# Big Book Workshop — 3

- Archive ID: `DP-1999-RICHMOND`
- Source: https://mikechase.org/AA_Podcasts/Media/AA%203rd%20Don%20P.,%20BBW%20at%20Richmond%20,%20VA.%20AUG.14th.mp3
- Duration: 00:51:01
- Audio SHA-256: `106e2808cbaec7a45caa094495000917658f4f5ceb5e4e94ae87bc20c14871aa`

> Automated timestamped draft (faster-whisper base.en). Names, specialized terms, and unclear passages require human review.

## Transcript

**[00:00:22]** You may already have asked yourself why it is that all of us became so very open drinking.
**[00:00:41]** Doubtless and curious to discover how and why on the face of expert opinion of the contrary,
**[00:00:46]** we have recovered from a hopeless condition of mind and body.
**[00:00:53]** There was a time when I used this book to validate my experience.
**[00:00:59]** I must tell you that today my experience validates this book.
**[00:01:06]** I am one of we.
**[00:01:08]** I have done what they said, the way they said, and had the experience they had.
**[00:01:14]** I am one of we.
**[00:01:15]** I am a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
**[00:01:22]** We have recovered from a hopeless state of mind and body.
**[00:01:24]** It's not even a seemingly hopeless thing anymore.
**[00:01:27]** He just kind of led you down the path there for a while, give you an out.
**[00:01:31]** All the way through here, there are outs.
**[00:01:32]** If you notice that, you can jump off any time until you get to the third step.
**[00:01:39]** Once you do that, you can't get off, so there are lots of outs between now and then.
**[00:01:50]** If you are an alcoholic who wants to get over it, you may already be asking, what do I have
**[00:01:54]** to do?
**[00:01:55]** It is the purpose of this book to answer such questions specifically.
**[00:02:01]** We shall tell you what we have done.
**[00:02:04]** I have been taught how to sponsor again.
**[00:02:06]** If you want to know what to do, I can just show you what I have done.
**[00:02:11]** You don't even have to be smart for that.
**[00:02:16]** I have to have a reasonable memory and a willingness to embellish whenever necessary.
**[00:02:24]** I am over on page 20.
**[00:02:34]** I am sorry.
**[00:02:35]** Every time I get in the heart of a bunch of big book fanatics, I just assume you all know.
**[00:02:47]** Many described as the three different kind of drinkers.
**[00:02:51]** These first 52-some pages are pretty redundant.
**[00:02:54]** Keep hitting the same information over and over and over because we are slick devils and we
**[00:02:59]** don't want to miss anybody.
**[00:03:02]** So here it comes again.
**[00:03:03]** We are going to look for those of you who are clinically minded.
**[00:03:07]** Let's take a look at the three kinds of alcoholics.
**[00:03:11]** There are three kinds of drinkers, not alcoholics.
**[00:03:15]** Some of our drinkers have a little trouble in giving up liquor entirely if they have
**[00:03:18]** a good reason for it.
**[00:03:19]** They can take it or leave it alone.
**[00:03:21]** Is that me?
**[00:03:23]** No.
**[00:03:24]** No, that's not me.
**[00:03:28]** I am not a moderate drinker.
**[00:03:29]** If that's what defines it, that's not me.
**[00:03:31]** I can't take it or leave it alone.
**[00:03:34]** I can't stop for any kind of good reason.
**[00:03:38]** I have had many good reasons along the way, meaningless.
**[00:03:43]** So I'm not a moderate drinker, good.
**[00:03:47]** Then we have a certain type of hard drinker.
**[00:03:50]** You may have the habit badly enough to gradually impair him physically and mentally.
**[00:03:55]** It may cause him to die a few years before his time.
**[00:03:59]** If a sufficiently strong reason, such as ill health, falling in love, change of environment,
**[00:04:04]** the warning of a doctor, becomes operative, this man can also stop or moderate, although
**[00:04:11]** he might find it difficult and troublesome, and may even need medical attention.
**[00:04:16]** Is that me?
**[00:04:24]** All those and more have been brought to my attention and it didn't do it.
**[00:04:28]** So I must not be a certain kind of hard drinker.
**[00:04:33]** What's that leave?
**[00:04:35]** Real alcoholic.
**[00:04:36]** And how's he described?
**[00:04:38]** It may start off as a moderate drinker.
**[00:04:39]** Mayor may not become a continuous hard drinker, but at some stage of his drinking career he
**[00:04:45]** begins to lose all control of his liquor consumption once he starts to drink.
**[00:04:50]** That's me.
**[00:04:51]** That's the doctor's opinion put on a different set of words, begins to lose all control
**[00:04:58]** of his liquor consumption once he starts to drink.
**[00:05:00]** Is that me?
**[00:05:01]** Yes.
**[00:05:02]** So if I have that intellectual defense built, that slides me face that you.
**[00:05:10]** I know it's not you, you know, that's a good thing.
**[00:05:14]** He made a mistake of asking me for help, and he's going to get it.
**[00:05:26]** And then I go on to describe it in more detail, but let's keep it simple.
**[00:05:31]** If that fits you, are you a moderate drinker, are you a hard drinker, or do you lose control
**[00:05:37]** of your liquor consumption once you start to drink?
**[00:05:40]** If you do, that's alcoholic.
**[00:05:43]** Real alcoholic.
**[00:05:44]** There's nothing to do with drama, circumstance, behavior, nothing.
**[00:05:57]** I made some other identifications there on page 21.
**[00:06:03]** That did not describe me in any given day, but along the way I have been, each of those
**[00:06:08]** things he describes here, and I particularly have a strong memory of the fellow who goes
**[00:06:13]** to bed so intoxicated he ought to sleep the clock around.
**[00:06:17]** I can remember a horrible night.
**[00:06:20]** We drank at the lighthouse bar until about two, and then they closed it, and I wasn't
**[00:06:26]** finished, and it was a horror on me, because I knew whatever it was I was looking for that
**[00:06:31]** night.
**[00:06:32]** It was too late.
**[00:06:33]** It wasn't going to happen, and I had to keep drinking, and I was already too drunk.
**[00:06:41]** So I went home to my chicken coop.
**[00:06:42]** I had converted a chicken coop into a pretty fine little place to stay.
**[00:06:47]** We weren't all that bad.
**[00:06:53]** I was at that stage of drunkenness where I knew from experience, if I laid down, it would
**[00:06:59]** trigger the bed, which would spin rapidly and fling me onto the floor, where I would puke
**[00:07:05]** all over my rug, and I really didn't want to do that.
**[00:07:10]** I also knew from experience that if I would continue drinking just a little longer, I would
**[00:07:15]** pass out.
**[00:07:17]** I would go into a coma, go unconscious, which was far better deal than being flung out of
**[00:07:25]** my own bed, and I had no choice anyway, so I did.
**[00:07:29]** Now at that stage of drunkenness, this must have been around three or so.
**[00:07:32]** The bar closed at two, three, three, three, three.
**[00:07:35]** I drank myself into a Bolivian.
**[00:07:37]** I should have slept for a long, long time.
**[00:07:40]** That's a lot of Saturday, and just shortly after six, I'm up and awake, and I'm looking for
**[00:07:45]** a drink, because I still need a drink.
**[00:07:47]** So I have a memory to fit this.
**[00:07:49]** Do you have one?
**[00:07:51]** Somewhere on the way to fit, sir?
**[00:07:55]** I haven't met a moderate drinking guy who had that happen.
**[00:07:59]** I love my daughter, my wife is a joy, but she's got compassion for her, she got to have tough.
**[00:08:07]** Our oldest daughter came home one night, truly, gloriously, bombed, and the only way we knew
**[00:08:15]** that is we could hear her retching in the bathroom, and Jackie said, help me get her
**[00:08:21]** to bed.
**[00:08:22]** I said, don't do that to the child, you're going to put her to bed, and in a couple minutes
**[00:08:29]** she's going to have to puke again, and she won't make it down the hall.
**[00:08:32]** You're going to embarrass her, just get her a pill, and put her in the bathroom with her,
**[00:08:37]** which we did.
**[00:08:39]** My child retched online, she was 16 or 17, child.
**[00:08:45]** She has not done that since.
**[00:08:48]** She likes a little beer now, and a little wine now, and she hasn't done that since.
**[00:08:57]** You're all laughing.
**[00:08:59]** What a strange child, huh?
**[00:09:06]** Blocked to your family?
**[00:09:08]** Yes, so we have memories we can bring to them.
**[00:09:26]** We know that while the alcoholic keeps away from the drinking, I'm on page 22 now, Clay.
**[00:09:44]** Don't want you to miss a word, down to the bottom, it starts with we, you know, I'm sorry,
**[00:09:53]** I just, the devil gets to me now.
**[00:09:56]** We know that while the alcoholic keeps away from the drink, as he may do for months or
**[00:09:59]** years, he reacts much like other men, we're equally positive that once he takes any alcohol
**[00:10:05]** whatever in his system, something happens both in the bodily and mental sense, which
**[00:10:10]** makes it virtually impossible for him to start.
**[00:10:14]** The experience of any alcoholic will abundantly confirm this.
**[00:10:18]** My friend David, we did battle here.
**[00:10:23]** He said I went in to have a couple beers.
**[00:10:26]** I just changed my mind, and we battled until he finally heard what he said, and this helped.
**[00:10:34]** His mind was changed after a couple beers.
**[00:10:37]** He didn't change it, his mind was changed.
**[00:10:41]** So he was right, but that helped to find his alcoholism for you.
**[00:10:48]** It changes after a couple beers.
**[00:10:51]** I changed mentally and physically.
**[00:10:56]** These observations would be academic and pointless if our friend never took the first drink,
**[00:11:03]** thereby setting the terrible cycle in motion.
**[00:11:06]** Good morning.
**[00:11:07]** How are you?
**[00:11:08]** Now you can hear me.
**[00:11:12]** Good.
**[00:11:14]** Where were you before?
**[00:11:16]** You can't hear me over there.
**[00:11:18]** Yeah, I'm glad you're here.
**[00:11:21]** Therefore, the main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind, rather than his body.
**[00:11:28]** Strong statement.
**[00:11:31]** All of this horror we've been talking about will not happen if I don't take the first drink.
**[00:11:37]** What is it that causes me to take a drink after this has happened more than once?
**[00:11:43]** My problem centers in my mind.
**[00:11:50]** If you ask him why I started on the last vendor, the chances are he will offer you any one
**[00:11:54]** of 100 alibis.
**[00:11:55]** Of course.
**[00:11:56]** You've already convinced me.
**[00:11:57]** I've got to give you something to get you off my back.
**[00:12:01]** Why did you do that?
**[00:12:02]** I don't know.
**[00:12:03]** Yes, you do.
**[00:12:04]** You must know.
**[00:12:05]** You did it.
**[00:12:06]** Okay.
**[00:12:07]** Here's my little kit of tools.
**[00:12:08]** Which one pleases you today?
**[00:12:10]** Now leave me the hell alone when I try to figure out what's going on here.
**[00:12:17]** Remorse, promises, I'll never do that again.
**[00:12:25]** Sometimes excuses have a certain plausibility, but none of them really make sense in the light
**[00:12:31]** of the havoc an alcoholic's drinking about creates.
**[00:12:35]** I was tense and tired.
**[00:12:39]** Now I've shared that with my entire family and my boss and other all tense and tired.
**[00:12:44]** We're unified.
**[00:12:48]** It sounded like the philosophy of the man who having a headache beats himself on the head
**[00:12:52]** of the hammer so he can't feel the ache.
**[00:12:56]** Once in a while he may tell the truth.
**[00:12:58]** And the truth, strange to say, is that usually he has no more idea why he took the first drink
**[00:13:02]** that you had.
**[00:13:03]** Why do I need to remember that?
**[00:13:08]** I get caught up in all the reasons I drank and eliminate those behaviors.
**[00:13:14]** The main reason I drank is still there.
**[00:13:19]** No reason at all.
**[00:13:26]** So there's no treatment for that either apparently.
**[00:13:30]** We get a whole bunch of stories here of men who tried treatment all the way to Carl Jung's
**[00:13:36]** patients and Bill and numerous others, knew everything about their minds and the springs
**[00:13:43]** and the triggers.
**[00:13:44]** I'm in the business.
**[00:13:45]** I have to laugh at all the shit we have to present.
**[00:13:49]** It's meaningless.
**[00:13:52]** Triggers.
**[00:13:53]** It's like triggers.
**[00:13:59]** I drink as an alcoholic, unless something changes that.
**[00:14:08]** The tragic truth is that if a man be a real alcoholic, the happy day may not arrive, meaning
**[00:14:14]** that he'll raise himself and his lethargy and start over.
**[00:14:18]** He's lost control.
**[00:14:19]** At a certain point in the drinking of every alcoholic he passes into a state with the most
**[00:14:24]** powerful desire to stop drinking is an absolutely no avail.
**[00:14:32]** Somebody finally understands.
**[00:14:34]** I really didn't want to do what I just did, and my heart I really didn't.
**[00:14:40]** So why don't I do it?
**[00:14:42]** I don't know.
**[00:14:44]** The strongest desire to stop drinking is of absolutely no avail after a certain point.
**[00:14:50]** So in the fellowship we have a desire to stop drinking is the only requirement for membership.
**[00:14:55]** But a desire to stop drinking will not keep me sober.
**[00:14:59]** If that's all there is there, it won't keep me sober.
**[00:15:05]** I got the truth there.
**[00:15:06]** Somebody finally understands.
**[00:15:11]** The fact is that most alcoholics for reasons yet obscure have lost the power of choice
**[00:15:14]** and drink.
**[00:15:17]** It's gone.
**[00:15:18]** That's the best news I ever got.
**[00:15:22]** I have lost the power of choice.
**[00:15:24]** I have not gotten it back.
**[00:15:25]** I have no more choice of whether I drink today than I did when I stopped 31 years ago.
**[00:15:31]** Thank God.
**[00:15:32]** Every time I had the choice, I made the wrong one.
**[00:15:36]** I don't have any choice anymore.
**[00:15:38]** Back to my own devices, I will drink again.
**[00:15:41]** I'm just as sure of that as I am that I'm breathing today.
**[00:15:45]** Left of my own devices I'll drink again.
**[00:15:49]** Our so-called willpower becomes practically non-existent.
**[00:15:54]** We are unable at certain times to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the
**[00:16:00]** memory of the self-hearing and humiliation of even a week or a month ago.
**[00:16:04]** We are without defense against the first drink.
**[00:16:08]** Man has good news.
**[00:16:12]** I can quit fighting this thing.
**[00:16:15]** I don't have an adequate defense in my mind.
**[00:16:18]** I can't think my way out of this deal.
**[00:16:21]** All that's good news.
**[00:16:22]** I've been trying for years.
**[00:16:23]** Have you been trying to think your way out of this?
**[00:16:27]** What are your results?
**[00:16:31]** Struct speechless.
**[00:16:32]** Talk to you.
**[00:16:35]** Failure?
**[00:16:36]** That would happen to you once?
**[00:16:50]** More than once.
**[00:16:54]** That's alcoholic insanity.
**[00:16:56]** This is a little nutty.
**[00:16:59]** Twice is a little psychotic.
**[00:17:01]** Fifty times, that's stark rating, man.
**[00:17:05]** Yeah.
**[00:17:06]** Oh yeah.
**[00:17:07]** There's nothing wrong with being stark rating, man.
**[00:17:09]** That's the truth.
**[00:17:12]** You can't hear me.
**[00:17:16]** We're in trouble.
**[00:17:17]** I can't talk any louder without yelling.
**[00:17:20]** Let me hover once again.
**[00:17:22]** Okay, Mom.
**[00:17:24]** Is that better?
**[00:17:25]** Yeah.
**[00:17:26]** Yeah.
**[00:17:29]** Until I turn over here.
**[00:17:31]** Okay, I'll try to remember this.
**[00:17:37]** I don't have one of these at home.
**[00:17:40]** I'm not allowed.
**[00:17:47]** The almost certain consequences that follow taking even a glass of beer do not crowd into
**[00:17:52]** the mind to deter us.
**[00:17:55]** If that's true, then remembering my last drunk is, well, it's a good idea.
**[00:17:58]** It will not keep me sober.
**[00:18:01]** So I can just trash that idea when I hear it.
**[00:18:04]** Remembering my last drunk may help you get sober, but it won't keep me sober.
**[00:18:09]** Because at the time I need it, the chances are the information won't show up.
**[00:18:14]** That's all they say.
**[00:18:17]** I've got a filter that's built out of things like it really wasn't that bad.
**[00:18:27]** Memory has to get through that.
**[00:18:32]** It was bad chili.
**[00:19:15]** And then there's a stage where it doesn't bring the relief and you do it anyway.
**[00:19:20]** That's where this leaves.
**[00:19:22]** Yeah.
**[00:19:25]** I would have said, I remember most of the time, I remember specifically doing this with my
**[00:19:31]** parents.
**[00:19:32]** I wasn't sober.
**[00:19:33]** And I remember knowing that it was just, they were like the last full desk, usually with
**[00:19:40]** a lot of their home.
**[00:19:41]** And it was very important that I not go and do my Google account for a friend.
**[00:19:48]** And I did end up getting, you know, this is supposed to work.
**[00:19:54]** It was supposed to go more or less the same thing from there.
**[00:19:58]** I don't remember who thought it would be nice to have a drink.
**[00:20:02]** I just remember finding myself a drink, you know, and you know, what am I doing here?
**[00:20:09]** I didn't have to thought of, boy, this bad stuff is going to happen.
**[00:20:12]** This is what I do.
**[00:20:13]** When I started drinking, I was just starting to drink here.
**[00:20:16]** It wasn't anymore.
**[00:20:17]** Big thought process.
**[00:20:20]** Yep.
**[00:20:21]** That's an alcoholic mind.
**[00:20:22]** Well, I should have been noticeable.
**[00:20:23]** Yeah.
**[00:20:24]** Does that happen to you?
**[00:20:33]** You're described in this book.
**[00:20:35]** Yeah.
**[00:20:37]** Hey, too.
**[00:20:38]** No thought at all.
**[00:20:40]** Do it anyway.
**[00:20:51]** I know.
**[00:20:52]** Am I so stupid to me?
**[00:20:55]** Okay.
**[00:20:56]** Yeah, but you won't.
**[00:20:58]** You might as well.
**[00:21:00]** Yeah, I agree.
**[00:21:01]** I'll point you back.
**[00:21:02]** Yeah.
**[00:21:03]** That's the second level of filter right there.
**[00:21:07]** I'm wasting my time anyway.
**[00:21:09]** I'm going to lose this one.
**[00:21:33]** Right.
**[00:21:37]** We have lost the ability to make a choice.
**[00:21:40]** What are you saying?
**[00:21:41]** It comes a point where it goes.
**[00:21:44]** It's gone.
**[00:21:45]** I've lost the ability to choose.
**[00:21:47]** And I really don't want it back.
**[00:21:50]** That's my ego.
**[00:21:51]** If these thoughts occur, they're hazy and readily supplanted by the old thread beer idea,
**[00:22:00]** that this time we shall handle ourselves as other people.
**[00:22:03]** That one always weirded me out because I picked the kind of people that were just like me.
**[00:22:10]** Okay.
**[00:22:11]** The handle themselves the same way.
**[00:22:15]** Oh.
**[00:22:16]** There's a complete failure of the kind of defense that keeps one from putting his hand on a hot stove.
**[00:22:22]** Yeah.
**[00:22:23]** It just isn't there.
**[00:22:27]** That's real powerlessness.
**[00:22:29]** I've got a body that'll kick up if I give it alcohol.
**[00:22:33]** And a mind that gives it alcohol.
**[00:22:36]** And insists on it.
**[00:22:38]** That's the way it is.
**[00:22:40]** The alcoholic may say to himself in the most casual way, it won't burn me this time.
**[00:22:44]** So here's how.
**[00:22:46]** Or perhaps he doesn't think at all.
**[00:22:49]** Just heard about that.
**[00:22:51]** How often have some of us begun to drink in this nonchalant way and up to the third or fourth
**[00:22:56]** pounding on the barn and said to ourselves,
**[00:22:58]** God said, how did we ever get started again?
**[00:23:02]** Only to have that thought supplanted by that, well, I'll stop at the sixth drink or my favorite
**[00:23:07]** what's the use anyhow.
**[00:23:12]** What's the use?
**[00:23:14]** Now, let me tell you the effect that it has on the world around us.
**[00:23:20]** I learned a great deal from that psychiatrist.
**[00:23:23]** He told me that any competent psychiatrist dealing with alcoholics, particularly in their first six months,
**[00:23:30]** would almost have to declare them manic depressive.
**[00:23:34]** Because that's what we look like.
**[00:23:36]** That's the symptom we present.
**[00:23:38]** What's the use anyhow?
**[00:23:41]** That's depression.
**[00:23:42]** And so they medicate us.
**[00:23:46]** That's their job.
**[00:23:50]** Here's what the system looks like.
**[00:23:53]** And here's what we do to treat that.
**[00:23:56]** So I can't be mad at them for that.
**[00:23:58]** I'm giving it to them.
**[00:24:01]** Okay.
**[00:24:02]** What's the use anyhow?
**[00:24:05]** Isn't that wonderful?
**[00:24:06]** It's like a warm cloak.
**[00:24:09]** Oh.
**[00:24:12]** Now I don't say that at home because they just slap me around.
**[00:24:17]** But if you and I are in a bar together, you're not my ally.
**[00:24:21]** Yeah, me too.
**[00:24:22]** She doesn't understand.
**[00:24:26]** Why don't you go home?
**[00:24:30]** What's the use?
**[00:24:31]** I mean, there's a whole range I can play with that, particularly drinking.
**[00:24:39]** You know what that says to me?
**[00:24:41]** I've already known the truth.
**[00:24:43]** If I take one and say, what's the use anyhow, I know where it's headed.
**[00:24:48]** I'm deluding myself that I don't.
**[00:24:50]** I know.
**[00:24:52]** And I almost welcome it.
**[00:24:59]** When this sort of thinking is fully established in an individual with alcoholic tendencies,
**[00:25:03]** he's pussyfooting again, by the way.
**[00:25:05]** He'll stop doing that pretty soon.
**[00:25:10]** He's probably placed himself beyond human aid.
**[00:25:15]** And unless locked up, my dog will permanently insane.
**[00:25:18]** That hit my terror button.
**[00:25:23]** My great terror was that I would end up in a mental institution and I would be there forever
**[00:25:32]** because they would catch me during one of my insane times and lock me away.
**[00:25:38]** And then I would get sober and I would be saying, now I'm in real trouble.
**[00:25:43]** Because if you're in a mental institution and you tell them you're saying, they keep you.
**[00:25:49]** They know you're not.
**[00:25:51]** It's not until you admit you're nuts that they let you go.
**[00:25:56]** And I just knew that.
**[00:25:57]** I already knew about this shift in personalities.
**[00:26:00]** It's below the level of consciousness, below the level of articulation that are frightened
**[00:26:06]** because I knew that's when they'd get me.
**[00:26:09]** And to be locked up with a bunch of crazy people is frightened.
**[00:26:13]** I run with them.
**[00:26:14]** I'll play with them.
**[00:26:15]** But I don't be locked up with them.
**[00:26:18]** There is a solution.
**[00:26:28]** And this is kind of doom and gloom stuff.
**[00:26:30]** If you've got this or doom, there's no treatment for it.
**[00:26:34]** But beyond human aid, there's nothing we can do.
**[00:26:37]** You've got it.
**[00:26:38]** You've got it.
**[00:26:39]** Unless locked up may die or go permanently insane.
**[00:26:45]** It's the best news I've got for you this morning.
**[00:26:48]** Okay.
**[00:26:49]** But there is a solution.
**[00:26:53]** Almost none of us like the self searching, the leveling of pride, the confession of shortcomings
**[00:26:58]** which the process requires for successful consummation.
**[00:27:08]** I heard one time in early sobriety at some meeting somewhere that there are no musts in AA.
**[00:27:15]** I'm sorry.
**[00:27:17]** Requires kind of sounds like a long form of must to me.
**[00:27:21]** And I was told very clearly by my sponsors, there's some things you must do if you're going
**[00:27:26]** to die.
**[00:27:27]** Now you don't have to do them.
**[00:27:28]** If you don't, you're going to die an ugly, ugly death.
**[00:27:33]** So what is it I'm going to have to do?
**[00:27:34]** If we're looking toward an experience here, what are we going to have to do?
**[00:27:38]** Self searching, leveling of pride, confession of shortcomings.
**[00:27:44]** These are the requirements.
**[00:27:48]** If I'm going to have this thing go to its full end.
**[00:27:55]** I've got to tell you that from observing over the years, most of the people we lose, we being
**[00:28:02]** those of us who take people through the big book, we lose at the eight step.
**[00:28:07]** That's where we lose.
**[00:28:14]** Those who make it to permanent sobriety have an experience at the eight step that sets them
**[00:28:20]** free.
**[00:28:21]** The whole thing is about willingness.
**[00:28:24]** Now some people will say that I got stuck at the eighth and ninth step.
**[00:28:29]** No?
**[00:28:30]** You get stuck at the first step.
**[00:28:32]** It's the only place you ever get stuck.
**[00:28:40]** The confession of shortcomings is not just the fifth step.
**[00:28:44]** It includes the eighth and ninth step.
**[00:28:47]** And the continuing.
**[00:28:49]** I've got to come to the people I've harmed and confess my wrong going to them.
**[00:28:54]** That's how I make a mess.
**[00:28:56]** The whole thing becomes a flaw.
**[00:28:58]** And that's where we lose people.
**[00:29:01]** And I worry about that.
**[00:29:03]** Because, I mean somewhere along the way, I missed a signal.
**[00:29:07]** When you're doing your fourth step and your fifth step.
**[00:29:12]** When we work together on the sixth and seventh step.
**[00:29:16]** Or at the third step.
**[00:29:18]** One of the things I started doing, and I lose fewer people now, by the way.
**[00:29:22]** When you're ready to take the third step, I send you home.
**[00:29:25]** I don't let you do it.
**[00:29:27]** It says in the big book to thank Will before taking this step.
**[00:29:30]** So I send you home to thank Will first.
**[00:29:33]** Really think about this.
**[00:29:35]** Because if you take this step, you're then going to have the power to finish up.
**[00:29:40]** And if you don't finish up, you're in trouble.
**[00:29:43]** Because the power will still be there.
**[00:29:45]** And you just run right over you.
**[00:29:47]** It's a good morning.
**[00:29:49]** Once you're on the path, you can't get off.
**[00:29:51]** Unless you go drink.
**[00:29:53]** It's fun to watch somebody who's decided to ask God for help.
**[00:29:57]** Then try to finish up.
**[00:30:11]** And if you don't finish up, you're in trouble.
**[00:30:14]** Because the power will still be there.
**[00:30:16]** And you just run right over you.
**[00:30:18]** It's a good morning.
**[00:30:20]** Once you're on the path, you can't get off.
**[00:30:22]** Unless you go drink.
**[00:30:24]** It's fun to watch somebody who's decided to ask God for help.
**[00:30:28]** Then try.
**[00:30:29]** I didn't measure up here.
**[00:30:43]** That's hard to admit.
**[00:30:45]** I could admit my gross wrongs.
**[00:30:47]** It's really hard to admit.
**[00:30:49]** I just didn't measure up here.
**[00:30:51]** I knew the difference between right and wrong.
**[00:30:53]** And I did the wrong thing.
**[00:30:55]** If we wanted to do that, then we can proceed.
**[00:31:05]** We saw that work for others.
**[00:31:07]** And we had come to believe that the hopelessness and futility of life as we've been living in.
**[00:31:17]** Oh, I love those words.
**[00:31:19]** Hopeless and futile.
**[00:31:21]** What's the use anyhow?
**[00:31:23]** It's futile.
**[00:31:26]** Nothing I do works.
**[00:31:28]** Nothing I do seems to make me happy or useful or productive.
**[00:31:32]** Kind of what a wonderful place.
**[00:31:34]** I don't depress you.
**[00:31:36]** Go to your sponsor.
**[00:31:37]** Don't go to the doctor, please.
**[00:31:39]** Because the doctor will fix you at that point.
**[00:31:44]** You will take that feeling away from you.
**[00:31:47]** And you won't get to finish it.
**[00:31:49]** You have to go back and do it again someday.
**[00:31:51]** There's a time for doctors.
**[00:31:53]** There's a time for sponsors.
**[00:31:55]** You get a mean point of time from the main sponsor school.
**[00:31:59]** You look you right in the eye and say, yeah, I know.
**[00:32:04]** But you ain't seen nothing yet.
**[00:32:06]** You don't even learn about suffering here or whatever.
**[00:32:10]** Just help you right to the edge of the cliff and then kick you off.
**[00:32:14]** That's what we had.
**[00:32:18]** Look at the truth.
**[00:32:19]** It would set you free.
**[00:32:20]** So there's nothing left for us but to pick up the simple,
**[00:32:27]** kit of spiritual tools later are feeding.
**[00:32:31]** Important for me as a sponsor to remember, that's the way to do it.
**[00:32:36]** I do not take out the spiritual tools I have and work them on you.
**[00:32:41]** I present the same kit of tools that I was given and put them at your feet
**[00:32:46]** and it's up to you to pick them up and go with.
**[00:32:49]** There's no autonomous robots here.
**[00:32:51]** It's all freedom.
**[00:32:58]** I'll show you how to use that wrench.
**[00:33:01]** You can't use my wrench.
**[00:33:02]** You've got to use your own.
**[00:33:04]** You can't have my experience.
**[00:33:06]** You've got to have your own.
**[00:33:08]** That's what I said.
**[00:33:09]** I can't even share a God with you, but it's sad.
**[00:33:11]** I can just tell you love my relationship with it,
**[00:33:13]** but you're going to have to have your own experience.
**[00:33:15]** That's good because I quit trying to chase his and began looking for more.
**[00:33:19]** The great fact is just this and nothing less.
**[00:33:24]** God, I love this piece.
**[00:33:28]** This is Alcoholics Anonymous.
**[00:33:30]** Nothing less than this is acceptable to me.
**[00:33:33]** We have had deep and effective spiritual experiences,
**[00:33:37]** which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life,
**[00:33:41]** toward our fellows and toward God's universe.
**[00:33:44]** The central fact of our lives today is that our Creator has entered into our hearts
**[00:33:49]** and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous.
**[00:33:51]** It's a commercial copy to those things for us,
**[00:33:56]** which we can never do by ourselves.
**[00:33:58]** That can also be read entered into our hearts and lives.
**[00:34:04]** Currently, it comes out of me lives because God's very much alive.
**[00:34:11]** What a wondrous deal.
**[00:34:13]** Now, there's a message with depth and weight.
**[00:34:15]** Anything less than that, and I probably wouldn't have stayed here.
**[00:34:18]** The very thought of having to fight my alcoholism for the rest of my life
**[00:34:25]** would have driven me away.
**[00:34:27]** I've got no fight left.
**[00:34:29]** Deep and effective spiritual experiences.
**[00:34:31]** I've had spiritual experiences, but they weren't affected because I stole them.
**[00:34:36]** Here's one I can have.
**[00:34:38]** When God will come alive, that's what they're saying.
**[00:34:42]** That's what I'm saying to you.
**[00:34:43]** That's what you say to the people you sponsor.
**[00:34:45]** I know you. Some of you do.
**[00:34:47]** Nothing less than this.
**[00:34:49]** Good. It doesn't mean you have to have it this afternoon.
**[00:34:52]** Just know it's available.
**[00:34:54]** If you're as serious as the alcoholic as we were,
**[00:35:01]** we believe there's no middle-of-the-road solution.
**[00:35:04]** Half measures are available to us, nothing.
**[00:35:10]** Half measures don't get 50% results.
**[00:35:13]** You're either drinking or not.
**[00:35:15]** You're either awake or you're asleep.
**[00:35:17]** Half measures available. It's nothing.
**[00:35:19]** Good, because I'm that kind of person anyway.
**[00:35:23]** If I'm going to go do something, I do it all.
**[00:35:28]** Whatever that may be.
**[00:35:31]** It's just my nature.
**[00:35:35]** We were in a position where life was becoming impossible,
**[00:35:38]** and if we had passed into the region from which there was no return through a human aid,
**[00:35:42]** we had the two alternatives.
**[00:35:46]** One was to go to the better end,
**[00:35:48]** vlogging out the consciousness of our intolerable situation.
**[00:35:51]** As best we could in the other two, except spiritually.
**[00:35:54]** Can you imagine the ego in that?
**[00:36:07]** I'm completely rock bottomed out,
**[00:36:11]** and I still have enough arrogance to wonder,
**[00:36:15]** should I or should I?
**[00:36:18]** There's no question that I'm a lunatic.
**[00:36:23]** Okay.
**[00:36:24]** Anybody with any kind of disease offered any kind of solution
**[00:36:30]** wouldn't take ten seconds and say,
**[00:36:32]** let's do it.
**[00:36:34]** Not me.
**[00:36:36]** Spiritual help, let me think about that for a while.
**[00:36:40]** Oh, we're wonderful.
**[00:36:42]** I know I feel bad, but it'll be better tomorrow.
**[00:36:47]** Because this is a book of great mercy,
**[00:36:56]** all the way through it are a number of little merciful things.
**[00:36:59]** There are descriptions of what a spiritual awakening looks like,
**[00:37:02]** because I'm so self-absorbed, even when I have one,
**[00:37:05]** I don't know what's happened.
**[00:37:06]** I wouldn't recognize it if it came by,
**[00:37:08]** and they come by all the time.
**[00:37:10]** There are checklists all the way through here.
**[00:37:14]** If you've done the actions, the way they're presented here,
**[00:37:17]** certain things will happen,
**[00:37:20]** and it describes what that looks like
**[00:37:22]** so you don't think you're going nuts.
**[00:37:24]** See, every time I have a new awakening,
**[00:37:26]** the first thought that comes to mind is,
**[00:37:28]** oops, I just lost my mind.
**[00:37:30]** It's because I did.
**[00:37:33]** Whatever I was using is gone.
**[00:37:35]** I'm not familiar yet with the new word.
**[00:37:38]** So it's described, because it'll scare the hell out of you
**[00:37:41]** when you've been totally self-absorbed for years
**[00:37:44]** to suddenly find yourself interested in somebody else.
**[00:37:48]** It's a scary thing when it first happens.
**[00:37:50]** And on page 27, Carl Jung describes
**[00:37:57]** a vital spiritual experience.
**[00:38:00]** This comes as a result of Rowan Hazard,
**[00:38:05]** who is the one who essentially 12 stepped in.
**[00:38:09]** It's been a year with Carl Jung,
**[00:38:12]** trying to stop drinking,
**[00:38:14]** learned everything you could possibly learn
**[00:38:17]** from the greatest psychiatrist in the world,
**[00:38:20]** very spiritually.
**[00:38:22]** I didn't even get home when he was drunk.
**[00:38:26]** I came back to him and said,
**[00:38:29]** is there nothing?
**[00:38:31]** The doctor says, you have the mind of a chronic alcoholic,
**[00:38:33]** and I've never seen one single case recover.
**[00:38:37]** Well, that state of mind existed to the extent it doesn't you.
**[00:38:40]** And I'm reading this at a time when I have gone through this
**[00:38:43]** and I'm identifying with him all the way.
**[00:38:46]** I am he.
**[00:38:48]** The one single case says this is a recovered
**[00:38:50]** who it exists like it does in you.
**[00:38:53]** Our friend, Phil, was able to go to hell
**[00:38:55]** and close it on him with a clang.
**[00:38:58]** He said to the doctor, is there no exceptions?
**[00:39:02]** Yes, reply to the doctor there is.
**[00:39:04]** Exceptions to cases such as years have been occurring
**[00:39:07]** since early times.
**[00:39:09]** Here and there, now and then, once in a while,
**[00:39:12]** alcoholics have had what are called
**[00:39:14]** vital spiritual experiences.
**[00:39:16]** To me, these occurrences are phenomenal.
**[00:39:18]** They actually happen.
**[00:39:19]** They're describable.
**[00:39:20]** They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional
**[00:39:24]** displacements and rearrangements.
**[00:39:28]** Ideas, emotions, and attitudes, which were once the guiding forces
**[00:39:31]** in the lives of these men, are suddenly cast to one side
**[00:39:35]** and then a completely new set of conception
**[00:39:37]** when motives begin to dominate them.
**[00:39:40]** In fact, he says I've been trying to produce
**[00:39:42]** some such emotional rearrangement within you.
**[00:39:46]** With many individuals, the methods I've employed are successful
**[00:39:49]** but I've never been successful with the alcoholic
**[00:39:51]** of your description.
**[00:39:53]** First of all, that's what happened to me when I had
**[00:39:55]** my first drink.
**[00:39:57]** That's precisely what happened.
**[00:39:59]** Huge emotional displacement.
**[00:40:01]** Ideas and conceptions that used to rule my life
**[00:40:04]** were cast to one side and a whole new set of motives
**[00:40:07]** began to dominate me.
**[00:40:09]** I had a spiritual experience, which seemed like one.
**[00:40:12]** No wonder I went back again.
**[00:40:14]** I've been looking for that forever.
**[00:40:17]** If I'm working with people and we look at this,
**[00:40:23]** I've got to remember what an order.
**[00:40:29]** I just want to get sober, right?
**[00:40:33]** We're talking about a transformation here.
**[00:40:35]** This sounds like I can't go through with this.
**[00:40:40]** That's scary.
**[00:40:42]** But that's what'll happen here.
**[00:40:44]** And that's really what I want anyway.
**[00:40:47]** But there it is.
**[00:40:49]** Nothing less.
**[00:40:50]** A vital spiritual experience.
**[00:40:53]** I've had one.
**[00:40:54]** In fact, I've had several.
**[00:40:57]** They're scary every time.
**[00:40:59]** They do not make you necessarily Mr. and Miss Wonderful.
**[00:41:03]** Sometimes spiritual people are real pain in the ass.
**[00:41:06]** You know what I'm saying?
**[00:41:08]** I'm page 28 to go on and say that if what we've learned
**[00:41:14]** and felt and seen means anything at all,
**[00:41:17]** it means that all of us, whatever our race,
**[00:41:22]** creator, color, or the children of a living creator,
**[00:41:25]** with whom we may form a relationship
**[00:41:27]** upon simple and understandable terms,
**[00:41:30]** as soon as we're long and honest enough to try.
**[00:41:33]** Kind of modifies Dr. Young's.
**[00:41:35]** If that's the experience and it jettles down to this,
**[00:41:38]** I'll go for it.
**[00:41:42]** What this book promises me is a relationship
**[00:41:45]** with my creator on simple and understandable terms.
**[00:41:49]** And that's good, because at the time I needed that,
**[00:41:52]** there wasn't anything left up here.
**[00:41:54]** We had an old timer in Colorado.
**[00:41:58]** I used to put it so simply.
**[00:42:00]** I never, we heard him talk from time in time.
**[00:42:02]** He never said anything but this.
**[00:42:04]** I can't.
**[00:42:05]** He can.
**[00:42:06]** I'll let him.
**[00:42:07]** The old bastard was 40 some odd years sober when he died.
**[00:42:12]** Never had any profound stuff to say at all.
**[00:42:15]** So I'm a child of a living creator.
**[00:42:25]** Can I accept that attitude?
**[00:42:27]** Okay.
**[00:42:28]** If you accept that, you know what happens.
**[00:42:31]** You have to start smiling.
**[00:42:33]** Well, yeah.
**[00:42:35]** What are children supposed to do most of the time?
**[00:42:38]** Play.
**[00:42:39]** Have fun.
**[00:42:41]** Laugh a lot.
**[00:42:42]** Lighten up.
**[00:42:45]** It's only life or death.
**[00:42:47]** And isn't that what we bring with us?
**[00:42:57]** If we're alive inside, that's what new people see.
**[00:43:03]** I mean, it's a little scary sometimes.
**[00:43:05]** I'm looking at my first look at how eight people
**[00:43:08]** were three convicts with numbers on their chest
**[00:43:10]** and their own environment and they had a smile.
**[00:43:13]** And the smile said, we know something you don't know.
**[00:43:17]** If you don't get it first time out, you're probably going to die.
**[00:43:21]** But they were smiling.
**[00:43:26]** If new people couldn't see the fun of them after, I wouldn't stay.
**[00:43:31]** If I'm coming off the streets and I'm dirty and every third word is a curse word
**[00:43:38]** and I'm confused and I'm unhappy and I'm miserable and I can't work and all those things.
**[00:43:43]** I come to a meeting of what I hear, a curse word, some dirty, uncomfortable people
**[00:43:48]** who can't work and can't get along otherwise.
**[00:43:51]** What the hell would I stay here?
**[00:43:53]** I can do that by myself.
**[00:43:55]** I'm not having anywhere near the hassle.
**[00:43:57]** I really needed to hear people who said you don't have to be this way anymore.
**[00:44:05]** Listen to this.
**[00:44:06]** This is weird.
**[00:44:07]** And then let me talk weird.
**[00:44:09]** And then they laughed at me.
**[00:44:11]** And taught me how to laugh at myself.
**[00:44:14]** It's only life or death.
**[00:44:18]** I'm not going to get out of it alive anyway.
**[00:44:26]** I can live with that conception.
**[00:44:32]** Am I willing and honest enough to try?
**[00:44:35]** The only thing I brought here was willingness, utter absolute total willingness.
**[00:44:39]** And I believe that is the power of God as it's demonstrated through people.
**[00:44:44]** Honestly, I didn't know.
**[00:44:45]** I was really afraid when we got to reading about kind of honesty that takes.
**[00:44:52]** I was afraid I was one of those people who was constitutionally incapable of being honest.
**[00:44:57]** I made up so many lies that I had begun to believe him and I really didn't know the difference between the true and the false.
**[00:45:04]** And I went to fill with that one.
**[00:45:07]** And he laughed.
**[00:45:09]** Because I told him I was afraid I was constitutionally incapable.
**[00:45:13]** He laughed because he knows I'm full of drama.
**[00:45:17]** He said that's probably the first honest statement you've ever made.
**[00:45:21]** But you made it. You're capable.
**[00:45:24]** It was kind of like now.
**[00:45:26]** Quit bothering me.
**[00:45:28]** Get on with it.
**[00:45:29]** What do you have with all that?
**[00:45:40]** What's your experience with all that?
**[00:45:47]** Where are you at with what we just read?
**[00:45:49]** What's your experience with the dusting?
**[00:45:51]** Have you had that experience?
**[00:45:58]** Would you like a solution to that?
**[00:46:16]** You think you're going honest enough enough to try?
**[00:46:20]** See, that was hard.
**[00:46:23]** I had a word.
**[00:46:26]** Everybody was telling me I was hopeless.
**[00:46:30]** I was a weekend AA.
**[00:46:33]** And I just laughed at him because I was already going to meetings.
**[00:46:36]** I thought like I already found the answer.
**[00:46:38]** Y'all are sitting there telling me I'm hopeless.
**[00:46:40]** I already found an answer, a solution.
**[00:46:43]** And I didn't say nothing back.
**[00:46:45]** I just looked at him and I laughed.
**[00:46:47]** You're wrong.
**[00:46:48]** You're wrong about me.
**[00:46:49]** The first time I was, I felt like I knew something about myself
**[00:46:52]** that they didn't, but they were wrong.
**[00:46:55]** And it was because I already found out about him.
**[00:47:01]** We got some really new people here.
**[00:47:04]** Before I jump on, because I'm getting ready to,
**[00:47:07]** are you okay with what we've done so far?
**[00:47:09]** Yes, it's grasped.
**[00:47:11]** The physical allergy and the mental obsession.
**[00:47:15]** And the lack of power and the lack of choice.
**[00:47:18]** Because if you get that, the rest of this is easy.
**[00:47:22]** It looks hard, but it's really easy from that point on.
**[00:47:26]** I don't want to leave anybody back on the path.
**[00:47:29]** Everybody got it?
**[00:47:36]** I got it.
**[00:47:42]** We'll not be able to stop based on self-knowledge.
**[00:47:45]** That, by the way, is my first tip that the self-searching is coming up.
**[00:47:49]** He's not about finding out who I am.
**[00:47:52]** That's about finding out who I'm not.
**[00:48:01]** On page 43, he wraps this up.
**[00:48:05]** He doesn't do much preaching, but when he does,
**[00:48:07]** he really hits it once more.
**[00:48:09]** At certain times, the alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense
**[00:48:13]** against the first drink.
**[00:48:15]** Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide
**[00:48:19]** such a defense.
**[00:48:21]** His defense must come from a higher power.
**[00:48:23]** Do you believe that?
**[00:48:27]** It's not a question you have to answer if you believe that.
**[00:48:29]** We can move on.
**[00:48:30]** If you don't believe that, then we're going to fool around someone.
**[00:48:34]** And just to be sure, he starts it over again and repeats himself again.
**[00:48:39]** On page 44.
**[00:48:41]** If one you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely.
**[00:48:45]** Or if one drinking you have little control over the amount you take,
**[00:48:48]** you're probably alcoholic.
**[00:48:53]** I think he just said that.
**[00:48:55]** And I think he just said that before that.
**[00:48:57]** And before that.
**[00:49:00]** He tells me something about alcoholics.
**[00:49:02]** We don't here to do it.
**[00:49:08]** Lack of power.
**[00:49:10]** That was our dilemma.
**[00:49:12]** I may have intentions.
**[00:49:14]** I may have dreams.
**[00:49:15]** I may even have integrity.
**[00:49:17]** I'm a character.
**[00:49:18]** I'm a will.
**[00:49:20]** Lack of power is my dilemma.
**[00:49:22]** If I drink, because I don't have any choice,
**[00:49:27]** knowing full will there will be consequences.
**[00:49:31]** That's lack of power.
**[00:49:33]** That's my dilemma.
**[00:49:34]** We're not going to find the power.
**[00:49:36]** We had to find a power by which we could live,
**[00:49:38]** and it had to be a power greater than ourselves, obviously.
**[00:49:41]** But weren't how are we to find this power?
**[00:49:44]** That's exactly what this book is about.
**[00:49:46]** Its main object is to enable you to find the power greater than yourself,
**[00:49:50]** which is solve your problem.
**[00:49:51]** And I'm drawn to the fact that it does not have an S at the end of the problem.
**[00:49:57]** It's a singular.
**[00:50:04]** It changes the way I'm going to work the steps.
**[00:50:06]** What's the problem?
**[00:50:10]** Lack of power.
**[00:50:12]** What's the answer?
**[00:50:13]** Power.
**[00:50:14]** At which point it's time to get a little bit frightened.
**[00:50:20]** We're going to acquire power here,
**[00:50:24]** and where power comes responsibility.
**[00:50:26]** We can take off on a whole tangent on that but we won't.
**[00:50:32]** Let's take a little break and then we'll come back in.
**[00:50:42]** Because what we're going to do is really, really important.
**[00:50:45]** Y'all comfortable at this point?
**[00:50:48]** We're just kind of moving along here.
**[00:50:51]** Ten minutes fifteen, what do you want?
**[00:50:53]** I have a ten.
**[00:50:55]** I hear a leg.
**[00:50:56]** Ten.