At a Big Book Study Weekend in Adelaide, Australia

I'm Bob. I'm an alcoholic.

Adults mean a moment of silence and hope with a prayer.

Lord, help me to set aside everything I think I know about you, everything I think I know about myself, everything I think I know about others, and everything I think I know about my own recovery. All for a new experience in you, Lord, a new experience in myself, a new experience in other people, in a much needed new experience with this program recovery. Amen.

God, you know, I could go on about the immense thing. There's just so much to talk about, but

it's such an important thing. But we're running out of time,

and so I want to move on to step 10 and 11:00 and 12:00 that the steps that have seemed to sustain me

the last all these decades.

Page 84 starts the section

on on step 10.

And this is right after the, the results of step 9, which is often referred to as the 9th step promises, which, you know, it's, it's odd to me that we, and I kind of understand it, the fellowship worldwide has adopted the night step promises as the promises, when in actuality, there's promises after every action step. And the promises to me

in step 10 are are really what I come here for.

I know why we

we tout the 9th step promises because they could fit on a Hallmark card in a recovery bookstore. I mean, you know, a new freedom and a new happiness. You know, it's, it's all very flowery, very cool. But if I don't get the 10 step promises, I'm going to probably with a new freedom and a new happiness, drink myself to death. I

because it's the only the, the 10 step promises that saved me. Well, we're going to work into that. In the middle of the 84, it says this is coming out of the ninth step promises. This thought brings us to step 10, which suggests we continue. Now it's going to use this word continue over and over and over again on this page and then next page. We continue

to set right any new mistakes as we go along. We have vigorously commenced this way of living as we've cleaned up the past. We've entered the world of the Spirit. Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for our lifetime. Continue to watch almost as if they're really trying to make a point here. And I think,

I think unconsciously when I was new, after I did my

5th step and made some amends. And I think, I think I unconsciously thought that step 10 said continued to take personal inventory. And if you were ever but I know I'm not going to happen. But if, if I ever was wrong, I promptly admit it, but it's not going to happen. And what what it says doesn't say it says when, when, which implies that buckle in. You're going to be wrong a lot.

And yet how I do I? I delude myself at times.

No problem here.

And yet I've been selfish. I'd been dishonest. I'd been resentful. I mean, I I'm not just resentful for no reason. People I resent sort of deserve it,

but I'm resentful just the same. And

so I it's when I have to continue to watch for this. For what? For the manifestations of self,

that really has always been the root of my problem when it when it talks in chapter 5, I really get this. I've I've it is pained me over the years that selfishness and self centeredness really and truly is the root of all my problems

and its manifestation. Self squirming for the spotlight. Squirming for more material stuff. Squirming for more attention. Squirming for more prestige notoriety.

It just always is doing that. So I have to continue to watch for this stuff and I love this this line. It says we've entered the world of the spirit. Our next function is to grow an understanding and effectiveness. And for some of us, the 1st just sore into any kind of other centeredness or understanding of anyone and being ultimately effective started

in a combination of this 4th step when we started to

look at these things from an entirely different angle. And I start to understand the people that I resented. I start to put myself in their place and I get it. I get I see it now. Now I'm looking at it from their point of OK, I get it. And it it's for me, it was the beginning of the first time I ever got unself centered enough to even start to understand someone else to look past myself

to get you.

And consequently through step 9 became very effective with some some people and in step 12 become very effective. And it says that we have entered the world of the spirit. What's that?

I noticed something all my life. I didn't understand it. I resented it at times, but there seemed to be people growing up in the neighborhood, in school and in different jobs and places. I want even in Alcoholics Anonymous, these people that life just works for these people that everything they touch turns to gold. Everybody loves them, everything works for them. It's just amazing. And then there's

me who's battling, breaking my back here and I don't. And they just easily come to them what I am fighting and struggling to get and cannot get.

And I thought, and some of the people that had it all, that's just everything. They turned, touched to touch, turned to gold. Everybody loved them. Everything worked well for them. Their relationships are great, their business, everything is great for them. I'm smarter than them

and I'm my life's crap and they got all that. It seemed very unfair to me

and I didn't. I think what

I think what it was is that they were not born with an exaggerated sense of themselves as I was in the in the third step,

it said, it says something interesting. It says, first of all, we had to quit playing God. Now, when I was newly sober, my sponsor used to nail me with that. I would come to him with these, you know, I'd save up like all these little petty resentments that I don't even think are resentments

because I'm right. And I would come to him and I'd start laying them on him. Like, you know, that the guy in the guy in the a, a meetings that selling Amway in the parking lot after the meeting, that ain't right. The guy who who drank 4 cups, I counted him four cups of coffee and didn't put any money in the basket.

The 13 steppers, Oh my bad, I had this. I got on this tirade about 13 steppers. My sponsor said you're just jealous. They're getting more action than you are, that's all.

Don't don't confuse me with the truth.

You know, bad people at work that that were that were weren't doing half and they were getting notoriety and the boss patting them on the back. And I'm doing the hard work here.

And I dumped this all on him and he's always said the same thing. You've got to quit playing God. I think I'm not playing God. I'm reporting accurate information here. I'm not. And I didn't see that. I I climbed up onto some throne of judgment

and I was judge, jury and executioner in my mind.

And the problem is I was the guy that was alone in that state of separation from them through my judgment, through playing God.

And some people never do that.

They hardly, you know, one of the things that what it says in Chapter 3, that we're bodily and mentally different from our fellows.

You know, it's the, the, the bodily different thing is, is an apparency. I mean, you pick up a, we pick up a drink, It's, it sets something in motion. We can't get back in the cage.

But I am also mentally different. But the great promise of Alcoholics Anonymous is when the spiritual malady's overcome, I will straighten out mentally and physically. So contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition. I'm not nuts anymore, but I could be.

I could be easily left unchecked for me just to sink into me and make me the center of the universe again. I get very weird quick quick. I am not cured of alcoholism

very quick.

And what what seems to happen in alcohol, what I believe these people that everything worked for, they were just in the zone of God's world.

But the Alcoholics are not one with God's world. We're like, imagine,

imagine all the Alcoholics in the world are are ants on this giant tree trunk going down a river and every single Ant is imagining he's steering, right? Come on, guys, lean this way. You know, we we all think we're, we all think we're doing something here and normal people

aren't trying to run the universe. No, it's not that they don't have a way occasionally and they get disappointed. But the book says that something interesting. It says that we are extreme examples of self will run riot, though we usually don't think so.

So matter of fact, you're sitting here going, I'm not an extreme example, you just qualified for it.

And yet I don't think so. But I am

my daughter and I love to use her as an example. She's one of the most spiritually, emotionally and mentally

focused right on balanced people I've ever met. I don't know how she's my daughter. I don't know how that happened. I'm telling you, I have no idea. It's just God's mercy. My big fear when she was growing up is she'd end up like I was and I don't. It would have broke my heart. She's a very well balanced person.

She does not react

to life the way I react to life. She is not an extreme example. That doesn't mean that she doesn't get sad. It doesn't mean that she doesn't get angry and her feelings hurt from time to time. She's just not an extreme example of it as I will tend to be. A while back she ended a relationship and I'm her dad. We're very close and I got together with her and she was telling me about it. I said OK, I'm so sorry and I'm trying to be trying to say daddy things to her. Like, you know, you got to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your Prince.

You know, I'm trying to say daddy stuff. You know, I don't know what daddy say, but I'm trying to be that guy. I'm trying. I love my daughter. I love her. I'm trying to comfort her and she's she's got a pretty good attitude. Well, I get together with her almost a week later and we're having dinner and I said, so Kate, how's it going? She said that's going good, Dad.

I said no, I mean with the the relationship breakout. Oh, she said that, you know, it's, it's yeah, you know, you can't just got to move on with this stuff. I've got to actually going to go out on a date this next week and with somebody and you know, you can't hang on to that stuff. I said

move on,

OK? You couldn't have possibly got enough mileage out of that just yet. I mean, I would have been taking that to meetings. I've been writing about it. I've been

calling I'd be ruining my sponsor would have cauliflower ear from me calling him on the phone

but see she's not prepared to drink of those of that emotional track as I drink of it alcoholically. She's not an extreme example. She just goes on with her life. She doesn't want to. She doesn't have this need to stare at what's wrong. You know, maybe as if she's Superman with laser vision is going to dissolve it if I stare at it long enough.

She just goes on

and my daughter lives in the zone. There was a great a famous basketball game in the US years ago. It made sort of part of big piece of basketball history now.

And it was there was when Michael Jordan was at his peak. Some of you guys might not know who he was. He was one of the best basketball players in the US, probably won a top of all times. And there was a game and it's it's right down to like the last minute of the game or so or even less like seconds and they're tied.

And Jordan at about four, three or four seconds before the buzzer before the end of the game of a tie game where they're going to have to go into over. I don't know, whatever. I'm not sure what's going to happen. But he takes a desperate half, almost half court shot at the basket and it swishes it. And the crowd went berserk. They're on their they're on their feet screaming and cheering and going just going nuts. And there's

a famous scene of Jordan kind of lightly jogging down the court, looking at all these people screaming and cheering and yelling his name. And he just went like this. He just shrugged his shoulders. And later they said, what was that about? And he said, well, I don't know how I did that. And he said, well, how'd you do it? And he said something that was classic. He said. Well,

he said. Sometimes you just get in the zone, and when you're in the zone you can't miss.

And I think the realm of the spirits, the zone

or you're not trying to run the universe, you're going with the flow. You're awake enough to see how your actions are affecting other people, your other centered enough to be one with and useful. And the thing about being of service and being useful in life, there's a cause and effect here. The world and the life itself and the universe will return to you. Good stuff

in almost direct proportion to how much you're how helpful you are to people.

It's the universe is a funny place. If you attack it and try to control it, it resists and pushes back. But if you try to serve it and help God's kids, it will push the love back at you too.

It's almost in life. There's this funny thing that that's self-serving Alcoholics of my type. We want to play God never get. They were not awake to the reality of of we, you will get what you give.

Alcoholics Anonymous introduced me to that when I was early. I remember I'm going to meetings and I don't feel like I fit. You know how that feeling like it seems like everybody in this a group knows everybody. And then there's me. You know what I mean? I'm I'm the odd guy. I'm the guy that doesn't belong. I'm the guy that doesn't feel right here. And this old timer grabbed me and he said, I got a job for you. And I was just delighted. And he's even talking to me. I'm just anybody talking to me. I was just delighted. He said, I need you to do something. It's very important.

Well, yeah, what he said. I want you to watch for the people that are brand new.

And he said, I want when you see somebody that you know is new, as new as you are around the same time or less, I want you to go over to them and try to make them feel welcome. And he said, the reason we want you to do this is that it's, it's fresh with you. You know what it feels like to get sober. You just did. You know how uncomfortable it feels to come to Alcoholics Anonymous and feel like it's all of them and there's only you.

And you will be the guy who can really let this, this new person know that they're legitimately is someone here that knows how they feel

and you can try to make them feel welcome.

And I started doing that and I honest to God, I have no idea if I ever made anybody feel more welcome in AA except me. I felt, well, I started feeling like this is my home here because I'm getting what I'm trying to give

and you get what you give in life.

And that's why it's so important to claim the primary purpose of helping other Alcoholics in this altruistic movement. Because if you come to Alcoholics and you locked into the taker's position and you remain a taker, there's nothing to get here. I mean, all we got is alcoholism. That's all you're going to get is alcoholism because that's what we got. You're here, We can have mine. I don't want it. I mean, if you're a taker, you're going to get alcohol, but if you become a giver, the givers get it all here.

Look around, look around your home, the groups you know, and look at the people that laugh a lot and smile a lot. And if they're chronic Alcoholics, as you are, chances are their help. They're sponsoring people and they're doing service and they're helping people and they're showing up early and helping with it. They're giving in to the process and consequently they're getting from it.

So I think that that's the realm of the spirit. It's a realm that's often free from me.

It's a realm that where I've trans, I've made the transition and maybe not permanently, maybe I'll regress back as we often do. But I've moved away from a life driven by fear to a life motivated more by love and service. I'd moved away from a life of self-reliance to a life of God reliance. I've moved away from a life of self-centered to now I'm becoming other centered

and it's it's beautiful.

So we continue this says this is not an overnight matter to continue for our lifetime. Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear. When, not if, when, these crop up. Here's what we do.

Four things. First, ask God at once to remove them.

Two, discuss them with someone immediately.

Three, make amends quickly, which in some cases is three months.

I know, you know, I know I am. I just I want, if I want to, I'm I'm the kind of guy that will drive with a flat tire. I hope it goes away. You know what I mean? And now I've done that in I'll tell you something when they say quickly, make it quickly. The longer you sit, The only person that suffers from your unmade amends is you. Quickly,

right? Because I know I've I've resisted. I put it off and it's like a stone in your shoe. It doesn't go away.

You're the one that pays the price, right?

Quickly,

if we've harmed anyone, then we and then this is the new default position or my my default position coming in here was me and now the new default position. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help.

It says that over and over again. This book ask God to do this and turn our thoughts to someone else and see who we can help. Ask Gardner morning meditation how we can do for the man is to it just it's like a theme through this altruistic program of alcoholic science. I guess that's why they call it our primary #1 purpose above everything, above ourselves

is to help others, to help other Alcoholics achieve sobriety

there. I had a nun in school that I

I don't, I never, I never liked her much, but she was, she was actually pretty spiritual, which probably why I didn't like her. And she used to say something. She used to say,

God first,

you second me last.

See, that seemed awful to me,

and I think she's right.

I think she's right. Love and tolerance of others is our code. If you're ever in a a a trivial contest that still ask you what the What's the code of Alcoholics Anonymous Love and tolerance of others?

Bill Wilson

one time in a letter said that

he believed that honesty brought us to Alcoholics Anonymous, but it was only tolerance that would keep us here.

And I must constant in order to

survive this giant dysfunctional family of Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, look, look, objectively, what we are here. This is the world's largest outpatient clinic. I mean, you know, I read. I mean, when you, if you start coming here expecting people to be normal, you're going to you're going to get your heart broke here. I'm telling you, this is it is what it is. And I'm on a bad day. I'm one of the nuts here.

None of us ever rise above our disease permanently. We may contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual conditions seem to rise above it intermittently.

And so I have to I have to constantly change my perception of you to allow you to be who you are so that I can be here without the friction in, in mechanics. They often talk in in engines and and they often talk about tolerances. Sometimes in an engine because of a build up of kinetic energy. It builds up so long over a period of time that the, the, the,

the heat will actually start to warp the parts of the engine very slightly. And what happens is the tolerances get off. And when the tolerances get off, what starts to hack is now the moving parts are not moving freely of each other. They're starting to create friction. And if they create enough friction long enough, what happens? The engine blows up. So what happens when you get an engine that the tolerance is off a lot? You have to dissemble the engine and in a machine shop,

like what we do in step four or in maybe the concentrated version of step 10, is you have to change the tolerances so that the parts can move freely of each other without causing so much friction that there's a blow up. And that's what I have to do with you. I have to change my expectations, my perception of you, to allow you to just like me, to be who you are.

Because on a bad day

isn't funny. When I when I'm out of line, I'm having a bad day and I'm just acting badly or childishly. I want everybody in the world to understand.

But am I willing to do that for you?

And that's the important thing. It's not. It's like it says in the prayer of Saint Francis, It's not. It doesn't matter that you understand me. It only matters that I understand you,

that I this is the really our code of love and tolerance. And

I think, I think sometimes I think all of Alcoholics Anonymous, all 12 steps are just, they're just, they're just tools to craft me into being a better lover of God's kids, crafting me into being other centered, to be God reliant, to be driven by love.

And then here's the promises. And these are remarkable.

And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone, even alcohol,

that mean that edge that you walk around with, where you're always kind of having a little bit of conflict with life, that maybe that will stop, Maybe you won't. You won't fight anything anymore. Maybe you'll accept, for by this time sanity will have returned. We'll be seldom interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally. We will find that this has happened

automatically. We will see that our new attitude towards liquor has been given us

without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes. That is the miracle of it.

Now, it's not this has really come true for me, but it's not that I haven't had any effort or on my part. I've had to do a lot of work to get to this point. I've had to do an inventory. I've had to make a lot of amends. I've had to do a lot of prayer meditation. I've had to do a lot of service sponsor guys, listen to the fifth steps. All of that is part of the package. It's just not an effort on fighting the bottle.

See, when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I'd been relapsing for a number of years and I had fought the bottle. I gave it everything I had and the more I fought it, the more I lost

and I didn't know that I'm fighting in the wrong arena. You guys showed me, you told me stop fighting the bottle. We're going to show you how to fight the real problem called alcoholism, the condition of a sick self, self filled up spirit that starts to get depressed and and you get full of yourself. We're going to show you how to

fight in the right arena. And since I started fighting in the right arena and and my contest now is not with alcohol,

it's with alcoholism. Alcohol has not been a problem. But I'll tell you, just like that story I told when I started stealing from my boss and all of a sudden alcohol starts coming back on the horizon again.

Because alcohol I I stopped. I stopped living in the solution and started becoming the problem again.

And this is such this is, I think one of the the great definitions of of grace is it's an unmerited, undeserved gift.

And this really sounds like that, that this is just that. Then what must have happened? I'm the guy who would beg God in prison cells, don't ever let me drink again and drank the day I got out because I could not access his grace. There was too much of me between me and God,

and if this means that something is changed within me now, I, I, I must have been able to access the grace because God is now doing for me what I can't do for myself. Something has happened to me. I didn't do it. I can't take credit for it. If I could take credit for it, I'd put it in a book and sell it, become a millionaire. I can't take credit for it. I didn't do it. All I did was avail myself of what you showed me, what it said in this book, and what my sponsor and the people I got sober with

told me to do. I just did what you told me to do. And little did I know that I would be. I was, I was crafting myself to become a more adequate receiver of my own inheritance. God's grace. It had always been there. I was just blocked from it. I was, I was like a broken receiver that can't get the signal. Signal's still coming out. I just can't receive it

and you help me to repair the receiver

and my sponsor has a great analogy says that that we're like we're like an old battered TV set on the back of a pickup truck on a bumpy Rd. You got to constantly turn in the knobs and full of the antenna to keep the signaling because the minute you get it in, it goes out again. And then that sometimes that's what it's like to have chronic alcoholism. I am like a the back of a toilet. You flush it and it empties right out and then I just automatically fill up start filling up with me again. You know what I mean? I just,

I just start filling up with me again.

So we are not, it just comes. We're not fighting it. Neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we've been placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. That sounds almost bizarre, doesn't it?

It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky. We're not cocky, nor are we afraid. We're not. We're not the intolerant reformed drinker who's on the muscle about alcohol. We're not that at all.

We react so long as we fit, remain in fit spiritual condition. And page 100 of the book it, it expands on this whole view and it's, it's kind of a dramatic thing. I, I, I, I go to meetings sometimes and people just say we just don't drink no matter what instead of slippery places. And well, let's let's see what it says in the book.

The bottom of page 100.

Now the first couple words are very, very important. This is this is not for new people who are 60 days sober with the benefit of step none. This is for people who have gone through the steps you're sponsoring people you've made your immense okay. You're in what the book would refer to as fit spiritual condition. It says assuming we are spiritual, spiritually fit, we can do all sorts of things

Alcoholics are not supposed to do.

People have said we must not go where liquor is served. We must not have it in our homes. We must shun friends who drink. We must avoid moving pictures where they show drinking scenes. Oh my God, it's a bottle. I got to go get drunk. I can't help it. I'm we must not go into bars. Our friends must hide their bottles if we go to their houses. We mustn't think. How do you do that? You get a lobotomy. We mustn't think or we be reminded about alcohol at all.

Our experience shows that this is not necessarily so. We meet these conditions every day. Every day.

I worked around alcohol for 25 years in my sobriety. I had it in my home.

Some people don't think that's a good idea. I,

I don't know, I know a lot of people that have an, I had a wine cellar for investment, but never I, it meant no more to me than the artwork in the house. I mean it, you know, it's just, it's nothing because I was put in the position of neutrality

and then check this out. An alcoholic who cannot meet these conditions still has an alcoholic mind. There is something the matter with his spiritual status.

His only chance for sobriety would be someplace like the Greenland ice cap, and even there an Eskimo might turn up with a bottle and ruin everything. When you think about

if you're, if you're sober 10 years and you think you've and you've worked the steps and you still can't be around alcohol and it still looks like medicine and calls at you, I've got to tell you, in my, in my view, you've missed something here.

You miss something.

It's either that or a doesn't work, and I don't believe that I've seen it work too much.

So roll up your sleeves. Sometimes what you miss is step one

did them at all. You did that. You did the textbook example of four. Oh my God, we should frame it, put it on the wall and GSO. But you, if you never got one, and in your innermost self, where you really live,

if you if the delusion that you somehow, someday, some way you could, can still control and enjoy your drinking, if that hasn't been smashed,

you're not all the way in.

You have a back door.

And check this next line out, this next paragraph.

In our belief, any scheme for combating alcoholism which proposes to shield the sick man from temptation is doomed to failure. If the alcoholic tries to shield himself, he may succeed for a time, but he usually winds up with a bigger explosion than ever. It's almost like it gives a torque.

We have tried these methods, these attempts to do the impossible, and they've always failed.

Lack of power is my dilemma

now. This is now. If you're new and you haven't worked the steps yet, you need to shield yourself from temptation for a time.

But if you're 10 years sober and you're still staying sober by shielding yourself from temptation, you you miss something here.

Either that, or maybe you don't believe this. This will work for you.

I don't know, worked for me.

There's a caution here and this is very important. This ties in with the 2nd delusion it talks about in in chapter 3. And I've watched, you know, for twice a week now

for for almost 34 years, I've gone to a Skid Row detox and watched men and women sober up again,

some of them sober many years. We had one guy, 45 years ended up there, Bill. Bill Wilson was his sponsor. We tried to make a project out of him because he had all these great stories about Bill

and he drank himself to death

over the next 7-8 months, I guess

because of his ego, how much it had progressed, couldn't it? He was just so full. He could. He knew what was wrong with everybody in AA and yet he was dying.

Dying of alcoholism. What a tragedy,

the book says. It's easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. Oh my God, it's so easy. What? What happens

to so many of us? This happened to me. It happens in most people that I know at some point in their sobriety. And when it's happening to you, you don't know that it's happening to you. And what happens is we get comfortable here.

And as I get comfortable and I haven't thought about taking a drink for 20 years,

I feel good. I got respect now. I made my amends. Everybody loves me again.

It almost feels like I don't have a problem now. I know vaguely, in an intellectual, abstract sense, I still have alcoholism, but I don't really feel like it. And I think consequently, some of us can easily be seduced

by the fruits of our own programmer recovery into a false sense of volcanus and start to compromise the actions that put us in that place. And you don't, you don't, you don't, you don't dismantle a program of recovery that has put you in that state of freedom and oneness with where your life is clicking, where you're in the zone, you're in the in the realm of the spirit. You don't dismantle that

instantaneously, you take it down one action, 1 brick at a time.

Sometimes it takes you 25 years to build up this thing, and it might take you 5 to tear it down

and you sometimes we tear it down one judgment at a time. Sometimes we tear it down by just compromising 1 little action in AA.

You know, you hear, I hear guys all the time say things, you know, they're sober 30 years and say come on, I'm going to go on a 12 step call. You want to go with me and they'll say the craziest thing you've ever heard?

No, I've done a lot of that. Let some of the newer people do it. You've done a lot of it. Have you any any this year?

As if

they're saying I no longer have as much alcoholism as I had in the days when I needed to do that.

As if. As if they're now if you ask them, do you still think you're alcoholic? Oh yeah, I'm definitely an alcoholic. Well, for God's sakes, your feet just made a liar out of you.

You're acting like someone who's kind of gotten over it.

I mean,

your life's good, isn't it? And you're not doing this anymore. What the hell happened to you? If you were to go? I, we had a guy in our detox years ago. He was 17 years sober and he drank again. And he, he, he was astounded that he drank because he had such a great life.

And he says, and he says in detail, I don't know why I drank again. I have a big house, make it a couple 100,000 a year. I've made all my amends. My my wife, my wife loves me. I have three kids that adore me. I have a great business. I have two paid for cars in the garage.

I don't know why I drank again. Everything was great.

And as if he thinks that all of the success was his treatment for alcoholism,

right? He got seduced. He hadn't been on, he hadn't tried to work with a newcomer in five years.

He played golf once a month with his sponsor.

That's from the chapter into golfing.

I mean, you know, I mean, if you, if you, if you saw a diabetic in a hospital just coming out of a diabetic coma and and he said, I don't know why I went into the coma. I have a big house. I mean, that's crazy.

That's nuts, that an alcoholic, that stuff makes sense to us,

makes sense. So it's easy. It's really I've been seduced by my own life away from what I should be doing. I went into the first depression. I'd gone into

a long, long time since the, since the time I put the steps in my life. It was 19 years and I, I sunk it 19 years. I sunk into a depression and I didn't know what had happened to me. And this is exactly what had happened to me and I didn't know it. And I don't know it because I'm still going to a meeting every day

and I'm sponsoring guys and I'm running my mouth and talking in AA. But there was a shift inside of Maine that was subtle and I didn't realize it.

And a guy nailed me. I told him. I said, I can't shake this depression.

And he said to me, He told me the truth.

He said, yeah. He said you go to meetings and you sponsor all these people and you run your mouth a lot in AA, He said, but I don't think your primary purpose is helping others. He says. I think your primary purpose is you,

and it's just like, shut up.

Oh, shut up, will you?

And he was right. I mean, he was right. My life had become I still want I wanted the bragging rights of a good a member. So I did the the the trappings of alcoholic. But the truth was

all I really focused on and cared about, my primary purpose was my toys and my investments and my business and my sex life and what you think of me and me, me, me, me, me

and the guy saved my ass. I'll tell you, I within a week I had new guys in my car and I'm, you know, I'm back to pushing myself aside and for a purpose greater than me.

And here's the crazy thing is that I didn't know that that happened to me. I didn't know what was wrong.

It's just it's because it's not you don't go from the guy connected helping others and this is really the center of your life to the guy who's the the center of your life is you. You don't make that transition overnight. It's it's as incremental slow. It's the it's they're boiling the frog slowly. You don't know it. You don't know it. I didn't know it. I think I'm a pretty bright guy. I didn't know it.

Thank God for God's works through people.

Great thing about you continue to go to meetings is that God will send you somebody

and you you won't like them. But

listen, I hope you hear this.

Don't shoot the messenger.

You may not like him, but he's their God sent him, and God sends people to us. It seems to be the way of it.

So if we do wrestle in our laurels and

you know, you know, everybody know where Laurel is, you know about the Laurel wreaths that they use. The Romans, when you became a citizen, you got this wreath and gave you entitlement to property and slaves and everything. Got to wear this wreath of laurels on your head

means you've arrived. You don't have to do anything anymore. You're there, you're vested. You're vested and you wear your laurels on your head. So if you're resting on your laurels, that's and shows you where your head's at.

We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle foe. It's subtle. It's sneaky. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all our activities. How can I best serve thee? Thy will not mind be done.

This is the essence of one day at a time. One day at a time is so much more than you just don't drink. Even though in the beginning

it meant it, I hung on to that. I just don't drink today. But eventually it's really talk you really move into this is about my spiritual condition that every day is the day that I have to show up for this. Every day is the day that I have to push myself aside and seek God's will. Every day is the day that I need to try to forget about myself and remember you.