You may already have asked yourself why it is that all of us became so very open drinking.

Doubtless and curious to discover how and why on the face of expert opinion of the contrary,

we have recovered from a hopeless condition of mind and body.

There was a time when I used this book to validate my experience.

I must tell you that today my experience validates this book.

I am one of we.

I have done what they said, the way they said, and had the experience they had.

I am one of we.

I am a member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

We have recovered from a hopeless state of mind and body.

It's not even a seemingly hopeless thing anymore.

He just kind of led you down the path there for a while, give you an out.

All the way through here, there are outs.

If you notice that, you can jump off any time until you get to the third step.

Once you do that, you can't get off, so there are lots of outs between now and then.

If you are an alcoholic who wants to get over it, you may already be asking, what do I have

to do?

It is the purpose of this book to answer such questions specifically.

We shall tell you what we have done.

I have been taught how to sponsor again.

If you want to know what to do, I can just show you what I have done.

You don't even have to be smart for that.

I have to have a reasonable memory and a willingness to embellish whenever necessary.

I am over on page 20.

I am sorry.

Every time I get in the heart of a bunch of big book fanatics, I just assume you all know.

Many described as the three different kind of drinkers.

These first 52-some pages are pretty redundant.

Keep hitting the same information over and over and over because we are slick devils and we

don't want to miss anybody.

So here it comes again.

We are going to look for those of you who are clinically minded.

Let's take a look at the three kinds of alcoholics.

There are three kinds of drinkers, not alcoholics.

Some of our drinkers have a little trouble in giving up liquor entirely if they have

a good reason for it.

They can take it or leave it alone.

Is that me?

No.

No, that's not me.

I am not a moderate drinker.

If that's what defines it, that's not me.

I can't take it or leave it alone.

I can't stop for any kind of good reason.

I have had many good reasons along the way, meaningless.

So I'm not a moderate drinker, good.

Then we have a certain type of hard drinker.

You may have the habit badly enough to gradually impair him physically and mentally.

It may cause him to die a few years before his time.

If a sufficiently strong reason, such as ill health, falling in love, change of environment,

the warning of a doctor, becomes operative, this man can also stop or moderate, although

he might find it difficult and troublesome, and may even need medical attention.

Is that me?

All those and more have been brought to my attention and it didn't do it.

So I must not be a certain kind of hard drinker.

What's that leave?

Real alcoholic.

And how's he described?

It may start off as a moderate drinker.

Mayor may not become a continuous hard drinker, but at some stage of his drinking career he

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

That's me.

That's the doctor's opinion put on a different set of words, begins to lose all control

of his liquor consumption once he starts to drink.

Is that me?

Yes.

So if I have that intellectual defense built, that slides me face that you.

I know it's not you, you know, that's a good thing.

He made a mistake of asking me for help, and he's going to get it.

And then I go on to describe it in more detail, but let's keep it simple.

If that fits you, are you a moderate drinker, are you a hard drinker, or do you lose control

of your liquor consumption once you start to drink?

If you do, that's alcoholic.

Real alcoholic.

There's nothing to do with drama, circumstance, behavior, nothing.

I made some other identifications there on page 21.

That did not describe me in any given day, but along the way I have been, each of those

things he describes here, and I particularly have a strong memory of the fellow who goes

to bed so intoxicated he ought to sleep the clock around.

I can remember a horrible night.

We drank at the lighthouse bar until about two, and then they closed it, and I wasn't

finished, and it was a horror on me, because I knew whatever it was I was looking for that

night.

It was too late.

It wasn't going to happen, and I had to keep drinking, and I was already too drunk.

So I went home to my chicken coop.

I had converted a chicken coop into a pretty fine little place to stay.

We weren't all that bad.

I was at that stage of drunkenness where I knew from experience, if I laid down, it would

trigger the bed, which would spin rapidly and fling me onto the floor, where I would puke

all over my rug, and I really didn't want to do that.

I also knew from experience that if I would continue drinking just a little longer, I would

pass out.

I would go into a coma, go unconscious, which was far better deal than being flung out of

my own bed, and I had no choice anyway, so I did.

Now at that stage of drunkenness, this must have been around three or so.

The bar closed at two, three, three, three, three.

I drank myself into a Bolivian.

I should have slept for a long, long time.

That's a lot of Saturday, and just shortly after six, I'm up and awake, and I'm looking for

a drink, because I still need a drink.

So I have a memory to fit this.

Do you have one?

Somewhere on the way to fit, sir?

I haven't met a moderate drinking guy who had that happen.

I love my daughter, my wife is a joy, but she's got compassion for her, she got to have tough.

Our oldest daughter came home one night, truly, gloriously, bombed, and the only way we knew

that is we could hear her retching in the bathroom, and Jackie said, help me get her

to bed.

I said, don't do that to the child, you're going to put her to bed, and in a couple minutes

she's going to have to puke again, and she won't make it down the hall.

You're going to embarrass her, just get her a pill, and put her in the bathroom with her,

which we did.

My child retched online, she was 16 or 17, child.

She has not done that since.

She likes a little beer now, and a little wine now, and she hasn't done that since.

You're all laughing.

What a strange child, huh?

Blocked to your family?

Yes, so we have memories we can bring to them.

We know that while the alcoholic keeps away from the drinking, I'm on page 22 now, Clay.

Don't want you to miss a word, down to the bottom, it starts with we, you know, I'm sorry,

I just, the devil gets to me now.

We know that while the alcoholic keeps away from the drink, as he may do for months or

years, he reacts much like other men, we're equally positive that once he takes any alcohol

whatever in his system, something happens both in the bodily and mental sense, which

makes it virtually impossible for him to start.

The experience of any alcoholic will abundantly confirm this.

My friend David, we did battle here.

He said I went in to have a couple beers.

I just changed my mind, and we battled until he finally heard what he said, and this helped.

His mind was changed after a couple beers.

He didn't change it, his mind was changed.

So he was right, but that helped to find his alcoholism for you.

It changes after a couple beers.

I changed mentally and physically.

These observations would be academic and pointless if our friend never took the first drink,

thereby setting the terrible cycle in motion.

Good morning.

How are you?

Now you can hear me.

Good.

Where were you before?

You can't hear me over there.

Yeah, I'm glad you're here.

Therefore, the main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind, rather than his body.

Strong statement.

All of this horror we've been talking about will not happen if I don't take the first drink.

What is it that causes me to take a drink after this has happened more than once?

My problem centers in my mind.

If you ask him why I started on the last vendor, the chances are he will offer you any one

of 100 alibis.

Of course.

You've already convinced me.

I've got to give you something to get you off my back.

Why did you do that?

I don't know.

Yes, you do.

You must know.

You did it.

Okay.

Here's my little kit of tools.

Which one pleases you today?

Now leave me the hell alone when I try to figure out what's going on here.

Remorse, promises, I'll never do that again.

Sometimes excuses have a certain plausibility, but none of them really make sense in the light

of the havoc an alcoholic's drinking about creates.

I was tense and tired.

Now I've shared that with my entire family and my boss and other all tense and tired.

We're unified.

It sounded like the philosophy of the man who having a headache beats himself on the head

of the hammer so he can't feel the ache.

Once in a while he may tell the truth.

And the truth, strange to say, is that usually he has no more idea why he took the first drink

that you had.

Why do I need to remember that?

I get caught up in all the reasons I drank and eliminate those behaviors.

The main reason I drank is still there.

No reason at all.

So there's no treatment for that either apparently.

We get a whole bunch of stories here of men who tried treatment all the way to Carl Jung's

patients and Bill and numerous others, knew everything about their minds and the springs

and the triggers.

I'm in the business.

I have to laugh at all the shit we have to present.

It's meaningless.

Triggers.

It's like triggers.

I drink as an alcoholic, unless something changes that.

The tragic truth is that if a man be a real alcoholic, the happy day may not arrive, meaning

that he'll raise himself and his lethargy and start over.

He's lost control.

At a certain point in the drinking of every alcoholic he passes into a state with the most

powerful desire to stop drinking is an absolutely no avail.

Somebody finally understands.

I really didn't want to do what I just did, and my heart I really didn't.

So why don't I do it?

I don't know.

The strongest desire to stop drinking is of absolutely no avail after a certain point.

So in the fellowship we have a desire to stop drinking is the only requirement for membership.

But a desire to stop drinking will not keep me sober.

If that's all there is there, it won't keep me sober.

I got the truth there.

Somebody finally understands.

The fact is that most alcoholics for reasons yet obscure have lost the power of choice

and drink.

It's gone.

That's the best news I ever got.

I have lost the power of choice.

I have not gotten it back.

I have no more choice of whether I drink today than I did when I stopped 31 years ago.

Thank God.

Every time I had the choice, I made the wrong one.

I don't have any choice anymore.

Back to my own devices, I will drink again.

I'm just as sure of that as I am that I'm breathing today.

Left of my own devices I'll drink again.

Our so-called willpower becomes practically non-existent.

We are unable at certain times to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the

memory of the self-hearing and humiliation of even a week or a month ago.

We are without defense against the first drink.

Man has good news.

I can quit fighting this thing.

I don't have an adequate defense in my mind.

I can't think my way out of this deal.

All that's good news.

I've been trying for years.

Have you been trying to think your way out of this?

What are your results?

Struct speechless.

Talk to you.

Failure?

That would happen to you once?

More than once.

That's alcoholic insanity.

This is a little nutty.

Twice is a little psychotic.

Fifty times, that's stark rating, man.

Yeah.

Oh yeah.

There's nothing wrong with being stark rating, man.

That's the truth.

You can't hear me.

We're in trouble.

I can't talk any louder without yelling.

Let me hover once again.

Okay, Mom.

Is that better?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Until I turn over here.

Okay, I'll try to remember this.

I don't have one of these at home.

I'm not allowed.

The almost certain consequences that follow taking even a glass of beer do not crowd into

the mind to deter us.

If that's true, then remembering my last drunk is, well, it's a good idea.

It will not keep me sober.

So I can just trash that idea when I hear it.

Remembering my last drunk may help you get sober, but it won't keep me sober.

Because at the time I need it, the chances are the information won't show up.

That's all they say.

I've got a filter that's built out of things like it really wasn't that bad.

Memory has to get through that.

It was bad chili.

And then there's a stage where it doesn't bring the relief and you do it anyway.

That's where this leaves.

Yeah.

I would have said, I remember most of the time, I remember specifically doing this with my

parents.

I wasn't sober.

And I remember knowing that it was just, they were like the last full desk, usually with

a lot of their home.

And it was very important that I not go and do my Google account for a friend.

And I did end up getting, you know, this is supposed to work.

It was supposed to go more or less the same thing from there.

I don't remember who thought it would be nice to have a drink.

I just remember finding myself a drink, you know, and you know, what am I doing here?

I didn't have to thought of, boy, this bad stuff is going to happen.

This is what I do.

When I started drinking, I was just starting to drink here.

It wasn't anymore.

Big thought process.

Yep.

That's an alcoholic mind.

Well, I should have been noticeable.

Yeah.

Does that happen to you?

You're described in this book.

Yeah.

Hey, too.

No thought at all.

Do it anyway.

I know.

Am I so stupid to me?

Okay.

Yeah, but you won't.

You might as well.

Yeah, I agree.

I'll point you back.

Yeah.

That's the second level of filter right there.

I'm wasting my time anyway.

I'm going to lose this one.

Right.

We have lost the ability to make a choice.

What are you saying?

It comes a point where it goes.

It's gone.

I've lost the ability to choose.

And I really don't want it back.

That's my ego.

If these thoughts occur, they're hazy and readily supplanted by the old thread beer idea,

that this time we shall handle ourselves as other people.

That one always weirded me out because I picked the kind of people that were just like me.

Okay.

The handle themselves the same way.

Oh.

There's a complete failure of the kind of defense that keeps one from putting his hand on a hot stove.

Yeah.

It just isn't there.

That's real powerlessness.

I've got a body that'll kick up if I give it alcohol.

And a mind that gives it alcohol.

And insists on it.

That's the way it is.

The alcoholic may say to himself in the most casual way, it won't burn me this time.

So here's how.

Or perhaps he doesn't think at all.

Just heard about that.

How often have some of us begun to drink in this nonchalant way and up to the third or fourth

pounding on the barn and said to ourselves,

God said, how did we ever get started again?

Only to have that thought supplanted by that, well, I'll stop at the sixth drink or my favorite

what's the use anyhow.

What's the use?

Now, let me tell you the effect that it has on the world around us.

I learned a great deal from that psychiatrist.

He told me that any competent psychiatrist dealing with alcoholics, particularly in their first six months,

would almost have to declare them manic depressive.

Because that's what we look like.

That's the symptom we present.

What's the use anyhow?

That's depression.

And so they medicate us.

That's their job.

Here's what the system looks like.

And here's what we do to treat that.

So I can't be mad at them for that.

I'm giving it to them.

Okay.

What's the use anyhow?

Isn't that wonderful?

It's like a warm cloak.

Oh.

Now I don't say that at home because they just slap me around.

But if you and I are in a bar together, you're not my ally.

Yeah, me too.

She doesn't understand.

Why don't you go home?

What's the use?

I mean, there's a whole range I can play with that, particularly drinking.

You know what that says to me?

I've already known the truth.

If I take one and say, what's the use anyhow, I know where it's headed.

I'm deluding myself that I don't.

I know.

And I almost welcome it.

When this sort of thinking is fully established in an individual with alcoholic tendencies,

he's pussyfooting again, by the way.

He'll stop doing that pretty soon.

He's probably placed himself beyond human aid.

And unless locked up, my dog will permanently insane.

That hit my terror button.

My great terror was that I would end up in a mental institution and I would be there forever

because they would catch me during one of my insane times and lock me away.

And then I would get sober and I would be saying, now I'm in real trouble.

Because if you're in a mental institution and you tell them you're saying, they keep you.

They know you're not.

It's not until you admit you're nuts that they let you go.

And I just knew that.

I already knew about this shift in personalities.

It's below the level of consciousness, below the level of articulation that are frightened

because I knew that's when they'd get me.

And to be locked up with a bunch of crazy people is frightened.

I run with them.

I'll play with them.

But I don't be locked up with them.

There is a solution.

And this is kind of doom and gloom stuff.

If you've got this or doom, there's no treatment for it.

But beyond human aid, there's nothing we can do.

You've got it.

You've got it.

Unless locked up may die or go permanently insane.

It's the best news I've got for you this morning.

Okay.

But there is a solution.

Almost none of us like the self searching, the leveling of pride, the confession of shortcomings

which the process requires for successful consummation.

I heard one time in early sobriety at some meeting somewhere that there are no musts in AA.

I'm sorry.

Requires kind of sounds like a long form of must to me.

And I was told very clearly by my sponsors, there's some things you must do if you're going

to die.

Now you don't have to do them.

If you don't, you're going to die an ugly, ugly death.

So what is it I'm going to have to do?

If we're looking toward an experience here, what are we going to have to do?

Self searching, leveling of pride, confession of shortcomings.

These are the requirements.

If I'm going to have this thing go to its full end.

I've got to tell you that from observing over the years, most of the people we lose, we being

those of us who take people through the big book, we lose at the eight step.

That's where we lose.

Those who make it to permanent sobriety have an experience at the eight step that sets them

free.

The whole thing is about willingness.

Now some people will say that I got stuck at the eighth and ninth step.

No?

You get stuck at the first step.

It's the only place you ever get stuck.

The confession of shortcomings is not just the fifth step.

It includes the eighth and ninth step.

And the continuing.

I've got to come to the people I've harmed and confess my wrong going to them.

That's how I make a mess.

The whole thing becomes a flaw.

And that's where we lose people.

And I worry about that.

Because, I mean somewhere along the way, I missed a signal.

When you're doing your fourth step and your fifth step.

When we work together on the sixth and seventh step.

Or at the third step.

One of the things I started doing, and I lose fewer people now, by the way.

When you're ready to take the third step, I send you home.

I don't let you do it.

It says in the big book to thank Will before taking this step.

So I send you home to thank Will first.

Really think about this.

Because if you take this step, you're then going to have the power to finish up.

And if you don't finish up, you're in trouble.

Because the power will still be there.

And you just run right over you.

It's a good morning.

Once you're on the path, you can't get off.

Unless you go drink.

It's fun to watch somebody who's decided to ask God for help.

Then try to finish up.

And if you don't finish up, you're in trouble.

Because the power will still be there.

And you just run right over you.

It's a good morning.

Once you're on the path, you can't get off.

Unless you go drink.

It's fun to watch somebody who's decided to ask God for help.

Then try.

I didn't measure up here.

That's hard to admit.

I could admit my gross wrongs.

It's really hard to admit.

I just didn't measure up here.

I knew the difference between right and wrong.

And I did the wrong thing.

If we wanted to do that, then we can proceed.

We saw that work for others.

And we had come to believe that the hopelessness and futility of life as we've been living in.

Oh, I love those words.

Hopeless and futile.

What's the use anyhow?

It's futile.

Nothing I do works.

Nothing I do seems to make me happy or useful or productive.

Kind of what a wonderful place.

I don't depress you.

Go to your sponsor.

Don't go to the doctor, please.

Because the doctor will fix you at that point.

You will take that feeling away from you.

And you won't get to finish it.

You have to go back and do it again someday.

There's a time for doctors.

There's a time for sponsors.

You get a mean point of time from the main sponsor school.

You look you right in the eye and say, yeah, I know.

But you ain't seen nothing yet.

You don't even learn about suffering here or whatever.

Just help you right to the edge of the cliff and then kick you off.

That's what we had.

Look at the truth.

It would set you free.

So there's nothing left for us but to pick up the simple,

kit of spiritual tools later are feeding.

Important for me as a sponsor to remember, that's the way to do it.

I do not take out the spiritual tools I have and work them on you.

I present the same kit of tools that I was given and put them at your feet

and it's up to you to pick them up and go with.

There's no autonomous robots here.

It's all freedom.

I'll show you how to use that wrench.

You can't use my wrench.

You've got to use your own.

You can't have my experience.

You've got to have your own.

That's what I said.

I can't even share a God with you, but it's sad.

I can just tell you love my relationship with it,

but you're going to have to have your own experience.

That's good because I quit trying to chase his and began looking for more.

The great fact is just this and nothing less.

God, I love this piece.

This is Alcoholics Anonymous.

Nothing less than this is acceptable to me.

We have had deep and effective spiritual experiences,

which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life,

toward our fellows and toward God's universe.

The central fact of our lives today is that our Creator has entered into our hearts

and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous.

It's a commercial copy to those things for us,

which we can never do by ourselves.

That can also be read entered into our hearts and lives.

Currently, it comes out of me lives because God's very much alive.

What a wondrous deal.

Now, there's a message with depth and weight.

Anything less than that, and I probably wouldn't have stayed here.

The very thought of having to fight my alcoholism for the rest of my life

would have driven me away.

I've got no fight left.

Deep and effective spiritual experiences.

I've had spiritual experiences, but they weren't affected because I stole them.

Here's one I can have.

When God will come alive, that's what they're saying.

That's what I'm saying to you.

That's what you say to the people you sponsor.

I know you. Some of you do.

Nothing less than this.

Good. It doesn't mean you have to have it this afternoon.

Just know it's available.

If you're as serious as the alcoholic as we were,

we believe there's no middle-of-the-road solution.

Half measures are available to us, nothing.

Half measures don't get 50% results.

You're either drinking or not.

You're either awake or you're asleep.

Half measures available. It's nothing.

Good, because I'm that kind of person anyway.

If I'm going to go do something, I do it all.

Whatever that may be.

It's just my nature.

We were in a position where life was becoming impossible,

and if we had passed into the region from which there was no return through a human aid,

we had the two alternatives.

One was to go to the better end,

vlogging out the consciousness of our intolerable situation.

As best we could in the other two, except spiritually.

Can you imagine the ego in that?

I'm completely rock bottomed out,

and I still have enough arrogance to wonder,

should I or should I?

There's no question that I'm a lunatic.

Okay.

Anybody with any kind of disease offered any kind of solution

wouldn't take ten seconds and say,

let's do it.

Not me.

Spiritual help, let me think about that for a while.

Oh, we're wonderful.

I know I feel bad, but it'll be better tomorrow.

Because this is a book of great mercy,

all the way through it are a number of little merciful things.

There are descriptions of what a spiritual awakening looks like,

because I'm so self-absorbed, even when I have one,

I don't know what's happened.

I wouldn't recognize it if it came by,

and they come by all the time.

There are checklists all the way through here.

If you've done the actions, the way they're presented here,

certain things will happen,

and it describes what that looks like

so you don't think you're going nuts.

See, every time I have a new awakening,

the first thought that comes to mind is,

oops, I just lost my mind.

It's because I did.

Whatever I was using is gone.

I'm not familiar yet with the new word.

So it's described, because it'll scare the hell out of you

when you've been totally self-absorbed for years

to suddenly find yourself interested in somebody else.

It's a scary thing when it first happens.

And on page 27, Carl Jung describes

a vital spiritual experience.

This comes as a result of Rowan Hazard,

who is the one who essentially 12 stepped in.

It's been a year with Carl Jung,

trying to stop drinking,

learned everything you could possibly learn

from the greatest psychiatrist in the world,

very spiritually.

I didn't even get home when he was drunk.

I came back to him and said,

is there nothing?

The doctor says, you have the mind of a chronic alcoholic,

and I've never seen one single case recover.

Well, that state of mind existed to the extent it doesn't you.

And I'm reading this at a time when I have gone through this

and I'm identifying with him all the way.

I am he.

The one single case says this is a recovered

who it exists like it does in you.

Our friend, Phil, was able to go to hell

and close it on him with a clang.

He said to the doctor, is there no exceptions?

Yes, reply to the doctor there is.

Exceptions to cases such as years have been occurring

since early times.

Here and there, now and then, once in a while,

alcoholics have had what are called

vital spiritual experiences.

To me, these occurrences are phenomenal.

They actually happen.

They're describable.

They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional

displacements and rearrangements.

Ideas, emotions, and attitudes, which were once the guiding forces

in the lives of these men, are suddenly cast to one side

and then a completely new set of conception

when motives begin to dominate them.

In fact, he says I've been trying to produce

some such emotional rearrangement within you.

With many individuals, the methods I've employed are successful

but I've never been successful with the alcoholic

of your description.

First of all, that's what happened to me when I had

my first drink.

That's precisely what happened.

Huge emotional displacement.

Ideas and conceptions that used to rule my life

were cast to one side and a whole new set of motives

began to dominate me.

I had a spiritual experience, which seemed like one.

No wonder I went back again.

I've been looking for that forever.

If I'm working with people and we look at this,

I've got to remember what an order.

I just want to get sober, right?

We're talking about a transformation here.

This sounds like I can't go through with this.

That's scary.

But that's what'll happen here.

And that's really what I want anyway.

But there it is.

Nothing less.

A vital spiritual experience.

I've had one.

In fact, I've had several.

They're scary every time.

They do not make you necessarily Mr. and Miss Wonderful.

Sometimes spiritual people are real pain in the ass.

You know what I'm saying?

I'm page 28 to go on and say that if what we've learned

and felt and seen means anything at all,

it means that all of us, whatever our race,

creator, color, or the children of a living creator,

with whom we may form a relationship

upon simple and understandable terms,

as soon as we're long and honest enough to try.

Kind of modifies Dr. Young's.

If that's the experience and it jettles down to this,

I'll go for it.

What this book promises me is a relationship

with my creator on simple and understandable terms.

And that's good, because at the time I needed that,

there wasn't anything left up here.

We had an old timer in Colorado.

I used to put it so simply.

I never, we heard him talk from time in time.

He never said anything but this.

I can't.

He can.

I'll let him.

The old bastard was 40 some odd years sober when he died.

Never had any profound stuff to say at all.

So I'm a child of a living creator.

Can I accept that attitude?

Okay.

If you accept that, you know what happens.

You have to start smiling.

Well, yeah.

What are children supposed to do most of the time?

Play.

Have fun.

Laugh a lot.

Lighten up.

It's only life or death.

And isn't that what we bring with us?

If we're alive inside, that's what new people see.

I mean, it's a little scary sometimes.

I'm looking at my first look at how eight people

were three convicts with numbers on their chest

and their own environment and they had a smile.

And the smile said, we know something you don't know.

If you don't get it first time out, you're probably going to die.

But they were smiling.

If new people couldn't see the fun of them after, I wouldn't stay.

If I'm coming off the streets and I'm dirty and every third word is a curse word

and I'm confused and I'm unhappy and I'm miserable and I can't work and all those things.

I come to a meeting of what I hear, a curse word, some dirty, uncomfortable people

who can't work and can't get along otherwise.

What the hell would I stay here?

I can do that by myself.

I'm not having anywhere near the hassle.

I really needed to hear people who said you don't have to be this way anymore.

Listen to this.

This is weird.

And then let me talk weird.

And then they laughed at me.

And taught me how to laugh at myself.

It's only life or death.

I'm not going to get out of it alive anyway.

I can live with that conception.

Am I willing and honest enough to try?

The only thing I brought here was willingness, utter absolute total willingness.

And I believe that is the power of God as it's demonstrated through people.

Honestly, I didn't know.

I was really afraid when we got to reading about kind of honesty that takes.

I was afraid I was one of those people who was constitutionally incapable of being honest.

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.

And I went to fill with that one.

And he laughed.

Because I told him I was afraid I was constitutionally incapable.

He laughed because he knows I'm full of drama.

He said that's probably the first honest statement you've ever made.

But you made it. You're capable.

It was kind of like now.

Quit bothering me.

Get on with it.

What do you have with all that?

What's your experience with all that?

Where are you at with what we just read?

What's your experience with the dusting?

Have you had that experience?

Would you like a solution to that?

You think you're going honest enough enough to try?

See, that was hard.

I had a word.

Everybody was telling me I was hopeless.

I was a weekend AA.

And I just laughed at him because I was already going to meetings.

I thought like I already found the answer.

Y'all are sitting there telling me I'm hopeless.

I already found an answer, a solution.

And I didn't say nothing back.

I just looked at him and I laughed.

You're wrong.

You're wrong about me.

The first time I was, I felt like I knew something about myself

that they didn't, but they were wrong.

And it was because I already found out about him.

We got some really new people here.

Before I jump on, because I'm getting ready to,

are you okay with what we've done so far?

Yes, it's grasped.

The physical allergy and the mental obsession.

And the lack of power and the lack of choice.

Because if you get that, the rest of this is easy.

It looks hard, but it's really easy from that point on.

I don't want to leave anybody back on the path.

Everybody got it?

I got it.

We'll not be able to stop based on self-knowledge.

That, by the way, is my first tip that the self-searching is coming up.

He's not about finding out who I am.

That's about finding out who I'm not.

On page 43, he wraps this up.

He doesn't do much preaching, but when he does,

he really hits it once more.

At certain times, the alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense

against the first drink.

Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide

such a defense.

His defense must come from a higher power.

Do you believe that?

It's not a question you have to answer if you believe that.

We can move on.

If you don't believe that, then we're going to fool around someone.

And just to be sure, he starts it over again and repeats himself again.

On page 44.

If one you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely.

Or if one drinking you have little control over the amount you take,

you're probably alcoholic.

I think he just said that.

And I think he just said that before that.

And before that.

He tells me something about alcoholics.

We don't here to do it.

Lack of power.

That was our dilemma.

I may have intentions.

I may have dreams.

I may even have integrity.

I'm a character.

I'm a will.

Lack of power is my dilemma.

If I drink, because I don't have any choice,

knowing full will there will be consequences.

That's lack of power.

That's my dilemma.

We're not going to find the power.

We had to find a power by which we could live,

and it had to be a power greater than ourselves, obviously.

But weren't how are we to find this power?

That's exactly what this book is about.

Its main object is to enable you to find the power greater than yourself,

which is solve your problem.

And I'm drawn to the fact that it does not have an S at the end of the problem.

It's a singular.

It changes the way I'm going to work the steps.

What's the problem?

Lack of power.

What's the answer?

Power.

At which point it's time to get a little bit frightened.

We're going to acquire power here,

and where power comes responsibility.

We can take off on a whole tangent on that but we won't.

Let's take a little break and then we'll come back in.

Because what we're going to do is really, really important.

Y'all comfortable at this point?

We're just kind of moving along here.

Ten minutes fifteen, what do you want?

I have a ten.

I hear a leg.

Ten.