At a Big Book Study Weekend in Adelaide, Australia

Bob, an alcoholic.

So

why are we here?

We're trying to work all these steps to

hone ourselves into such a state of spiritual perfection. We glow in the dark.

Or are we here to do all of this so we can grow an understanding and effectiveness that our real purpose is to be of maximum service to God and the people about us?

To serve what Alcoholics Anonymous refers to as its primary #1 purpose.

And if, if you've been diligent in this process, by now, there's been a tremendous shift inside you. It's in, it's, it's, it's inevitable. And the shift is that you are probably no longer your primary purpose.

That's your primary purpose in life is something greater than you. It's helping God's kids. And now your usefulness is is based on the fact that everything about you becomes to bear here.

Even the worst stuff about you becomes useful.

The things that you've done in sobriety that you're ashamed of becomes helpful

because you're going to, you can, you can, you can bet whatever is you've done in your life that you regret and you're ashamed of, you're going to end up sponsoring someone just like that.

And your experience is going to help them.

And there's a rightness about it all.

But yet at the same time,

I come here such a self-serving. I mean, my primary purpose was me. And I don't want to do 12 step work. And the book on page 89 says the practical experience. And this is the practical experience of a fellowship of people who've recovered from a seemingly hopeless condition of mind and body. That practical experience of Alcoholics Anonymous shows that nothing, nothing's like a big word. Nothing. Nothing will so much ensure

from drinking his intensive work with other Alcoholics. It works for other activities, fail.

It works for everything else Fails when when I was in moments in my sobriety where I was absolutely insane

with resentment is like as I found out my wife and daughter moved in with my friend or I found out that one of my employees just it it ripped me off for quarter $1,000,000 or I I found

I found out that somebody else had on and on. I could tell you

in those moments when I'm full of fear,

this is what saves me.

I'm a depressive alcoholic.

I'm very much

like Bill Wilson. I came cut out of the very similar cloth. Bill Wilson was a depressive alcoholic, also suffered from it. He found relief in it, in his story. He talked, I'll read this. It's it's such a brilliant thing. It's and this is exactly my experience. This is and, and I thank God I fell into the hands of people that just pushed me

and kicked me and shoved me into service and I didn't want to do it.

People are telling me to go on 12 step calls, go out to the prison, go to detox,

help others help. I don't want to help others. I told this guy said, you know, don't you think I should work on me for a while? And he said work on you. You've done quite enough of that. Stop. It will help somebody,

Bill, Bill says in his story. I think it's on page 13 if I remember correctly.

No

15

15

the first full paragraph,

5 lines down.

I was not too well at the time. Now this is after Bill, sober a little while, but not a long time within his first year.

I was not too well at the time and I was plagued as I was by by waves of self pity and resentment.

This sometimes nearly drove me back to drink, but I soon found that when all other measures failed, work with another alcoholic would save the day. Many times I have gone to my old hospital in despair

on talking to a man. There I would be amazingly lifted up and set on my feet. It is a design for living that works in rough goings.

That is exactly my experience

and I didn't understand for a long time why these old timers are pushing me to help others and do 12 step work. And you know, I didn't work the steps out of the book until I was over four years sober. So I wasn't really getting a lot of the best I was getting was intermittent relief from me

inner spaced with just tremendous self absorption and almost to the point of chronic depression

and bouts of anxiety, almost to the point of panic.

And I was came, I came home from work one day and I, I, I'd have gone to two meetings that day. I called my sponsor and I'm sitting on the sofa and I'm just

thinking, just sitting there thinking about my sex life and it's how do you ever think about it and have it look good? It never looks good to me. And just whatever I look at, I only see the glass half empty. I don't look and I don't spiral thinking about me upward. I always spiral down. I'm thinking I'm spiraling into this abyss and the more I look at my life and the more I sit there and think the bleaker, everything looks

my financial future, my job future, just, you know, it's, it's not good.

And I don't just get depressed. I drink of this and this emotional condition like I drank alcohol.

I get in it so deeply at times where I physically can't, I get debilitated. And if you've never been to this kind of depression, you will not understand it. You get to a point where you weigh 1000 lbs and you can't get out of bed, you can't get off the sofa. You are debilitated that your emotions have become that dominant, that you're that self-centered that you can't even get up off the sofa. You're so consumed with yourself. And that's the way I was. And I was sitting on the sofa and I just, I'm

into this horrid, hard, frightening depression because I know in in moments of desperation for relief in the past, I have drunk or taken drugs at these moments and it's scaring me.

And I can't even get up off the kill. And I look at the clock and it's about 9:50 at night

and there's a meeting at at 10:15 not too far from my apartment up on the strip at a Chapel called Duffys. And, and I remember thinking if I could just get up there, maybe I'd hear something that would snap me out of this. And but I can't get off the sofa way like 1000 lbs. I, I just like to debilitate. And I said a prayer and some, and I made-up my mind and I somehow,

maybe through an effort on my part and maybe through God's grace, I don't know, but somehow I got up off that sofa

and I shuffled out to my car like a mop. I walked depressed, You know, my, I think, I don't know what I look like in the mirror, but I bet you my hair looks depressed. I mean, I, I mean, I get depressed in every cell of my body. I mean, I get, I'm into it, man. I, I mean, it's, it's funny now talking about looking back, but I'll tell you, it's not funny when you're in the middle of that. It's horrid.

And, and I, it was hard. And I, and I get my car and I drive up to the meeting and, and, and the meeting was right on the Las Vegas Strip.

And there's, it's this Chapel and right next to the entrance, the Chapel, there's a billboard. You know, they have, they advertise stuff. Well, there's a parking space underneath the Billboard also. I park right there because I that way I don't have to walk, but a few feet to the door of the Duffy's and I park under the Billboard. Now there's 100 pigeons that sit on this billboard. Now they're going to decorate my car to fit my mood, I'm sure.

And, and, and so I park under the Billboard and I go into the meeting and I'm sitting in the back of the meeting, but I can't, I can't even hear anything.

I'm so into me that everything in the meeting is so distant and far away from me. It's, it's like, it's just way it doesn't it? Nothing gets into me.

Well, there's a guy sitting in the back of the room who's coming off a drunk. He's sitting right across from me and he's in bad shape. He's sitting and he's grabbing himself and rocking back and forth like he wants to jump out of his skin

intermittently. He can't sit very long, so he gets up and he's pacing back and forth in the back of the room like a caged animal. His nerves are so shot. You can hear him. The bathrooms right there. You can hear him going in there a couple times during the meeting and he's dry heaving in there and he's a wreck.

And I have a lot of problems and I'm trying to figure them out. And this guy's annoying the crap out of Maine.

So by the end of the meeting, I'm not doing any better. I'm actually doing worse. Because here's what happens to me when I'm really depressed. I look out the world and I look out to see how everybody in the meetings doing a lot better than I am. And I just, I'm the miserable one here and nobody understands me

and I don't say anything, but because I don't want to bother anybody.

But I just, it's, it's like some people that there, there's writers who, who, who, who there's their image of themselves is in the fact that, that they're a great writer. There's athletes that they're, they're self images and the fact that they're really very athletic. There's guys who are writer or musicians who because they're great guitar players. Well, I I'm a guy who suffers more than anybody else.

No, it's just. But I'm the best worst. I am the best worst. I can tell I'm I'm the best, worst here,

and it's horrible. And in the meeting, the subject in the meeting's gratitude,

all of you have so much to be grateful for and you don't understand my life. And

this is that uniqueness, Oh my God, that terminal uniqueness that comes with that. You know, I am the only one that really and people and your my ego is so intense.

If you ever been in a bad like a depression like that and somebody charged a cheery up, Oh, they're stupid

because your ego wants to be right about how miserable you are.

And I'm in this thing and I by the end of the meeting, I have worse. I just, I don't know what I want to do. I need to go. I'm going to go back home and think some more.

Well, I don't know, you know, that's what I do. I So I stay after the meeting because you guys have told me you got to do service and I'll do some service. At least I'll be a guy who suffers but helped, you know. So I stayed and helped Charlie.

Charlie Parker was the secretary of the meeting, and we had to put the chairs back in order for the Chapel, and we had to clean up the trash and make sure the bathrooms were OK and everything. And Charlie and I are the last two guys to leave the meeting. And Charlie's locking up and he's on his way to work. He works a graveyard shift at one of the casinos up on the Strip. And Charlie and I are standing there and we look out and the guy coming off the drunk is laying on the ground in front of my car curled up almost in a fetal position.

Now I'm going to have to step over him to go home and ponder my life more deeply, which which I would have done. I really, I'm pathetic, but I tell you I would have done. I want to go home and think, I don't want to be bothered with nothing. And but Charlie's here and Charlie has a big mouth and he's Charlie says, are you going to help this guy go to go to work? Are you going to help this guy? I don't want to help this guy. But Charlie is a big mouth. If I don't help this guy, Charlie's going to tell everybody in a a what a bad member I am,

and he knows my sponsor. I go over to this guy and he's pathetic. He's peed his pants, He stinks. He stinks,

he's shaking it out. He's afraid he's going to go into seizures. We don't have at this time in Vegas, there is no free detox. If you don't have medical insurance or have money, you're you're out of luck. And this guy is and he's so inconsiderate. He didn't even keep medical insurance. Imagine that in the inconsideration.

So there's nothing to do with him except one of two things. And I've done them both. And one is to get find a partner and you sit with a guy,

you give him a shot of vodka with a little bit of orange juice about every hour and a half. Just hopefully so he doesn't go into seizures. Sometimes they still do. I've had guys go into seizures on my living room floor.

I'm so glad that I got to experience detoxing people in my apartment,

but I couldn't do that. The only other alternative there was a County Hospital and, and because they got some government funds, they were required to take a certain amount of injured patients without money. But they didn't like it and they did not like Alcoholics because all the all the drunks from the street ended up at the County Hospital. And so they had this disdain towards Alcoholics. And I had been down there before with guys, so I'm getting this.

This guy in my car, he smells like I'm driving down to the County Hospital.

I know what's coming. I've been down there before. They'll make you sit in that waiting room and they'll, they'll take people that come in an hour after you

because they would rather treat the what they consider the legitimately sick people than this self induced guy who's sick, who's probably going to be back here next month anyway. And they got that attitude. And I, I've been there before and I know I'm driving to this hospital. I know I'm going to be there all night. I got to go to work in the morning. I'm not going to get any sleep. I'm going to be tired.

I'm going to go to that job. I'm probably going to get in a fight with my boss because I'll be irritable. He'll probably fire me. Lose that job.

It's a lousy job anyway,

I think to myself. Isn't it bad enough that my lifes crap? I I'm saddled with this stuff too? I doesn't anybody else step up in the plate to the plate in a except me? The keywords me, me

and I don't say ain't saying nothing to him. I'm just driving. Get down to the hospital. We park in the back and I take him in. We sign up on this thing at the window and go into the waiting room. Sit there,

this guy is coming apart at the seams. He's in really bad shape and the nurses are just ignoring him and he's so it's just me and him and he starts to talk to me

and he starts to open up to me.

There was one point he started to cry as he told me about the remorse and the shame that he felt for the things he did to the people who loved him. I could, he said I couldn't even drink it away anymore. He told me that for some time he'd been wishing he had the courage to kill himself. And then he really got me. He said to me. He said I don't know why you're wasting time with me.

See, I'm not like you. People in AAI always drink again and he's telling me about me.

And in the wee hours of the morning I I started to fall in love with this guy. It was the most amazing experience. All of a sudden I don't, I don't even know what my I don't have any problems. I just all I want is what's best for him. I started. I wanted I cared more about what was going on with him than I cared about what was going on with me.

And it was sometime later that I realized what had just happened here,

that I, what I had fallen in love with is I'd fallen in love with the me that is in him,

a part of me that needed to be loved but could not be loved directly by me. I had to love it through loving you,

by loving the me that is in you and he knew why. I know that I had a therapist one time that was very big on love yourself. She used to say you got to learn to love yourself. You love yourself. The problem is you don't love yourself.

She came in this year. Once you do this exercise, every morning I want you to stand in front of the mirror, look yourself in the eye and want you to sail over and over again. God loves me, God Forgives me, God accepts me. I love me, I forgive me.

Bullshit. I just. I could have stood there and said that until the planet blew up and it would not have changed how I felt about myself. Not one iota.

And yet, in

caring about you, it came back on me.

Just like making amends to you came back on me.

I never imagined that they checked the guy in, they gave him a bed. I'm driving home and the sun's getting ready to come up. It's early in the morning and I'm driving home and I'm crying. But I'm not crying because I'm depressed. I'm crying because I don't know, in my whole life I ever felt more right about everything.

It was like all the planets lined up. It's like everything is perfect. I know exactly what I need to do. I know exactly who I am. I know what why my life, why I'm alive. I feel the presence of God in that car that you could cut it with a knife and it wasn't through prayer, meditation, It was through exactly what Bill Wilson talks about, through self sacrifice and constant work with others.

And as I'm going home that morning, I remember thinking to myself,

I want to feel this way the rest of my life.

It was very much the feeling, the sense I had the first time I ever really got high. You know that feeling when you really light you up and you you think to yourself, oh, we are going to do this a lot?

We are going to do this a lot

and I want to do this a lot.

And that was the morning I claimed my primary purpose. And it was the morning I all of a sudden the veil lifted and I understood. I understood why these old timers were been hammering me. Help others, help others, help others. They knew something I didn't know until that moment. They knew that no matter how depressive I was, no matter how full of myself and my own fears and worries, no matter how narcissistically self-centered and self involved I was, that if I stayed in that venue of

this long enough, one day you'd hear a loud pop as my head came out of my butt and I would actually show up in God's world. And that was the dad, Got it. I got this is it. This is what Bill Wilson learned. Do you know when Bill Wilson, at many Years sober, went back into depression? You know what was going on in his life when that happened,

Tell you, I think it's an interesting story. I sat in stepping Stones and I sat in meditation and I thought about his life and what had happened and what brought him there and what happened to him once he moved there.

Bill Wilson's lit he gets sober December 11th, 1934.

He spends his next several years every single day, every when he says in the book our very lives as X problem drinkers depend upon our constant. That's like constants a lot constant thought of others their needs. Now we work for me. Bill Wilson helped other tried to help other drunks every day he went to Calvary Mission Towns Hospital. Later he went to Knickerbocker Hospital and he'd go there every day.

Every day. This is really self forgetting

and Bill was lit up. Bill was free from the depression. He's a depressive alcoholic

and he was amazing.

And then because he wasn't working and he had such bad luck in that area, they eventually lost the house on Clinton Street that was Lois''s families. I I know that just took cut bills heart out to do that. He lost her family home because he couldn't pay the taxes or anything on it.

And they spent the next quite some time, I think it was maybe two years or close to it, sleeping on people's back, bedrooms and couches.

And here's this debutante who the only thing she ever did was fall in love with this drunk and she's following him into homelessness.

And something miraculous happened. Lois said it was her God house where this woman stepped up and made them an opportunity, gave them an opportunity to have this amazing. It's a beautiful house out in Bedford Hills, which was way outside of New York City back in those days before the freeways were in. It was quite a trek, actually.

And so Bill went. Bill Wilson went from every single day of his life helping other drunks to living in this paradise out in the country,

and he started to implode.

He started to implode,

but he couldn't say anything because after everything Lois has done for him,

how could you say so? How could you say I want to move back to the city and give this up? This is she was in love with this house. She loved this house and he odor and he owed her big time.

And also at the same time, Alcoholics Anonymous is starting to have troubles and now builds the figurehead. Bill's not at town's hospital every day. He's not at the Calvary Mission every day. When he does go into New York City, he goes to the office where he's plagued by problems. He's reading the letters of the groups that are falling apart around the country. He's reading the letters of the people that are angry at Alcoholics Anonymous and how well they don't understand what happened, why A was doing so good now

fallen apart. And Bill's whole task was no longer of a venue that would relieve him of the bondage of self.

And he put his time and his effort because he cared about Alcoholics Anonymous until

Bill always saw into the future

people who knew him. And I've met quite a few people that knew him. They said that they never knew anybody that had a greater vision into the future than Bill Wilson. He could see farther down the road than anybody they've ever known. And Bill was always caring about the guys and the gals that were going to get sober fifty, 60-70 years later in places like Adelaide. He knew they were going to come. He knew. He knew you'd be here,

so he suffered.

He knew what the answer was, and he suffered the Depression and he wrote the 12 traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous and he fought with the groups.

They wouldn't accept them. He wrote them in the original form, which is now considered the long form. And he fought with him.

And once Alcoholics Anonymous was

once Alcoholics Anonymous was stable and the traditions were in place. Bill Wilson at one of the at the conference turned Alcoholics Anonymous over to its members. And he tried to go back to just being another drunk. Helping other drunks in the last years of his life were sweet because he got back to doing what he should have been doing all along. But Bill sacrificed himself for us.

I remember sitting there and thinking about it, thinking I don't think I could have done it.

I think I'd have died in the middle of this dream house.

I would have just been so consumed with myself. I don't think I could have survived and Bill suffered from, oh, there's letters in our archives where we're friends of Bill wrote and to other friends, and they were in their letters. They were afraid Bill might take his own life. There's letters in the archive where Bill was supposed to deliver to Tom Powers sections of the book, the 12 steps and the 12 traditions. And the letter says we can't get it to you. Bill's sitting in his desk sobbing.

He's so depressed.

And he muscled through it and he got that book together, the 12 Steps and the 12 Traditions. He got the he. He got us safe from ourselves.

We owe great debt to Bill Wilson,

a great tech. He really gave his life for us.

He never wanted credit.

He never asked for credit. When Time magazine wanted to put him on the cover, he turned it down. Lois, who was always Lois is so I, I met Lois. Lois was so funny. Years later. I wasn't there when she said this, but she's at this some event, some a event and somebody saying, well,

Bill Wilson turned down the cover of Time magazine. He's the only one in history that ever did that in. Lois said, yeah, he did. That's true. He turned down the cover. Then she said, you know, but I think he got more. He said, she said there have been hundreds of people on the cover. He's the only guy in history that ever turned it down. I think he got more mileage out of Turn It Down.

She was very good for him.

She was perfect. They were brought together by divine appointment.

I don't think another woman could have, could have buried with it.

And we owe her a great debt.

And out of this

we came an altruistic movement.

I am a big proponent and I, I run into people in AA that are that are doing, they're emotionally not doing very well. And I always and I always try to encourage them. I got guys I sponsored that now sponsor seven and eight people

that at one time we're on lots of medications and very depressed. And they were, they were basket cases emotionally and they're free men and you would not know them today if you saw them because of the way they laugh and carry on. I think Scott met met Neil, we call him the Admiral of our group. Five years ago. He was so entrenched in the mental health system, there was nobody home here.

He was so medicated. He hasn't taken anything in years. You should see him.

He's the funniest guy you'll ever meet. He's just hilarious and he sponsors guys. He does service. He always his new guys in his car a lot comes to detox. He's he's alive, he's free.

The Buddhist tell a story about a man who tries to ride two horses

and how you can't

and you can't serve a power greater than yourself and serve yourself. You got to pick your horse

and you got to ride that horse.

If serving yourself has worked well for you,

I would encourage you to do that. But if you're like me, it hasn't worked out very well,

so I would encourage you to ride this horse.

It's this. It's the horse of self forgetting

and nothing will ensure immunity for drinking is intensive work with other Alcoholics. Do you know in in a a I heard this I heard this years ago and I don't know I don't know if these are accurate statistics, but they feel pretty close to me like they're not. I don't think if they're not maybe not accurate. They're not far off. This trustee said at a service conference that 5%

of the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous does 95% of the service

and of that 5% that does 95% of the service, that that 5% has almost a perfect recovery rate as long as they stay part of the 5%.

When it says in the book nothing so much ensure immunity

from drinking his intensive work with other Alcoholics that are a kid. And it's really true.

So I try to stay on the lines. I try to stay in the trenches.

It's not convenient.

I've had times where I could have done some amazing stuff,

but I have a commitment to do this.

It's it's easy to, it's easy to say

that you really have surrendered yourself completely. The simple program that your primary purpose is helping others. It's it's a little more difficult to live that

actually day in and day out. You know, the book suggests that we ask God in our morning meditation each day

how we can help the man who is still sick each.

Then we forget

in the in the chapter working with others is is is a blow by blow description on how to do a 12 step call, how to sponsor someone. This is a lost art. I, I think if we follow this chapter more, we'd have more success in Alcoholics, zombies, and we would also, we wouldn't be trying to recruit people into a, that really shouldn't even be here. There's

a, we'll get into that. Page 90, top of the page. OK, let's, let's say you're buying this. You're, you're going to go help people.

Remember that the first remember Bill Wilson worked with 96 people who drank again before he met Doctor Bob, 96. So if the first person you, you, you try to help drinks again, you got you got 95 more to go through this to be up to his level. I mean, you keep pitching. There's a spiritual principle. You throw enough shit up against the wall, some of it will stick. Just keep throwing crap. Just keep throwing it, flinging it,

keep flinging it.

So you find somebody, you get your first 12 step call top of page 90. When you discover a prospect for Alcoholics Anonymous, find out all you can about him. Which means you're going to listen to him, you're going to ask him some questions, you're going to you're going to seem like you're really interested in him and his life. If he does not want to stop drinking, don't waste time trying to persuade him. That's a very

two You want to stop drinking? No, I know you think you should. Do you want to stop? Well, I know your wife wants you to.

Do you want stuff? I know the judge wants you to. I know your boss. I know, I know, I know. But do you want to stop drinking?

And it says don't waste time trying to persuade him. You might spoil later opportunity.

I, you know, I'm an idiot. I start doing 12 step work when I'm new, but I never read this book. If you don't read the book and you don't have the principles in place, then all I got to come with is my own personality, right? So I'm coming a 12 step work with ego. I I get a 12O. They're weird. This answering service in Vegas

back in the late 70s, early 80s was a professional answering service that went on like at night and during the like for midnight to 8:00 AM. There was a professional service and answered the phone. You call Alcoholics almost get a professional service. They have a list of phone numbers. They call a member of a, A that was willing to answer, take a call in the middle of the night. Well, what this service did is they don't call varied people. They find one or two people they know we're going to take calls and they just call them. So I went through a period where I was getting calls every night

and I get caught 3:00 in the morning.

This is Alcoholics Anonymous. This is Bob. If you want to stop drinking, well, I'll be right there.

I put on my Cape,

I get my car, I put in the my favorite soundtrack to the to Mighty Mouse here we come to save the day. And I resume over there because I'm going to get this guy sober because I need to bring him back to my Home group to show the old timers. It's it's, it's I'm almost, I'm almost like, you know, when your cat brings your mouse and chose it to you, you know, I'm like, I want to show, I want to bring this. I want to bring this guy and dump him at the feet of my, of the old timers of my sponsor, because it's about me. It's all about me,

this guy, and I get these guys. Well, at 3:00 in the morning, Alcoholics will call Alcoholics times. I should know that. I used to do that. I don't want to get sober. It's 3:00 in the morning. There's nobody to talk to and I've run out of vodka. I mean, I just, I'm calling ex girlfriends for God's sakes. I'm calling suicide prevention. I mean, I'm calling anybody. These guys don't want to get sober. I'd but I don't ask them because they called.

So I get the guy in my car. I I've I've done horrid things I wouldn't want me and some gal went to some gal's house one time and she asked for

a 12 step call. I I held her in the one room, wouldn't let her out of the one room while while no, the gal held her in the one room and I went in the bathroom and dumped out all her pills and she's looking in her bottle of vodka. She's looking at me like, oh, no, you don't like what do you guys? What a hard thing to do to somebody. I'm dumping out their vodka and pills. What a hot, but I don't know any better, right? I'm not I'm not carrying the message. I'm carrying the disease.

I'm contagious.

Oh God, I get these guys and I tell you they're going to get sober or I'm going to kill them

because if they don't stay sober, I'm gonna look bad, right. And once you take them to a Home group in some old timer seeing you with them now, now they can't drink again, 'cause I'm a look bad. And Oh my God, I, the book says don't, don't chase a guy that doesn't want to stop drinking. You'll spoil a later opportunity. And I did that and I got to tell you, I, I never, I didn't do it out of malice. I did it out of ignorance. But when it comes to alcoholism,

ignorance is as deadly as malice.

And there's a lot of people I got a lot of things I wish I could undone. There's a lot of people that I 12 step back in those days that may never come to Alcoholics Anonymous because I was the first view of a a they'd ever see.

There might have been some of those people that maybe maybe were this close to hitting the bottom and being ready for us. Maybe. And now they may never be ready because they had to run into Bob. And I'm, I'm just, I'm so I'm coming from ego. It's all ego, that's all.

There's an old Persian proverb. It's it talks about this, why we don't do this, why you don't try to get somebody to stop drinking that doesn't want to stop drinking, why you don't want to change somebody that doesn't want to change. It says. It's like trying to teach a pig to sing. Not only doesn't it work, it annoys the pig.

I annoyed a lot of pigs, man. I didn't mean to, but I did.

OK, So what do you do if the guy wants to stop drinking? Good question.

If there's any indication that he wants to stop a good talk with the person most interested in him, usually his wife,

that seems so bizarre to me. That's might be true, though.

I'm outside of his wife. There's nobody more interested in him than him. But that's what Al Anon's we we marry. You know why Alcoholics marry Al Anon's we finally find someone who thinks about us as much as we do. I mean,

so, so you talked to his family members if he can, if he doesn't have any family members, you talk to him. You and here's this is very important, he says, get an idea of his behavior, his problems, his background and the seriousness of his condition and his religious leanings.

Why

to do the most important thing you will do in the next line is the essence of what we do here. I think if you can do what it talks about in the next line, it will make the difference between success and failure.

You need this information

to to put yourself in his place,

to see how you would like him to approach you if the tables returned.

One of the most powerful things in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's given to us. It's not given to the psychiatrists and the clergy, it's not given to the doctors. It's given to us.

Is this ability to do something that a man with five doctorate degrees cannot do and never will be able to do?

And that is if you're clear with yourself and you've worked the steps, if you're properly armed with information about yourself, if you get your disease and get the self centeredness and you get it all

that you can go inside yourself to a place where you will get this new guy in a way that nobody's ever understood him before. Because it's you. You are intimately familiar with his state of mind and emotion because it's you

and you can come at him in a way that will blow his mind

because you're just talking to yourself. I think a good 12 step call is I'm just talking to me. I'm talking to the me that I was, that I'm seeing in you that I was 34 years ago. That's what I'm doing. I'm talking to me

and the old timers were masters of that. When I got sober, Oh my God, they'd say things to me that you you just think they're psychic.

How do you know that? And we kind of because if you know yourself, we kind of have an unfair advantage really. I mean, an alcoholic properly armed with information about himself, not only can help another Ali can scare the crap out of one too. I mean, when you think about it, you take somebody's brand new sober three days, he can walk up to him and say things because they're true and you'll know. Just go things like,

you've been worrying about yourself a lot, haven't you?

How do you know that?

Because we know ourselves. We know that.

That's why in Alcoholics Anonymous we have singleness of purpose is so important. You don't have to come to AA and describe all your other problems. We know you don't have to. You don't have to tell us you had a hard time with drugs. We know we don't know anybody here that's had a good time with them.

You don't have to say you're an alcoholic. And you know we don't need You don't have to say you're an Anda. We know you've had a problem with relationships. Yeah, we know that. We know you think about yourself obsessively. We understand you. We worry about stuff. We know you don't have to say you're an alcoholic and a neurotic. We know, We understand you're alcoholic and you don't fit anywhere. You don't have to say you're an alcoholic and I'm lonely. We know. We understand. We get you

because you're us. What get you

We have alcoholism. Because when I say my name is Bob Darrell and I'm an alcoholic. And if you're an alcoholic who's properly armed with information about yourself, at that moment, you know more about me than every member of my family has ever known.

You know me because you know you

powerful stuff.

So if we can, if I can put if I can get clear enough of myself and and you know the things that stand in the way of our usefulness. The stuff I talked to God about in step 7 is this is all the self crap.

Like all of a sudden I got a relationship on my mind. So I'm not really there for you. So now I'm blocked. Now I can't come into myself and go to that place where I get you because I go inside myself and all I see is the relationship or the finances or the things I'm afraid of or the resentments. So it's it's, it's optimum that I stay clear of me so I can help you.