Mark H. and Dave F. at the Fellowship of the spirit convention at St. John's University, Queens in New York July 27th

Yes.

For those of you guys that are hardcores want to stay here for a while,

what have we dealt with? We've been talking about inventory, right?

Something that I didn't mention is how to set yourself up for inventory. This is what I currently do and have been doing.

If I'm going to write inventory, I say a set aside prayer. There's one. I think I threw one in the guide, a version of a set aside prayer, ask guide to set aside what I think this process is going to be. I ask Guy to remove my fear of what I'm going to see about myself and I ask God to show me what I need to see, show me His truth. What is it that I has to come out on this inventory When I start sit down to start writing the process, I do it just like as it is out of the book. Column one, person, institution principle. Column two, you work vertically. I don't write horizontally.

I don't say column one, column two, column three, column four, and then try to get back to column one again. It doesn't work that way for me. I write vertically. I write all of my column ones, all the people, persons, institutions, principles. Then I go to column two. What did they harm me? And then I go to column three and I work at a cross. When I read inventory, I read it horizontally. Column one, column two, column three, column four, next. Boom. That way

I asked God to take me into that space. If for some reason I don't finish that inventory for whatever reason, just like we end the meetings here, I stop. I ask God to Take Me Out of the place that I write inventory from, keep me safe and protected until I can come back and be with Him to write more inventory. Why do I do that? Because I guarantee you, if you don't do this, you will ask God to take you into the place of inventory. You will write inventory, put it down and say I'm tired. Let's go to a meeting. You will go to a meeting and say, hey, you got a topic and it'll be something that's going on on your inventory. You'll raise your hand and you will fist up with a group

and you had absolutely no intention of fist stepping with that group

and it'll destroy you and you won't realize that you created your own problem because there will be a trust issue. Now you hear it come out of your mouth and you can't get it back. And now you can't trust your own Home group because now you don't want to be there. Because they know something about you and they know this deep intimate secret. Because you haven't finished the inventory. You haven't gone through all the fears and cleaned the rest of it up on a one-on-one.

Once you've done that, you've given it to God and you've 5th stepped it formally. Most people, who cares if they hear it, It doesn't matter. It's gods, they don't. It doesn't own them anymore. So ask God to take you into the place to write inventory. Ask Him to take you out of that place once you're done. All right, there's been a couple questions on the example I gave you in a short form.

If you go to the the page in the guide,

which I believe is like page 10 if I'm not mistaken, it's a page 11.

All right, this is an example of a short form filled out. Remember how I do use a short form

the guy they fill out column one, they fill out column two, they hand it to me. I check off column three. You'll notice the top of column three there there's a BCDFG that corresponds to the left hand margin ABCDEFG. So every check mark in the A comp, the vertical A column has to do with mom, the resentment with mom. Did it affect myself esteem, my pocketbook, my ambition, my personal relations, ex relations right down that line. You'll notice under pocketbook there's an at symbol. Put the at symbol there because

when she forgot me at the store as a child. May or may not affect your pocketbook.

It's a question mark. Depends on the inventory.

How could the your mom abandon you, forgetting you at the store and that feeling of abandonment you had affect your pocketbook? Well, if you carry 20 bucks in your pocket to this day, because you're never going to be left out without a way to get home, it's affected your pocketbook. All right, there's there's somebody in my life that used to get thrown out of the house constantly as a child. To this day, they always carry their pocketbook with them. They carry they carry it because they're afraid of still getting thrown out of the house. It's an unconscious behavior. It's

affected their pocketbook literally, you know, so it may or may not all right, look at the resemblance. B Dad, he beat me when I broke the car. May or may not affect your pocketbook. Depends how old you are.

If because he beats you when you broke his car when you borrowed it, you smashed it, you hit it. Let's say you hit a mailbox, you broke the side mirror off and he came home and he gave you a big whooping man. He whipped up on you for that and you said I will never borrow that man's car again. And then you work like a dog washing dishes so that you can get your own car. So you never had to rely on him again. Guess what affected your pocketbook?

All right? If he felt so bad because of the beating he gave you that he didn't make you pay for it and you fixed it up, maybe it didn't,

maybe continue to borrow the car and it didn't really have effect on your pocketbook. It kind of up. You can see where I'm going with that. It may or may not. It all depends on the situation. And as the 5th stepper, the guy's bringing you the fifth step. You have to hear it and ask the questions and delve into that some more. Don't you say? Because the guy says, oh, it didn't affect my sexual relations.

Go after it. Do you smell more? Is there more to that deal? There may be more that you're going to have to take a look at. You know, I get into a an altercation at an AA meeting. Somebody comes up and challenges me and, and we have a disagreement. The big I am right? And I go down. I write my inventory. It affected myself esteem. Yep. Affect my pocketbook. Nope. Affect my ambition. Yep. My personal relations. Yep. My sexual relations. Nope. Wait a minute.

Because I had a fight with Rashid at an A meeting maybe. Well, if I go home and start bitching to my wife,

the victim, oh, you wouldn't believe it. She did to me at the meeting and everybody made me look like an idiot. Remember, guess what? Do I feel like getting any that night? No am I could be in completely dishonest with my wife? Absolutely. I didn't bring a whole person to the relationship. I brought the victim to the relationship and I'm expecting I'm demanding her 100% loyalty. In that frame of mind, the victim wants 100% loyalty. I want her to take my side and to stroke my the back of my head and say, oh, honey, it's OK. Let me rub your feet,

scratch your back, you know, because remember my language of love, physical touch, gotta I'll make it OK. You know, he was the big bad Rashid. He shouldn't have done that.

You know, if on the other hand, she looks at me and says grow up,

guess what? Now it's multiplied. I got 2 resentments.

All right, let's say that happens at a noon meeting, a lunchtime meeting. Now it's 10:00 at night, we're getting going to bed, and you think she's a little bit frisky? Do you think I'm not just going to roll over and turn the light off and I'll show her Hitman, right? She ain't getting none. I'm not even talk to her. Why? Because that resentment with Rasheed has affected my sex life. Now

Rasheed's in bed with me

and I don't even see it.

Right.

All right, powerful stuff. But you need to understand what's going on here with inventory

fears

face and be rid of fear, fear, fear, fear. Any way you can get to a fear. It's the key to your sobriety, the fear tool. Whether you come from the second step proposition, whether you come through a normal fear inventory, whether you come from premeditation, However you get to the fear, get rid of the fear because why? Fear is a conscious decision, right? The big book says it ought to be classed with stealing. How can fear be a class with stealing? When I steal something, if I'm going to steal this, I grab it. I take it I made a conscious decision to take it.

Well, if I've made a conscious decision to in fear, what is that decision that I'm making? I'm making the decision to rely on myself rather than to rely on God or my ultimate power comes from fear is a conscious decision. All right. And then the sex ideal. Some people have asked a question on the sex ideal, who is BT, KB, TK or my wife's initials. So when you're reading that, it looks down and says BTK, people are going, whoa, what is that?

This reminds me, anybody that didn't get any of this stuff and you're interested in it? My e-mail address is [email protected].

If you're interested in any stuff, I will e-mail it to you. If you want the traditions and relationships, I'll e-mail it to you. If you want the concepts and relationships, I'll e-mail that to you. And if you ask for the concepts and relationships, you got to read the fine print because it talks in there about 1988. The Concepts of World Service uses a different date. I'm applying the 12 concepts to my relationship. 1988 was the year that I got married,

so I substitute that date that that's when I formed the the spiritual union like it talks about in the 12 concepts of a A that's when we gave World Service over. That's when we forward our spiritual union.

So I use my spiritual union with my wife. That's how I start to apply it. So in case you ask for the concepts e-mail again, is a a Dave one the [email protected].

I feel really sorry for the guy who's a, a Dave because he gets a lot of bizarre emails.

Any questions on inventory? Now is the time it's fresh in your mind. We're going to have an open panel tonight. But there's I've been getting lots of little questions from, from people and the question that you have maybe the same question that they have. And the only dumb question is the question that doesn't get asked. I always like to do this before we move from inventory to fist stepping because the inventory really is the key to your future.

You can, if you can crack the inventory nut your life is an oyster man. You can do whatever you need to

because anything that knocks you off from your relationship with God, you can get right back up on the beam.

Speaking of that expression,

does anybody know what being on the bee means?

Radio. Yes. Radio track. Since I'm a pod, I might as well explain that. The old days before navigation, they had AM radios, right? The old fashioned AM radios. And they realized that they sent a frequency out in two different ways,

two exact opposite frequencies. They would cancel each other, have one sign over here and one sign over here. Have you heard da, da, da, da, da? You knew you were to the left, Of course. Have you heard dash, dash, dash, dash, dash? You knew over on the right side of the course. If you didn't hear anything, you were on the radio beam. Emmet Fox talks about being off the radio beam. Guess what? Bill Wilson stole it from Emmet Fox. It's in our big book. You're on.

Is there a question,

Mike?

Oh, great question. Not supposed to put yourself on the on the resentment list. Did you harm yourself? Yes. I allow people to put them on there. Put it on there. I put it on there. All right, but what was Mark talking about? Were you doing the very best you could as asleep as you were? Yep. So here's what I do,

guys bring me that and I have, I've got one guy who brought me like 9 pages of self resentment. Oh well, it's me. I'm the worst person. We don't ever want to be middle of the road. I'm the worst person in the world. I've done this, I've done that. And you know what? He ends it to me. And I looked at him and I said, oh that's nice. I took a big axe and I went through each of the 9 pages in his eyes. Every X the guy's eyes got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger

and he's gone. What are you doing? And I said

forgive yourself and move on.

You were doing the absolute best you could with what you had at the time. How are you going to make amends to yourself for the harm you caused? 456789101112 right? Plug into God, do the best you can with what you got and you'll make that amend up. And

oh, a written third column. Yeah. The question was some people like to write a third column. You heard me reference this as a short form. There's a long form where people will actually write out the selfishness and how it affected you and they'll write out the the the how it affected your sex relations, personal relations. Take a guy, he's walking in the door, He's a brand new sober and he's got 400 resentments. If you sit him down with long form and you turn him loose, a it's going to take him weeks to write that and BI guarantee he's going to run out of energy and he's going to die in the process

to kill him. And the way I know that is I've done it.

Unfortunately, I had to learn the lesson the hard way. I take guys through and I get them some relief right away, get them back into inventory as quick as I can, but get them through the remains, get them right back in inventory six months later. Do that cycle maybe once or twice. Now we got something to work with. He's got a conscious contact. He's got some tools. Now let's sit down. Take her time. Now instead of having 300 resentments, this inventory that I just did, I had 9 resentments

man. I did long form and it's sitting up here if you want to take a look at it.

I don't know it anymore. It's God's.

That's probably 60 sheets on 9/9 resentments.

Could you imagine what that would look like for 400? I mean, that's six reams of paper, for God's sakes. And you've got a dead alcoholic at the end of it because he's not going to make it. And in the process, as ego will figure out a way to bring it, wrap it around and attack him from behind. He won't see it, you know. And then a, he's not going to work. That's what he's going to tell you.

By the way, if you got anything, jump in man,

hand in the back.

When do I recommend somebody to stay on steel? My experience is steel on steel. For those of you who don't know where I was going to talk about this later on and we will go into it more detail, steel on steel is basically like a fifth step. It's getting together and you have spiritual commitment with each other to pull each other towards God. All right, Which means for me, my experience is you need to have a relationship with God. And so until you've done inventory, you don't have a relationship with God. So I like to tell people that if you want to do steel on steel, finish your amends, get through the 9th

and go do it. I've seen people that are almost done with their amends who are able to start steel on steel, although it's few and far between guys that are still carrying guilt and remorse of the harms and they haven't cleaned it up. Their ego will use that and I'll get into steel on steel. And next thing you know, it's three years later and they still haven't finished up the last three amends, finished the amends, and then jump into steel on steel. And it's like doing a regular inventory on a regular basis. At least that's my experience. What's yours with them are

it's it's the very same as iron sharpens iron. So one man or one woman sharpens another.

I'll share a little bit about that right now, I guess. Why not?

When I got down to Kerrville, TX in 9192, I guess,

and Chris can tell you this,

I guess I've been down there about two years and I got very, very clear that myself, delusion and sobriety had almost killed me.

And I also got very clear that the idea of one man, say a sponsor being able to help me with that was placing a burden on someone that they, I had no business placing. So, you know, I was doing some 11 step reading one night and I like to read proverbs. I like stories, you know, and Proverbs is stories. But so I'm reading Proverbs and Proverbs 2717 says

as iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another

and man that that that wouldn't leave me. And so I thought, you know, I'm going to do something with that. So I got a hold of Chris and another gentleman I sponsor Dale and another man, Dan. And trying to think of who else seemed to me, there's one other one. Oh yeah. The gentleman at that time who had some of the longest sobriety in that town, who incidentally, after a period of time left steel and steel because his ego could not handle it. He could not handle the considerations that he was posed by somebody who was much younger

sobriety than him. And so we had the first meeting

and basically here's the format that we utilize. We like to open with some meditation.

Today I have a two page form that I use and we use timers. One of the things that that I've learned, again, I guess this is about simplicity, but I'm a bullet person and

Alcoholics. I, I can always tell when an alcoholic is, is going to justify selfishness because

before they ever get to what it is they're going to tell me, they, they go through a 15 minute explanation laying out the 9 course dinner and then they tell me what I'm going to eat. And I, that really makes me gun shy. So in steel and steel we use a timer and you only get 10 minutes and we start out in, in, in currently, what we do right now is I talk about first of all, where am I exactly with a circle and triangle? How many medians have I gone to right now? I'm meeting every two weeks

with two men. How many meetings have I gone to in the last 14 days?

In the last 14 days? This is back to discipline as the horse I ride. How many morning prayers did I do? How many morning meditations? How long were these meditations? How many evening reviews did I do? Am I doing a written evening review? How many evening meditations did I do? What was the length of those?

Where are each of the people I sponsor in the steps? Am I accountable as a sponsor? Am I accountable to someone specifically? What step am I on?

And then it goes on once, once they're done asking questions about the strict disciplines of 1011 and 12. Then it goes on to say are you having any problems in relationships, IE work, co-workers, a a, et cetera.

Then it says what's going on in your significant other relationship? Then it gets into money. Are you planning to spend any money over $200.00? Weep through that in there right now 'cause two of the men that I'm doing this with have unfinished financial amends. So right now they both have everything they need. So if they are, I got them to agree that before they'll ever spend any sum of money over 200, they'll call the other two men and seek counsel. Because of what that

means is since he's still old amends, they would be once again stealing from these same people they've already stolen from once. And, and they're, you know, so that's in there. Are you planning any purchases over $200?

I can see some of you already going. Who wants that kind of accountability right

in there is your physical health, what's going on with your physical health? And we talk about that when I started steel on steel,

I weighed probably about £250. I had great medical insurance and I hadn't had a physical in probably 10 years.

I mean, it was unbelievable to us. And so we begin to ask these questions and I'm here to tell you as a result of steel and steel, I get yearly physicals every year, dermatologists,

I take good care of myself in that area with exception of smoking. So the physical health piece is on there. What are you doing with that? Then we like to work with the definition of honesty. Say what you do, do what you say. How you been doing with that, Say what you do, do what you say. See and you take a look at that every area of your life, are you getting to work on time, etcetera. Then the last question on the form that we use is do you keep your word?

And then we've got some little reminders. Use the word consider,

done in love, that kind of stuff. Then what happens is

I shut the timer off, I pull out a notebook and those two men, based on everything that I've shared, will ask me to consider some things. See give an example of some of some of the considerations. One that they gave me about a month ago is they want me to consider a lot less travel and a lot more involvement in a a where I live.

So I write that down consideration. And of course, I'm sober much longer than both these guys. So I have to look at them and thank them

because our agreement is you cannot defend because the ego wants to defend. What else did they ask me to consider? They asked me to consider that maybe I was working with too many people, that I was placing too much of A burden of myself with my with my career and trying to work out and do this and do that and do that. So I'm writing these considerations down

when when we're done with that, then what I did is for the next two weeks, I took those considerations in a prayer and meditation. And

I can tell you that I made some decisions off that. That very next week, I went to five meetings. See, steel and steel allows me to defeat my ego and use it to my benefit. If you all think I'm showing up at steel and steel with two guys with less sobriety and and they're going to confront me again about not having enough meetings in my own hometown, you are wrong.

I'm going to go to that meeting even if I don't want to be there. See, that's how steel and steel can benefit. But I'll tell you off that already. I did cancel a bunch of stuff

I can't steal, and steal is one of the most important practices I've ever had in my life, and I've had it pretty well consistently since about 1994. That kind of accountability, unbeknownst to me, where you got to understand if, if you do what I'm talking about, there isn't any secrets in your life, are there?

And they're asking you to consider things. And really over the years, what it did is it opened just totally opened up my ego, if you will. But most Alcoholics when they hear about this format, they don't want anything to do with it because we lead secret lives,

financial, you know, you name it and we don't, we don't want that kind of accountability. Myself, delusion, my unwillingness to face that kind of accountability. I told you where it got me at 10 years. I love that kind of accountability. I love that kind of kind of discipline. Now understand something else

we do steal and steal from an Ave. of love. Now I'm not here to try and tell anyone what they have to do with their life

by virtue of self delusion. Meaning I fall asleep dreaming. I'm awake. Steal and steal is about Are you asleep to this? I was asleep to the idea that as you begin to get older in your life, it's probably a good idea to go get a yearly physical so that by the time you find out you have cancer your whole body is not full of it. Just little simple things like that that I was asleep to right. So that's what we do. Like, we currently

meet every two weeks,

but as you can see, it covers every area of my life. Now there's a strange thing about this

is surprisingly enough, the first half of this form that I like to use is all the things that we need to do is stay in fit spiritual condition. Right now, strangely enough, when I report and I'm doing all those things the second-half of my life, which is that I'm in the world to play the role of God as a sign, it seems very clean and very smooth and very peaceful. Surprisingly enough when the first half has a bunch of holes in it. Like I only meditated 2 times last week

I went to one meeting. I'm not sure what step I'm on. I'm not working with anyone.

It is incredible what the bottom half looks like, meaning your job and relationships and physical health. And so when when I meet with with the men that I work with and and I do that fairly religiously, they always bring that form with them and they know me well enough. If they got a bunch of holes in the top half, I will not talk to him about the bottom half. Don't talk to me about your relationship with your girlfriend when you've been unwilling to do the disciplines of 10/11 for a week. Get

out of my house.

They get out of my house. I'm not going to talk about it. It's just dribble. It's a waste of time. See. Go on. Just get away from me. I don't want what you get out of here, See,

because what's going to happen as a result of not doing the disciplines, then what have they taken into that area of their life, their selfishness and their self will. So what they're going to report back is, well, we had this big fight and this blow up my employers all pissed off and I haven't been feeling good physically and I'm lethargic and I go, oh, let's see, no prayer, no meditation.

Gee, I wonder if there's any connection here, Right. And so any rate, that's what steel and steel is. That's how that's how I use it. Again, I will tell you

it's one of the best disciplines I've ever brought into my life. It has helped me beyond belief. I mean, Chris, who you'll hear tonight, will tell you he, he and I are involved in that for years. And you develop a closeness, a caring and compassion.

See, you know, Dave brought up something, and this is so important. Here's these people in his group watching him drift off into lala land that he could drink behind. And nobody's saying anything to him,

you know, And steel and steel ultimately for me became a vehicle in which men that I cared about and loved about deeply, areas in which they would fall asleep, think they were dreaming, they were awake. I could bring that to their attention. I did that in the spirit of love. I didn't do it in a spirit of judgment. I didn't do it, you know, in, in anything else. So that's a little bit about, about steel on steel. I think Dave, I think brought some forms which are pretty similar. The ones I have in, in a used Fort.

I can tell you from my experience, if you get more than about four people, it's it's just about too many. It may may take too long, but and I'll be happy to answer any other questions about that

during the course of the weekend. And I guess we are just about ready to eat dinner. So then tonight you're going to get the Chris R show.

I guess we're going to break for a couple hours, if I understand that, and meet back here at 7. OK,

I got just one more thing to add to steel on Steel, since we're talking about him.

Steel on steel, when I first started it, I was getting I chose three people to do it with. There's a magic of the number of four. I've done it in different size groups. There's a magic of four. Don't ask me what it is, it's just my experience.

A3 Oftentimes you'll get a consideration where you'll say this. They'll say one guy will say, well, is it possible that you need to do this? And the other guy will say, is it possible? You need to do that? And they're diametrically opposed. So who's going to break the tie? If two guys are saying, is it possible over here? One guy saying, is it possible over here? Chances are you're hearing the voice of God and you kind of get an idea where you need to go. So there's a magic of the number of four

second item. Don't be surprised if you change. Do not attempt steal on steel if you don't want to change

because remember, God's grace lasts only as long as ignorance. They will show it to you. We call them IIP questions. Everything is in the form of is it possible IIP colon boom. Is it possible that you need to look at this? Is it possible that you get an unlimited amount of time to report back to the group on the questions they gave you last time? Well, you asked me about this and here's what I did. You asked me about that and here's what I did. And then I asked the question, Is there anything I didn't cover that you want to hear about from last time I shared?

Then we hacked the clock and you got 10 minutes. The reason for the 10 minutes is absolutely critical, because in 10 minutes your ego doesn't have the opportunity to set up a story to make you look a certain way.

You got to put the truth on the table and you got to put it on the table right now.

And the last thing is steel on steel is about commitment. Don't come to my steel on steel group with the same problem month after month after month after month. It's about change, you know, And there are no holds barred. Every door is open. We talk about sex specifically. How is it going on in your life? We talk about the Internet. We talk about masturbation. If it's going on, we talk about The Dirty, nasty deeds that are going on. How's the hairy eyeball? You're going to be talking about that

summer time you're at the beach on vacation.

Were you having a problem with that? You know, were you mentally undressing other women? What's going on in your life? We talk about every possible thing that can come up on the table and it's all open for discussion.

When I first started my first steel on steel group, the wives of the guys that are in my steel and steel group were saying, wow, this is pretty cool. And all of a sudden these guys started growing really fast. And it puts a lot of pressure inside a relationship when you start doing what's right because now you're holding up the spiritual mirror, right? And next thing you know, the wives are, I'm not sure if I want this to continue. Some of them, some of the other ones. My wife begs me for steel on steel because she see the benefits if I miss a steel on steel, meaning she's like, when's the next meeting? And she'll arrange her whole schedule to open up a hall. I'll cover the kids you got

right here, OK? She's ABS. She's a tremendous support for steel on steel. Changed my life.

Try it. But you got to want to change. All right. The forms are pretty specific. I give you it's a whole meeting package. There's the reading that we intro with. There's a description of steel on steel, what steel on steel is about, what it's not about. And then lastly, there's a there's a reading that we do out of the big book, which is from page 62 forward. And it talks about why we're there and who who the problem is and where do we get the power from.

Something I just added to Steel on Steel.

All of us happen to be Christian in our steel and steel and steel group.

At the end of our steel on steel now we started to break bread together. You want a powerful spiritual experience. If you have something like that that's part of your religion, do it together as a group. We openly pray together. We pray for each other. We have prayer lists that go on for each other for the problems that are in each others lives. It's, it's dramatic the way it's affected my life and the things that the areas that have changed. It's I can't say enough good stuff about it now. It's not

a A, but man, does it affect your A? A you want to really be get sharp.

It's like doing a fist step once a month. I happen to do it once a month because of schedules. I wish I could do it every two weeks. It just doesn't work in my life that way. Everybody that I chose for steel on steel in my group were all basically the same. We're all within about 10 years of each other age wise. We're all married. We're all double digit sobriety. We've all been going to couples meetings for a lot of years. I've been to go into couples meetings in a A for over 15 years.

Two of the three of us have kids. Excuse me,

three of the four of us have kids. One guy has since dropped out. So I'm now back in a situation where we have three of us in our steel and steel group. And as a group, we're trying to decide how we're going to handle that. Are we going to add somebody? What are we going to do? Right now? We're going with it and seeing how it goes. So it's the ultimate challenge. You know, my sponsor used my effect. My Home group. I used to have belong to this group that had an unwritten motto. You think you work in the program? Show us your family and we'll tell you how well you're working the program.

Steel on steel were really sharpened that up

because you can't live in that state of disillusionment when you got three other guys pulling you towards God. That's what it's all about. In the spirit of love, pulling each other shoulder to shoulder. Nobody's the sponsor, nobody's a sponsee, nobody's the guru, nobody's in charge except God. And that's what the deal is about. Let's go eat.

Pollock, I hope everybody's relaxed. We're about to not get relaxed though. I give you a little idea of what the format tonight. We got Chris odd to speak for the next hour or so and then Mark and Dave are going to come back and join him and a bunch. He's filled out some questions that you gathered over the last day and 1/2 that we had.

I'm sure I saw people squirming in their seats a little bit, including myself

and start up some questions and going to try and answer some of them

and let's see, why did I get, why did we get Chrysia? I guess real quick the first time Dave handed me a tape of Chris''s and I was listening to it in the car and I was ready to just about drive over to the airport and get on a plane to Texas because I thought this guy needs help. He is angry

and then I put the tape on at home and I listen to what he said and I identified a lot and I felt exactly he wasn't angry. He was full of passion

for this program, just like myself, and I couldn't deny a thing that he said.

And he actually got me passionate again, more passionate for what this program has done for me. So we asked him to come down here and share his passion with us about what we've been talking about this weekend. So Chris saw.

Can y'all hear me all right?

I won't need this in a few minutes anyway.

My name is Chris Raymer I'm a recovered alcoholic

who's fixing to lose his voice is something I picked up in Texas. I guarantee you this is not anything I can't blame on New York. This is an amazing thing here. I give me a second I I man. I need to thank the cats that made this, made this possible, Bart and, and Rick and, and all the, all the buds, Denise that I just,

I, I travel a lot. I, I, I get to speak, I'm honored to get to do anything in Alcoholics Anonymous. I also speak some in, in our sister fellowships of cocaine Anonymous And I, I travel a lot and get to come to lots of conferences. And of course, it's just, it's the obligatory thing to do, you know, Oh, well, this is such a nice place, you know, and you've, you've been tortured all day long, you know, but the truth is, I mean, this was so well organized and I mean, great service from top to bottom. And I'm, I'm honored to be here. I'm, I'm a little, I'm blown away by New York. I, you know,

like every time I travel someplace, I says, well, Chris, you know, trying to act like a tourist, you know, but then but how can we flew in over to LaGuardia last night and flew right over the city And it's like, you know, Jeannie was my wife here with me and she's got the aisle seat, right. And so it was like a minute. It was like,

wait a minute, I'm the one that's speaking. I need the aisle seat, You know, I mean, I was like, I'll crawl over, you know, we're looking out the windows. It's, it's like y'all live in a tremendous place. I, I, I've been blown away. Next time we'll come back and get to spend a little more time. Jeannie got to do some sightseeing today and I got to sit and listen to two of my absolute heroes in this fellowship. Mark Houston is my sponsor and he, he will keep me honest tonight. I guarantee you. And,

and Dave, Dave I met, I met, I don't know, a couple years ago. It's he, I got a call out of clear blue sky and he says this Chris Raymer. And and he,

he was in San Antonio, which is an hour drive from where I live. And I live in a little town called Ingram, Texas. And it is

a

well, it is just as country as can be. It's just it's Ingram Texas I we all have wives and, and, and date sheep there in Ingram Texas. I I don't know,

that's the first thing in divorce court. Was it a sheep or was it a real woman? And it's like

it's pretty country. It's pretty stupid up there. And I'm sorry, I need to take. But anyway, Dave came up and sat in a little big book with us and just out of clear blue showed up and we got to visit and he's been bud ever since. And I honor and respect him for carrying carrying a message. I need to tell you. You know, he spent a lot of time today apologizing right off the bat, you know, you know, from cussing and the tone of his voice and the way he may have looked at you and I just I'm not that spiritually fit. Like I, I'm going to tell you I'm not,

you know, I'm going to tell you going in the door. It's going to be my attempt not to cut.

I don't think it's respectful, but but I can tell you right now, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to fail miserably at it. So you might as well. You might as well know. And if it offends you, go away. I don't know what to tell you. I don't know what to tell you. I, I,

it's a character defect. It's being removed from me, not too, too damn quick, but it's being removed. And I, I, I don't know, 13 years ago, guys, a God, God did a number on me. And after years in and out of the fellowship, he removed the obsession for me to drink and drug. And I'm, I'm pretty, pretty passionate about that. I, I got a friend in, in Kerrville that said one time he said, he said it's a, he comes from Houston and he said it's a tragedy that we, some of us in our, in our fellowships have to feel out of place in the, in our

own, our own fellowship, the fellowship that saved our life. We've got to feel uncomfortable in those rooms because the message we're carrying is so different from the message that most people are carrying out there. And, and, and that's the truth. It's