, I'm sponsoring one person.

That's the maximum number of people I'll ever sponsor is the person sitting in front of me during the course of the week might talk. I might have several different people sitting in front of me,

but it's one alcoholic talking to another.

And

I thought when I had spent a long time on the 1st

11 steps

and I discovered that I wasn't fixed yet,

I developed a bad case of ABTS, which is anything but the steps.

So and I went some very good therapists who helped somewhat. And I tried all sorts of outside things, which helped somewhat,

but those therapies were not designed for a guy like me

because I'm difficult to reach.

What I've experienced through sponsoring people

is that whatever is unresolved in me, these people will knock on my door. People will bring me up

with problems I can do nothing about, but I can show them how I work through the steps, how I've been taken through the steps.

And you think all all along, all along. You think that you're leading them to the light, that you're showing them how to have a spiritual experience, that you're leading them somewhere fresh. And you may or may not be,

but I'm being LED somewhere by that

1000 times more by sponsoring other people and seeing myself reflected in them then I've ever learned by someone telling me what's wrong with me, what is wrong with me, and what I ought to do instead. That's how I've got healing is by hearing my own story told back to me so many times in so many different ways. And I look at you and I know. I know at cellular level that you are a perfect child of God and just can't see it.

And I think, damn, but I'm like you,

I can't tell myself that. You can't tell me that,

but I can see it in you and it reflects back at me. And I was the one that was being brought to the light the whole time. That's the spiritual awakening as the result of these steps is that I am you and you and me, and there is no difference.

And everyone thinks that. Everyone thinks they're different and

one of the difficulties in the parts of A, A and NA and DAA where people are doing the business and grabbing onto a solution is that it's not really a problem. It's a phenomenon that you're going to attract a lot of people in your direction.

And it can be frightening because you think, I don't know how I'm going to, I don't know how I'm going to deal with this.

These are people's lives. I don't know how to I, I mean, I'm just a drunk. I came here as a failure. What what do I know? It's so important for me to remember what it says on. I'm just going to read something on page 1124.

Um,

showing others who suffer how we were given help

is the very thing which makes life seem so worthwhile to us now. Cling to the thought that in God's hands the dark past is the greatest possession. You have the key to life and happiness for others. With it, you can avert death and misery for them.

I came to a A out of a family where everyone is mentally ill one way or another

and I was too. And I'm not anymore.

And it's not because of any magic word that was said. Healing has taken place through the steps and all I need to do with new people is show them the mechanics. I need to show them the mechanics of, of, of how to go through this. But it's simply being the demonstration of someone who is suicidal and did not know how to live and couldn't get through a day without alcohol.

And I can't fool you any more than you can fool me either. You believe me from my what? That. What's that line about our whole deportment shouting that we're a man with a real answer?