Bob D. - AA Speaker - Spiritual Principles in Relationships - THE M2 THE ROCK SHOW - Michael Molthan

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
My name is Bob Darren. I am an alcoholic only
through the grace of a God that I was afraid
to believe in that I found out through the steps
is crazy about me and has no taste. Good sponsorship,
and a persistent and comm and consistent commitment to the
primary purpose of helping other alcoholics. I haven't had a

(00:26):
drink or any mind or emotion holdering substance since Halloween
nineteen seventy eight. For that, I owe you my life
and my freedom. I'm sorry if plot AA, if you want,
don't applaud me. I'll show you what I did with
my life before I got to you. It wasn't good.
I chuck was up here, was having trouble with the microphone.

(00:49):
It kept twisting. I kept thinking, I someone told me
once that microphones take on the personality of the person
who uses them. I I want to thank Lee for
and John and all the and I know there's a
whole gaggle of people involved in putting this thing on

(01:09):
and just for those who need to know, this is
the second Woodstock of alcoholics. Ani. I had to throw
it cause I could not say that I'm just that way.
I am really delighted to be here. There's a lot
of what I am today and how I've connected the

(01:31):
dots in Alcoholics Anonymous, with the program and myself have
come from people that are in this room today this weekend.
From listening to them, I've found me and I've found
a lot of stuff I've found in AA, and I
think that's how we do it here. Nobody can tell
us anything. We listen to people talk about themselves and

(01:51):
the lights go on and we make those connections. And
there's a lot of people in this room that have
helped me to find myself in Alcoholics Anonmoms listen, and
if there's anything I can bring to bear, it's probably
a combination of what I found in AA and what
I've found in other people's experience that I passes through me.

(02:14):
This is the like a passing the baton and the
biggest cosmic relay race. I mean, just here and it
goes through us. I mean, I want to read something
out of the twelve y twelve. I'll start out with this.
I was frantically trying to find it. I didn't bring
I call it the twelve y twelve. Somebody always says

(02:35):
something what's not at twelve by twelve. It's a twelve
an twelve Well I was. I got in the habit
of saying that thirty years ago because that's what I
was told that I would frame my life with the
twelve steps and the twelve traditions. And then it gets
depth and dimensional when I had the concepts and get
into service. This is a This is a paragraph that

(02:57):
really talks about my primary problem once I get sober.
It's from page fifty three of the twelve and twelve.
It says, it's from our twisted relations with family, friends
in society at large that many of us have suffered
the most. We have been especially stupid and stubborn about them.

(03:21):
The primary fact is that we fail to recognize is
the total inability to form a true partnership with another
human being. Our egomania digs to disastrous pitfalls. Either we
insist upon dominating the people we know, or we depend
upon them far too much. If we lean too heavily

(03:43):
on people, they will sooner or later fail us, for
they are human too and cannot possibly meet our incessant demands.
And this way our insecurity grows and festers when we
habitually try to manipulate others to our own wilful desires,
the revolt and resist us heavily. Then we develop pert feelings,

(04:04):
a sense of persecution, 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 sought
to be one in a family, to be a friend
among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be

(04:26):
a useful member of society. Always we have tried to
struggle to the top of the heap, or to hide
underneath it. This self centered behavior blocked a partnership relation
with any one of us, any one of those about us,
of true brotherhood. We had small comprehension. I wish that

(04:50):
was only true. I wish that kind of just stopped.
As when you stop drinking, alcohol a lonely business, and
I in my experience, it's lonelier when you stop drinking
at least alcohol. There's a line in our literature that

(05:11):
says it at one time, it allow it allowed us
to act extemporaneously. That means I could come out, I
could I could become external, I could get free of
this prison up in here. And then in the last
days of drinking it doesn't work like that anymore, and

(05:32):
the countless feudal attempts to become extemporaneous, the countless feudal
attempts to get free, and I can't. And that's when
our Book and a Vision for You says we will
know loneliness such as few do. I heard Chamberlain years
ago say that alcoholism was a disease of separation. And

(05:56):
when he said that, it just hit me, because I,
all is, always had feelings of being separate and apart
from I always had feelings of not fitting. I've always
had this this sense of an invisible yet impenetrable barrier
between me and life itself that I could not, on

(06:20):
my own sober breakthrough. Now, there was a time when
five shots of whiskey and the barrier would just dissolve
and I'd be I'd come out and I was free.
I was a free man. But so I'd get sober
again that I'd always be kind of locked up inside
of me, which is, oddly enough. There's a tell you

(06:43):
a little story. I know Tom has had this experience,
and there's a lot of people in this room. Occasionally,
maybe once every year or so, I go to a
prison in the central coast of California. That's a supermax prison,
and this is where most of the lifers end up.
And there's a huge AA group in there, one hundred

(07:06):
and fifty guys, I guess, and they have like a
line of greeters and there's an energy in that room
that is amazing. And you have guys that are lifers
that will never ever get out of prison, and they're
sponsoring guys and they are freer. I'm telling you, they're
freer than guys I sit on the outside with that

(07:28):
are free to walk around the earth. They're freer because
freedom is really there's only one thing that I ever
have to be free from, and that's the bondage of self.
I drank for it. I do AA for it. It
is essential to who and what I am to be
free because I know what it's like to be abstinate

(07:50):
and locked up. And I'll tell you something, it's no
wonder that I go back to drinking eventually, and I
go back to drinking with a desperate, desperate hope of
busting out of getting free. The uh years ago, I

(08:10):
was in a meeting. I was pretty new, maybe in
my first year, and some people were I ended up
going to the twelve and twelve meeting, and it was
they were on the traditions, which the minute I found
out that I wanted to leave, right because I don't
really I don't want to you know, That's that's fine,
It's it's the traditions to me and Alcoholics Anonymous is

(08:33):
like the fifty five mile an hour speed zone. I
think it's a good idea, but I'm in a hurry here, right,
you know, And I think they should be in place
for you. You people need to So why do I
think you should practice INTRINSI principles so you will maintain
you will maintain AA for the most important person in

(08:55):
the universe me right, But personally, I like that guy
in that Humphrey Bogert meeting or movie traditions. I don't
need no stinking traditions. And I am self centered. I'm
an extreme. Book says we're extreme examples of self will

(09:18):
run riot though we usually don't think so, I mean,
I don't, I don't think so. So I come, I
come to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I tell you this will
sound very bizarre, but this is this is my perception
looking back in the groups I went to, I don't

(09:38):
even think I realized there was other people there with
problems and stuff. For a while, it was like I
was when I was new. I think I thought my
name was does anybody want to share? You know? Right right?
And I would take a whole meeting hostage, you know,
about my life and my problems, very selfided, very self centered.

(10:02):
And then what happens, Uh, because because of self centered fear,
and only because of that, this is the only place
I've ever been where you took my defects of character
and made made them into and used them to help me.
And because of self centered fear and my concern with
what you thought of me and what the old timers

(10:23):
and my sponsor thought of me, I got into service
in AA. Didn't really want to. I thought it was
an inconvenience, but I started to do it. And then
what happened is is I started to care about a
couple of people. A couple guys that I had been
involved with that I was on the twelve step call
with them, or i'd I had talked to them and

(10:43):
spent a little time after a meeting in the detox,
or or a guy that I saw come out of
the jail where I took a meeting, and you know
how that that thing, that that thing that always starts
to happen in our hearts, you know, where somebody else
becomes important to you, and then all of a sudden,
my world gets a little bigger. And then I started

(11:04):
really falling in love with the people in my home group.
You know. I I would uh to the point where
if one somebody wasn't there, I'd get I had to
be worried where think where where're seons of? Now this
is a guy doesn't th worry about anybody except himself.
And I started to worry about people in my home group.
And then I I got into general service, and uh,

(11:25):
I started being concerned with other groups in my district
and and then in my area, and then eventually I
fell in love with alcoholics anonymous worldwide. I is the
most amazing, amazing thing, and I I there's a I've
been in meetings in all over the world, I mean,
and it's it's it's the same thing. The magic exists

(11:48):
everywhere we come together. But we almost we almost didn't
survive ourselves. And one of the things that I started
looking at getting into the traditions when I started getting
into general service. A guy in AA said something to

(12:10):
me that really I've thought about to this day. He said,
none of this means anything until it means something to you.
In other words, I have to personalize this stuff. As
long as these are just some vague set of rules
for you people, they really don't mean anything to me.

(12:32):
And a guy used to say that he thought that
the practicing personally of the twelve traditions in his life
with relationships with people, family, work, or is what allowed
him to be a part of there. And for a
guy who doesn't fit sober very well, that was a

(12:54):
program of attraction for me because I wanted to fit.
I'm everything that it talked about in that paragraph in
the twelve, twelve and twelve. I am all of that
sober I don't mean to be, and I can pretend
all I want. It doesn't change it that I'm the
separate guy. I'm the guy where it's all of you
and then there's me. And I can't will that away.

(13:16):
The book says we can't. We can't will our self
centertors away. We can't wish it away anymore than alcohol.
And I couldn't do that. And it was really in
the impo implication, implementation of the Twelve Steps and the
Twelve Traditions in my life that I started to really
start to fit, not just in alcoholics anonymous, but also
out in the world. I ran a company for a

(13:42):
lot of years sober, and we had a lot of employees,
and I ran the company on the Twelve Traditions. And
they didn't know where they came from. They didn't even
know they were called the Twelve Traditions. But we in
our staff meetings, we would talk about the principles, we
would talk about their application. We'd talk about things like
setting ourselves aside for the greater good. And and you

(14:09):
know something, I'm amazed to this day how normal everyday
people they get all of this. You gotta you gotta
about kill me to open my mind up to something.
And and normal people they just go, oh, yeah, the
whole is better than they've oh yeah. And and I

(14:30):
don't do that. I go, I got the great call
of every alcoholic I've ever met. Yeah, that's fine, But
what about me? About me? And this it starts in
the in the steps, and I think accumulates and and
and really comes to fruition and the and the traditions
is where I set myself up aside for a greater

(14:52):
whole and a greater good and a greater purpose. Some
of you know a little bit about the history of
the UH, the traditions. I I just want to talk
about this real briefly because it's just because it's important.
I don't consider myself as an historian. But in the
mid forties, early late late mid forties early I'm sorry,

(15:13):
mid forties, AA was in a lot of trouble and
Bill was very becoming very concerned, and through a series
of coincidences how God works through us, he discovered information
about a group called the Washingtonians that he didn't even
know existed. And in his concern and worry for the

(15:38):
future of alcoholics anymous and Bill, Bill loved AA and
Bill loved Drunks. I identify so much with Bill Wilson
because Bill Wilson was very flawed. Bill Wilson was not
a perfect He was not a perfect guy at all.
But he loved alcoholics, and he loved alcoholics anonymous. He

(16:00):
loved the idea of hope for generations of us, and
out of that his worry and love, I think came
this traditions, which I'll tell you something. This sounds strange,
but I maybe two thousand years from now, Alcoholics Anonymous
will not be known for its steps anymore. Maybe it'll

(16:22):
be known for its traditions. You know this. To this date,
science has never come up with a permanent cure or
an ability to eradicate alcoholism. But now they're doing some
DNA stuff and where feasibly they could remove the things
out of the species that create alcoholism. And then if

(16:45):
that's true, the steps will become like sort of academic,
very nice but academic. There won't be people coming to
the table with the desperation of dying men as we have.
But maybe a thousand years from now, the twelve traditions
will be known for the most unifying force in humanity.

(17:06):
And when Bill put these in place, when he created them,
he tried to put them in place. He created the
long form, which unfortunately most AA members today, the majority
of people here I don't in a maybe not in
this room, because this is like the people that come
to a weekend like this are very enthusiastic about a

(17:26):
But across the board and meetings and clubs and around
the country, most people have never even heard of the
long form, but they know the short form. And the
reason the short form evolved is that Bill could not
get anybody excited about the long form. Matter of fact,
he couldn't even get anybody to read them in meetings.
I mean, you know why, you know why right, because

(17:50):
they're long right, and you know what, It's all good,
but you're cutting into the important stuff when we could
be talking about me here, right, and so Bill, it
was very frustrated. There's even letters in our archives where
groups had asked Bill to come and speak, provided that

(18:14):
he agrees not to mention the traditions. And Bill struggle
with that, and then in a in a desperate concession,
he conceded to an abbreviated version. And I've talked to
a lot of people over the years. There's speculation who
wrote them? Did Bill write them? I've heard people say

(18:37):
that they think that it was a collaboration between Tom
Powers and a couple other people. I don't know. I'm
not that there may be people in this room that
have more information about actually who wrote the twelve the
short form of the twelve traditions than I do. But
I have sensed and I can't prove this, but I
sensed Bill's reluctance. I think he really really wanted to

(18:59):
stick with the law, and he conceded to them. Whether
he wrote conceded and wrote them himselves, or he conceded
to a collaboration, I don't know, but he conceded to them,
and they were adopted in nineteen fifty by the groups
at the first conference in Cleveland, and they've been part
of our program ever since. I suspect I've suspected at

(19:20):
times that we took a hit by going with the
short form. I think that the long form has more meat,
that has more substance for alcoholics. Anonymous, it's I think
the long form keeps us more in where on our
focused on what we're about. But that's just my opinion.
I don't know. Maybe in the bigger picture, maybe the

(19:42):
shorter form has opened the doors wider, and maybe that's
a good thing. I don't know. I don't know. I'm
trying try not to have an opinion about that, even
though I do, but I try not to take it
and just kind of go through. The tradition is very

(20:02):
much like the steps. It's they're very they're laid out
almost very similar, and step one you define the problem
powerless over alcohol, drunk and sober. Oh if if only
my powerlessness over alcohol stopped where the bottle stopped, then
there'd be no relapse in alcoholics Anonymous. Once you really,

(20:26):
I mean, not like the other twenty times, but once
you really made up your mind, you'd be good to go.
But I am powerless over its call to my spirit
that gets sick. Even when I'm sober, I'm really powerless.
And then and I can't manage my own life. You
know how? You know that because you tried a lot,

(20:48):
didn't you. Oh? Yeah, I mean. And the problem really
is defined in the first tradition is a lack of unity.
Not only is that the problem in alcoholics, Anonymous, it
is the problem of the spirit of a business or
a company, of a family, of an AA group, of myself,

(21:12):
and the loneliness and separation of untreated alcoholism. The problem
is is that when I get sober, I don't fit anywhere.
And because of that, I'm afraid. I'm afraid of what
you'll think of me. I'm afraid that you don't accept me.
I'm afraid of all that. And I have this ego
that rises up and tries to run the universe, to

(21:34):
make it right, and my making it right makes it
more wrong. Always, always, always, always. I guess that's the
core of the reason I can't manage my own life.
There's this thing about the unity. There was a letter
that Bill Bill Wilson received from the great psychiatrist Carl

(21:56):
Jung in the early sixties, and Young said something to Wilson,
I have a copy of the letter if anybody, it's
amazing letter. It's really there's a lot of good. One
of the things that really hit me was that he
said that as a result of working with Roland Hazard
and and other alcoholics, that he had c came to
believe that the alcoholics thirst for alcohol is not really

(22:18):
a thirst for alcohol. He says, it's a low level
thirst of the alcoholics being for wholeness, connectedness, unity, or
union with God An And I drank for that. Really.
I drank to be a part of I drank not
only to fit with the guys I drank with, but
to feel like like as if this was my planet,

(22:42):
my home planet. Cause you know, I I used to
have fantasies about flying saucers, realizing that I they'd left
me here and coming and getting me, you know, I mean,
I never felt like I fit. That's why I love
that book Chariot of the Chariots of the Gods. I
remember reading that in jail one time, going they left

(23:02):
me here. So this lack of unity really is is
the deal? In the long form it I love the
way it's worded. It says that we that each member
is but a small part of a great whole. Now

(23:25):
that's the first inclination that I'm supposed to set myself
apart or are down in order to something the whole
is greater than me and more important than me. That's
that's a that's a big deal for for self centered
people like me to act and take that position and
added angle of approach not only an alcoholics anonymous, but

(23:48):
it work. I could not become successful in work until
I started to apply this principle and the principles of
the traditions. My first four year here's of sobriety. I
went through nine jobs in four years, and I could
have told every time I either left or was fired,

(24:08):
I could have explained it to you how it wasn't
my fault. But I am the seat and the source
of my separation and conflict. I am the guy and
I couldn't. I couldn't have told you that because my
ego exists to justify itself, to explain itself, to defend itself.

(24:31):
But I am the guy lack And when I started,
Chuck Chamberlain really hit me with something. When I was
talking to him, he told me something, and he'd probably
said it and talks before he probably and he's also
say you can only hear what you can hear when
you can hear it. And one time I talked to

(24:52):
him after a meeting. He spoke just for a couple
of minutes, and he said, I was getting ready to
quit the ninth job I had sober and because it's
because of them, right, And he said to me, kid,
you have it all wrong. The fact that how the
much you're appreciated or paid, or how more work you

(25:13):
do than anybody else, or all that stuff's none of
your business. He said, you got to go to work
for one reason and one reason only, and that's to
help God's kids. And if you'll go to work to
be of service and forget yourself and ask God to
help you, to put you aside, he said, things will
change in this area and only only because I was desperate,

(25:35):
and I was scared, because I was afraid I was
gonna be the guy that was thirty years sober, that
it had thirty jobs and hated every one of them.
It's like I could show you guys like that in AA.
I was afraid I was gonna be that guy. I
was afraid that I was going to be an endless
forced life of going to work and feeling like I'm
doing time there and hating it. And you know, only

(25:58):
because of that was I opened. My mind was open
to what Chuck said, and I started to try to
put myself aside, and I'd ask God to help me
to go to work, forget myself and go to work
every day and just help God's kids, and my whole
employment world turned around. It was the most amazing thing.

(26:19):
It was the you know what happened. You know that
feeling that you have in your home group because you
have a commitment there and you're greeting people and you're concerned.
And I started to feel the same connectedness in the
job that I felt in my a group. Because I'm
setting myself aside and serving a purpose greater than me,

(26:42):
which is you. There's a lot of descriptions of lack
of unity in the book, Page fifty fifty two's is
a great description of it. Of this of what you
could consider it, some people would consider untreated alcoholism. It

(27:04):
says we were having trouble with personal relationships. That might
not be big in Florida, that's a big deal in Nevada.
I'll tell you if I get a call from a
guy at three in the morning, it's this is it.
This is what it's about. It's not about not of
these mad abouts. They changed the TV's night for his

(27:26):
favorite show. We couldn't control our emotional natures. What's silkworth
say that when we stop drinking, we become restless, irritable
and discontented. And I don't know how to I don't.
Do you ever catch yourself and maybe when in your

(27:48):
early sobriety, realizing you're angry and resentful and irritable, and
just and say to yourself, Okay, I'm not going to
be that way anymore. How'd that work? Right? How that work? Yeah?
Couldn't control my emotional nature. I couldn't. I can't just

(28:09):
change like that, A prey to misery and depression. I
like the word depression. More often in AA will use
the word self pity. I don't like the word self pity.
I like the word depression. Depression is the kind of

(28:30):
word that if you suffered from depression and you drank again,
the guys at the bar will go, of course you did,
let me buy your drink. My god, you got clinical depression.
They'll buy your drink for that. It'll buy you nothing
for self pity. They'll give you medication for depression. They

(28:52):
don't give you a crap for self pity. And it's
such a it's such a sleeve, the squirmy word. You know,
do you ever have somebody do j every have somebody
come up sober when you're not doing well. Let's say
you're five, you're feeling sorry for yourself for about a minute.
You're not anymore as you want to punch them, right.

(29:16):
I hate that pray to misery, misery and depression. We
couldn't make a living nine jobs four years. It's funny
how it's always their fault. We had a feeling of uselessness.
Oh my god, that that sense of in the in

(29:37):
the ninth step promises that the wording is amazing, where
it says that feeling of uselessness and self pity. It
doesn't will disappear. It doesn't say that feeling of uselessness
and the feeling of self like they're two separate things.
They're they're they're they feed each other. They're connected. When
you're useless, you're gonna eventually feel sorry for yourself eventually.
That's they're connected. That useless feeling that I've had this

(30:02):
most in my life, that feeling like, what's it all about?
For God's sakes, what am I supposed to be when
I grow up? If that's ever gonna happen? You know?
And I live in a world, especially in AA when
I was new, old timers, and I had this love
hate relationship with most of them. And the love was
they were very kind to me and good to me,

(30:24):
and I really appreciated that, and I wanted what they
had and yet resented them for having it. Do you
know what I mean? They, the old timers in AA
looked as if they knew exactly who they were and
exactly what they were about. Their life made sense. There
was no spinning in their head as it is in

(30:47):
mind wondering what do I do? Where do I go?
Should I shop? At Safeway, or maybe I should shop
at Smith's or Lucky. I don't know. If I could
figure out God's will which one story I should go to,
I'll probably get a better deal. And you know, I
mean crazy stuff, right, They're not even concerned with that.
They're just right as if they know exactly what their
life's about, exactly who they are, because they do. They

(31:11):
know that they're alcoholic. They've been given what is arguably
the I think the greatest blessing God would ever give
his kids, this spiritual malady called alcoholism. I'll tell you why.
I think it's a blessing because without it I would

(31:31):
never be driven, shoved and pushed into the life I
have today. And it is what has. It's a double
edged sword. It almost destroyed me and hurt a lot
of people through me, and yet with God's grace, it's
the opposite. It's changed my life and helped a lot

(31:55):
of people through me. Alcoholism really is and God's hands
his greatest blessing in my hands. Bad deal, bad deal,
feeling of uselessness. We were full of fear when it's

(32:16):
all about me and I am in the world is
all about me. There's a lot of crap to worry about. Man,
I'm telling you, first of all, it's a planet full
of people and they're thinking something.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
And you don't know what it is, but you suspect
it's about you, or it might have to do with you,
and you gotta figure it out.

Speaker 1 (32:47):
I don't know if anybody else had this experience of
getting sober and really just fighting the bottle, fighting the
bottle fall, and feeling like you're eventually gonna lose your mind,
Like overwhelmed with such a degree of anxiety that I
feel like I'm gonna my head's gonna blow up. Full
full of fear in this. This This chased me well

(33:11):
into sobriety. I rarely rarely ever get this anymore unless
I unless I'm out of line somewhere and have something
that needs to be corrected, which is sometimes fear that
all this stuff is God's way of moving me. But
in early sobriety, I used to wake up afraid, and
I didn't even recognize it as fear. I would just
wake up worrying about me, wake up with an apprehension

(33:35):
about what's gonna be coming at me today. I was
full of fear. We were unhappy. That's in in Vision
for You, it talks it says that that that's why
we drink again. It says he'll presently try the old
game again. Why because he's not happy about his sobriety.

(33:57):
And what happens to some of us is we we
go to dis meetings in AA, the discussion meetings where
everybody seems like they're doing well. So what do we do?
We pretend? But as it talks about in Into Action,
we we you sober. You can't survive living the double life.
You can't survive putting out an image that that you're

(34:18):
everything's okay here and then going home and thinking about
killing yourself. You can't survive that abyss between who you
really are and who you want other people to think
you are. You can't survive it. It's it's just it's
too much. God knows. I know, I cause I've tried.
I've been that guy, uh in sobriety, the double life guy, tough,

(34:40):
tough way to go that that is hell on earth.
I remember when my well, we'll say, uh, my first
year and a half of sobriety, I developed what what
some would call a chronic gambling problem. I thought it

(35:00):
was a god was trying to make me rich and failing.
But I used to I would go out and gamble
all my money and be broke, and I'm in debt,
and I hate myself and go to a meeting and
put on my sober suit in the parking lot so
I can go into the meeting and sound like a
stellar example of AA tough, tough way to go. I

(35:25):
was unhappy and it couldn't be of real help to
other people, which connects back to the uselessness. The reason
the people, the old timers are lit up is because
they're helping others. They There's a line in our book
that says an alcoholic properly armed with information about himself

(35:47):
can be of use to another alcoholic where nobody else can.
And these old timers that I would see that are
just lit up is because they're they're on fire. They
got a purpose in their life that lift them up,
because even the worst things about them have become useful.
There's nothing within them that is not right that doesn't

(36:11):
have a useful rightness about it. Even you know, some
of you that are new here, you know the worst
thing about you, the thing that you'll want to take
to the grave, the thing you secretly have swept under
the rug that you hate yourself for. You go through
the steps, get involved in service, and I promise you you'll
come a day when you'll be delighted you had that experience.

(36:36):
I'm telling you, because you'll you'll watch that experience turn
another guy around, a guy that thought he was the
only person on the planet that ever did that was
dying behind it. It's a it's an amazing, amazing thing
Hedge one f one. In the book, it says we
know a loneliness such as few do, and this is

(36:59):
really the problem him as lack of unity. In doctor
Bob's last talk, he said a few things that there
he really encapsulated the essence and the spirit of the traditions.
In that talk he talks about disunifying forces in aa

(37:20):
he uh. He talks about how we should never set
ourselves apart as professionals, that we shouldn't even be concerned
with the scientific stuff about the Freudian you're really your
parents didn't treat you right, or all that self analysis stuff.
It's not our business. Our work here is to free

(37:42):
ourselves of ourselves through helping other people and cleaning house
and and he talks about gossip. In there, he says,
the airing member and the tongue I have. I think
that can has the potential to be the one of
the most disunifying forces, not only in Alcoholic Exonymous, but

(38:03):
in your family. Some of us were in families where
nobody could talk to each other directly. So one member
would talk to another member about you, right, and then
that member talked to another member about you, and there
was no there's no connection, right, And then you don't

(38:24):
feel like and you know they're talking about you, so
you don't want to be around them anymore. Or how
many times in alcoholics Anonymous that some guy will be
out of line. Maybe he has a gambling problem, or
maybe he's maybe cheating on his wife, or maybe maybe
he's I don't know, whatever the deal is. And and

(38:46):
it starts and it's not and it's not kind stuff.
It's almost comes from a piece a place of ego,
as if the people talking about the person want to
grandize themselves and feel like up here looking down on
that person. There is a line in our book that says,
we do talk about each other quite a bit, but

(39:07):
we always do it with the spirit of love and tolerance,
real tolerance. And Bill Bill one time said in a letter,
he said that honesty gets us to AA, but it
is only tolerance that will keep us here, and real
tolerance for some of us guys like me, I didn't
know what that was, and I started to learn it
in step four as I went through the resentment section,

(39:29):
and I started to see change my perception of you
by seeing myself in you and dismantling the judgment of
you and realizing I'm why am I mentally beating you up?
That you're me? You're me on a bad day, but
you're me. But maybe next week I really will be you. Right.

(39:56):
It's the same thing that mechanics talk about when they
talk about tolerance. This is an engine's your tolerance. And
an engine gets off, the engine will eventually blow up
with friction because it's rubbing. The parts are rubbing their
each other, so they're irritating each other to a point
of such kinetic energy the engine blows up. And so

(40:16):
what a mechanic must do is take the engine apart.
Adjust the tolerance is to allow the moving parts to
move freely of each other so that there's no undue
friction in the enough kinetic energy to blow the engine up,
and some of us know from a lack of tolerance,
we blow up. Did you ever kick the dog because

(40:38):
yesterday the cat scratched you? Right, that's the kind of
guy I can be. I'm capable of all that, capable
of all of that. And this this gossip thing in
alcoholics anonymous is very brutal. I know a guy that
left AA because because of gossip, and it wasn't kind

(41:04):
and it was he had a situation within his family
that was very painful for him and there were people
talking out the side of their neck about him, and
he kept getting back to him and sometimes well meeting
people in AA because their their knuckleheads don't realize what

(41:25):
they're doing when they come to you and tell you
what so and so said about you. That's not information
you need, right? And why are they telling that? Why
are they telling you that? Because they want there's a
sense of power in having the information, a sense itself grandizing.
I got the good dope, here's what happened. Did you

(41:47):
know he said that about you? And you can almost
feel I'm puffing up because they're the guy with the information.
But it doesn't do any good that does sometimes almost
as much harm as the guy that's the crap m
and people leave here because of that. I pray to

(42:07):
God that I never I would never do anything that
would make people leave alcoholics anonymous. One of the great
things about the traditions is they protect us from ourselves,
protect alcoholics anonymous from ourselves. Tradition number two really tells

(42:29):
you who's in charge for this. It's a funny as
a funny place. This is for a group purpose. There
is but one ultimate authority, only one but one. There's
only one, a loving God, as he may express himself
in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants.

(42:49):
They do not govern as. The only place I know
of where if a new guy comes is most people.
New guys come and do what I do? You know
you want to find I got my first sponsor because
he looked I thought he was in charge of AAH.
He's a past delegate, he was conference chairman, and he
sponsored a lot of guys I got because what do

(43:11):
you do when you're new and you're awkward, you don't fit.
You try to figure out who's got the juice right,
who's in charge? And if a new guy ass tries
to ask you who you know comes to somebody says
who's in charge? Well, god, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know,
I know, I don't who's really in charge? God? No,

(43:37):
come on, I mean like, who's who runs the deal?
Who's the top dog? Oh? The top dog? Well, you
know the guy cleaning the bathroom, right, he is not
the speaker. No, no speaker. We just he's just so
self centered. We just let him stand up there and
ramble about him up, the guy cleaning the bathroom, because

(44:04):
our our leaders are but trust and servants. He is
the only place on the planet where you come in
a big shot and work your way up to servant.
Everywhere else the other way around. Everywhere else you come
in a servant. You sweep the floors, and maybe someday
I'll be a vice president. AA. You come in. We
all come in big shots, and if we're lucky, we

(44:27):
work ourselves up to servant. Because our our growth here
is is always about reduction. It's never about accumulation. It's
always about reduction. We probably I come here too much
of me. I gotta I got t bow used to say, Uh, ego,
reduction at depth, at depth? How do I access the

(44:52):
boss through the group conscience. What's the group conscience? Well,
in business meetings, there's that aspect of it. But I
don't know about you, guys. I bet you on this square.
At least a thousand times since I've been sober, God
has talked to me through a meeting of alcoholics anonymous

(45:14):
at least a thousand times when I'm distraught and separate
and apart from and confused and worried and scared, and
I'll go to a meeting and there'll be somebody saying exactly,
and you have exactly what I need to hear. In
order to access the ultimate authority, you have to stay
a part of You have to stay connected here in

(45:38):
order to access God's great Because I don't know about you, guys.
When I'm in trouble, I can't access God directly. Wouldn't
that be nice? Then I'd never need you? But I can't.
I get too much of me between me and God.
If you've ever tried to do meditation when you're nuts,

(45:58):
oh don't. I don't have any sharp objects around, man.
Oh it's not good, it's it's all. I can't. I
don't meditate, I think, And we're gonna We're gonna break
here in about five or ten minutes. And the reason
we're gonna break is there's a spiritual principle that the

(46:20):
mind can't absorb with the butt can endure. So I
want to say that to give some of you hope.
With the ones that are looking at their watching. If
I hear any more about the traditions, are gonna hang myself.
They can have. I know most of you can run
to the beach and the break. It's a good chance,

(46:40):
it's a good opportunity. Tradition number three UH really defines
our membership requirements in UH. In the original long form
was very very different than the short form. And I
this is just this is my opinion, and I switch
doesn't mean anything really that I respect that AA took

(47:02):
a hit when we went from the long form to
the short form, and I don't know that's only one perception.
Another perception of the same thing is, oh, we didn't
take a hit. We broadened everything. Now we got all
kinds of people in here. Anybody that just figures anybody
gets into UIs welcome. Anybody that just somebody says, you know,
you drink too much and they quit drinking, that can

(47:23):
come to AA. But in the original membership requirement. In
the long form, it said membership should include all who
suffer from alcoholism, and then they eventually changed that to
a desire not to drink. Well, I don't know. This
is in my mind. There's a big difference between suffering
from alcoholism and having a desire not to drink. My

(47:45):
sister could be a member of AA. She has a
desire not to drink right now because she's trying to
lose some weight. But her if she could succeed, succeed
in her desire, what she's given up is is one
and a half glasses of wine occasionally. I mean, but

(48:06):
she's got a sincere desire not to drink. But when
she quits the one and a half glasses of wine,
she don't suffer from alcoholism. I am a member, an
everyday member of Alcoholics Anonymous, because my alcoholism starts and
becomes more painful where the bottle ends. That's why I

(48:27):
need you. If that wasn't true, why would I come here?
Maybe for social reasons, I suppose it could be like
the sober elks.

Speaker 3 (48:38):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (48:41):
But I ain't right when I'm not drinking. I ain't
right when when the medicine don't work no more. I
ain't right, and that's why I need alcoholics anonyms. I
suffer from alcoholism. I'm the guy who can't quit entirely
because of it. It talks about on page forty four.

(49:03):
I am not the hard problem drinker. I'm the real alcoholic,
but the spirit. It goes on to talk about this
open door spirit. Hence we may refuse none who wish
to recover from alcoholism. We have a thing that's in
contention today at times in alcoholics anonymous is singleness of purpose.

(49:30):
And I've set meetings where it's debated, and I sense
that we miss the point that singleness of purpose is
not designed to exclude anyone per se because anyone can.
Anyone who wants to call themselves an alcoholic, even if

(49:53):
they're not, has a right to be here. I mean,
you don't there's no police. I mean, we don't. You know,
a couple guys in black uniforms don't come to your
apartment in the middle of the night to give you
a blood test to see if you're really alcoholic. I mean,
we don't. You want to say you're alcoholic, but it's
an encouragement for a couple things to keep the real

(50:14):
alcoholics here. And what happens is if you go if
you go to a group that is dominated by people
other than alcoholics, and they and their discussions might be
about drugs primarily, which is a lot of alcoholics have
that experience in their stories. That doesn't mean but they

(50:36):
have alcoholism, but they're alcoholic. You can do. You can
be alcoholic and a lot of stuff. You can be
alcoholic and choke little baby chickens necks. It doesn't matter
do you have alcoholism. But if you go to groups
where consistently they're talking about their chocolate cake problem or
their gambling problem, or I could have there was a

(51:00):
couple of years ago, I could have dominated twenty minutes
of a meeting with my anxiety over and my addiction
to the stock market. And what happens if you go
to meetings like that, you don't want to go anymore.
I mean, it's it's useful, and it's it's kind of
intellectually stimulating. Oh I didn't know anything about the stock
market until I went to that meeting.

Speaker 4 (51:20):
Not but wow, that's really cool. Uh oh, it's time
for that meeting again. Why there's something really good on TV.

Speaker 1 (51:33):
I lose my desire to go because it's not it
doesn't feed me. We always want the common welfare should
always come first. I want alcoholics anonymous to always feed
me and feed my spirit. And everybody in this room,
every I bet you, everybody in this room has had
gone to meetings that lit you up and gone to

(51:56):
meetings that when you came out of the meeting, you
needed a meeting. Right, everybody has that experience. And do
you ever, do you ever look try to look at
the difference between the two. It's usually has something to
do with the traditions. Usually let's take a twelve minute

(52:20):
and thirty seven second break. Uh I reiterated an announcement
that was made by Chuck at the very beginning about
the cell phones, and I want to I want to
tell you something. If you especially if you're new, you

(52:41):
don't we probably don't get this. We're not trying to
tell you what to do. We've been here, We've been
here a long time, and we know how God works.
God has a bizarre sense of humor. If you leave
your cell phone on, you can bet he will have
some knucklehead call you in the middle of the met
Everybody around, you would turn and look at you, and

(53:03):
you will not hear anything else the rest of the
meeting because you'll have being conversations in your head with
the people that looked at you. So just save yourself
a lot of grief and shut it off. I mean,
it's just but do what you want. But if it
goes off and you miss a big chunk of the meeting,
it's not it's not our fault. I want to talk

(53:28):
a little bit about uh, about this disunifying force of
gossip in AA. I know from taking my own inventory
why I gossip is to try to elevate myself because

(53:49):
I don't really feel that good about myself. Do you
ever notice when you're really you're, when you're really okay
with yourself, what other people are doing is it's nothing,
it's nothing. Been on a bad spiritual hair day. Oh
that's when that's when the noticer comes on. I was

(54:10):
up in I lived up in Maine for a while.
It was one of my better geographics, and I was
up there and I had a job for a while
working on a lobster boat as a stern man. It
was a tough, hard way to make a living, but fun,
interesting and we used to pull traps, lobster traps, and
my first day on this lobster boat, we're pulling these

(54:32):
traps and there's crabs in the traps, which is not uncommon,
and the lobster guys don't want the crabs. So they
got this big bucket on the deck of the ship.
Well it's about about this high, about this big round,
and they just throw the crabs, pull them out of
the traps, just throw them the crabs and they set
the lobsters aside. Well I'm standing there and I'm looking

(54:53):
at this crab bucket and it's got several hundred crabs
in it. It's and they're just a about to overflow,
and they're climbing out and be all they're going to
any minute. In about a minute, they're going to be
all over the deck. And I'm a little concerned about
this because, well, first they're a little creepy the way,
you know that. And so I tell this guy that

(55:14):
on the boat, I said, you got to put a
lid on that. He goes, no, we don't. I said,
they're going to get out. He says, no, they won't.
I said, look right there, they're just about that guy's
right just about ready to cut over the top. He said, no,
they won't. He says, watch and sure enough, just when
a crab was about to break out, the other ones

(55:36):
couldn't stand it. They'd reach up and they'd pull him down.
He said, we never have to cover that. And sometimes
a group of alcoholics anonymous that is permeated with a
lot of untreated alcoholism is very much like a crab bucket.
We'll just keep pulling each other down, pulling each other down.

(55:57):
That's one of the most disunifying forces as an alcoholics
anonymous tradition. Four. This is really where the traditions get interesting.
Each group should be autonomous except in matters affecting other
groups or a as a whole. Now, in the long

(56:20):
form it gets very specific about the trustees and etc.
But in the spirit, and I'm really I'm more into
the spirit of the traditions. The application of them within
the fellowship is essential to our survival. But I am
one who believes if you get the spirit of something,
the application is very simple and it's like just a

(56:41):
it's automatic. This is the tradition where the principle from
Shakespeare that is on our coins to thine own self
be true meets and merges with the other centeredness of consideration.
Autonomy in alcohol synonymous brings us much freedom, and freedom

(57:04):
brings much responsibility. Freedom without responsibility is kind of self
will run riot, because with the freedom there should be
a consciousness of how our actions affect others. I think
that one of the things that happens in most of

(57:25):
us is we progress along grow along spiritual lines as
we start to think outside the box of ourselves. In
other words, how does my behavior, what does it speak
to the newer people? Everything I do in alcoholics anonymous
is is is essentially my vote for how I think

(57:51):
everybody should conduct themselves. And you only get one vote.
That's not what you say, it's really your actions. If
I want to cross talk in a meeting or gossip
with the guy next to me while someone's sharing in
a meeting, then isn't aren't I really saying that I
think everybody should do that? Now, the the inherent thing

(58:14):
in alcoholics of my type is we think we're above
the rules. I think the rules should apply for you.
But essentially, if this is if equanimity is here, if
we have if we are a program of equals, and
we all have equal rights here. Then what I do
is really my vote for how I think people should
conduct themselves in alcoholics anymous If I don't put any

(58:36):
money in the basket, aren't I really saying I don't
think anybody should Maybe AA should dissolve. If I come
late to a meeting and sort of disruptive as I
come in, Aren't I really saying I think everybody should
be late for meetings? And I think as my consciousness
starts to expand, as I start to get it, it's

(58:59):
it's there's there's no there's no punitive measures in alcoholics anonymous.
There is spiritual growth. And as I grow spiritually, I
grow away and outside and above myself. I start to
wake up to what are my actions speaking here? And
I'll tell you something. You think you start waking up

(59:21):
to that you start changing some of your behavior, right,
And it's beautiful. It's beautiful. I have changed stuff in
my in my life that I got to tell you.
I would have never changed if it was just me.
But I came. I came to the table in step

(59:44):
six with a willingness because I didn't want to be
a bad example. Isn't that weird that I in some sense,
I love you more than I love me, care about
you more than I care about me. Now that sounds crazy,
doesn't it. But if you were to, if you're like

(01:00:06):
me and you if I step back from myself, it's
evidenced throughout my whole life. If I have a guy,
one of the guys I sponsor, or some guy in
my home group has got some little physical problem he's
not sure what it is. I will be the first
to step up and suggest you go to the doctors.
I'll even get up and take it if it was me. Well,

(01:00:35):
isn't that evidence that I care more about you than
I care about me? And this is the only place,
the only place on the planet where my deficiencies and
shortcomings have become useful. I have grown in some areas
in my life simply because I so much loved you.

(01:00:59):
And how ye, how could you not? How could you
not stay in AA for a number of years and
have the transformation that comes into your life as a
result of alcoholics synonymous and then sponsor guys, and then
you get the privilege of having a ringside seat to
watch the hand of AA or the hand of God

(01:01:19):
who works through AA change their lives. I had dinner
with my sister and my daughter the other night, and
we're all going to on a trip to Kozmlment. My
sister's gonna We're gonna get her. My daughter and I
were working on her, trying to get her certified to
go scuba diving. She's a little resistant to it. She

(01:01:41):
saw the movie Jaws three times. But we're working on
her and if nothing else, she's gonna come down there,
lay on the beach with us. And I have I
can almost not talk about this without crime. I have
this relationship with my daughter and my sister that is unbelievable,

(01:02:03):
and it came from alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, how could
I not love AA for what it has done. I'm
the guy that was dying a loneliness and I'm connected
to people. How could I not love alcoholics Anonymous. I'd
have to be I'd have to be an idiot to
not love AA for what it's done, not only in
my life, but in the lives of the people that
I love. My daughter's never seen me drunk. She she

(01:02:34):
loves me. That's you. That's you. That's not me. Are
you kidding me? That's not me? I watch guys in
AA start to take credit for their lives, dangerous proposition.
The ego clamors for that all the time. I heard

(01:02:58):
I'm probably gonna screw this up trying to quote it.
But I heard Tom one time talk about what he
does in the morning, and he said the he'll probably
talk about this later. I'll probably screw it up. About
being cognizant of the gift that he's been given and
then trying to align himself as a guy worthy of
receiving the gift and acting accordingly in his life. Something

(01:03:18):
like that. It was, that's not exactly what he said.
But we all put things, we hear things in AA
and then put them on and wear it the way
it is, you know. That's why. That's why what I
hear and what is said probably not the same thing.
That's why in AA we have a book as Bill
sees it now and on they say, lois remembers are there, Well, yeah,

(01:03:46):
you should. You should be a fly on the wall.
When my sister and I talk about our childhood, you'd
think we came from two to separate families. Because I don't.
I I get stuff and then I tweak it. Now,
that's not dishonest, that's creative, and that second nature to me.

(01:04:13):
And that's why I'm suspect of a lot of things
I think. And I mean I am because if you know,
if you know me the way I know me, you'd
be suspect of what I think and perceive in my life. Also,
I've had just so overwhelmed by evidence of how I
do that tradition Number five is really it's really the

(01:04:35):
core of alcoholics anonymous. It talks about our primary, number one,
first and foremost purpose is and I'll read it. It
says each group has but one primary purpose to carry
its message to the alcoholic who still suffers. In the

(01:04:55):
long form, it refers to an AA group as a
spiritual entity. I love that. It really is. Did you
ever walk into your home group when there's nobody there
except you, and then close your eyes and sit there
and try to feel what's there, And then close your
eyes and sit there when we're all here. There's something

(01:05:17):
is in the mix here, And I think that's the
covenant here that when two or more of us come
together for the purpose recovery, God will be in the mix.
He's in the midst, and there is an entity. It's
almost as if in an AA group, especially if it's
a group grounded in the principles of alcoholics anonymous, where
that the sum is greater than the parts. There is

(01:05:40):
something in a room. I heard Bob say it last
weekend we were together in Nashville. He called it the
collective consciousness. And it really there's something. Maybe maybe it's
it's multiple. It's such a multiple concentration of manifestations of
God that it becomes an ntiy onto itself. But you

(01:06:03):
can feel it. You can do you ever, Just sit.
I loved it in big meetings or in conventions. Just
sit and close your eyes and just try to clear
yourself and feel what's there, especially right before the meeting
when you or are doing the coffee break, when when
you instantly there's three hundred conversations jump started with the

(01:06:25):
word I just right. Our primary purpose uh, my business
uh went through a little some bumps in the road
and got sick because we lost our primary purpose for

(01:06:47):
a while, and our primary purpose was being a service
and it started to become us and the spirit of
the business became sick. Family do the same thing when
the individual becomes more important than the whole. I got

(01:07:07):
sick in my sobriety. I was a guy who I'd
been diagnosed as clinically depressed by it before I got sober.
In the years, I was in and out by some
competent psychiatrists, and I wasn't really clinically depressed. And I'll
tell you how. I'm not a psychiatrist, but i'll tell
you how. I know that because I diligently applied the
medication and treatment for clinical depression, I didn't get any better.

(01:07:32):
It wasn't until I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and applied
the treatment for spiritual depression that I started to get
better and I started to get free the problem. It
looked exactly like clinical depression, but it really was the
depression of a spirit and a being that is being
smothered by himself. Right. I just had so much of

(01:07:55):
me on me that it was like it was as
if the very oxygen hose to my being had been crimped.
And I was suffering from that. And I got sober
and I spattled with that, and twelve Step works saved
me from that continually, continuallyinly eventually started working steps and

(01:08:17):
I was free from it. I mean free from it.
And when I was nineteen years sober. It came back,
and this is this is crazy. It came back in
a time in my life where I had everything I
ever wanted. I was making more, much more money than

(01:08:38):
I make today, than I have today I had I had,
I ran out of things to buy. I mean, the
only thing left would have been a leer. It would
have been a golf stream or something, you know, or
a lyric. I mean, I had like three very expensive
fancy cars, and two motorcycles, and thirty some pair of

(01:09:01):
custom cowboy boots and jewel all kinds of jewelry. And
I had enough money in my life and my bank
account at that point that I could have retired. I
never worried about money. I remember I came home from
a trip to Maui, where I stayed at this beautiful
hotel on the beach in Waile and rented a Harley

(01:09:24):
and rode around the island, went to gourmet restaurants. It
was a wonderful trip. And I came home and I'm
sitting in my house. It's a very nice house as
a view of the city of Las Vegas up and
sits up high, and sitting there and I'm depressed and
I can't shake it. And it's crazy because I have

(01:09:44):
everything and I don't know about you guys. When I
feel weird, I always want to hang it on something,
you know, like at somewhere I didn't get my way
or something, and I had everything, and I'm sinking into
this deep depression and it's bad. And it's the first
time i'd been I'd had this for years, since I

(01:10:05):
was you know, knew in sobriety, and I didn't know
what to do. And I went to a meeting one night,
and I'm telling this friend of mine about it, and
I felt awful. It's that kind of depression where you
can't even hear in meetings because you're so self consumed, right,

(01:10:27):
And I managed to get to this meeting. I'm telling
this friend of mine, and here's what he said to me.
He said, he said, he said, well, you know, you
go to meetings and you sponsor guys, and you run
your mouth a lot in AA and he says, but
I don't think your primary purpose is helping other alcoholics anymore.

(01:10:50):
He said to me. I think your primary purpose is you.
You know, they say the truth will set you free,
it'll ruin your day. First, I'm telling you because he's right.
It it hurt, but he was right. Somehow the purpose

(01:11:12):
of my life had become my toys and my business
and my finances and my sex life and what you
think of me, and how many sponsease I have, and
how many toys. It had become me. And here's the
sad part and the frightening part. I didn't even know
that that had happened. Honest to god, I didn't even

(01:11:34):
know what it happened. You don't go from a guy
who's lit up helping drunks to a guy who's consumed
with himself overnight. I think, I think it's a small
incremental shifts back into the center of the universe again.
And I didn't even know that. I didn't even know
that happened. And some of us know that, no matter

(01:11:57):
how good you get it out here, if it ain't
no good in here, telling you, it ain't no good.
And I was dying. And within a week I got
a couple of knuckleheads, new guys in my car, and
I'm lit up again. I'm lit up again, and I've
never been back in that place since then, because I
had walked, I had walked slowly incrementally away from my

(01:12:20):
primary purpose. And I this is just speculation on my
based on my experience, but I think if you're an
alcoholic of my type, you're compelled. You don't have a choice.
You're compelled to serve something. And you're either gonna serve yourself,
or you're gonna serve an ethic and a principle and

(01:12:42):
a purpose and ultimately behind the curtain of power greater
than yourself, or you're gonna serve yourself. But you're gonna
serve something. And most of us have spent our lives
serving ourselves. And there's only one question you ever have
to ask yourself with that, how'd that workright? Victims of

(01:13:04):
a delusion that I can arrest happiness and satisfaction out
of this world by managing well serving myself, And I
think that we lose a lot of people in alcoholics Anonymous.
I've been going to a detox, this one particular detox.

(01:13:27):
They've been open probably twenty four twenty five years, and
I've been going there average twice a week to take
a meeting in there. I love going down there. It
is it's my personal relapsed prevention plan. It's a great thing,
and we see the things. I see things there that

(01:13:48):
some of you will never see. I see the guys
from Florida and the Carolinas and Maine and New York
and California that drank with twenty years a So they
end up on the streets that Las Vegas calls you.
We call Vegas the hitting bottom capital of the world.

(01:14:11):
It calls you. And they end up often in our
detox and you can ask them a lot. There's a
lot of myths in AA. Mythslike, well, if you people
that drink again stop going to meetings, that's not always true.
I know guys that have went to two meetings one
day and drank that night, or they stopped praying. That's

(01:14:33):
not true. I sponsored a man of the cloth who
drank himself to death, begging God not to let him drink.
What is the one common denominator? And I ask people,
I tell you I've done a study, personal study, just
through observation, because I don't ever want to drink again.

(01:14:56):
I have never to this date found anybody that ended
up in our detox with after ten years of sobriety
or twenty years or whatever. When you ask them the
question of how many how many new guys were they
working with the month before they drank again. How many
guys were they trying to help with the steps? How
how much twelve step worker service were they doing. It's

(01:15:19):
usually zero, It's usually zero. They're praying, they're going to meetings,
but their life becomes all about them, right, And that's
to this day. That's the comp I have never once
been in detox with some guy and said, you know,
I got would you do me a favor? I don't
have a phone here, here's these three new guys I'm

(01:15:42):
working with. Would you call them? Tell them I slipped.
I've never had that experience, never had that experience, and
never will. It's when it says in the beginning of
working with others that nothing so much in Sure's immunity
to drinking is intensive work with other alcoholics. It's real.

(01:16:05):
It's our primary number one, above everything purpose, and what
a glorious purpose it is. You don't need You don't
know that till you've you've claimed it. Nothing in AA
makes sense until you till you claim it. Nothing there's
never I have never seen and in the years I've
been here, never seen one person ever come to alcoholics

(01:16:30):
anonymous suffering from the loneliness and separation and depression and
anxiety and remorse of untreated alcoholism, that has ever sat
in the room looked at the twelve steps and went, oh, yeah,
that would work. Of course, of untreated alcoholism that has
ever sat in the room looked at the twelve steps

(01:16:51):
and went, oh, yeah, that would work. Nobody says that.
Occasional Alanon will say it for him, but no alcoholics
ever said that. No alcoholics ever said that until what
happens is you out of desperation. I love that there's

(01:17:13):
a line in the Twelve Way toils as we come
to this by circumstance rather than by virtue, that out
of desperation and a lack of alternatives, I start doing
some of this stuff, and then what happens, universal universal
experience that everybody works steps. We all say the same thing,
should have done that years ago, but you don't know

(01:17:38):
that until after you do it. Till after you do
it is our primary purpose. As a matter of fact,
I believe that all the twelve steps are to serve
that end. That's why step twelve is last. Matter of fact.
As you go through the process in the book, it
talks about things like we're our real purpose is to

(01:17:59):
fit and sometimes because our egos always clamor and to refit,
to fit ourselves, to be a maximum service to God
and the people about us. That's the deal. This is
not alcoholic. Snomes is not a self serving program. And
I thought it was. I want to get I want
to come in here. Oh yeah, the meditation. I want

(01:18:21):
to hone myself to such a state of spiritual perfection
that I kind of rise above everybody. You know, at
the very best is I'm restored to a sense of
one with in community and usefulness. Usefulness that I can

(01:18:42):
that I can experience the juice of having something that
I didn't even believe in when I got here worked
through me. What a sweetness that is. I know some
of you have had that. Some of you had the
experience talking to some new guy. It's an out of
body experien You hear you, you hear yourself saying things

(01:19:03):
to a new guy that you don't even know. You know,
where's that coming from? What a sweet experience that is.
I've walked away from those gone. I feel like I've
been loved. I feel like He's been loved, and all
through me what a sweet experience that is that you

(01:19:25):
don't want to miss that tradition. Number six, an AA group,
i't never endorse finance or lend the AA name to
any related facility or outside enterprise. Last, problems of money, property,
and prestige divert us from our number one, our primary purpose.

(01:19:46):
In the long form, it also uses the word authority, money, property,
and authority. I don't what else would divert you. The
only thing I could add to that would be a relationship. Money, property, prestige.
Authority and relationships divert us from our primary purpose. And

(01:20:09):
what is it all? Isn't it all clamoring? It's all
clamoring of self, because whose money? Do you think they're
talking about? My money, my prestige, my authority, It's all
about me. It is the clamorings of self and things

(01:20:30):
that self attaches itself to that will divert me from
our prime from my primary purpose to help with others.
And it's consequently it's what will divert a family from
its primary purpose, a business or a group. And I
think that before anything dies, whether it's a business, a family,

(01:20:52):
or an a group, the spirit of it gets sick
first and how does it get sick? It gets inundated
by self, by ego and just I. I have absolutely
convinced that what happens, what's good, what happens and is
true for the for the the whole is also happens,
and it is true for the individual. You know, I, my, my,

(01:21:17):
My journey into extinction spiritually is no different than the
journey of an AA group into extinction, or a business
or a company into extinction. It's the same. It's the
same thing. I get. I get so wrapped up in
me playing God again, doing all that stuff, running the

(01:21:37):
show and and the con There's a uh an interesting
line in our book. It says that, uh when the
spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically.
I if that's true, then it would be reasonable to
assume that the opposite was true, the reverse. So if
I get sick of spirit and disconnected and full of myself,

(01:22:02):
wouldn't it make perfect sense that I start to get
a little my thinking gets a little wacky. Yet you
don't know it. I've never I've never been had wacky thinking.
We're in the middle of it. I thought, Oh, that's
wacky thinking. No, that's not wacky. I think it's right right.
That's why I got a sponsor. Uh. I checked stuff out.

(01:22:22):
I gotta try a sponsor and a couple of spiritual
advisors that are in this room. I bounced stuff because
I one of the greatest, the greatest things I have
gone for me is I don't trust this uh and
I don't trust it enough to check to check with
people and talk to people and try to be transparent

(01:22:42):
about what's going on in my life. M Uh fungus
only grows in the dark. What tradition numbers? Oh and

(01:23:02):
oddly and something I'm gonna touch on this too. In
the short form, this is one, this is this is really,
this is good for my consciousness. It says, wow, this
is the short form, I'm sorry. This is the long
form of the of the sixth tradition. It talks about
dividing the material from the spiritual there and it talks

(01:23:26):
in here about hospitals and AA clubs and this is
particular that they should never use the A name and
they must be separate and set apart so that if
the groups don't like what's going on, they can discard
them in jedtison them. That it is not Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I'll tell you a sad thing that's happened and

(01:23:47):
recurs in my area is we have a lot of
clubs and not a lot of groups. And we have
some AA clubs that have gone out of business over
the years because they were started by by members of
a a for profit as if they're gonna they're gonna
make a living off the fellowship, right, And what happens

(01:24:07):
is those places get sick and they eventually just stop existing.
And this is this is so pathetic. There was a
there was a place called the Kiss Club in Las
Vegas that was owned by a guy and he had
the you know, the pool tables and the food. He
tried to make a living off of it. And when
it dissolved, there were people that went to meetings there
and that's the only place that they went to meetings

(01:24:28):
that thought AA disappeared. That wasn't a a Now there
were AA groups that met there some and some of
them they took the treasure and they give it to
the club. I mean, they don't even get it. That's
not an AA group. We must always we got we
got a group in Las Vegas right now that there's

(01:24:49):
a lot of it's a that's not a group, it's
a club. They try to they act like a group.
That's that was started by a guy who was all
over the press as one of the leaders of this
Nazi Aryan brotherhood thing. And he's thrown at some ethnic pie.

(01:25:09):
He's asked some ethnic people to leave them the facility. Well,
I'll tell you, anybody I know don't go there.

Speaker 4 (01:25:18):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:25:19):
And the sad part, this is what this is what
chaps me a lot. And I'll tell you I get,
I'll get more offended. If you hurt AA, you can
hurt me. Don't hurt AA. I get, I get up
in arms. Man. Is that there are new guys that
go there that they think that's AA. That's what really

(01:25:41):
chaps me. And I am absolutely convinced that the spirit
of that place is so sick that it won't exist
in another year. But in the meantime it reflects very
badly on us, very badly on us. And further on,
towards the end of this, the tradition of the long
for it's just something that's very important to me. It's hiss.

(01:26:04):
While an AA group may cooperate with anyone, matter of fact,
is almost as encouraging. We can cooperate, we can be helpful,
and we do. We cooperate with the prison systems. You know,
I've seen AA members get up in arms because of
the prison system. Try to tell them what to do. Hey,
it's their prison. For god faith. We're the only people

(01:26:31):
I ever met on the planet that can show up
somewhere and have a better way for people to do things.
You know, that's crazy. We're guests there, so we cooperate
with them. They want. Don't wear blue jeans, yes, sir,
don't wear khakis because it's a federal place, yes sir, Yes, sir.

(01:26:52):
Don't talk about this, got it? Got it? It said
that we can cooperate with anyone. Such cooperation ought never
goes so far as affiliation or endorsement. We can in
a helpful spirit. We can cooperate with anyone, but we

(01:27:15):
don't align ourselves. And here's the part that's the kicker
to me. It should never go so far as affiliation
or endorsement, actual or implied. Now that broadens that up
a lot. So in other words, I gotta step back
from my behavior and look at it and ask myself

(01:27:37):
and the behavior of groups. I think healthy groups do this?
Does anything that we do, would it even imply affiliation
or endorsement? In other words, how do we look to
the newer people? What are we saying to them? Are
we saying that Alcoholics Anonymous is a Christian organized Are

(01:28:02):
we saying that Alcoholics Anonymous believes in in medication or
believes in not taking medication? What are we speaking that
looks like we're behind some issue, that we're affiliating or
endorsing some cause we don't do any of that in
Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'll tell you in this spirit, I've

(01:28:24):
looked at some things I've shared in meetings and some stuff,
and I, ah, my god, I thought, you know that
imply what if there was somebody in the room and
I was the only This is the first meeting of
Alcoholic Anonymous, and I'm the only example that to this
day they have ever seen of AA. Now they don't
know that I'm not really I don't really speak for
AA in their mind. They don't know that. And I

(01:28:46):
just said something that makes AA look like it's a
certain way that it's not. And I tell you I've
done that stuff, and not consciously, not out of malice.
I never did it out of malice. I did it
because I'm a knucklehead, right, and I'm I don't know,
I just don't know. Tradition number eight. This is a

(01:29:10):
this is a weird deal. Oh seven. I think I
wanted to skip that subconsciously. Yeah, find out financial integrity
is tradition number seven. Well, it gets into an area
that's a little touchy. Each AA group ought to be

(01:29:33):
fully self supporting, declining their outside contributions. I got jumped
by an old timer in AA when I was new
at a meeting at one of the clubs. He saw
me go and buy a pack of cigarettes, and then
I didn't put any money in the basket, and he

(01:29:54):
embarrassed me in front of the whole room. Maybe his
method of approach to me was a little adamant and
a little could have been softer, But what he was
saying was right, is that that I come to alcoholics
anonymous and I was remaining a taker. And you know

(01:30:15):
what I had to start looking at if I if
I come to an AA meeting and I drink four
cups of coffee and put a dollar in the basket,
I'm a taker here. Where do you get four cups
of coffee for a dollar, all right, I think the standard.
I think the standard in AA was always the price
of a drink. Now, I know some of you haven't

(01:30:37):
been at bars for a lot for a long time.
You wouldn't, we wouldn't believe what you'll pay for a
cocktail today. You get a gray Goose martini, you're gonna
be it's like seven eight ten bucks. An average drink
is probably five. And I put five bucks in the
basket in my home group, and I'll put a minimum

(01:30:59):
of two in the basket in any other meeting. I
ever go to a minimum, And that's probably and I
and I objectively, I gotta tell you objectively, that's probably short. Objectively,
if I am really gonna buy the principle of self supporting,
in other words, that I want to contribute here now

(01:31:21):
and don't. And I got to say this, if you're
sitting here and you're broke, that's a whole another deal here.
Matter of fact, some i've been to I was in
an AA group one time. They told the new people,
if if you can put some money in the basket,
put it in. If you don't have any, take a
dollar out, which is and I washed nobody took a
dollar out. Now there's groups I go to where the
basket to.

Speaker 5 (01:31:41):
Be empty by the time it got but this was
not a skid row group like where I go. I mean,
there's there's homeless people in some of the meetings I
go to that just grab a handful. I mean, but
if you're sitting here and you don't have if you're
in a May meeting and and you're you don't have
any money, you know.

Speaker 1 (01:31:59):
That's that's a whole different that's a whole different deal.
We're not asking you, we're not The seventh tradition is
not designed to embarrass anybody, really, really and truly. But
if you got if you got fifty bucks in your
pocket and you've had five cups of coffee and you
put a dollar in the basket, I mean, don't take

(01:32:20):
my word for it, step back objectively and look at
what you just did. Is do you feel if you can,
in your own mind think you're pulling your weight here,
then I'd like to have your phone number. From time
to time, I got things that I think you're thinking
would probably justify things in my life. I mean, I

(01:32:48):
this spiritual principle of being self supporting is is I
don't know. I think I thought. For when I first
got sober, I thought step one was get a job.
They're big on that, big on get a job. When
I was almost a year sober, I'd lost the job
and I had a hard time for a while getting

(01:33:08):
another one, and I was eligible for one hundred and
twenty dollars a week unemployment, and people in AA and
I the only job I could get paid minimum wage,
which the take home was like ninety some dollars, and
people in AA made me, what made me pushed me
to take the job where I was gonna end up

(01:33:31):
with ninety seven dollars rather than one hundred and twenty
for doing nothing. I'm thinking, these guys don't know math.
Ninety seven, one hundred and twenty forty hours nothing, I mean,
what's it? I mean, that's crazy, And yet they were
absolutely right. I'd have died taken that free money and

(01:33:55):
not working. It would have killed me. I think my integrity,
and also in groups, the integrity of Alcoholic Anonymous, is
that we stand up. We stand up, and so many
of us have been takers all our lives. We let
our families support us. Some of us have taken money
from the government sometimes under fall. I can't tell you

(01:34:18):
how many eight step lists I've seen where there's they
took money from the government under false pretenses. This is
where we stop it. We stop it financial integrity Tradition
number eight. This is very different in the long form

(01:34:41):
than the short form. The short form is very brief
and alcoholics anonymous should remained forever non professional. But our
service centers may employ special workers. What's that mean? Clerical
clerical workers for the most part, most I know if
you've ever been to the General Service office in New
York City, they have quite a payroll. But it's not

(01:35:05):
None of those people are getting paid for twelve stepwork,
at least I hope not. I don't think they are.
They're getting paid for clerical office work, the same kind
of work that you would hire a maybe hire a
tempt from a secretarial service to do filing, correspondence, phone stuff.

(01:35:28):
But are in the long form it says alcoholics anonymous
anonymous should remain forever non professional. We define professionalism as
the occupation of counseling alcoholics for fees or higher But
we may employ alcoholics where they are going to perform
those services for which we might otherwise have to engage

(01:35:50):
non alcoholics. Such special services may be well recompensed, and
central office workers clerical stuff. But our twelve, but our
usual AA twelve step work is never never to be
paid for if you break this tradition. The punitive thing

(01:36:16):
is not within the fellowship that comes from the spirit
of the universe. I'll tell you something I've watched over
the years. Guys try to profit off of alcoholics anonymous,
and they get away with it for a number of years.
But I'll tell you I've never seen it turn out well.
Whether it's guys get dollar bills in their eyes and
they open some they buy some dump abandoned house and

(01:36:40):
stick thirty newcomers in it at five hundred dollars a week,
you know, or a month or whatever, trying to get rich,
and or I just kiss besides myself and I worked
as a counselor for my first year of surpriving. How
many other people in here have either worked as a
counselor or at least thought about it at one time

(01:37:01):
that that's what they'd like to do, is become an
alcoholism counselor. Do you know that statistically, the highest relapse
rate is in alcoholism counselor. You have a better shot
staying sober as a drug dealer than as an alcoholism counselor.
And yet yet that's the first job we all want,

(01:37:23):
because you know, you got to Amy's in their hammering.
You got to help people. You gotta help people. And
if you're self centered and have a mind like mine,
it's like, how can I benefit me from that? How
gonna get paid to do that? And I worked, uh,
And some some people are able to do that very well,
and they get they call them two hatters, and it

(01:37:43):
doesn't one doesn't bleed into the other. But here's what
happened to me when I did it, UH. Within no
time at all, is working as a professional in the field.
I started to become unsponsorable. I became the I know
guy because I was taking a professor stance towards my
own recovery, and also because I worked ten hours a

(01:38:05):
day in this rehab. When I got off work, I
didn't feel like doing a twelve step work. I didn't
feel like spending time with some new guy. I didn't
feel like going into a hospital or an institution. I'd
still make myself because I was under pressure, but I
didn't feel like it. And what was happening is I'm
cutting off the flow of power in my life. I

(01:38:27):
was up in the Rocky mountains years ago, and these
guys took me to see this little lake that was
so clean and clear and pristine. You could see the
rocks on the bottom of the lake. And the reason
it was so pure and clean is on one side
of the lake there's a stream with water rapidly moving in.
On the other lake other side, water moving out. It

(01:38:48):
never got stagnant. When I worked as a professional in
the field of alcoholism, I became unsponsorable. I blocked the
stuff coming in and I did it for a living,
and I blocked the stuff going out, and I started
to get stagnant. I didn't even know that. The few
individuals that have worked in the field of alcoholism professionally

(01:39:12):
and have survived it and done well, remained very humble
and sponsorable. And they will get off work and go
and do into a different institution where they don't get paid,
and they'll volunteer their time, or they'll put a meeting on,
or they'll listen to a fifth Step and they're very,
very present and active in their primary purpose and they're

(01:39:33):
able to separate the two and not listen to the
clamorings in their head as well. I don't need to
do that. I do it all day long. They never listened,
They never indulge that they're able to keep it separate.
I wasn't one of those guys. It bled from what
it bled into each other with me, and it was
and God took that job away from me. I don't

(01:39:56):
think I would have stayed sober if I'd have stayed there,
because I was cutting off the two chain, the channel
within the channel out. Tradition Number nine in the in
the short form is AA as such, I'll never be organized.
I have never found this us in much danger of

(01:40:16):
breaking this I I don't. I know it's in the
long form it gets very you know, it gets very
specific about the grapevine and the General Service Office, et cetera,
et cetera, and it's but from a spiritual point of view,

(01:40:43):
I don't. I don't think we're gonna get over organized.
You ever try to get you ever, try to get
twenty members of your home group to go out to
dinner together. Oh man, you know what we need it?
You need an alan on In the midst to kind
of get it all wrong because because alcoholics all have
we all have twenty different ideas of where we should eat.

(01:41:06):
And whoever, if we go with anybody else's idea, you'll
sit there and have a resentment. All right, it's like
trying to herd mosquitoes. You know. It's just we're not organized,
but but we are responsible and responsible as a word.

(01:41:31):
Just the word responsibility used to make me guilty as
a word I didn't like. And it's such a simple
word because it's just the ability to respond. They need
a coffee maker, step up. Respond, you got new guys
walking in, stick your hand out. Respond. I think within

(01:41:55):
the implied in this word. Even though we're not organized,
and we shouldn't be, we're very unworthy organized. Actually we
are a fellowship of lit up, good hearted people, but
behind a primary purpose, and we respond. You get a
good AA group, a really good AA group. There's no
they don't have to be beaten the bushes for people

(01:42:17):
to do commitments. A matter of fact, there's usually people
stand in line. In a good AA group. Everybody wants
to serve because they get it. They get it, they
get that's where the that's where the goods are. That's
where the one of the guys I sponsored talks about
service in twelve step work.

Speaker 6 (01:42:34):
He says, that's the good dope.

Speaker 1 (01:42:41):
Yeah. Tradition number ten. No AA group or members should,
ever in such a way as implicate a implicate AA
express any opinion on outside controversial issues, particularly those of politics,
alcohol reform, or sectarian religion. The Alcoholics anonymous groups should

(01:43:07):
oppose no one considering such members they express no view whatever.
Very different than the short form, because in the short
form it's talking about groups. Here it says or member,
this is the tradition that I am the most efficient
of This is the one I struggle the most with.

(01:43:31):
I have. I have a lot of opinions.

Speaker 3 (01:43:38):
Matter of fact, I'll.

Speaker 1 (01:43:38):
Tell you something. It's it's hideous, but you can you
can measure my distance from God, you can measure my
distance from others, and you can measure my distance from
my own surrender by how many opinions are in my life.
And I I got if I could, personally, as a
member of Alcoholics in and has become opinion less, I

(01:44:02):
think that would be I would finally have gotten to
a place where I've actually carried out the decision in
step three, because what is my will? When I'm saying
to God and I'm coming from the intention of turning
my will first of all and then my life, what
is my will? It's my view, it's my way, it's

(01:44:27):
my opinions of how things should be, how things shouldn't be.
And I incur personally when I have a lot of opinions.
I incur the anxiety of my opinion of how things
should be isn't going to be done, you know, the
anxiety of not getting my way, or the depression. You

(01:44:49):
know what depression is. That's when God stops doing your will.
I'm one of those kind of guys. It's drunk or sober.
I can be crushed. There's a line in our book
that says we're crushed by self imposed crisises. We cannot
postpone or of eight, and then we have to fearlessly

(01:45:11):
face the proposition. God's either everything or he's nothing, either
is or isn't. You know, you can come out of
a place like that where God's everything he is, you know,
and I am nothing and I'm surrendered. And what's the
first thing you get back? Your opinion? Some of you
may have had this experience walking into your home group

(01:45:34):
or maybe into work, maybe somewhere, maybe going home, walking
into the house where the kids and stuff running around,
walking in there, surrendered. It's all good, it's all good,
it's all good. God's in his heaven, everything is in
divine order. And then you sit down and it's the
weirdest thing happened. It's like a key turns in my head.

(01:45:58):
I'll just start noticing thing. You know what I mean.
It's just this, and I don't notice. If you're like me,
this is terrible. I don't notice good stuff. I notice
out of line stuff. I notice where people are wrong.
I know right. And then what happens is that I've

(01:46:21):
joined the ranks of the unsurrendered. There's separation once again
between me and you, and me and God. Because if
I'm not happy with you, you are God's first gift
to me. I'm not happy with God if I'm not
happy with you. Isn't it odd an AA that we
get closer to God not by getting closer to God,
and get closer to God by getting closer to people.

(01:46:42):
In the fifth step is where promises the nearness are
our creator. When after I started to clear away everything
between me and God, or between me and you rather,
and as I clear things away between me and you,
what happens is I end up closer to God cause
and effect, because you were my first, my first expression

(01:47:04):
of God I ever see as you. The Hindus tell
a story of creation that I've found fascinating.

Speaker 3 (01:47:16):
I love.

Speaker 1 (01:47:16):
It's called Maya and it stands for the Great Illusion.
And their story of creation is that God existed timelessly
unto himself, and he devised this cosmic game. And the
cosmic game was he would break himself into an infinite
number of parts, give all the parts costumes, skin suits,

(01:47:40):
and give all the parts amnesia. And the game is
which parts are going to realize and see through the
illusion and realize that they're not separate. They are one
with each other and one with God. The Hindus call
that enlightenment. We call it a spiritual awakening. I think

(01:48:00):
one of the reasons that we become effective here is
that we get it. I see the knee that is
in you. I see what Einstein. I see through the
illusion that Einstein talked about when he said the great
illusion of mankind was that there was more than one
of us here, and boy you sponsor people, you get
that after a while, you listen to fifth you listen

(01:48:22):
to fifth step after fifth step, it's the same guy.
I haven't heard anything new in a fifth step in
twenty eight years. I'm hopeful I hear imperiodicity. I'm always
hopeful somebody's gonna come up with something interesting, you know,
this squeen, a vibrating lawn rake, chunky peanut butter, something exciting, interesting.
But it's never like that. It's always the same pathetic, scared,

(01:48:46):
inadequate guy desperately frantically trying to fill his vacancies and
failing and stepping on the toes of everybody around him
and causing a mess in the process. Every you could,
matter of fact, it's so, it's this. The commonality in
it is that we could write your the first ten

(01:49:07):
people on your inventory for you. We know who they are, mother, father, sister, brother, first,
the couple, big bosses, every relationship that ever. I mean,
we it's it's all the same.

Speaker 6 (01:49:22):
I mean, yeah, where am I.

Speaker 1 (01:49:43):
Eleven? I'm getting there? This is tedious, isn't it. Yeah?
I know, I don't know, all right, We're almost done.
Eleven are Public policy is based on attraction rather than promotion.

(01:50:08):
We're more promoters than attractors. This is really a big
deal Bill Wilson. I love Bill Wilson. He was a
promoter by nature, yet hampered by spiritual principles, and consequently
he was often really an amazing program of attraction. That

(01:50:28):
his nature was promotion his nature, and only God does that.
Only God does that. Our public relations policy is based
on attraction rather promotion. We need always maintain personal anonymity
at the level of press, radio and films. Within the
Fellowship of Alcoholics anonymous, I give my last name and

(01:50:53):
I tell you my name's Bob Daryl. I am alcoholic,
and my phone number is in the Las Vegas directory.
And I do that in the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous
because I've been taught to step up here and be available.
That if I were to share something this weekend that
would touch someone in a way that you needed to

(01:51:16):
talk to me, and maybe you were too afraid to
approach me this weekend that a week later asked, as
it's cooked and simmered in you, that you could find me.
I want you to be able to find me. I
want I want to be available.

Speaker 2 (01:51:31):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:51:32):
That is my primary purpose and God. God chooses all
that you know, we don't. You can't pick who you're
gonna help. I mean, if if I could pick who
I would help, i'd I'd have a lot more respectable
sponsease than I got. I'll tell you i'd have. I'd
have caps, some captains of industry and some movie stars

(01:51:52):
I get. I get knuckleheads like me. You don't pick
mm hm. We serve service without prejudice. And yet at
the same time, I am very, very protective of my
anonymity at public level. I was approached many years ago

(01:52:15):
by someone in the media. I suspect someone in AA
dimed me out and went as this person and told
him some of my story, and they found it fascinating
that a guy that had been homeless, a whino on
the streets could at one time I owned the largest
chain of retail liquor stores in the state of Nevada.

(01:52:35):
And they found that that would be good copy, very
human interest, great human interest story. And they came to
me and they wanted to do a story on it,
and I told I absolutely refused, and they even offered
not to print my last name. Well, that's not gonna
They're gonna know who it is. For God's sakes, right,
who are you kidding me? And that they couldn't understand

(01:52:58):
why I would. They kept saying, but it'll be good
for your business. It'll kill me because it would set
me as part as separate and apart from it would
feed something in me that should be starved, and it
would starve something in me that should be fed. I

(01:53:20):
must must remain a part of the herd. I can't
be And I'll tell and I'll tell you something. I
think standing up here doing this is a dangerous proposition.
It scares me. And I have a I have a
network of guys I talked to about this kind of stuff.
Bob and I have talked about this. Tom and I

(01:53:40):
have talked about Tom wrote it, wrote Oh, he wrote
an amaze. I think he wrote it. It was anonymous,
But I saw this thing. I knew. I was sure
he wrote it, and it was it was about a
circuit rider. About was that you that wrote that? He
won't see he's too humble to say. I don't. I don't.
I'd have been sided autographs if it was me. I
think he wrote it. But it's a dangerous proposition, And

(01:54:06):
how how do guys like me survive it well. I'm sponsored.
I go into the trenches several times a week. I
go to meetings the heart, the heart of my program recoveries.
I go to meetings where nobody knows I'm some kind
of big shot speaker. I'm just I'm just an annoying

(01:54:29):
guy from AA to them where they they really would
rather be taking a nap, you know what I mean.
And I'm nothing special down there, And I'm the guy
who brings in the meeting a couple times a week.
I do enough of that kind of stuff. I hope
to God that it balances out what I do up here,

(01:54:50):
because if if I just did this, I would I
am absolutely convinced I would die of alcoholism. I heard
my Cliff R who's a dear, dear, dear friend, and
he just had a great turnaround physically. Everybody we were
all really concerned. He's got a little temporary new least physically.
He's doing very well. But Cliff, one time at a
meeting at a conference, I heard him get up to

(01:55:12):
the podium and he talked about the guys he sponsors
and the commitments he has and the things he does
in the trenches. And the service things. And then he
said something I wanted to cheer when he said it.
He says, I don't think we should allow people to
get up here and do this unless they're doing that,
because we'll kill him. It won't hurt alcoholics, anonymous, but

(01:55:34):
it'll kill a guy like me. This is very first
of all, you tell me, you finally beat it into
my head that my problem is self centered. Now you
want me to get up to a podium and capture
a whole room. Well, I talk about me. What's wrong

(01:55:57):
with that picture? You know? Something a little accepted. It accepted,
it's useful sometimes and it's scared. I'll tell you it
scares me. I've known some guys that they got to
a point where this is the only meetings they went to,
or meetings where they where they talked dangerous. That's a

(01:56:20):
closed system. Right, How's God? How's God going to talk
to me through you? If it's just me? Right? Dangerous?
Dangerous deal. Finally, tradition number twelve, Anonymity is the spiritual
foundation of all our traditions, ever, reminding us to place
principles before personalities. I'm embarrassed to tell you I'm a knucklehead.

(01:56:47):
Sometimes I just I was sober somewhere between fifteen and
twenty years sober before I realized what that meant. Here's
what I thought it meant. I thought it meant that
I was supposed to put the principles of Alcoholics Anonymous
ahead of year before you're obviously screwed up personalities. And

(01:57:10):
it doesn't mean that at all. That there's only one
personality in this room that's the source of my separation
and conflict. There's only one personality. I have to work
these principles and put them before. I must subjugate myself
and push myself into the back seat and put these
things for most in my life. And it's I am

(01:57:32):
the source of my conflict. If I ever I almost
died of alcoholism because I couldn't get in here, because
I couldn't stop judging you. I couldn't hear you because
I kept picking you apart. And if I ever leave
Alcoholics Anonymous, I think it will be the same mechanism.

(01:57:54):
I think that I will judge myself out of AA
one judgment at a time, or my ego will rise
up and I will compromise my actions as if I
don't need to do that stuff the little people do
anymore right, and I will incrementally leave AA because I
will have put my personality ahead of the principles. It

(01:58:18):
is the principles that save Bob from Bob, and it
is the principles of alcoholics anonymous that were our redemption
comes from. And the problem is alcoholism is cunning, baffling,
powerful and patient. And it doesn't matter if I'm sober
over thirty years, over fifty years. Alcoholism waits for guys

(01:58:42):
like me. It's a predator. It circles the herd. It's
circling this room today and it just waits, and it
waits to get a foot in, and it clamors and
it says things to us continually. If you ever saw
the Meet the movie, the second movie in The Lord

(01:59:03):
of the Rings Two Towers, there was a scene in
there where this king Theodin sitting on the throne and
he's in the spell of an evil force and the
minion of the force is sitting next to him. It's
a it's a guy called worm Tongue, and he's clamoring
in the kings in his kling's king's ear. Don't listen
to those people that guy doesn't know what he's talking about.

(01:59:26):
Do you know you don't have to listen. You know
he cheated on his wife. You can discount everything he says.
You know what's he's so full of himself. Look at
the way he talks in meanings and gradually incrementally, I
will I will leave AA one person at a time.
And I want to close by reading the long form

(01:59:47):
of the twelve Tradition, which I I think is one
of the most beautiful things Bill has ever written. It's it's, it's, it's,
it's unbelievable. The first my my home group, my old
home group, and my and my new home group, we
read the the long form of the traditions. Uh, not

(02:00:08):
every week, but like once a month. And when if
you've ever watched, I love to watch the new people
as they read them.

Speaker 3 (02:00:15):
They just sit there, roll their eyes, and then the reader.

Speaker 1 (02:00:28):
Gets to the and and most of them think the
first two words of the twelfth Tradition. They think that
the readers injected them into there, that they because it
says and finally, and finally, we have alcoholics Anonymous believe

(02:00:53):
that the principal of ananimity has an immense spiritual significance
that reminds ends us that we are to place principles
before personalities, that we are actually to practice a genuine humility.
This to the end, that our great blessings may never

(02:01:15):
spoil us, that we shall forever live and thankful contemplation
of Him who presides over us. All, thank you for listening.

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Bob D. - AA Speaker - Spiritual Principles in Relationships

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