Bob D. from Las Vegas, NV speaking the topic of "Ending Loneliness using the 12 Traditions" at the Unity and Service conference in Concord, CA

And now please help me welcome our main speaker for this morning, Bob D from Las Vegas, NV, on the topic of ending loneliness using the 12 traditions.

It's a dumb topic, I'll tell you.

Blame Kent.

I'm Bob Darrell and I am alcoholic

and I'm a member of the Connect the Dots group in Las Vegas. And if you would ever go to that group, the other people there know that that's my Home group by my actions. And that's very important. If you have a if you tell people you have a Home group and the people there don't know it's your Home group, it's not.

I have a sponsor and he knows he's my sponsor by my actions.

And if you have a sponsor that doesn't, not sure if they're your sponsor, they're not.

And I have a sobriety date, which is October 31 St. 1978. A a day in my life that felt like the worst day of my life. And if you would have told me on that day that I would spend the next 38 years celebrating that day every year, I would have thought you were crazy.

And it is exemplary of this thing that I don't know. And in 1978, when I got sober, I, I finally was, as the book said, says, we're beaten into a state of reasonableness. And I, I was always the I know guy. I'd worked in therapy. I'd, I'd, I'd, I was AI read a lot. I was a smart guy. I was the I know guy in 1978. I only knew one thing for sure.

I don't know, and that saved my life.

It brought me into Alcoholics Anonymous where I could hear you

and I,

I was thinking about this.

I have a, my ego, even though I don't most of the time even recognize that it's there. It's so strong within me that it creates a resistance to anything that threatens its control, right? And it's an unconscious resistance. And, and I experienced that with AA. I, I sitting is a, is a guy that was a perpetual newcomer for several years in and out. My I would sit there as my head

would pick you apart

because there's something in me that doesn't want that resists what you have, right? It doesn't want to get better. It doesn't want to lose its control. And then even after failing and just horrible horrible relapses, I was step resistant

and I'm not. I'm not alone in this. Do you ever notice how you'll go to what the great length she'll go to rather than write your 4th step,

right? I'll wash my car. I can tell my, my sponsor, you write anything. I've been doubling up on my meetings. You know, I mean that because that's good. I want to throw something that looks good at the, at the vacancy, right. And so like, maybe I'll get credit for that. That's like, it's like going to the gym, killing yourself for two hours and then come and leaving and eating a whole cheesecake. I mean, it's, you know, it's you don't one good action doesn't negate, you know, it's, it doesn't work that way.

So I was very step resistant and

and the pain

of untreated alcoholism in a prolonged period of abstinence drove me to my knees

in Alcoholics Anonymous and where all of a sudden I I got to this place where I'm going to have to do this. I know I've done 2 BS inventories but I'm not to do what it says in the book because I got to do something here because I ain't right and I don't know how long I can weather my not rightness in abstinence before picking up a drink will start seeming like a good idea.

So my it was driven by my alcoholism but well well into sobriety. Long time into sobriety, decades,

I was personally

tradition resistant. Now in the beginning, it was very adamant in the beginning. It was just like I was the guy. If if I went to a 12 by 1212 and 12 study group and they were on a tradition, I would all of a sudden realize I was needed at a different meeting across town, you know, because I don't want it's, it's, it's just they were squirming to me. I don't even like,

I don't really hear that. That's just boring.

Boring.

And then, you know, I got my first sponsor was a past delegate. He was a doer, man. He was a doer. I met him because he brought meetings into the detox I was in twice a week,

sponsored a lot of guys, very service oriented. He didn't come from a big book consciousness. In the 70s and even up into the early 80s, the The Fellowship of Alcoholics, Thomas was big book conscious. Baron

I I, my, I was a member of a Home group that was a big book group. We'd read the big book and then people tell their story. They'd read the big book, talk about their day, but nobody really had that laser like focus that developed after Joe and Charlie

on the big book that we we developed. And so I didn't come from an error of big book consciousness. I came from an era where the people, the real solid members of a, a they were really big into amends

and they meant pay everybody back. I mean, I, I remember having a conversation with my sponsor about a drug dealer I owed money to and he, I said, you know, I don't have to pay him. He's a drug dealer. He said, you owe me money. Yeah, we have to pay him. I mean, there was no compromise and and he was, there was no compromise on service, right? There was they they would not stand up against my justifications and rationalizations.

They were very principled people

and they wanted me to do service and 12 step work and it saved my life and I got, I ended up a GSR

by default at about a year sober.

I was a Co GSR in the GSR got drunk and I ended up a year sober as a GSR and I went to my first assembly and it got something inside me going. And

when I was a couple years sober, I got tasked by that my service sponsor who was A

at that time was a delegate and leader at one of the legendary trustee Ruth. And Ruth tasked me with

doing a two hours every Sunday afternoon A12 Concepts and Service Manual study group,

which is a crowd pleaser.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I just, I'd go in there to be a couple browbeaten newcomers in there, you know, new GSR, Two or three of them I'd sponsor and the other two, they don't know why they're there, you know, Right.

But I did that for two years. And it's funny how stuff percolates into your unconscious, your subconscious, like, and then all of a sudden, 20 years later it comes back because that's when you need it. I think God works like that, doesn't he? It's, it's a funny thing. I've had things out of four years ago I've never thought about. And all of a sudden I'm in a situation of my life in this great reality deep down within me sort of percolates something out

and all it's like it becomes you. The things that I just I did it, but I didn't really think it was useful become useful.

A lot of things have been that way in my life. And you know, I I'd be started to honor the 12th traditions. When I was in general service, I went to a lot of tradition workshops,

area, district, a lot of stuff like that. I started, but I got to tell you, if you're an egomaniac with an inferiority complex like mine,

it's like I don't initially gravitate to this stuff because I'm a good soul. I gravitate it because I see opportunity in learning about the traditions to go to meetings and Lord it over the deficient ones, right.

I I am embarrassed to tell you that I there was a period of time when I was armed with knowledge of the traditions and the service manual. I would go to meetings,

hopefully looking for tradition breaks,

right, so I could rise to the occasion and, and feel that smoke superiority.

And isn't it? It's, I think it's bizarre that the, that my alcoholic ego would take principles that are designed to connect me to life and God's kids and use them to separate me from life and God's kids.

It's an there's no, there's no end to my egos deviousness. And it's, and it's, it's continual squirming for spotlight, prestige for all that, all of it. And so I, and I don't, I'm not aware of it, but it's happening. It's funny, I get in hindsight, I get a better view of me in hindsight than I ever had in the moment.

I think maybe, maybe that's a blessing from God. Maybe there were times when I was so selfish and self-centered, if I'd have seen it in the moment, I'd have killed myself. I don't know. I, I, you know, I don't know. Maybe it's a blessing. Who knows? And

well, I was.

I was sober a long time

and an alcoholic synonym and I doing a lot of step work, taking a lot of guys through steps, hearing a lot of inventories and I I've always since day one had service commitments here. I still have several a week

but

a a. Do you know your name is on this clock?

But a a started to pale. It's it started doing is really it started to pale. There's a several of us up here. It started to pale and I started, you know, those subtle, those subtle little feelings like we're you're now you're all the things that you one time lit you up that you're doing in a now you're making yourself do them

right,

Having feelings in meetings like I don't fit, but I don't recognize it as that because internally for me, it doesn't look like I don't fit. It looks like I've outgrown all of you and you're stupid, right? No, do you know what I'm saying? Right. It doesn't look. See, it doesn't. I don't I can't even admit to myself that I have those squirmy little pathetic feelings, you know, go to my suppose I just feel lonely. You know, I don't say that right?

I just, I'm lonely because you're stupid and I'm the only one here that gets this, that kind of thing. And I found myself and this has happened to me a couple times in my sobriety. Literally, I never left a A and I never left my stop doing service. I never have done it. And that's probably saved my life because it's kept my tethered here long enough and solid enough for God to do his magic here through the group conscience. And and but, but I would I was I'd get toward emotionally and

get to the edge of AA looking in. Never left,

but I and I did that. I'm moving towards the edge, one judgment at a time, right?

And I've,

I guess, I guess God has restored me to some small level of sanity because there's something that's occurred in my sobriety that is never true from before. Not only have I been able to learn occasionally from my own painful experience, I've watched you and learned from yours. And I've watched people leave AA and they leave at one judgment at a time,

one compromised action at a time, and they don't know they're leaving,

right? That's the deviousness of this alcoholic ego that I have. It's out to kill me, but it, it doesn't manifest that way inside me.

And I, there's a paragraph from step four in the 12 steps in 12 traditions that I, I just stumbled across it and it was just me. And this is me with a lot of years of sobriety.

And it says it is from our twisted relations with family, friends, and society at large that many of us have suffered the most.

We have been especially stupid and stubborn about them. The primary fact that we fail to recognize is our total inability to form a true partnership with another human being. Our ego mania digs 2 disastrous pitfalls. Either I insist upon dominating the people I know and it's for their best interest,

or I depend upon them far too much.

If I lean too heavily on people, they will sooner or later fail me and disappoint me. It's like everybody's just, you know what? The human race is a funny place. I have high hopes for all of you individually, and you always let me down, right?

They will. If we lean too heavily on people, they will sooner or later fail us, for they are human too, and cannot possibly meet our incessant demands. In this way, our insecurity grows and festers. When we habitually try to manipulate others to our own willful desires, they revolt and resist us heavily. Then we develop hurt feelings,

a sense of persecution.

You know that feeling that

they're just out to get me because I know the truth, right?

Sense of persecution and a desire to retaliate.

As we redouble our efforts at control and continue to fail, our suffering becomes acute and constant. We have not once,

not once, sought to be one in a family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society. Always I've tried to struggle to the top of the heap or to hide underneath it. This self-centered behavior blocked a partnership relation with any of those about us of true brotherhood.

I had small comprehension.

I remember reading that and almost being sick to my stomach because it was true. Because it was true. And this is and this is not because I'm a newcomer. This is how deviously and unconsciously my ego squirmed back into position again. And at one time I think I really was surrendered

for a short period of time. And then as as Harry Tebow talks about this amazing recuperative powers of the alcoholic ego.

And there came a point I was tried travel with Joe and Charlie for a number of years and did the traditions with him, did the big book, did a bunch of stuff. And somewhere in there, I think it was when I started to wake up to the 12 traditions

and what they would mean to for personal application, as if, what if we didn't have the steps and the only thing I had to to change and save my life was the spiritual principles of the 12 traditions. What would that look like?

What would it look like if if truly the common welfare you, how you're doing and what you if everybody else came first and I was last,

If I really position myself through my actions and my approach to life, That thing they talk about in the prayer of Saint Francis, that self forgetting,

what would that look like? It wouldn't look like Bob.

What would that look like?

This this idea that

my personal recovery and that's the hook because Bill's brilliant. He's got to give you, he knows how self-centered we are. So he's got to give you a little self-interest to get you to to do things that are you're resistant to. So my personal recovery depends upon a, a unity. In other words, I have to be one with you and one with here in order to survive Bob

and and unity is is a is always unconsciously been a big piece of business with me and I didn't know it. I drank alcohol

for unity.

I drank alcohol because I'm the lonely guy that can't talk to people. I can't fit. I can't talk to girls, I can't make good friendships. I don't know how to fit. And I could go into a bar and I got to just be so lonely as, because I go in there sober and four drinks in

these are my best lifelong friends. I mean, you know, 8 drinks in, I'm saying things like, I love you bro, you know, I mean, just feel that connectedness and, and, and when you, when you suffered the, the, the pangs of anxious apartness that Wilson talks about, when you suffered the loneliness of alcoholism and you're, you're unconscious of it, yet you suffer from it.

My abstinence would always be I love the feeling of connection that I got when I drank

and and not to this. Not an A a sediment necessarily. But I'll tell you the truth. If alcohol would have continued to do that for me, I would have never got sober. I'd have been willing to pay the price I'd been willing to go. I'd be willing to spend 6 months out of every year in jail if I could get high like I got high when I was 18, right?

Because I didn't think that AA could do that for me.

I thought A was just going to get me to quit drinking.

Wow, whoopee.

And so I didn't understand how how important unity is here. There's there's, there comes a time, I think in some of us where we realize that the most important thing we have in our life, it's more important than your than your husband or wife. It's more important than your kids. It's more important than your house, your job, it's your seat and Alcoholics Anonymous

that your chair here is the most important thing you have. Because without that, you're going to lose everything else anyway, right?

Now, if you're a problem drinker, that may not be true. If you're a hard problem drinker, the person who drinks horrifically and and dangerously and destroys their life, but when they get sober

they're good,

then that might not apply. But I am the chronic alcoholic. I, I don't just have an abnormal reaction alcohol, I have an abnormal reaction to abstinence and, and, and it's your fault somehow. And I haven't, I can't always figure that out, but it's always seems to be your fault.

You know, our common welfare should come first. My personal recovery, I have to be connected here and I have to do that means that you know what that means? Sometimes that means sometimes I'll have to make amends to people when I, when I, I didn't even, I didn't even do anything, but they think I did. And Sandy used to say the person with the most tools gets to do the work.

All right. So I've, I've had many, many conversations with people in a a where I watched them and they act like I've hurt them. They've act now. I don't know what I did,

but I also understand that I am very capable of stepping on people's toes and not realizing it because I just got me right here and I don't even know I'm stepping on your toes. I'm just trying to get to the next thing that's important to Bob and I don't even know it. So I've gone up to people and I say, listen, I want you to know something. I've always liked you, I love you, but I have a feeling like I did something. Maybe I don't unconsciously that stepped on your toes. And if that's the case, please

tell me what it is, man, I don't want to be like this with you. Tell me what it is. I'd like to make it right

and because nothing's more important than being one with here, because if you left unchecked, what happens is I don't run away around him. I'm going to be around him. He's an idiot too. And I can be around him and, and I resent by if I just think you don't like me, I'm going to not like you first. And not only am I going to resent you, I'll resent by default everyone who you know and likes you.

Which I'm telling you something, Alcoholics and arms can become a lonely business like that.

So nothing's more important than my chair here, you know, and that's not, that's not just true. That's true in, in everything, in every area of my life. It's true in my all my friendships, interactions with people. It's true. It's true in my business. I, I ran my company for a lot of years on the 12 traditions. I, they didn't the, the non alcoholic people who worked for me didn't know they were the 12th tradition. They just, but they, it's funny. We resist these principles. Normal people go, oh,

that's a good idea.

No, really, they do. I mean, it's like

I've had a blunge in my spots. He's with a big book for weeks to get him to go to just even no, they just oh, unity, yes, that's good group, conscience group. Oh, nice, that's great. That's very nice of you to think of that.

Well, I'm telling you,

you know, not only for my group purpose, but for my personal purpose,

there is an ultimate authority here.

I mean, it's, it's, it's the, it's the turning point. It's the crux of a it's, it's where we begin to live our life on a different basis. It's that third step prayer. It's the intention of surrender, even though we may not just saying the period doesn't surrender you. It's the intention of surrender. I'm on a different basis now,

the basis of trusting and relying upon God. And there is this altar, this ultimate authority, The book, the tradition says, expresses himself and our group conscience. I think there's a covenant in Alcoholics Anonymous that when two or more of us come together for the purpose of recovery, God's in the midst.

And I think that's true on a one-on-one individual, one alcoholic talking to another. I think it's true with my sponsor. It's been true with the people I sponsor. I mean, if you, how many people in here sponsor people? All right, I'm preaching to the choir here. You guys know this. If you sponsor people, you know that God will he'll do stuff in you.

You'll be, you'll be with someone who's struggling and suffering and the truth is you have nothing to give them. And it's a funny dynamic. It's like a portal opens up inside of me and, and stuff comes out that I don't even I I've had this, I've had this experience where I've catch myself saying something to a guy and it's blowing my mind what I'm saying to the guy, right? It's like, I should write this down. I think I'm going to need this right.

You know, we, we don't just keep this thing by giving it away. I think sometimes we get this thing by giving it away.

And I tell you, you know, they made the announcement with the cell phones and

Carl Jung talked about the collective, the collective unconscious. And, and I think that to me that I think he, what he's talking about the same thing it talks about in the book, the great reality, the same thing they talk about tradition #2 the way God will express himself. And God talks to us continually in meetings. But you got to show up where God in the, in the venues where God speaks the loudest. And he's hundreds, hundreds of times. He's talked to me in a a meetings

hundreds of times

where I'm sitting there and I'm not doing well or I got some unresolved stuff in my life or an unmade immense or something going on and it'll be some stranger there.

And he's just at the moment when I can hear it, starts talking about what's going on with me.

And the reason that in my Home group, and a lot of a lot of groups that I have a lot of respect for in Alcoholics Anonymous, we discourage anything that's a distraction in the meeting, like your cell phones. And I know, I believe me, I learned this the hard way by having my cell phone on in a meeting. And it's, it's it. Sometimes it's, it's an innocent thing you forget.

But what happens when it goes off?

There could be people sitting around you that God's talking to through the people that are sharing the meeting. And now there's like a minute and a half of blank spot in the meeting because of the cell phone.

Well, that's not that bad. Here's what's really bad. It's when it's your cell phone and it goes off. Now you don't hear anything the rest of the meeting because everyone who turned and glared at you when your cell phone off, you're going to have a conversation in your head with them for the rest of the meeting, right? And and besides, I know I know you, you you hope this, but

trust me, your ex is not going to come to their senses and be properly ashamed of themselves during the meeting.

It's not going to have God doesn't work that way was who's going to call you? Is it telemarketers want to call you?

I mean, for Oh God.

So I don't want to do anything in Alcoholics Anonymous. I try to sit quietly sometimes if I drink a lot of tea or stuff. Sometimes I hate to do this. Sometimes to get up and go to the bathroom beyond my control. It's, it's a, it's a lesser of two evils of sitting there. And yeah, no, it would be bad. It would be bad,

but I don't like to do that because I and I try to do it. I try to get almost to be like a mouse when I do it, be small and not disruptive because

if I have to do that because I don't want, I want God. I want you to be able to hear. Hear what? God's talking to you here. For God's sakes, open your ears, listen, be present here. That's why texting is such a horrific thing. We make an announcement in my Home group. No, no cell phones, no texting. Because not, not only are you not hearing God when you're texting or hearing anything else, you're consumed up in your head with you and the phone,

but the people next to you, the, the lights on and they're

just, it's bright light. Just that's why they tell you in movie theaters don't have it on because it's a distraction right now. You can, you can choose to come here and not hear anything. You can choose to come here and think we're all full of crap. You can choose to not do none of this. That is your right,

but don't interfere with someone else who's trying to struggle towards the light. Don't get between them and the light.

Don't do that.

You know, you could be, you just never know. Billy said something last night I really liked. I I too have been and I thought this for a long time. I wished we would have, you know, I wish Wilson would have held his ground on the on the long form,

but you know, he couldn't. He he, there's letters in our arc. He couldn't get people, he couldn't get groups. They didn't even want to read them because they're long. I mean, my old, my old Home group, we used to read them And, and oh, he just, he watched the newcomers who have the attention span of a gnat, you know, sitting there and there's this like, oh, make it stop.

Let's get back to the important stuff that has to do with me.

You know it's right. It's like, and I get it. I'm that way. I'm wired like that. I get it. I don't, I don't condemn people for being that way, but I understand. I understand Wilson's frustration. So when Earl Treat and I got this information just recently from GAIL, when Earl Treat wrote the short form, I always knew it wasn't Wilson. I just didn't know who until till GAIL told me

and Doctor Bob sort of sponsored Earl, I guess from the guy from Chicago and

the pressure was on Wilson and a is falling apart. He conceded to adopt those. And that's the one. Those are the there's a most members of a a don't even know the long form exists. But in the third tradition, the long form really nails it for me. And I think that the adaptation of the short form changed Alcoholics Anonymous and I I I can look at this from both sides of the street. It's brought a lot of people into a A then it's helped them and, and enrich their lives,

but it's also brought a lot of people into alcohol extonists who just have a desire not to drink and they don't suffer from alcoholism.

So it everything that every positive thing that may have come about as a result of it, I think there's an equal, if not greater negative thing that's happened to us as a result of it. See, I am, I am not an everyday member of a A because I have a desire not to drink. I'll tell you that isn't even a piece of business in my life. I, I everything that talks about in step 10 has happened for me. I've been placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected from alcohol

and it through little effort on my part. Except I just

If you treat your alcoholism, your drinking takes care of itself, right?

So I'm not an everyday member of alcoholic. So I'm because I have a desire not to drink. I mean, I do if I stop and think about it. Oh, yeah. I don't know. I love my sobriety. Yeah, but I am an everyday member of Alcoholics Anonymous because I suffer from alcoholism in sobriety,

in those feelings that from that are intermittent for me of restless, irritable discontent, the feelings of anxious, of partners and separation, the depression that that so many of us from Bill Wilson on have been plagued with

all of that. And so I come to alcohol extonomists. I work these steps, I sponsor guys, I do service here. I do all of this

because I suffer from alcoholism. I don't do it because I'm a good guy. I don't do it so people walk around and say I touch the hem of his garment. I mean, I do it because I suffer because I have a horrid, horrid case of alcoholism. I, I am a high maintenance alcohol. Oh my God, I am a high man. I I wish there's not not everybody in a is like me

there. There are people that can just they're fine. They go to a one meeting a week

and when they really want to amp up their spirituality, might go to two. They might even say hi to a newcomer once in a while. I mean, you know, they've they've made every amends that that was coming at him and they couldn't duck

I

but and they're fine and they're fun. I used to resent those people. I remember going to my sponsor and just I was angry because I'm at meetings, I'm doing all this service, I'm doing all this crap. I'm paying everything. They won't let me. They want me to pay everybody back and I'm going to, I'm going to my sponsor and I'm complaining, you know, and he just,

he said you have to play the hands you're dealt, not the hand they're dealt.

You got to find your alcoholism here. And I mean beyond the drinking, you got to find your alcoholism here, beyond the drinking and bring that to Alcoholics Anonymous because that's what we're about. Alcoholics Anonymous is not designed to treat your drinking problem. That's a benefit from it. That's a but we're really designed to treat your abstinence problem, to treat everything that happens to you that makes you subtly alone and depressed and separate in your.

And that's what we do here and that's it. And we do it very effectively. Very. It's a magical thing that happens here, the way God works through all this stuff. And

so I, I'm an everyday member of Alcoholics Anonymous because of that. And this, I love what God I, I really liked Billy's talk last night. The thing about autonomy,

a ton of the tradition of autonomy, the principle of autonomy without an awakening and and a consciousness of the other traditions and the welfare of others is is just, it's a wild card to be rebellious and crazy

and self-serving. But autonomy gives us an amazing amount of freedom. But freedom without consciousness of responsibility is anarchy.

It's destructive. And so we're, you know, and this is not true just of us. This isn't built into the consciousness of the human race. One of the the great, one of the great things God has given us, and sometimes the more hard thing he's given us is free will.

Free will. We're the only creatures on the planet that have the ability to go against your very instincts and your very nature to the point of self destruction. You'll never walk through a forest and see a, a deer smoking a crack pipe right and and drinking a bottle of wine. You'll never it doesn't happen because matter of fact, the deer is going to go Nah, Nah,

but God's given us free will. We can actually choose not only we can choose to go against him to the point where we're we're we're killing people, we're hurting people and even possibly kill ourselves, that we can actually go against that to that degree.

And the same thing is true in Alcoholics times. There's there's no enforcement here of the 12 traditions. I my sponsor tells he says something funny. He says he said it wouldn't it be nice if we had a a police, right?

You've broken the traditions. You know, we're going to take you away to a reeducation camp, you know, I mean,

but it, it doesn't happen, it's not happening. Here we are. We are granted a tremendous amount of freedom,

but wake up and and that's my sponsor has been brilliant with me to to get me to look at every action I take. And what does it speak to the newer people?

Right. What does it speak to the newer people? You want to text in a meeting? Great. You have the freedom to do that. But what's your You only get one vote and it's your actions. What you're really saying. I didn't care. I think everybody should be doing this. Do you want everybody to do that? No. No. But my case is different

as I understand the rules. I just secretly think I'm above them or they don't apply to me, they apply to everybody else. Isn't funny. I'm I think the rules should apply to everyone except me. Like the handicapped parking thing. Oh, that's important. Handicapped people need easy access. But I'm only going to be a minute

right above the rules. That's the that's my alcoholic ego. I'm above the rules.

And so we hope that this tremendous, tremendous freedom that we're given here, this autonomy

that that you also develop a consciousness of others.

There's a lot of things. There's a lot of things I don't do. I'm a selfish guy by nature. I'm a self gratifying, I'm all of that, everything we all are, I'm that. But there's a lot of things I do not do because I don't want to put that. I don't want to speak that to the newer people and give them the green light on that stuff, right? I don't want to do it.

You're more important than me. How did that happen?

Man,

tradition #5 has been

crucial in my life. I don't know. I don't know at what point in my innermost self I really got this. But when I did, it changed everything that, you know, I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. Like all of us. My primary purpose is me and my feelings and my relief and and what you think of me and my comfort and my finances and my sex and me, me, me, me, me.

And to get a level,

some a small, tiny level of self abandonment where my primary purpose is no longer me and I'm given us an alternate primary purpose. And that's to help God's kids, to help other Alcoholics. That that really is why I'm placed here on earth. That is why I've survived this, this fatal, fatal illness called alcoholism.

It's not not to be have a big house and

not to have money, not to have friends, not to. It really has nothing to do with me.

I am given a purpose that is greater than me. And I'll tell you something when you claim that and you understand at a gut level that your life is not, is not your own,

that you've been, that you've been saved from the abyss for one reason, one reason only is to take all that pain, all that struggle, all those defects, all of that, and make it useful in God's hands. All of a sudden life makes sense. All of a sudden there's a rightness about everything when it was about me. Nothing's right, nothing's right,

but when I claim my primary purpose, man, even the worst things about me, the things that were the the deepest, darkest secrets become useful here

in God's hands.

And to claim to start rather than serving myself to start to serve a principle, an incentive principles, and a purpose and ultimately a power and a people that I've made of greater importance than myself. I had a nun in Catholic school. She used to say something I thought was the stupidest thing I ever heard. She said God first,

other people second, me always last. I thought, no,

it's me first, me 2nd and just me. That's all it is. It's just me.

I, I, I suffered a lot in alcohol autonomous because I my 19 years sober. I started, I got into a depression because my primary purpose, unbeknownst to me, started being bled away by the, the abundance and the toys and the the money and the prestige until I had become my primary purpose and I started getting depressed.

A person wrapped up in themselves makes a very small package.

No matter how good you get it out here, if it ain't no good in here, if you're not, if you're not aligned with your purpose and God's will in your life, there's nothing, none of it means anything truthfully.

And so I, I, that's where I really started to claim my primary purpose. I was like almost 20 years sober.

No, I was taking the actions, but I'm in my innermost self,

not so much. And you know what? One of the great things about having a Home group and a sponsor and and sponsoring people is that you will take actions you don't feel like because you don't want to look bad.

A is the one of the few places on the planet I know of. It'll take my my hyper concerned with what you think of me and use it to make me better or to tether me here, right? I mean, I don't know any other place on the planet that'll do that.

Wilson's Wilson was brilliant when he talks about

money, property and prestige.

If he could add one more thing in there that would divert you from your primary purpose, probably sex.

And these are the things that, and

you know, there's, there's a I've shield away from a few people in Alcoholics Armistice because they're prestige predators.

I had a friend and he I found out that he gets every talk he's ever made and he, he puts it on YouTube and sends it to recovery websites. I said, are you kidding me? He said Oh no, I my message is important.

That's creepy to me,

right? I mean, if selfishness and self centeredness is the root of our trouble, isn't that like self promotions, like arming the Al Qaeda, isn't it? I mean, or, or ISIS? I mean, it's it's don't feed the things in you that should be starved and that I'll tell you, I don't know about you guys. That's my natural tendency is to feed the things that should be starved. And I will, unbeknownst to me, starve the things that should be fed.

That's why I have a sponsor.

So I sponsor guys. There's a lot of accountability in sponsor and sponsoring people because you wake up one day. They're the primary example of how to live there, how to be an A member. You're the primary example to them, how to be an A member, how to live your life and how to exist on spiritual principles. And let me tell you something. Your sponsees watch you more than you could ever imagine. They watch you. You know how you know that?

Do some self-serving out of line crap and see how many of them join you within two weeks.

Right they watch you

Tradition 7. I'd be self supporting. I don't I

I thought I first got sober. I thought step one was get a job. I mean, it was Jesus.

I had a chance. I was a year sober and I'd been working as a, as a counselor

and treatment, which against my sponsor's wishes, you know, but I'm, I'm, I have enough ego is returned that I think I'm smarter than he is. You know, I think he's just jealous because I found a way to do 12 step work and get paid for it. He never figured that out.