The topic of step 1 at a Sponsorship through the 12 steps workshop in London, UK

OK, so my name's Tim, I'm an alcoholic. I haven't prepared this in the sort of traditional sense of doing an outline or something.

I just thought I'd wing it. And so hopefully that will work. So it's not necessarily going to be very linear.

Before we get on to step one, though, you've got to make sure they're ready for step one.

It's no good launching into step one unless you've got someone that knows what they're in for.

And the thing is with saying, well, how do you how do you get someone to step one?

Well, it's almost like the question, how long is a piece of string? Well, it depends how long the piece of string is.

It depends on so many different factors. There are so many different types of people who've got so many different types of experience.

So I'm going to outline a few different types of person. It won't be exhausted, but it'll cover some of the main bases.

So the first one is someone who is completely new to recovery, completely new to AA.

As Margaret Atwood said, doesn't know that, doesn't know their arse from a hole in the ground.

As far as AA is concerned, as far as alcoholism is concerned.

And this is the easiest person, in fact, to get to step one because you don't have to clear lots of wreckage out of the way.

And also they've probably been drinking in the last week or so.

So they're usually a little bit chastened by that and just a tiny little bit willing.

They don't know they're allowed to argue with you yet. That comes within about three or four weeks.

They figure that out. Someone tells them and then they start to argue. But the really new ones are very good.

But I think it's very helpful for people to know a little bit about the fellowship.

And so I would always make sure they go to a gazillion meetings.

And if their mind is still working, I get them to read the big book up to page 164.

A lot of people these days have the rock bottom is higher than it was 20 years ago.

On average, I think people seem to be a bit less damaged cognitively than they used to be.

It's different with drugs, some drugs. It's actually the other way around.

But with the alcoholics, they tend to be readers able to read something around.

They tend to be able to read and that they're often spiritually literate.

They've often read spiritual books, which they hadn't 20, 25, 30 years ago, by and large.

So you can give them that if that if they're not readers.

I give them good old fashioned talks to listen to, like Clancy, who seems to and Don Pritz who get who seem to get through to people very effectively.

So they've got some sense of what AA is about.

And at the very least, I'll outline why we have the steps in the first place.

And of course, you're sort of begging the question, really, because to explain why you need all of the steps,

you have to give them a little bit of an understanding of step one. The steps two to 12 are there because of step one.

Namely that left to my own devices, I'll drink.

If I drink, I'm going to drink buckets. I might never stop it. It'll kill me.

So I need something to change me. So I don't have the first drink.

So people have got to be bought into the whole thing or it won't work.

They won't know why they're doing it. If people understand why they're doing it,

there's a much bigger chance that they'll actually do the work which is required and not get too bogged down in step one.

There's a lot of material in step one. So that's the person that's totally new.

You've got to give them an introduction. The next character is someone who's been bumbling around AA for anywhere

between a few months and two or three years in kind of good old fashioned meetings where you go along and you just,

you know, people just share about their week and there's a little bit about drinking,

a little bit about gratitude and things are so much better now.

I'm not drunk and a few sort of tips so that they haven't really been exposed to the programme.

And again, these these these people are there's less work to do with preparation.

Normally, if they ask for sponsorship, it's because they've reached a crisis.

They've figured out that there's something more than just meetings.

And they've they've isolated you as someone that kind of knows something that they don't.

And so the sell is relatively easy there and there. I definitely get people to read through the first one, six, four pages.

They're physically sober for a while. They're almost always capable of reading.

I'll come to the case of people that can't because I've had that.

The hardest case is people who've been five, 10, 15, 20 years in a with or without relapsing.

They've been to a hundred thousand meetings. They've, in inverted commas, been through the steps a number of times.

But they're still crazy. And they've got all sorts of little bits of knowledge.

But it doesn't add up to anything because all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle haven't been put together there.

You've got to come at it very differently because they sort of know everything already and might know all the individual bits of information.

As I say, they haven't put them together. And there the sell is why what I'm offering with a path through the big book is different than what they've been doing.

And I simply do that with my own experience about how when I did a piecemeal with little bits here and little bits there, I got some progress and some results.

But it fell short of getting the rocket into orbit to get the rocket into orbit.

Every single NASA needs to get everything right. If it gets one thing wrong, if it misses one thing, the rocket ain't going to orbit.

There might be a big bang somewhere, but it ain't going to get into into orbit.

So, again, that's a different that's a different question.

And also there are lots of problems with taking someone through step one if they've been through the steps before,

but are kind of nuts or all over the place or they've drunk again or something like that,

because what you've got to do is undo a whole load of stuff before you build afresh, before you build anew.

So people need to know what they're in for.

They also need to be prepared for some hard work.

So, and I don't make any bones about this, and you sort of, I do it slightly apologetically.

I say, well, I'm sorry to have to break this to you, but it's going to be hard work.

And I totally understand if you don't want to do it. I wouldn't want to do it unless I absolutely had to.

I read my friend Tom says you want to hold out as long as you can.

You want to rush into this and it says in the big book about, you know, if they want to proceed straight away,

don't let them make sure they think over it for 24 hours.

Otherwise, I'll say you rushed them if you go into it.

So what I've got to prepare people for is is this.

It's a little sequence. Number one. Do you have a problem?

What's your problem? And you've got to isolate the fact that there is a problem with the substance.

What one actually interesting thing. A lot of people have been sober a while.

Don't think they've got a problem with alcohol anymore.

They think, well, you know, now I've got a thinking problem, not a drinking problem.

And now I've got life problems, not realizing that unless those are solved adequately with a spiritual awakening,

they're going to drink again. It's not. The other steps are not disconnected from step one.

The steps are there because of step one. And the benefit to one's life is this is the side effect.

So they've got to recognize as a problem that they've got the problem that the steps are there to solve.

They may have a hundred other problems, too, but have they got the problem that the steps are there to solve?

Namely, a mind which is so broken, they need to power grace themselves to be the higher authority to turn to.

So that, as Grady O.H. says, you want to put your life in the hands of God because God isn't thirsty.

They've got to recognize that number. So for number one, they've got a problem.

Number two, they don't have a solution. And to recognize whatever solution they think they've got so far in totality hasn't worked.

So the whole thing's got to be set aside completely. Otherwise, any new information you give them,

if it's consistent with what they already know, it'll they'll let it in.

And they'll admit it if it's inconsistent, that their antibodies will reject it.

And they'll end up no further ahead because they'll only admit the information that is consistent with their existing worldview.

So there's got to be the sense that although you may have the person may have achieved a lot and understood a lot and learned a lot,

everything needs to be set aside. Anything which is true and good and useful will come back through the course of the process.

So they won't be permanently getting rid of anything useful.

They're just temporarily setting it aside. And to do that, the best way.

I had someone say to me this was a sort of that it was someone on a tape,

but they were, as it were, having a dialogue with the audience and I was listening to the tapes.

I was having the part of the dialogue and it went something like this.

You know, how old are you? And I thought to myself at the time, I'm 30, 34, whatever I was, 34, 35.

And are you happy? No, was the answer. I struggled to get to that initially.

Well, I'm not sure. Am I? I'm happier than I used to be. I'm happier than lots of people I know.

I'm happier than the people at my home group. But fundamentally, I was there were things I was unhappy about.

And that poisoned the whole thing. And it then went like this.

So you've been trying for 35 years to be happy and you're not happy.

If your plan was ever going to work, don't you think you would have kicked in by now?

If it hadn't kicked in by now, when do you think it was going to kick in?

So I had to admit complete defeat. And it's it doesn't take long.

This is a 24 hour, 48 hour process for people to admit the complete.

I don't find it takes long. Just the question needs to be asked. Are you happy?

No. Do you want to set aside everything you think, you know, for a new experience? Yes.

Good. Are you willing to let go of your old ideas and are you willing to go to any lengths?

If they say yes, with are you willing to go to any lengths? I've got a daily programme that I give people.

Actually, there's a little note I'm going to put in the chat. If I'm if the chat does the chat work.

Yes. That link even is now.

Oh, yeah. So some. Oh, by the way, icebreaker questions. That's the icebreaker questions.

That's to get to know them. I adjust those if they're super new. Half those questions won't make sense.

So I've got a different version for people who are totally new.

But you want to get as much information about them as possible so that you know how to pitch it.

But the thing if they say they're willing to go to any lengths.

I just sent a second link, which is the daily programme.

And that also includes basically the notion that they're going to be doing step work daily.

Schedule it first thing in the morning because then it won't get bounced by anything.

So go to bed early. Get up super early. Get up before the cat gets up.

Get it. Get up for the kids. Get up. Do your step work early,

because then you've spent all day smugly thinking, I've done my step work today.

And you can tell everyone you've already done your step work like everyone you speak to.

You can brag about that if you leave it till night. Number one, it won't happen.

Number two, you create guilt and then the guilt actually prevents you from doing it because you don't want to admit the guilt.

So you pretend the cause of the guilt is not there. And then you forget to do your step work and you're not forgetting.

You're repressing the knowledge of it. So you don't need to feel guilty about it. Best way around that.

Do it in the morning. I always, always get sponsors.

Now, if they do some step work to find a gang of little people who have also done the steps to run the step work past,

preferably people who will challenge and not just be nodding dogs.

Because once it's once they've talked a topic through with three people, everyone gets everything.

This I've ceased to have problems with people understanding things.

This is me trying to explain something for some reason that there's something that happens when you're the sponsor.

You're the authority figure. And this barrier comes up and it causes communication problems.

However, nicey-nicey you do it, you can get it right on your side.

If you're the sponsor, you're good. You're the problem because you're the authority figure.

So sometimes with the initial processing of information, they need to bash it out with someone else who they don't have an authority problem with.

So and that's what people did with me when I was new. They said, you know, my sponsors have taught you all your little friends about step one.

Don't just talk to me about it. Talk your step four through with all your little friends at your home group, which I did.

I did a bit more structure, but I give people a list of people who I know have got a good sound understanding of the programme.

So the daily programme is terribly important because they won't that they won't do the work unless it's supported with lots of people,

lots of meetings and something which kind of starts to give them access to a higher power with steps 10, 11 and 12 straight away.

Now, as regards step one, it's I'm sorry, I'm going on a bit longer than I was.

Is that all right, Alastair? OK. Is it such an unusual thing to actually talk about?

I kind of don't care. It just takes as long as it takes because it just isn't the opportunity to do this all the time.

The actual step one. I'm going to start with the hardest case and then work backwards.

The hardest case is people that can't read for educational reasons and they can read the words.

They can. They can. If you ask them to read out the sentences, they can read out sentences.

But you'll the sign is where the biggest sign is when people don't see the full stop at the end of the sentence and they carry on reading as though there isn't a full stop.

So they're literally just pronouncing the words. If that's happening with the ends of sentences, it ain't going to go in.

You have to read it with them line by line and make sure they get it.

This is also the case with people who are still acting out with food or sex.

Can't read. I've needed to go through it.

I had someone that was many years sober, but was acting out very badly with sex stuff and he was trying to put a lid on it.

But it was you know, it was a lot better than it had been, but it was still there.

The mind was so scrambled by what he was doing sober that you couldn't give him a page to read and hope that he could come back.

Having heard what the page was saying, he heard a whole load of other things.

So we needed to go. We sat day after day, week after week in a coffee shop in East London, just went through it page by page.

The problem with that is it can take a long time. It took a bloody long time to get through it.

So what you can do is select key passages.

And if you want to do a selection of key passages so you get them to listen on tape, sometimes people can listen on tape.

If it's a nice soothing voice, it actually goes in in a way that stuff on the page doesn't.

So they listen to the whole thing. But you hide you basically pull out some key passages in the doctor's opinion.

Get them to listen to Bill's story for identification. Key passages in chapter two.

And then the key characters, a couple of passages in chapter three and the key characters.

So I'll come to the characters later. So you're still going through it with them in detail, but you're not making it take three months.

It can take it can literally take three months if people's minds are super scrambled.

And there's a danger of just losing the patient in the process because it's just taking so long.

What what I've done with a lot of people over the years is not something I do now, but it's very successful.

I've got various worksheets I've used for step one with lots of quests with a bunch of questions for each chapter.

And there you can do it in two ways. You can either give them the chapter plus the worksheets.

Say, have a look at the chapter, have a look at the worksheets, answer the questions, come back.

We'll go through. Or. I go through the again, if there's an educational problem or the mind is scrambled,

then I'll go through the questions one by one. A third method.

And I did this for a while. And this was this was very good is getting to read anywhere between two and five pages at a time.

So today you're going to read two pages and then you call me and we talk about it.

Maybe you call two other people, talk about the two pages, then call me and talk about the two pages.

And then they say I say, what did you get out of that? What did you understand from that?

And they say some very peculiar things. And then I say, well, I think some really interesting points here are dot, dot, dot.

You might want to write these down. They're always like the important bits are never the bits that they spot.

But it gives them a chance to interact with the text and kind of make it their own.

But you're also pointing out the important bits afterwards that breaks it down into chunks.

Some people can manage. They can't cope with the idea of getting through a book.

But you say, can you read two pages? They can read two pages.

If people have been through the steps before. And have got some comp, some understanding and competence of what is going on.

Rather than just going through the chapter, the book chapter by chapter, because the kind of chapter the chapters jump all over the place.

One minute you're on the problem. Next minute you're on the solution.

Then you're back to the problem. Then you're back to Bill's story. Then you're back to the solution.

And boom, spiritual awakening. Then you're back to the problem again. Kind of goes all over the place.

So sometimes I do it by topic. And so this is my preferred method at the moment, especially with people who've got some experience.

Is to do it in this in this specific order. Physical craving.

No such thing as a safe slip. And I'll come back to these one by one. Physical craving.

There is no such thing as a safe slip. Mental obsession. And those three together produce the diagnosis.

And then there's the prognosis. Progressive, fatal, incurable.

And then there's a discussion of unmanageability. And then there's a discussion.

Well, what's the solution? The solution is spiritual. And you can either given all of those topics.

I think I've got a note I can give you on this. Yeah.

There we go. So this is my standard step one note I give people. And it's got some links to some blog articles as well.

I don't always give them that if they're going to have trouble processing lots of material, I don't give them the blog articles.

I just say ignore those. Just look at the book. So that that that covers those those topics.

Because I think step one builds up logically. And if if there's any doubt about if someone's very competent,

you know, I've got someone who is 30 years sober. So I gave them the whole of step one to look at in one go.

But often I'll break it down into those individual elements of the first one.

And I'll tell you why. I established that they got a problem with drinking.

What's the problem with drinking? You're drinking so much that you get consequences, which after the event you regret.

I mean, at the time you take them in your side. I take them in my stride.

You tell me before a drink what the consequences are going to be. I'm fine. Afterwards, when they've hit, I'm not so fine.

So that's someone who's got a drinking problem. You're drinking enough that you get consequences that after the event you don't want.

And you look at the question of. Well, solution number one is, can you moderate?

And if the answer is if your experience is that you haven't, then you means you can't.

And the simple way it was put to me, and I think this works very well.

Well, if you know that moderation is an answer to drinking too much and you didn't do it, you're either powerless or you're.

If not, what are you? Are you mad? Are you dumb? I mean, you don't seem to be either of those.

So if you're not powerless, what are you? And that's the unanswerable question.

And that's that's really straight from the doctor's opinion.

It doesn't satisfy us to be told that we couldn't control our drinking just because we were in full flight from reality.

Mad, outright mental defectives. You just don't have the, you know, the brain cells to rub together or in full flight or maladjusted life, unhappy.

None of those make sense. And so the only thing you're left with is powerless.

Now, the reason it's so important to get this done first, if someone is equivocating about whether or not they can moderate,

they need to solve that because the question of would I be insane to have the first drink is only a question.

If having the first drink is an insane thing to do, if you might be able to moderate, it wouldn't be insane to have the first drink.

So the mental obsession is all about insanity. And that can't be a question unless you've got the physical craving down.

So you've got to get the physical craving understood first. There's a pivot point in the book when I go through the book in a linear way.

So page by page, bottom of 22, top of 23.

It says that's the pivot point where it finally draws a line under the physical craving and says, right,

now we've established that when you drink, you have little control over the amount you you take.

Oh, no, no, no. It's a different quotation. Something.

That's it. When you have a drink, something happens in the bodily and the mental sense which makes it virtually impossible to stop.

The experience of any alcoholic will abundantly prove this.

And then it says if that if that's the case, then the problem is in the mind, i.e. the mind,

which gets you to have the first drink in the first place.

But you the premise behind everything else on step one is that you can't drink without drinking too much.

And there's the one thing almost everyone, especially even the slippers, is totally down with the idea that, you know, one drinks too many and a thousand aren't enough.

They're down with that or they're not down with is the corollary of that, which is if that's the case, you can't.

There is no such thing as a safe slip because you literally might never come back because you have a slip on one day.

If you slip on one day, you're much more likely to slip on the next day, too.

And I always give the example of my poor old friend Paul, who started drinking.

He was the same age as me, started drinking in 1995 as twenty, twenty one.

And he's the last I heard he he he'd left again.

Harry, you may know what's happened to him if he if he's back or not, but 26 years later and the poor kid isn't still isn't back.

And that that started with a slip which started with one day of drinking.

So there's no such thing as a safe slip. And once you've got that,

if you understand that you you not only do drink too much and do terrible things, but you might literally not come back from that slip,

then you've got a legitimate question. Am I the sort of person that will be crazy enough to have the first drink?

By the way, the story for there's no such thing as a safe slip is the man of 30 who could stop once, stops for 20 years, starts again and then can't stop.

Once you've established that that you've got the physical craving, no such thing as a slate safe slip,

you're into mental obsession territory. And that is it's downhill from here.

Basically, if you've got years of experience, this is how I always put it to people.

If you've got years of experience of drink doing bad things yet that didn't deter you,

then again, you're either dumb or you're mad or you're alcoholic. Pick one. Which one is it?

Keeps it super simple. People get very wrapped up. But I don't know if I really wanted to give up.

I don't know if I ever really tried to give up and irrelevant. It's the fact that you didn't.

The fact is sufficient. And the key passages, top of 21, where it talks about if a sufficiently strong reason comes along,

a heavy drinker can moderate or stop an alcoholic. So I get people to give a year.

What year? Give me a year when you started to have very bad consequences from drinking.

I'll say, well, 1991. What year is it now? It's now 2020.

OK, so for 30 years, repeatedly, bad experience did not stop you from having the first drink.

So the question of whether you could is neither here nor there. If you could have, you would have.

And that cuts through that whole thing of whether or not they tried, which is always I think is a complete red herring.

If you establish that you're the sort of person that for whom experience doesn't consistently keep you away from the first drink,

you're the sort of person who then drinks excessively and is minded to keep doing so because it just seems normal at that point.

Then the diagnosis is done. And there's an interesting line on 21 where it says at some point in the drinking career of every alcoholic,

he begins to lose all control of his liquor consumption once he starts to drink.

So I said, OK, what age did you first start to lose control of your liquor consumption?

I'll say give me an age. And I'll say, well, the first time I, you know, I was shot was when I was 40.

OK, you've been a real alcoholic since you were 14. Often they think they've been a real alcoholic since last May or last Thursday.

Whereas, in fact, they've been a real alcoholic since, you know, the Callahan government, which was the first time that they overshot.

So your key if you if you if they if people contact some people can not hold more than four or five ideas in their brain because they're so frazzled from drinking drugs.

If you can't do anything but this, you look at 21. Did you have bad experiences from drinking?

Yes. Did you moderate? No. Did you stop? No. You're an alcoholic.

How long have you been alcoholic? When was the first time you overshot? 1984.

You've been an alcoholic since 1984. Would you like a solution?

You can kind of do it in 60 seconds. The problem is that's the diagnosis.

The prognosis is very is very straightforward. The three ideas, progressive, fatal and incurable.

And those pretty much speak for themselves. Progressive, fatal and incurable.

Unmanageability. This is one of those things where it throws it into the big book on page 59.

It says unmanageable for the first and last time.

And it doesn't define unmanageable or unmanageability.

And of course, when if it's not defined, there are two possible conclusions.

Number one, they wrote the book like the Da Vinci code, hoping that everyone was going to miss Marple their way into some secret divine truth.

Or it was so bloody obvious they didn't need to elaborate because it was so bloody obvious.

And it's so bloody obvious that A.A. collectively has missed the point of what unmanageability is in large part.

There are, of course, people who do get it. There's a tape.

Of course, the problem that while I'm speaking about here is the, you know, well, I'm not just powerless.

I've alcohol. I'm powerless over people, places and things. And I'm neurotic and I'm incompetent.

I'm disorganized. And my life is unmanageable. And I'm late for my tea service.

And my room is a mess. And I shout at my mother. So my life is unmanageable.

And those may or may not be true, but they're not distinguishing features of alcoholics.

And lots of alcoholics are not when they're new, necessarily disorganized, incompetent and neurotic.

It's not what it was about. A lot of people are. I was.

But they're not distinguishing features. They're sort of common symptoms.

I heard a public information tape, an A.A. public information tape on prisons many years ago where there was this sort of Mr.

Chumley Warner voiceover and the voiceover said there was this act of playing some some alcoholic in prison.

And the voiceover said, this is Brian. Brian has lost control of his drinking and thus his life.

And I thought, blimey, that's the best presentation of step one I've ever heard.

If you can't choose whether or not you're going to drink and when you drink, you can't choose how much you're going to drink.

And if you drink too much, you're going to do some strange things and you can't choose if you're ever going to stop.

You're not in control of your life. Whether or not you have a drink is in control of your life.

Now, if you're not in control that you're not in control of your life.

The course of your life is literally determined by whether the switch flicks in your mind and says, let's go to the pub.

Now, you may also be mad, you know, but you get bonus points for that.

You know, if you haven't if you haven't turned over your mattress in six months again, you get bonus points.

But this is not unmanageability. Now, you've got to be very careful where you say this.

If you try to make this point in an AA meeting, you'll get lynched afterwards because people are very attached.

The idea that unmanageability is being sort of unhappy and very bad at doing things, incompetence.

If you're uncertain about what Bill, because we know who wrote the big book, basically, it was Bill.

Other people had input. Bill wrote it. 20 years later, he writes the 12 and 12.

And they've got a problem because already by then, the unmanageability question had morphed within the AA fellowship.

So they had a problem. People, as he puts it in the 12 and 12 with.

You know, a nice house and two cars in the garage, a job and a house and two cars in the garage.

We're coming to AA and struggling with the question of whether or not they were unmanageable.

Their lives were unmanageable. So he says, well, how do we get them to see their lives are unmanageable?

So it's clearly I mean, I mean, he doesn't say, well, you know, if you're doing well on the outside, I'm afraid you can't take step one.

You'll have to get sober through some other organization because you have to be neurotic and incompetent to do step one.

He doesn't say that. He says, going back through our own drinking histories, we could see that years before the onset of real problems,

our drinking was no mere habit. It was indeed the beginning of a fatal progression.

So unmanageability hasn't even got anything to do with consequences.

It's got to do with choice. If I am powerless, I am not managed. I am not in charge of my life.

The alcoholism is in charge of my life. I'm in the grip of a progression which is bigger than me.

The progression is in charge of my life. And that's something that all alcoholics should be able to sign up to.

If you understand powerlessness, then you then the best way is explained to me.

If you're if you don't have the power to adjust the steering wheel, you're not managing the car.

You're not in control of the car. You've got to have the power to turn the steering wheel, to change the direction of the car.

You've got to have the power to stop drinking, to change the direction of your life.

In other words, to manage the course of your life. That's something that only alcoholics can sign up to.

And all alcoholics can sign up to. And that gets around all of those messy problems with unmanageability.

And the last point is, is needing a spiritual awakening.

I don't mention God unless I absolutely have to with Swanseas in the early stages.

My alia will probably laugh at this.

But the way I like to explain it is if if Susan and Clive used to drink a bottle of gin every day, they did not have the power to stay sober.

But now Susan and Clive do not drink a bottle of gin a day.

They have acquired the power. They've gone from being powerless to having power.

So whatever is keeping them sober is available to me, too.

One doesn't need to understand the mechanism or where the power comes from.

One simply needs to observe that your problem is lack of power.

So the answer is axiomatically the acquisition of power.

So those are the basic elements of of step one.

And then the last point is the rounding off point is on page 44, where you say if when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely.

Or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, then you're probably alcoholic.

Now, it's interesting. It gives this is the last one I'm going to make.

I'm going to stop. It says if if either of those two tests are passed, you're alcoholic.

Now, I'm told that this is intentional, but I don't know. I have no way of corroborating it.

I suppose. And I have. I just haven't asked the champion question. It shouldn't be all with those tests.

It should be. And if I could, if I'm compelled to have a drink, but then I can totally keep it to one.

I don't have a problem. I'm not an alcoholic. If I only if I'm if if when I drink, I drink buckets, but I can totally stay away from the first drink.

And it's not a problem. I'm not an alcoholic in the big book variety.

Both tests have got to be passed for me to have a problem, which I need a to solve.

And what's fascinating. People guard their reservations because they're frightened of not being able to get through the turnstile of step one, having to kind of leave a or something.

So often people pay lip service to step one. And that test, because it's all I've had had this countless times where people would admit, yeah,

I definitely drink too much when I drink, but I could probably stay sober on my own.

But it says either or. So, yeah, I'm an alcoholic or they or it's the other way around.

They say, yeah, I can't stay away from a drink. But, you know, I probably could control it if my life is more under control.

But it says or so. Yeah, I am an alcoholic. It inadvertently gets people to it gets built to inadvertently reveal reservations that they don't know are going to be obstacles.

So that's an incredibly important paragraph. If you get them through that, then you're well on to step two.

So I'm going to stop my timer there. And thank you for indulging me for 38 minutes.

Thanks a lot, Tim.

Thanks, Tim.

Usually what we're kind of format is if you'd be okay with it, that we kind of open the floor to ask questions.

If we if we have any.

Yeah.

Does anyone have any.

Well, I had one, so I'm going to jump straight in if that's all right.

With working with newcomer sponsors.

And that was a great outline of working step one.

Do you find a new you outlined different types that you've come across in your experience.