The 4th National Annual Drug Addicts Anonymous Conference in Jensen Beach, FL

Again, our theme is from Steerage to Captain's Table. It is in the big book and I believe the first page of there is a solution. I don't have the book in front of me or and I don't know exactly word for word, so I'm not really going to try, but you should definitely read it. We might read it again at some point. I think it actually is on the back of your card too, so how convenient.

So we're going to continue to have committee members come and introduce the rest of our speakers for the day.

I know people like see me and I was on the social media chair and everything. So I know like Chris thanked me, but but the really the truth is that I really took a backseat for the planning of this conference and I helped as much of A backseat as I can take. Is it possible? But there was a lot of people that that donated. I would say significantly more time and energy and efforts to put this on. And one of them far and away is our chairperson who we joked that he thought, you know, I thought he was in Illinois Navy a little over his head. Even he would admit that, but he

such a tremendous job as you can tell for throughout the weekend and he's actually going to come up and introduce our next speaker. So Corey

's study took a backseat, huh?

My name is Corey. I'm a drug addict, and I'm grateful to be here. Man, I'm glad that there was so many people here. I'm sure people are still coming in from lunch and everything, but man, we're glad you're here.

Last night there, at some point there was like 35 people here and Derek and I are talking and I'm like, man, this is 35 times better than I thought it was going to be.

So I'm grateful for you guys, man. Thank you.

I have the privilege of introducing Sean. He is actually my sponsor and I can honestly say that one of the reasons he is my sponsor is because of his knowledge of the traditions and that's what we wanted him to talk about.

I want to let him come up here and do do this thing because we're on a schedule.

OK, But you know what, like I'll just let him talk about it. The traditions to me are probably, I don't want to say more important because I don't know about that, but they're definitely more relevant sometimes than than the 12 steps, you know, in certain situations. So I think it's a disservice if we're not studying the traditions. And like I said, that's why that's one of the reasons he's my sponsor because he we've been to the traditions. We talked about the traditions a lot and

and I'll let him do his thing. So here's Sean.

My name is Sean McDonald. I am a drug addict,

everybody hear me okay?

All right, First off, before I get started,

Oh goodness, I just, I do, I want to thank anyone who had a part in this put in this conference on at all. I do, I know a handful, more than a handful of of the people, men and women that were involved in putting this thing on. I've been part of these kind of conferences myself and Alcoholics Anonymous and different subcommittees. And I've, I've been very privileged to do all kinds of service work for a, a in the group and out and outside of the group level as well in the district and the area level. And

I know a little bit about what goes into this, into these kind of things. I know how much apprehension and, and anxiousness there is leading up to these kind of things. I also know at the end when everybody who was on that committee sits down and takes a big sigh of relief and says, man, I can't believe. I can't believe we pulled it off or I can't believe God pulled it off through us. And it was last night was phenomenal. Thank you, Tara, for speaking. And that was the only one I heard last night because I was at work. But

anyone who's had a part of this is

to be a part of this kind of thing is those what the Big Book describes as an experience you don't want to miss and great events. So

I'm not nervous at all. I actually really enjoy this kind of stuff, although I can't say that, you know, I had a baseball coach tell me once that if you're not even a little bit nervous for a big game, that's a good thing. You want to be a little bit nervous for a big game. And my heart's definitely pounding. My heart's definitely racing. But I've learned to embrace that kind of stuff rather than run from it. I really am honored that I was asked to do the traditions And

you know, there's, there are definitely a lot of people in Stuart in this area that are probably way more qualified or have or I should say have more of a wealth of experience and knowledge on the traditions. But I do I do say that I know not just enough about the traditions to be dangerous. I also know just enough about the traditions to hopefully

present them in a way where like I've found like my service sponsor taught me not just to help them be applied in my Home group and in a as a whole, but in my personal life as well. And, and what Corey said about them being more important or more or, you know, I know that the 12 steps are paramount to the individual sobriety. Without that, we die, we drink.

The 12 traditions are just as important to the group survival and to the unity of Alcoholics Anonymous or Drug Addicts Anonymous. And

without the fellowship as a whole, there is no group, there is no personal recovery, and we all die anyway. So in a lot of ways, they are equally as important as the 12 steps and I have learned through experience how to apply them in my daily life. I do my best to apply them at home, which is a matter of fact. At the end of this, I want to, I want to read something that my wife and I did at our wedding. We, we listen to some speakers in a A

before we got married and

they adapted the 12th traditions in relationships and in marriages and when two people are in recovery and we adapted those ourselves. And we read them at our wedding as our wedding vows. And they're very powerful to me. We read them every few months together just to remind each other. But these really can be applied in every facet of life.

So before we get really into it, I just want to say that like I said, I'm a drug addict. I got sober in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. So I will use references. I'll do my best to use the word drugs and narcotics, but I will, I guarantee we'll say alcohol. And I know it's not a big deal, but I, I feel like I have to at least throw that out there. I got, like I said, sober with the big book. Thank goodness for that. There really is no other way from, in my experience to get sober. That is the only book that we have that has specific a specific set of practical directions on how to stay sober and how to find God.

Everything else is really just theory and pontification and stuff like that. And it's all good information, I'm sure. But what's going to really that that message that has to have depth and weight and that came out of the big book. So something when I talk about some of these traditions, they are definitely going to be some of the experience may be slightly different than what we have in Drug Addicts Anonymous. I know Drug Addicts Anonymous is a new fellowship overall, but it all applies. I promise that. And if you just listen with an open mind and open heart, we can all hopefully learn something from today.

My sobriety date is May 8th of 2011. I have a Home group. I have a service position in that Home group. I do service outside of that Home group on the district level. I've been doing that for a little over six years now. I've held various positions within the group and outside of the group. I've been the archives chair of District 6. I am currently the Bridge in the Gap coordinator of District 6. I've done multiple things like I said, within the group and without the group. I've helped start different groups.

I've been blessed to be part of that process to help get a group going, some of which aren't around anymore, some of which

are still going strong. And that's the one thing that I've learned importantly about groups. You know, in a small town like Stuart, if there's three different Friday night 8:00 meetings after time, you know, not all of them may stay strong groups. After a while, there's just not a big enough town and you go into a bigger, you know, metropolis and maybe so you can have many different groups at many different times on the same nights. But in a small town like this, you know, if you have too many groups and people start groups, whether you want to call it a resentment in a coffee pot, whatever you want to call it, just the fact that

there's a slot and there's a building and there's a space and there's a willingness to start a group. Sometimes God has groups be around for specific lengths of time to help specific people and to do specific things. And then sometimes those groups stay. Sometimes those those groups don't last. I know my Home group, which is the Monday night 830 group at fellowship hall. We are a big book study, by the way. And, and that group went through probably four or five, six different format changes before we finally settled on a big book study format. And it's been that way for quite a few years now. And it's a very, very strong group,

a lot of people that are members of that group and there's good representation. And I feel, you know, we carry out our fifth tradition, which in my opinion is the most important for the group, which we'll get into that pretty well. There's always room for improvement naturally, but I feel that pretty well. So I love the history of Alcoholics Anonymous and I don't want to spend too much time on this. I really want to get into the traditions. But I do want to point out that

in the late in 1939 and the early 1940s, Bill Wilson started receiving. He started getting inundated with letters

from groups that were springing up all over the place around the country and some outside the country, especially in Canada and stuff. And, and all of a sudden he started to get these letters with that were raising some real concerns for him and for Doctor Bob and some of the early members and for the groups themselves that they were starting to run into problems. They were starting to run into issues. And Bill Wilson was so he had so much foresight in so many things. He knew that like the two biggest things that Alcoholics Anonymous was going to face going forward was the infighting within ourselves and our

with the outside world.

There were plenty of people in those times and there still are today that that think, you know, they know better than what's been set forth, that they know exactly what's wrong with the fellowship and they know exactly what's wrong with that group member and with that specific group. And some of them keep it to themselves. A lot of them, they like to localize it. And Bill knew that was going to happen. And he started to formulate these traditions in the early 1940s. And between, I believe it was November 1947 and December 1948,

the Grapevine was already out. And he published in one by one each tradition and each article through that entire year, from November to December 1947 to 1948, and really kind of went in depth and went in detail about what its tradition was. It wasn't until 1950 at the first International Convention in Cleveland, OH, that the traditions were formally adopted to Alcoholics Anonymous as a fellowship. And if you think that's that's 15 years, well, that's yeah, it's 15 years later from when the fellowship began. That's

11 years after the Big Book was published, you know, 13 years after Bill started in the Big Book. So there was a significant amount of time that while Bill was trying to put forth these traditions within the groups, the groups were not biting. As a matter of fact, a lot of Bill, as you know, Bill traveled all over the place to speak, all over the country and some outside of the country. And a lot of the groups after a while would say, Bill, hey, we want you to come speak, but do us a favor, you know, leave that tradition nonsense, you know, out of your talk. Just stick to your story.

So much so that that

it really became a concern for Bill. But once again, he kind of knew that God was going to protect this thing because there were enough people with right mindset that were trying to set this thing forth. He knew that him and Doctor Bob wouldn't be around forever. And he, you know, I don't want to say a foolproof Pam, but it's a pretty darn good structure that he left Alcoholics Anonymous with. And, and, and so, so much so that many different fellowships like Drug addicts Anonymous has adopted the same exact service structure or something very similar. And

say what you want about a, a over the years, I, I know some people that,

that say it's gone downhill, it's this and that. And there definitely are pockets of it. And there definitely are meetings that, you know, you want to call them, you know, whatever kind of meetings that they may not be focused on the book of recovery. And some, some may be better than others, but that's the beauty of it. We do have so much access to Alcoholics Anonymous. We do have so many avenues and resources to get to Alcoholics Anonymous and other fellowships like it. And I know the old saying, you know, when the student is ready, the teacher appears. I know I was never interested in sobriety

before that. Before I was,

I was never interested in any of that stuff. And I got to AAA, I got to a halfway house right down the road from here actually. And I got taken in by a group of men, whether they saw something to me or not. I don't think I was any special or different than that, that they saw something in me. But I fell into a group of men that really quote UN quote, raised me what I believe to be in the truth. I say that I want to say the right way or the wrong way, but they raised me in the truth about my condition. They didn't dumb it down for me. They didn't tell me to sit on step one for a year. They didn't. If your sponsor told you that

I'm not your sponsors right now, I'm wrong. But they got me into the work quickly and I needed that. I don't know if I needed to be done with the steps by a certain amount of time or by out of four step by a certain amount of time. But I know that I needed to be occupied. Something needed to occupy me because you know, left to my own devices, I drink very quickly, right? I learned very quickly that I drink and we stay sober. And that's kind of the whole premise of the 12 traditions. So

that being said, I want to get right into it as best I can.

And how many people? First off, how many people are here that are less than 90 days sober or clean?

Awesome. Welcome everybody.

How? How many people in here with a year or more?

That's phenomenal. So the cool thing about these conferences, this is the fluff. This is the marshmallow fluff of what I get to do right? The real 12 step work is going to the detox is going to the hospitals, answering that phone call at 2:30 in the morning when I desperately, desperately don't want to, but I know I have to because it's my duty from God and my responsibility and because somebody did it for me. That's the real work. Sitting down with another, another man, or if you're a woman with a woman or a man or woman, whatever. And, and taking a fifth step, listening to a fifth step, doing a fist step, making a man's

reading the book. That's the real, you know, 12 step work in Alcoholics Anonymous, helping set up these conferences like this, that part of the service structure. This is the fluff. And what, what I'm going to talk about here is, you know, most of you are attuned to the 12 steps and the 12 traditions and, and the truth about our conditions in the big book. You know,

I would love to be able to bring this talk or talks like it from other people to, to specific groups that, you know, may, may, may need some help and may need some guidance in that area. So I know that people here going to be a little attuned to it. How many people in here? So these are the 12 traditions. You know, an AA, they're pretty much the same. A couple words are different. This is what you see on pretty much every clubhouse wall or most meetings around the country and, and out of the country. These are the 12 traditions, right? How many people know that there's a long form of the 12 or how many don't know there's a long form,

right? I didn't know there was a long form of the traditions for quite some time. Bill Wilson wrote the long form of the traditions before he wrote the short form. He wrote the short form after a lot of that stuff when the groups would be like, hey, we want you to come talk. But man, none of that tradition nonsense. And there's some groups that read the long form of the traditions at their meetings like maybe once a month or so. And it's long. Like it takes up a lot of time, the meetings half over by the time you're done with it. However,

I truly believe

in my heart and from what I've learned and experienced that we as a fellowship, AAA and at California, whatever you want to, we shortchange ourselves. If we don't understand the long form, we don't, or at least get introduced to the long form of the 12 traditions because some of them, as I'm going to read some of them they have, they have some different meaning. When you start to read the long form, there's some verbiage and some words that really make things stand out in a different way. And I'm going to read the short form in the long form as I grow through with it.

And I have set an alarm so I do know exactly where where I'm going to stop and I will I will not go over because we're good with the tradition talk to do if I go way over the time.

So the first tradition,

that's the 12 concepts. You don't want to hear those yet.

All right, so I'm going to read the short form in the long form and then talk a little bit about each one. So number one, our common welfare should come first. Personal recovery depends upon a a unity. That's the short form, long form. Each member of Alcoholics Anonymous is but a small part of a great whole. AA must continue to live or most of us will surely die. Hence our common welfare comes first, but individual welfare follows close afterward. Like we said before, if there's no group and no service structure, there's no individual recovery. So even though we talked about the newcomer,

most important person in the room and they are don't, don't get me wrong, you know, if we have a meeting, it actually happened not too long ago at one of my home groups. We, we had a meeting and there was, there was a gentleman. He was, he was drunk at the time and he was wet and he was belligerent. And it, the group put up with it and put up with it and put up with it. And then very simply, a couple of the men in the group asked the guy, Hey, let's go in the other room, let's go outside and talk. And it was as simple as that. And there were some people at the next business meeting that brought that up and said, well, he should have been able to stay. And you know, we weren't kicking him out by any means. But

what happens, you know, you have a group full of 50 people and one person disrupting it like that. What happens to the 10 or 12 or even one other person that desperately needs to hear a message of recovery and can't because of of the distraction in the belligerentness going on over here? Nobody kicked the man out. They took him outside. They sat with him. They gave him some cigarettes and some coffee, maybe even a few bucks, and they talked with him. Whether anything penetrated doesn't really matter. The group itself, the individual or excuse me, the group welfare shine forth in that and that

all the time. That's one of the reasons why we don't cater to any individual. I have seen meetings when there's a newcomer and somebody raises their hand, says they're new. They maybe, you know, do a quick group, a group conscience to say, you know, let's change it to a step one meeting or something like that. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. However,

you know, if there's a format for your group, that format should be followed as close as possible. Not to say that we have to be so rigid that we can't, we can't separate ourselves in that, but we have to follow that because again, yeah, this person's sick and suffering. But what about what if the topic was step 9 and there's somebody in there that's desperately afraid to start their 9th step and they really need to hear what's about to be shared and we just all of a sudden cater to this one other person over here? So

individual welfare follows close second to the group. But again, without the group,

we're all dead anyways. Without the people that came before me, without my sponsor who had a sponsor, who had a sponsor, had a sponsor who had been qualified through the work and had been through the 12 steps. Without them, they couldn't teach me anything. They couldn't share their experience with me, right. So if I don't have those people, the backbone of the group, so to speak, the service structure, the the those things already in place, I'm going to perish anyways.

So that's really what step one's all about, group unity. It's kind of like

I always equated to when I was growing up, I got was real competitive in sports and we'd go out for recess and we'd play basketball. And you know, one of my closest friends, this kid named Joe McDaniel, we'd go out in the back and we were always on opposite teams. And man, during the during the game, we would get so competitive and we'd get in each others faces. There'd be so much animosity. But as soon as that whistle blew, it was time to go inside. It was like

we left it all in the court and just went about our business. You go to a business meeting of a functioning group and there's going to be people on the far left and the far right. And really and truly, the fact that they're on both extremes is what helps keep fellowships. And like Alcoholics Anonymous, indeed, what helps keep us centered. It's what helps keep us centered because if everyone always just agrees with this person because they have the most amount of sobriety, well, that person's human. They're not always going to be right, no matter how much they think they are

right. That's why we have our our service structure. That's why we have minority opinion.

If you know, 8 out of 10 people say they, they vote on something one way and the group chairperson asked for a minority opinion and that person who had a no vote wants to share that minority opinion. I've been in many meetings and many, you know, district meetings and group meetings where I've heard that minority opinion and my mind changes or I start to think, I start to entertain some other ideas. So the unity of the group.

Has to come first, and that's kind of what bleeds into the second tradition. So the second tradition

is the only tradition that's actually longer in the short form than it is in the long form, which makes the traditions very, very alcoholic. So in the short form it says for our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority, a loving God as he may express himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants. They do not govern

the long form says the exact same thing, except it doesn't have our leaders of a trusted servants that do not govern Bill. I believe added that a little later, because by the time this was all coming too, like I said, he was getting all those letters and he really could start to see there were a lot of people in a lot of different groups around the country that really were starting to fancy themselves as like, I'm the leader of the group. I can remember

at our old fellowship hall in downtown Stewart, I was standing outside one day with one of the homeless guys. He's like the Duke of the homeless Beau. He's like, he's like knows everybody. He's like the Prince of all the Prince of the poppers

and very nice homeless man, by the way. And we're standing outside in the police officer came up and wanted to know where a certain specific person was. And I honestly didn't even know the guy. I don't think Bo did either. But we just said sorry, man. Like, like, we don't know who it is. We can't really help you. And he was like, well, well, who's in charge? And Bo, you know, half drunk. Well, everybody and the cops like what it's like. Yeah. You know, And that's exactly it. There's nobody. Now each group does have its people that, you know, you probably look to for guidance and for, you know, the elder statesman as opposed

bleeding deacons. But really and truly there's there's no leaders in the group or their excuse me, there are leaders, but nobody governs, right? Each group is going to have its leaders just like we talked about the people that have been there a while and have experience with the traditions that have experience with the steps and have held most of the positions. And that's why we have the spirit of rotation. That's why we have specific commitments that my Home group we do. Some commitments are a year commitment, some are two year commitments. We even have monthly rotating commitments for the newcomer, you know, to come make coffee for a month and then you can be a greeter for a month or take out the trash or chips or whatever.

You know, there's a reason why it's rotating. If there's a reason why, you know, one person isn't the chairperson of the group for 10 years or the treasurer for this amount of time or that amount of time, there's a reason for that. And just like I would imagine what happened many times with planning of this conference, there's different opinions and there's small even arguments that I would venture to say on how things should go. And the great thing about Alcoholics Anonymous? It is a true democracy in its truest sense of the form, which basically means

the group votes.

I could be so vehemently against a certain motion that's getting put in and everybody else can be for it, and it doesn't matter how much I bitch and moan if that vote goes in favor of it. That's the answer right now. That doesn't mean that some people don't have influence and they share something like we talked about the minority opinion. That happens on the other side too. You bring a motion up, you start to give the background, you start to give the information on it. And that does a lot of times sway certain people, especially if

certain people are new and they may not know a lot about the fellowship, but a lot about the service structure.

But there's always going to be those, those voices of reason inside groups. And the ones that don't, the ones that have those groups that go way far out there, those groups don't usually last, right? When people do try to govern and people do try to run the show and be the boss, those things don't necessarily last. They might for a while, but the natural course of events, attrition kind of takes care of itself. And, and it says if the group conscience votes on a certain way, we believe that to be God's voice speaking through the group conscience.

And if I'm connected and I'm in tune and I understand what this process is about, I can't argue with that. Whether I like it or not, I leave the basketball game on the court and I go about my business. We let it go.

Tradition 3, The only requirement for a membership is a desire to stop drinking. This is one that I do want to touch on a little bit, and I think it's perfect because we're not even in Alcoholics Anonymous technique, we're in Drug Addicts Anonymous. I think it's perfect, and I think there's a lot of misconception on this tradition, but listen to this. Listen to the long form. It's pretty pointed. Our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. The example I like to use that was taught to me,

if Mother Teresa, you feed Mother Teresa enough booze and enough drugs

speak, she gets behind the wheel of a car and gets a DUI and has to go to court and the court says, hey, you got to go to AAI. Bet you Mother Teresa would have a desire to stop drinking, right? That does not make her alcoholic. Suffering from alcoholism or suffering from drug addiction is a whole lot different than a desire not to drink, right? I have a desire not to eat eggplant. I can't stand eggplant. That doesn't make me an eggplant addict, right? I just, I just have a desire not to do it.

Suffering from alcoholism, as the book points out,

and it talks about it in chapter 2 about the moderate drinker, the hard drinker and the real alcoholic and it says the hard drinker appearing to them at a paraphrase, but a period. Actually, you know what, I have a book, let me not paraphrase. It's very simple. Then we have a certain type of hard drinker. He may have the habit habit badly enough to gradually impair him physically and mentally. It may cause him to die a few years before his time. If a sufficiently strong reason, ill health, falling in love, change of environment, warning of a doctor becomes operative,

this man can also stop or moderate, although he may find it difficult and troublesome and may even need medical attention. He may have to go to New Horizons a few times to get detoxed. He may have to go to a 28 day treatment program. Right. But then it says, what about the real alcoholic? He may start off as a moderate drinker. He may or may not become a continuous hard drinker. I jumped right over that phase. But at some stage of his drinking career, he begins to lose all control of his consumption, his liquor consumption,

once he starts to drink.

The person who is a hard drinker that can stop or moderate with a little bit of help

on the secular plane, the material plane, the non spiritual plane is not a real alcoholic. It's it's as simple as that. So when we talk about suffering from alcoholism, that means I am beyond human aid. That means AB and C of how it works are absolutely true in my life. That means without a spiritual solution, I will drink and I will get high and I will die.

That's what's suffering from alcoholism means

and it goes on to say. Hence we may refuse none who wish to recover, nor ought a membership ever depend upon money or conformity. Any two or three Alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an AA group, provided that as a group they have no other affiliation. I want to make two quick distinctions before I move on #1 an AA meeting and an A A group. Completely different things. There are a lot of

a A meetings out there that are not a A groups and what I mean by that, so

I'll use my Home group as an example. Not that we are the example, but it's the one that I'm familiar with. Obviously

we are an A A group. We have a service structure. We have rotating committees. We pie out to district, area, GSO and inner group. We take meetings into detoxes. We take meetings into halfway houses, we take meetings into treatment centers. We do our best to live by that 5th tradition that is an A A group. There's some A groups like that. Have they meet multiple times a week, right? The Gulf Stream group meets multiple times a week under that name at a certain location. There's plenty of other meetings

a little more frequent up north and out Western California and stuff that a specific group meets multiple times a week or multiple times in different places. An AA meeting can just simply be, you know, if three of us wanted to go outside on the back deck and open up the big book or the 12 and 12 and start having, we can have a meeting anywhere, right? We have, we have an, a, a meeting, a big book meeting on my friend's porch every Tuesday night. That's an, a, a meeting. It's not necessarily a group that has no service structure. We don't have any committees. We don't have any, any rotation. We just simply, it's a so we get together,

we open up the big book, we read it and we shall help each other learn how to do it. Still very effective in helping people learn sobriety and how to stay sober, but not in a group. So if anyone in here has ever been quote UN quote scolded or yelled at for going to an AA meeting and saying that they're a drug addict or an addict or whatever. If somebody scored you or yelled at your, shame on them, not you. Shame on them. Because it's our job as recovered Alcoholics and recovered addicts to teach,

to teach love and tolerance

and to teach what alcohol, what A is and what a A is not, what DAA is and what DA is not. The way it was described to me, they said, Sean, we don't care if you got 10 different afflictions. We don't care if you're a sex addict, a chocolate addict, a hoarder, an alcoholic, a gambler and a drug addict, as long as alcoholism is one of them.

You belong in Alcoholics Anonymous. And as my sponsor said to me, son, you're very fortunate. You can go to AAA, you can go to California, you can go to DAA, you can go to wherever A and you can recover by using their 12 steps. What about the person who comes in the rooms of and I'll use again. This is where I talked about my experience in A. A is going to shine through a little bit more. The person who comes through the rooms and they are pure alcoholic. Whether there's a lot of them are not anymore doesn't matter. The person who comes in the rooms and is a pure alcoholic doesn't really have experience with drugs.

And they hear me and a few other people talking about, excuse me, shooting up Dilaudid. And they say, whoa,

whoa, whoa. It's a little uncomfortable. This isn't for me. I don't belong here. And they turn around and they walk out and they drink and they die. They never make it back because that was their first introduction. That's what was explained to me. Sean, you can go to these different fellowships, but we need to have singleness of purpose for the person that specifically is just an alcoholic. And that applies. That's why DAA is so cool, man, because you can have multiple, you know, any different drugs, you know, I won't use the word drug of choice because that implies that I actually have a choice. And the book tells me I don't I've

that power of choice, but whatever drug I might have been more into than this or that, I can come and I can talk about that. I can identify as that,

right? So if you've ever been scolded or yelled at or told to get out of our meeting because of this, shame on them, not you. And I want, I want to make that very clear to everybody. I know the truth about my condition. I know that I'm a heroin addict and that I love Xanax way too much,

but I also know that I'm an alcoholic to the bone and I had a qualified sponsor that helped me figure that out. He didn't tell me I was or wasn't. He helped me figure it out mainly by going through the 1st the doctors opinion the first few chapters and having me relate some of my experience and it did a couple other things that really helped me come to that conclusion. There's no doubt in my mind because I have that obsession of the mind and I absolutely have that physical craving and and that's all I want to say about that.

So if you have it, if you have the whatever fellowship you're in, you have that truly you can say that in your core

addiction to whatever alcoholism, whatever, you belong in that fellowship. All I would say is that respect, whatever fellowship you're in, I don't go to church. I don't go to Catholic Church and start talking about Hinduism from the pulpit out of respect.

I go to drug addicts anonymous. I'm a drug act and I'm an alcoholic. Synonymous. I identify as an alcoholic #4 Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or a as a whole.

OK,

with respect to its own affairs of the long form, each A A group should be responsible to no other authority than its own conscience. But when its plans concern the welfare of neighboring group, neighbouring groups also, those groups ought to be consulted. And no group, regional committee or individual individual should ever take any action that might greatly affect A A as a whole without confirming with the trustees of the General Service Board. On such issues. Our common welfare is paramount.

You'll notice that some of these traditions tie back into one. So they talked about common welfare, which is what we talked about in Tradition 1. So I've been sober a little over eight years

and I'm still looking for a really good example of affecting Alcoholics Anonymous as a whole or each individual group. Yes, I know about the level of press, radio, TV and films, and today Internet. But

if your group wants to do chips for every day, every month of the year, that's called autonomy. You can do it, right? If you want to have cake every single night of the week, I think that's a fantastic idea, right? Have cake

if I want to go on Jimmy Fallon and talk about my A group

that would be highly against the traditions and we'll get more into that Tradition 11 tradition for for all its misunderstanding, I want to say two things. Number one, it is not to be used as AI can do whatever I want. Tradition

#2

Tradition 4 is the guidepost that I use to see if I'm out of line with the other 11 traditions.

I can use that as a guidepost. So

in tradition 3, if my group is wanting to make a whole bunch of rules

and regulations, I need to look at tradition 4 and say, wait a second, is that affecting other groups or a as a whole, right. If I'm making rules about like membership rules about why you're not allowed to be in our group

and you go to some other, that person goes to another group and shares that that's affecting AAA or other groups as a whole,

right? Or affecting other groups. If I want to go, like we talked about, if I want to get on Facebook and I want to start spouting off Alcoholics Anonymous or DA or, you know, my group and my this, and I especially want to start naming other people that's affecting other groups for a as a whole, right. So tradition 4 is not to be used as AI can do whatever I want tradition. And it should be the guideposts. It should be the acid test, quote UN quote that I base. Am I in violation or in concordance with these other 11 traditions?

And I'm going to just kind of stop there with that one because we can go on and on. And, and my opinion on outside issues in Tradition 10 comes into play on this one big time. So I'm going to stop right there

#5 each group has the one primary purpose, to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.

Number 55 in the long form. Each Alcoholics Anonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity having but one primary purpose, that of carrying this message to the alcoholic who still suffers.

This is why we have in. If you're part of a group that's fortunate enough to have a business meeting once a month, This is why we have what's called the group inventory. It's basically a fourth step for the group. It lets me and the group members see just how well or not well our group is following or in in line with the traditions.

I can tell you that I love going to my Home group. It is a social aspect for me as well. My wife, who's in a A, is a member of our Home group. We bring our girls to our Home group, you know,

or my daughters. I mean, we, you know, it's, it is a social event for us. I love seeing my friends. I love seeing the guys that I sponsor. I love seeing other people and new people and stuff like that. I, I love sharing at my Home group because it's, it's my Home group. It's the best group in the world, I think, right? We do the, you know, we carry the message. I love it. I love all of it.