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Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Fellowship Review Recording 845 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: chris-r-sponsorship-service-and-spiritual-action-in-cocaine-anonymous-ca-date-unknown-archive-845.mp3 Duration: 01:18:44
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So we're moving on to, there is a paragraph in the chapter, Working with Others, that really shows what it looks like to, number one, continue on the path of faith with works, in steps 10, 11, and 12. Then we're going to introduce our next segment with this quote. It says, Both you and the new man must walk day by day in the path of spiritual progress. If you persist, remarkable things will happen. When we look back, we realize that the things which came to us when we put ourselves in God's hands were better than anything we could have planned.
Follow the dictates of a higher power, and you will presently live in a new and wonderful world, no matter what your present circumstance is. So to get us going again, please help me welcome back Chris R.. Thanks, guys. Man, y'all ask such great questions. You know, at the break, it's like, and I think I didn't do justice to any of them because we were kind of going so fast. And, you know, I'll be around for a bit after a week and sure spend some more time.
And I encourage you guys, I bought some business cards, not a lot, but I got some and I've got email on there. And if y'all want to visit, you know, I don't ever want to get in a conversation with somebody, again, about the minutia of the steps. It's like we're splitting hairs here. And it's like, I don't really care. I can share my opinion with you if you want, but it doesn't seem to make any difference how you do it as long as you do it.
And that's the kicker. Everybody's sitting around confused because they don't know what to do, whether to do the three column or the four column inventory. Just do it. Action is what gets us sober, folks. Action, action, more action. Bill Wilson wrote extensively about that. A couple of real good questions, and I might not get a chance to answer them later. So I wanted to just touch base with it real quick.
You know, this idea of stuff that I'm saying kind of quick from the hip here. If you can't reconcile it with what's in the big book, skip it. The problem is that we're not even going to the big book to look for the solutions to begin with. My sponsor still to this day, always, Mark, did you look in the book and did you pray about it? And if we can't get straight with that, then let's go, let's talk.
It's one of the reasons we get so tangled up in this thing called sponsorship stuff, because we have to spend so much time trying to help these people when the answer is God to begin with. You follow? That's what we're going to talk about. Somebody asked me, in fact I had three or four of you over the course of the day ask me about the 12 and 12. I'm not a big 12 and 12 fan. I like the 12, I'm not against it at all.
It's just the 12 and 12 was another piece of literature written 11 years after the big book was written. And I think if you want to hand a newcomer a 12 and 12, I think it's just doing them a disservice because it contradicts so much of what's in the big book itself. I know we've got some cats that are real 12 and 12 fans in here. They do a better job of talking about humility in the 12 and 12 than anything else.
There's some great stuff in there. But again, I think in early recovery it's like triage. What we're trying to do is get these cats connected spiritually quick so that they stop going out and relapsing. Our fellowships have kind of all turned into a revolving door. Some of us stick and some of us go away. That's why so many people out there take shots at us. Hell, doesn't anybody come and stay? At the end of our meeting at the outpost, that's what we do.
We don't do, keep coming back, it works if you work it. We say stay and then go on about our business. Because I know you're welcome to keep coming back. But Jesus, if you'd stay, you wouldn't have to keep coming back. Just a touch on amends. I do a fourth step. I do a fifth step. An hour later I do six and seven. I have a completed eight-step list. Usually the next day, sometime when we come up, maybe next year or whenever we can schedule this, we come back up and we'll do a little workshop.
Myers and I, my twin brother, we do a little talk about how to get somebody through the steps at a pretty quick pace. And so we could talk about doing that. But usually the next day I sit down with a notebook and we go back over the amends. And then we ask them to start doing their amends. While they're doing the amends, I'm talking to them about 10 and 11. Because that's what the book says. As we clean up the wreckage of our past, we start talking about this thing called God.
A lot of you guys in this room right now are already doing 10-step stuff. One of the first things that came back to me, even before Herman came back, was my conscience. You follow? I mean, I knew immediately when I started. It took some of them a while to get that. My conscience was right there. And I was one of those guys, even when I was out there doing stupid stuff, I knew right from wrong. I don't know necessarily what the right thing to do sometimes is, but I always know when I'm doing something wrong.
Always. I'll say something that is coming out of my mouth. You shouldn't have said that. Just did it. So 10-step stuff is we start cleaning up the wreckage of our past. Pronto, pronto, pronto. We start cleaning up the wreckage of our day even faster than that. It's just standard procedure.
[00:05:01]
11-step stuff. Guys, I don't know what to tell you about this getting quiet with God. We've talked about it. I don't think there's a right way to pray. We were just laughing and talking with a nice lady we were visiting. You know, the guy that stands up here and does an eloquent prayer is not heard any more than that crack addict in that alleyway saying, God, please help me. I mean, are we in some kind of living a delusional life where we believe that it's the way we say it that gets connected to God?
I believe God gives a rat's butt about our sacrifices. I believe God cares about the message in our heart. The lady that gives, she's a millionaire and she writes a big old fat $500 check and drops it in the collection pate. And this lady back over here drops, yeah. No. No. Anne Lamont talks about it. The lady that rolls dimes all week long and then drops those in the collection plate. Now, listen.
Which one do you think makes the biggest impact on God? Which one do you think is appreciated more? I mean, this person, what, $5,000? What are you, a cheap bastard? Come on. Write a big check. This lady right here is going to have to go without something this week because she put money in the collection plate. Y'all understand that? It's about the seventh tradition. A lot of you guys are contributing.
And some of you guys are freeloaders. You've always been a freeloader. You've always been a freeloader. You always will be a freeloader. And that's okay. I'm not knocking that. But you wonder why you're always broke. I could talk an hour about that. Not spiritual. Not biblical. Not jamming it down anybody's throat. It's like, guys, you put stuff out in the universe. You go out of your way a little bit.
You with us? And see what comes back around. You put the good stuff out. You get the good stuff back around. Somebody comes up afterwards. I don't believe that crap. Obviously. I'm here. They usually preface it. They usually preface it. I'm just coming back from a relapse. And I don't believe that crap. I understand. Bless your hearts, guys. We get quiet. And that's the biggest problem that we have in our hospital.
We got a lot of people that learn how to talk to God. God this. God that. Pray. Ask. And then shut up. We finally, at our hospital, we got rid of all the little iPods. Walk around campus with a little iPod at the hospital where I work, buddy. Because you're not going to. God's not going to interrupt iPod. Not going to interrupt the TV. Turn the TV off. Turn the iPod quiet. You with us? You don't have to.
You can get quiet and get in a lotus position. Oh my God. I used to try to do that. It's just absolutely frightening. Just don't. You can't. Just get quiet with God. I believe. I believe some heart needs to go into it. I don't believe. I do it when I'm in the bathroom in the morning. That's not meditation. That's ridiculous. It's not driving down. I meditate when I'm driving. That's not meditation.
Get quiet. Take the effort. You with us? It's like watching some of you guys do a four step. You know, you take a pen and paper and you get it and you make some columns and you spend some time organizing it. I believe your efforts are going to be rewarded. Just a thought on my part. Get quiet with God. That's what it's about. We work in the 12 steps. That's what it's about. We work in the 12 steps.
That's what it's about. We work in the 12 steps. That's what it's about. We work in the 12 steps. It's important to do what? To improve a conscious contact with God. And then we don't give God a chance to get a word in edgewise because we're too busy talking. I'm going to tell you right now guys, a bunch of you in this room God is screaming direction at. You can't hear it because you won't shut up long enough.
The scary part is when you start to feel like you're fixing to hear, and that's when you start turning the radio on. Oh shit, I almost heard God's word and God, God's right about it. Because you know for a fact that God is fixing to ask you to do something you don't want to do. That's right. That's right. The guy's coming into treatment. I want to get sober right up until the point you asked me to do something I don't want to do.
And then I'm not really so sure you're with us and some of us have to make some hard decisions when we get sober and that's just the way it is. We're going to do that. I'm a big one on this thing called making amends. Oh my gosh. You know, guys make the amends. I, again, we can spend two hours just talking about the amends process. I, I, uh, I believe amends need to be made directly to people when we've done harm directly.
And I got people always wanting to write letters to people. Why don't you get your ass on a bus and go over where you did the damage and sit across the table from them. And since this email stuff's come out, everybody wants to do it that way. Well, I'm just going to do a blanket email to all my friends and apologize. I said, you know how easy it is to hit the delete button, you know, and they see my name come across, delete, delete.
No, I need to go make an appointment and sit across from him and make amends for the stuff I've stirred up. And it's just that simple folks. We're not going to spend a bunch of time talking about that. I guarantee you though, God's guys, if you get ready, God will put that person in your line of thought in your, in your sights. I can assure you it won't happen. Maybe on your time scale. Uh, God, I wish people, I get people, the biggest problem I have with guys, I sponsors, they want to go make amends to people.
They don't want to have nothing to do with them. You know, it's like, you know what you can do with me? You can stay the hell away from me. That's what you can do for me. Well, I just don't feel like that. I meant when a man went, went too well, it didn't because you forced it.
[00:10:02]
Why don't you ask the guy if he's willing to sit and listen to you for a few minutes to clean up your side of the street and a guy says, no honor that and move on. Makes sense. It took me my first wife. It took me 13 years to finally get to make amends to her. And I made the attempt the first few months I was sober and she said, leave me alone. And every year or so I would call her again. And every year or so the message is the same, go die.
And I'm in Houston talking with Mark Houston one time, it's sitting in a motel six and I pick up the phone book because her brother lived in the town where we were talking. I says, I'm going to try this one last time. And all of a sudden, 45 minutes later, I'm on the phone with this girl. Click. She said, if you'd have called last night, I wouldn't have taken this call. If you'd have called tomorrow, I wouldn't have taken this call, but you wore me out.
What do you want? And I said, can we go to dinner? And she said, absolutely. She said, you buying? And I said, absolutely. And we got a chance to talk and I made amends to that woman. I'm going to tell you. And I told her everything because I'd had this card in my briefcase all written out. I knew exactly what I was going to make amends to her for. And I made the amends and there was tears in my eyes, buddy.
I guarantee you. And there was tears in her eyes. She said, thank you, but you don't have a clue what you owe me amends for. And I said, oh, okay, fine. Bring it on. And she told me how the cow ate the cabbage. Never once raised her voice. Never said anything. Blah, blah, blah. But the truth of the matter is, I didn't. I never walked a day in her shoes. I was loaded when I hurt her. I had no idea what I was doing to her.
I was just looking on the outside stuff. The money I took from our bank account, the physical stuff that I could see, there's none of that. And she told me how the cow ate the cabbage. And buddy, there was more than tears in our eyes when we finished with that. And I got to tell you, I went back over to her apartment, to her little house that she had. She's been so successful since she got away from me.
I guarantee you. And she'd gone back to school and she was doing a lot of that. And I got to pick up some stuff of mine that she'd been carrying around, some artwork that I wanted. And she gave it to me free. I didn't ask her for it. And we, when we got to be okay, we're not buddies, we're not friends. I don't hardly ever talk, but we'd set it straight. And I got cats out there that I sponsored that have been sober for 10 years and they still got states they can't go into because they haven't cleaned up their crap.
And then you wonder why you're effect. I'm going to tell you one more time, guys, the crap I do over here, you got it? Affects me over here. Oh, right. You think that this amend that I'm making around that money that I stole is going to affect my job over here? Yes. That's what I'm saying. Spiritual principle, clean it up. You'd be willing to do what you're supposed to do and I guarantee you, you'll get taken to a different spot.
That's all we can look at. One of the biggest, let me see, look at this other thing. One of the biggest problems that we have in our fellowship today is this idea about working with others. And I'm going to separate this up and try to talk about it. Working with others is different than sponsorship. Can we, can we just go in the door with that? Sponsorship is relaying the message of the 12 steps to a newcomer.
If I haven't done a four step, I can't show you how to do a four step. Make sense? But the book gets crystal clear. If I don't start working with others quickly, I won't stay sober. And if we do any injustice to the newcomer, I know, again, our hearts in the right place when we tell a newcomer, just sit and be easy, just, just chill out with us and come to some meetings. Dr. Wilson clearly states, if you've got your big books, you guys look on the bottom of page 129.
It's in a disgusting chapter called Family After. Not one of my favorites. 129. At the bottom of the page it says, even if he displays a certain amount of neglect and irresponsibility towards the family, it is well to let him go as far as he likes in helping other alcoholics or drug addicts. During those first days of convalescence, this will do more to ensure his sobriety than anything else. You get it?
It says Bill Wilson understands it. Up in the front of the book in Bill's story, when Ebby's talking to Bill, he's 12 step in Bill, and he's, and Bill starts to explain this. I'm just going to read it. It's on the top of page 15, bottom of page 14, 15. It said, my friend had emphasized the absolute necessity of demonstrating these principles in all my affairs. Particularly, was it imperative? Isn't that a great word, imperative?
to work with others as he had worked with me. Faith without works was dead, he said, and how appallingly true for the alcoholic or drug addict. For if this drug addict fails to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others,
[00:15:00]
he could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead." Do y'all get it? It's not an option. He's saying, if you don't work with others, you're not going to get well. I grow spiritually by working with others. I don't grow spiritually by prayer. I'm going to say it again. I'm not knocking prayer. People take that stuff out of context all the time. Chris says we don't need to pray. He's an atheist.
He's a… I've never said that. He's an atheist of this. But it's working with others. It's the way I grow spiritually. It's the way you grow spiritually. In treatment, these guys come to us, right? They're all banged up. They all have this thing called low self-esteem. One of the main symptoms of the spiritual malady is this feeling of uselessness. You'll follow? So they got to standing in front of mirrors, scratching, talking positive affirmations and stuff.
And yet, none of us are staying sober. So we go back into the AA meetings and what takes place is, if you happen to land in a healthy meeting, in a CA meeting, they'll say, hey buddy, while you're sitting there shake, rattle, and roll, why don't you go over there and clean that table off? Help us pick up these cigarette butts out here by the church and let's go make some more coffee for the next round.
Oh, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. See, in 1987, when I finally got sober, some people finally did that. For seven years in Alcoholics Anonymous, I did this. I sat right on my butt and did nothing. I crossed my arms. I sat at the side tables. I took your inventory. I tried to date your women. You with me? I did nothing. You should participate. You follow? Part of that was my stuff. Part of that's your stuff.
Because every time I'd say, can I help? No. You're a newcomer. Just chill out. But yet the book says exactly opposite that. If you find a job in this fellowship, you'll stay. Y'all understand that? The people on this committee, they're not the ones that are going to relapse. They've been busting their butt trying to put this together, being of service. It's the cats that are not doing anything that are going to have trouble staying sober.
I've got to get out of my head somehow. I've got to get out of my head. Will these voices ever shut up? Early sobriety, y'all remember that? Who's talking for heaven's sakes? Who knows? Who knows? Who knows? But I can sit there for a few minutes and carry some cups and do some stuff, maybe vacuum the big meeting room. You with me? And at least for a few minutes, I'm not thinking about anything but this.
These guys in early sobriety, when I got back to Alcoholics Anonymous, they knew that and they showed me what to do. They said, Chris, we want you to answer the phones. Some of y'all heard me talk about it up in Louisville. I said, buddy, I'm detoxing. I ain't answering Jack. Chris, you're not hearing us. We got to go. The guy that was supposed to do it's not here. Just stand out here and if the phone rings, answer it and come get us and we'll help you.
We're not asking you to 12-step somebody. We're asking you to do something for somebody else. Listen, I don't know what to tell you, but I ain't going to know. And the phone rings. And all of a sudden, this. They all just look. I said, shit, y'all are serious about this. What do I do? She said, answer the phone. I picked it up. It was Louisville Group in Louisville, Texas. Louisville Group. I knew the girl on the phone.
I drank with her husband. I mean, all the stars start lining up. And I'm talking to this girl. She goes, oh, my God, is that you? I said, oh, my God, is that you? I said, you still got those shoes? She got these red shoes that you would not buy anyway. I said, yeah. When we start talking, I saw something just like I'm in the airport coming over here. And I said, yeah. And we started laughing. And she says, imagine me calling Alcoholics Anonymous and finding you.
You're just nothing but a big old drunk. And I said, no. Her husband's been drinking and she wants an out-of-line meeting. I said, buddy, I'm not doing anything. I'll wait for you right out front. You certainly know what I look like. I'm kind of hard to miss. And she said, would you do that? And I said, absolutely. And I stood out there like an idiot waiting for her to drive up. She waved. I took her to the out-of-line meeting.
And then I walked back into that room where the phone was. You know how we do. We're all beaten up, coming in, just look shifty-eyed. Now I walk back in and it's like, I took care of that one. You know what, you know what, Donna? And I got, you know, they created a, you couldn't go near that phone for the next six months. I mean, because I would. Look, I hear the phone. I'm going to go, no, no. The newcomer would be like, oh, you could kill somebody with this phone.
This is very important. I'll get this taken care of. Oh my God. Give the new guy a job and he'll stay. Let him feel part of this because he is part of this. Stop this sanctimonious crap of saying that you're not sober long enough to help. If he wants to chair the meeting, sit there next to him and show him how to chair the meeting. That's what we do. Guys, we're teachers. We're teachers. That's all we are.
We've been spared a life of misery so that we can come back in and teach this each in our own way. And if you're not sitting in the rooms, if you're not there prepared, you you're in trouble. Teach let them participate.
[00:20:00]
Are they going to screw it up? Sure. Guys, how can you screw this up? This is a train wreck ready to happen. And they mess it up. And what are we going to do? We're going to laugh just like that. And we're going to move on and they're going to learn how to laugh at themselves and stop taking themselves so damn serious. We were talking earlier. You know, the guys, we were just talking about XA speakers on the little sheets, those little tapers out of Iceland.
A lot of us. These guys started XA speakers because nobody would let them do 12 step work. They had an a lot of club in Iceland. It's huge. Morphine addicts there. This little island was rampant with addiction. It's also like some other places we know, state funded treatment. And a lot of these cats come into this hospital. Coming in is treatment on demand. And so these little guys were all getting sober, dry, but they couldn't stay sober.
And they'd stumble back down to the Lionel club after getting out of get one more treatment center. And the guys at the Lionel club would say, easy, does it think, think, think he's nice. A bunch of little one liners sit and they were just stewing in their juices until the obsession came back and then they would go use again. And so they said, screw this. They got ahold of some bunch of CDs and stuff.
We did. And a lot of these little guys got back over there and a couple of these cats started this little radio station, a little 24 hour recovery radio station. No telling how many thousands of people got helped by that little radio station. And it morphed into, they bought some time on a big server and it morphed into now, which is the largest downloadable recovery website out there. If you've never been to it, it's phenomenal to see what these little guys did.
They were in their early twenties when they started this. And everybody down to the bottom, you can't help anybody. You can't do. And they went, watch this. And they went out and they started this little deal. The problem is that we, everybody wants to underestimate the power of each individual person. Oh, Chris Ramer, you must help so many people. I help a bunch of people. How many are you helping?
Well, I can't help anybody. I can't even help myself. Hold that thought, hold that thought because you see, that's the crux of the problem. You believe you can't. So you're going to sit here and stew in it. I want to get well, and then I want to go help somebody. Why the hell do we need you? You're not going to get well that way. If you go help somebody, we were talking about it earlier. This is like first century Christianity, what it used to be.
First century Christian Christianity had nothing to do with your soul being saved. It had to do with finding somebody that was out there on the street that didn't have any food and giving them some money, showing them how to grow a crop, helping the poor, helping the less advantaged. You'll follow? It's about charity. We've taken a perfectly good religion and turned it into some kind of a, well, same thing we've done with our AA group.
Our job was to get sober and turn around and help somebody else get sober. And by helping somebody else, we get to stay sober. I told you earlier, what we're starting to see at our treatment center is a whole bunch of people come back in with long-term sobriety. I had a guy in there last week, and it's like when they come back in, I mean, I hug them. A lot of them have heard of me out there. They've heard my CDs and stuff, and that's why they end up coming sometimes because of that.
And I said, oh, you're Chris Ramer? It's nice to meet you, blah, blah, blah. He says, I had 17 years, but I lost it. You know, I got tangled up in the meds and this and that and the other, which is just a freaking excuse. You won't get tangled up in the meds. You won't get tangled up in the meds if spiritually you're connected. We've known this, it's another hour talk. I asked the guy point blank. I said, buddy, what were you doing?
He said, oh, I was going to meetings. I'm not going to have any problem with this. I was going to meetings. I said, let me ask you a question. How many guys were you sponsored at 17 years sober? Oh, well, I mean, let me get this one for you. None? You just said you were an Alcoholics Anonymous, but you're not sponsoring anybody. You're not an Alcoholics Anonymous. You're in the fellowship, but you're not in the program because the program requires you to get off your butt and help somebody.
Got people dying out there because we don't have enough people to work with, especially the women. Why? Because we don't have enough people stepping up to the podium to do it. Oh, I would love to help, but I'm much too busy. Some of you all have heard me read this before. I think it's fascinating. It came out of a Box 459 in 2000. Intergroups are asking, have all the volunteers gone? This is the AA little newsletter.
The most frustrating thing about answering the intergroups' phones, says Bob R., manager of the Intergroup Association in New York City, is finding an AA member willing to take a 12-step call for some sick alcoholic who has phoned for help. Sometimes it takes up to 20 calls to identify just one willing volunteer. Some of these responses we hear when a live member actually does answer the phone. What's a 12-step call?
[00:25:02]
How'd you get my phone number? Do you mean you actually want me to talk to someone who's still drinking? The saddest response came from a member who exclaimed, no, I can't do it. I'm busy all day. Today is my sobriety anniversary. Oh, man. I can just see God now. Okay, hold still. I'm going to thump your ass. Boom. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. I mean, what? The entire fellowship was based on this. I mean, what?
I mean, what? I mean, what? I mean, what? I mean, what? I mean, what? I mean, what? I mean, what? I mean, what? I mean, what? I mean, what? I mean, what? I mean, what? I mean, what? This is based on this idea that we are supposed to get sober and help other people. This is like the gravy. This is like the gravy. This is like having sex, but no orgasm. It's like up to this point, I'm working the steps, I'm busting my ass, I'm going to all these meetings and now you're fixing to get me right to the edge where I'm actually going to get the big, the happy ending you know what I'm saying?
They told me about that. I got this sponsor to tell me about that. I don't know anything about that. But you're fixing to get right there and then you stop. The key is the working with others. The first time, I got to tell you guys, the first time you sit down with some little knucklehead, you don't know if he wants it or not. He comes in and you can see him. My guys, they got to watch. They're on point.
If I got one of them little guys comes in, I'm watching not him. I'm watching my guys. Y'all know what I'm talking about, guys I sponsor, because they're better be on this little guy. I got to stay before. I don't, the last thing I need, Lord help me, is another sponsee. I don't, I'm flush watching, they're, they better be watching him. And if the meeting gets going too long before somebody, one of my guys slides over next to him, we're going to have a talk after the meeting.
It's the same story. No, we're not going to have a conversation. I'm going to talk. They're going to listen. You'll follow? Because I don't want them to, I don't want them to miss this. It's stupid. I don't want them to miss this. We were in Iceland talking one time like that and Aurora Borealis was out there big time. Y'all get to see it up here a lot. I'm sure. But down in Texas, I've never seen it.
And somebody took the effort to wake me up and let me come outside to see that wonderful sight that I may never get a chance to see again. Thank you for, for, for helping me to wake up to see a miracle. You follow? Well, we've got this fellowship out here with thousands of miracles taking place, possibly, and yet we're asleep. We're asleep. Oh, it's the truth. We have in our fellowships and all of our fellowships, we have this, these things called unsigned death packs.
Mark and I talk about it a lot. These unsigned death packs are, are quite simple. I won't hold you on your crap and you won't hold me on my crap. We'll have a sponsy sponsor relationship, but you do it any way you want. I'm going to do it any way I want. We're going to go on. We're going to be good buds. If you relapse, I'm sorry. I'll try to help you, but that's it, man. That's not sponsorship. Again, we could spend days talking about sponsorship.
We ought to do a workshop just on that. I don't want to get it off into that. My job as a sponsor is to hold somebody accountable, is to help them get on this path, and part of that is to help them understand that getting sober requires working with others. Everybody's going to find their niche, everybody. It may be service work in the coffee. It may be at a service structure, an area district. It may be artistic.
You may be designing fires for the rest of your life in our fellowship. Either way, it's working with others. It's helping out. If you miss this miracle of sitting across the table from another human being, nobody wants to do it because they're too freaked out. They think it's going to take too much time. It's one of the deals Myers and I hit so much. Sponsorship is not about raising somebody. Our job as a sponsor is to get you through the steps and then hold you accountable after that.
You with me? I'll be there as your answer man up to a certain point, but I'm not there to govern your life. The big book is crystal clear. I don't want you to depend on me. You with me? I want us to be friends, but I don't want you to become dependent on me because if I wake up one day and I have a crappy day, I may affect your life adversely. You follow? Besides, when are we going to stop going to another human being for the answer to our problems?
You come into a meeting. I'm having trouble in my relationships. It's like it freaks me out. Why would you go to a cocaine anonymous meeting to talk to people about? I mean it is. It's like two trash trucks colliding and now we're going to, there must be 5,000 marriages in this little group right here. Why don't you get, why don't you get quiet with God and say, God, what do you want me to do? You want me to be celibate a while?
You want me to get in this relationship? You want me to get out of this relationship? Listen you can hear it now and what you think God's gonna answer me with that attitude probably not but I'm telling you it will Happen absolutely We work the 12 steps to get connected spiritually guys And I'm telling you some of you guys are getting guidance and some of you are not and you're pissed at me because you're not I'm not the one not doing the work
[00:30:06]
Everybody gets so cranky about this, but the truth is, again, I'm gonna go back. My sponsor says it, I smell more. You sit across the table from somebody, it doesn't even have to be somebody you like. Everybody says, when they get out of treatment, go find somebody you can relate to. Why? Why would you want somebody you could relate to? Another fried pie? I need a mentor. I need a spiritual mentor.
I need somebody that's doing it. I'm watching your feet. How are you dressed? How are you acting? Are you staying around the meeting? Are you being productive in here? Are you happy, for God's sakes? Why do I want somebody to sponsor me that's miserable? You follow? You could relate to. I'm gonna find somebody that's an alcoholic and an addict that knows how to have a spiritual experience. Because that's the only prerequisite for sponsoring somebody.
You've got to be sober five years to sponsor somebody. God dang, show me in the book, where was that? I must have missed that. I don't know. I sure am glad Bill and Dr. Bob didn't know that. We'd be dead. We're not gonna play that game, guys. Once you've had a spiritual experience, I would much rather, I guarantee you, if I had a son that was in trouble, I'd send him to somebody that had eight months of sobriety, that was excited about life, carried a little busted up big book, buddy, come on, we're gonna do this, we're involved in the young people's deal, and we're doing this, and we're doing that.
I wanna send him to him. I'm gonna send him to some old crusty son of a bitch in the back that hadn't even been to a meeting in months and won't return your calls, but he's been sober 15 years, so he's a good sponsor. He may be a great sponsor. I'm just saying the length of sobriety is not indicative of good sponsorship. The length of a sponsor is supposed to get you through the steps. So many people don't want a sponsor because they're afraid that they won't know what to say.
A sponsor is not a doctor. Well, I don't know what to do with these antidepressants. I don't know either. Let's go find a doctor. Well, I'm having this problem with my divorce. I don't know either. Let's go find a lawyer. Let's go find a personal trainer. Let's go find a clergyman. I'm trained to do one thing. You wanna have a spiritual experience? I'll show you how. Guaranteed. You wanna ask me advice about your wedding?
Your wife? Uh-uh. We've gotta stop. See, some of you are grinding your teeth because you've got a sponsor that does this. You've got a sponsor that's been wiping your butt since day one and you think that's the way it's supposed to be. Well, I'm telling you, that's great. But let me show you what that sponsor's doing. That sponsor is making you dependent on them and not on God. And the sponsor's doing you a disservice.
And while I got a ladder of steam up, let me just go ahead and say this. And nine times out of ten, that sponsor's got one or two people he's working with. Well, I gotta tell you something. We're losing the battle. I don't sponsor 30 men because I've just got plenty of free time on my hands. I sponsor 30 men because we don't have enough people out there locally to sponsor them. If you'd start sponsoring a few more than one or two, I wouldn't have to sponsor so many.
We got women dying all over the world tonight. Guys, number one email I get, number one email I get are from women looking for sponsors. We got women in recovery all over the world that can tell you the best places to buy scented candles and the best places to go eat lunch and the predators in the meeting and keep you active and na-na-na-na-na but they can't tell you how to finish the stupid four-step.
And that's a cry in shame. My job is the same with men or women and I don't care. My job is the same with men or women and I don't sponsor women but my job is the same with all of them. Get them to God quick. Let's let them have their own spiritual experience so that we can move on down the road and we can go help somebody else. You sit across the table from somebody just like they did me. I said, you're telling me that if I work these 12 steps that quickly this obsession to do to snort cocaine is going to leave me and that I won't want to drink alcohol.
You're telling me that I can go back out there on the street and they'll be drinking alcohol and I won't want to drink. You're telling me that these seven medications that I've taken all my adult life that there might be a time downstream that I can get off all these medications. They're doing exactly what you're doing. He's nodding his head and he's got glistening moisture in his eyes and he's looking at me and he says, absolutely.
If you do what we tell you to do, if we do what we ask in you, what we call a spiritual experience is going to take place and the obsession to use is going to leave you. It talks about it in the 10th step. You're going to be placed in a position of neutrality again and you're going to be free. Well, this is a lifelong thing. I mean, this is going to take forever. Shut up, Chris. They showed me the circle and triangle.
Some of you old geezers, I signed your little book
[00:35:00]
and you had a third edition before they took the circle and triangle out of our book. Some of you guys, we need to get you some stickers back in that book. So many people in Cocaine Anonymous have never seen that circle and triangle. But that's how we stayed connected to the fellowship. That's how we knew we were in all three parts. We got a three-part disease and we got a three-part solution. Body, mind and spirit.
Y'all heard that? We talked about it in this first little segment and that's how we find out. But the piece that people miss is this first piece is they don't do all the steps. They go to a whole bunch of meetings and they fall flat on their ass and they're not sponsoring anybody. They're not sponsoring anybody because somebody told them they couldn't. And that was the death sentence to them. It's scary.
First time I ever worked with a guy he called me after a meeting. He was a cook and I was a cook and so we had some stuff to talk about and he was fixing to go on shift at the kettle. It was a night shift. It was 12 o'clock, he went on, 11.30. And he wanted me to come visit with him because he was going to use before he went to shift. Once he got to work, he wasn't going to use. And so I said, what do I do?
I'm talking to this girl I'm living with and I said, what do I do? And she said, go talk to him. And I went down and I sat down and I sat across the table and he started asking me those exact same questions. He wasn't asking me all the intricacies of the steps. He was asking me point blank. Does this obsession ever go away? Can you ever wake up and just not want to use? The media won't tell him that.
Oprah wouldn't tell him that. The treatment centers won't tell him that. My job was to tell him that. To give him some hope. We laughed our butts off. We talked about cooking. We talked about recovery. We talked about women. He went to work. I went back to my apartment. Walked in the door and she said, what happened to you? I said, buddy, you're not going to believe this. It's just like I seem to know exactly what to say.
And she's exactly like that. She's got tears in her eyes and she's laughing. I said, I don't know what that was about. She says, I do. It was one drunk working with another drunk. That's how the connections made. He listened because he knew I'd been there. I didn't have to do therapy on this guy. All I had to do was tell him my story. You sit across the table with somebody and watch them light up like a damn neon sign and get excited about recovery.
And you get to know that you played a part in that. You didn't cause it to happen. All you did was allow yourself to be used in a useful way. I go work with others. We go trolling for drunks, guys. We go to different meetings. You get your nice little CA group and the same people every day and you come and you talk about your same crap. It's nice for you. But that's not what the book says. The book says we tried to carry this message to the other alcoholics and the little dope fiends.
Go to the jitter joints. I hear people in meetings all the time. Guys I sponsor. We have a little accountability group. It's month in, month out. It's the same stuff. Look at this little guy. I just can't find anybody to work with. I can't find anybody to work with. Have you signed up for one H&I meeting? And you wonder why you can't find anybody to work with. We don't need you at that Wednesday night AA meeting.
We need you on the trench helping other alcoholics and addicts get well. Can y'all get… Are you that… Y'all know where I'm coming from? Some people don't want to work with anybody else. They don't want to work with others because it makes you uncomfortable. The first time that guy called me, it was the last thing I did, I cussed all the way to that restaurant. I don't want to go to this. I'm going to go for 15 minutes and I'm going to go back.
Same thing. Same conversation Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob had 75 years earlier. Just shared my hope. He got well. He stays over a while. I don't know. I've lost track of him. He stopped doing the work. Same story. Talked to him not long ago. He wasn't sponsoring anybody. You're going to die. That's your job and that's the way it goes. Let me sum this up. I'm going to repeat one thing. Sponsorship is about teaching somebody how to work the 12 steps.
That's my one main job. Traditions tell us we've got a priority here. Our primary purpose is to help others. You've got to ask yourself, are you working with others or you're not? It's a yes or no question.
[00:40:00]
I always try to get in these conversations with Mark. He said, Chris, I ask you a yes or no question. It's not an essay here. Not a debate thing. Just yes or no. Are you working with somebody or you're not? If you're not, you need to ask yourself why. Are you making more out of this than you need to be? We are not therapists. Don't try to practice outside your license here. You've got a license to help somebody have a spiritual experience.
You don't have a license to talk to them about all this other stuff. You better be careful what you're doing. We're catching a lot of flack out there because of it. Make sense? You've just got to be really careful here. Do that and hold them accountable. When I get in a sponsorship relationship with somebody, I make sure that they get the steps under their belt. We're working the steps. I don't sponsor outside my realm.
I don't do Narcotics Anonymous because I don't believe in taking your time to work the steps. And they seem to be very insistent on that. And I can't abide by it. But I love their fellowship. And I love the people that are involved in that. You with me? But I'm not going to sponsor somebody in a fellowship that I don't belong to. Make sense? Again, it's disrespectful to their fellowship. And it may work great for them.
And I'm more power to them. But I don't sponsor outside my realm. I don't do Narcotics Anonymous because I don't believe in taking your time to work the steps. And it may work great for them. And I'm more power to them. I don't want to talk to somebody about something that I don't know nothing about. So I've got to be kind of careful with what I do. I'm personally very rigid about gender-specific sponsorship.
I know some of you in here are not. And that's perfectly okay. If it works for you, great. I'm on my third marriage. And I have no intention of screwing this up by sponsoring a woman. I'm not. I had a lady not long ago, when I was back over in Seattle, she came up and said, I said, I say real quick, I'm going to set some parameters with a cat that night. And he comes and asks me. I'm going to ask him, one, why he wants me to sponsor him.
A lot of people want me to sponsor him just because I'm out there on the circuit and stuff. But I've got to set some parameters. One, I'm never home. I travel most weekends doing this kind of stuff, so I'm never home. So if you're one of those cats that just need constant attention, I'm not another sponsor. You follow? But I set these parameters in the beginning. When we can work together and what I expect.
And the front of the books, the guys I sponsor, I have them right on there. I'm willing to go to any length to overcome my addiction. And I have them sign it. Dig? That's just something that I do. Because in about, oh, three days, when we get ready to start cranking up on this old four step, or fifth step stuff, they're going to start crawfishing. And I say, buddy, I say, listen, I'm all for the little league, but you said you were willing to go to any length.
And the one chance we've got to meet this week is now. Damn it. Okay, okay. You follow? And so that's what we're going to do. Because see, I want to do triage now at the beginning. Let's focus all of our attention on let's get well. And then we go do the little league games. And then we go do, I say it again, I don't want AA or CA to ever get in the way of my regular life. But in early sobriety, you better put recovery number one over everything, guys.
Everything. Kids, relationships, jobs, everything. You want to get well. I set some parameters of what we can do and what we won't do. I let them know what I'm responsible for and what they're responsible for. And then we go on down the road. When I get a cat that won't do what I've asked him to do, we have the talk. Short and sweet. Get off the pot. Do what you said you would do or we're done. I've never fired anybody.
But I've suggested strongly that they go find somebody else that they might work with better. Because I am not going to waste my time, not one minute on somebody that doesn't want to do this work. I'm just not. Your actions show me. Kate says she wants to be a friend of mine forever. And I'm going to wait. We're going to find out. I'm going to email her. And there's nothing wrong with that. Action. I love you. I love you, man.
I love you. This gang shit. Do you? Do you? Then do what you say you're going to do. You say you're going to stay in touch? Stay in touch. You say you want me to sponsor that you're willing to go to any length? Show me. We're going to the halfway house Friday night. Oh, shit, I can't go Friday night. I've got a ticket. Guys, we go every Friday night. We go to this. You follow? Now we're starting to crawfish a little bit.
Because that's what happens, guys. When we get well, we get complacent. We start feeling good. All of a sudden there's a sense of urgency. The blowtorch backs off my butt about six feet. And I go, oh, jeez, I can work. Well, what's the idea about giving back? Do you start to crawfish? We're gonna have the talk You can go find somebody else to waste time with because I'm not here for your entertainment I'm looking for other soldiers in the trench. I'm looking for other soldiers men and women that are willing to get in the trench with us I've told this story a thousand times. I'm gonna end with it these guys. I was in a rainstorm. I was going to a young
[00:45:05]
Adult, a Young People's Conference in Houston, It was Raining Like a Bear Outside, and I'm Lost, I Kind of Know Basically Where I'm At, but I Look, and There's a Big Trench, I'm Stopped at This Stop, and They've Got Construction Everywhere, and There's Big Trenches Out There, and They've Got a Couple of These Little, The Wettest Little, Little Mexican Guys You've Ever Seen in Your Life, They're Drowning Down in This Ditch, and They're Both Digging Their Butts Off, and There's Seven, Count Them, Seven Guys in Slickers Up at the Top of That Ditch, All of Them with Clipboards Looking Down, You Know, One of Them Giving It This, You Know, Like This, All of These Supervisors, I Said, Buddy, I Just Rolled the Window Down, Just Sat There as the Cars Honked, Buddy, Yeah, This, Take a Picture, Click, This is Our Fellowship, This is Cocaine Anonymous Right Now Today, This is Alcoholics Anonymous Right Now Today, Got Everybody Sitting on the Sideline Taking Shots, and Then the Cats That Want to Do the Work, We're Taking the Grief, There's No Free Ride in This Thing, The Book Says Up in the Very Front that a Price Has Got to Be Paid, You Want the Coolest Life You've Ever Had, You've Got to Pay a Price, I Can Have This if I Want It, No, You Can't, The Cemeteries Are Full of People That Wanted It, and They Can't Have It, Because They Were Unwilling to Do the Work, Worst Case Scenario, They Were Willing to Do the Work and Nobody Told Them How, That's the Tragedy, Those are the Sad Ones, How Many People are Dying Today, All You've Got to Do is Just Get off Your Butt, Finish the Steps, Get on Some Solid Ground, and Then Reach Down and Help the Other Guy Up, But You're Too Busy to Do That, To Hell with You.
The Problem is Not Personalities, The Problem is Our Meeting Schedules, The Meeting Formats in All of Our Fellowships Suck, The Open Discussion Meetings Outweigh the Literature Based Meetings 3 to 1, You Can Go to Dallas, Texas, Still to This Day, There's Over 1,500 Meetings in Dallas, Texas, and Only 20 Literature Based Meetings, You Follow? Let Me Translate That for You, If You Want to Go Whine About Your Weed Eater, You've Got a Lot of Places to Go Do That, If You Want to Go Talk About God in the Steps, Study the Literature, You've Got to Go Look for One of Those Meetings, and We Do It the Same Thing, Just as Bad in Cocaine Anonymous, Everybody Wants a Place for the Newcomer to Come Talk, We Need to Share, You Need to Find a Therapist or a Friend or Get Yourself a Damn Dog, What You Need to Do is Study the Literature so You Can Turn Around and Help Somebody Else Get Sober, You Follow? We Do That by Going into our Group Consciences and Changing the Meeting Formats, Guys We Couldn't Have Done a Talk like This 10 Years Ago, We Just Couldn't Have, But Because We've Changed so Many Meeting Formats, There's So Many More of You Guys in Here Kicking Butt and Taking Names, We're Able to Do This, We're Gaining on Them, I Can't Say That We'll Ever Outnumber Them, But I Guarantee You We're Gaining on Them, There Are More and More of Us Chronic Alcoholics and Addicts, There Are More of Us Finally Getting Sober Than You Could Ever Shake a Stick at, and I've Got to Say This, Thank You for Sticking is All I Can Say, You Old Geezers in Here, You Cats That Snuck Across the Isle Out of Alcoholics Anonymous and Came Back Over to Cocaine Anonymous to Help Us Out, Listen, Thank You, Information and Experience is the Same, I Don't Care Whose Mouth It Comes Out of, I Don't Care What Fellowship It Comes Out of, There's Not One Better Than the Other, You Share Your Hope with the Experience that You Have, But You Old Geezers That Have Stagged and Stuck, Thank You, and in Cocaine Anonymous I'm Talking About Cats That Have Been Sober a Year, Thank You for Sticking, I've Got to Say It, We Were Talking About It Earlier, We Had Some Great Lunch Conversations, There's a Dark Side Out There, I Believe Most of the Spiritual Doctrine I've Studied, There's a Light Side and a Dark Side, as far as the Good and Evil, Ying and Yang, There was a Girl in Treatment the Other Day, She Says, I Don't Believe in This, What This Dark Side and Light Side, She Turned Around and She Had a Big Ying and Yang Tattooed on Her Neck, Honey, How Drunk Were You When You Got That Thing, It Freaked Me Out, But the Light and the Dark, What Happens is You Start to Get Excited and You Start to Get Lathered Up About Recovery and What Happens is the Dark Side Starts Taking Some Shots at You, It May Be Health and It May Be a Woman and It May Be a Job and It May Be Some Insecurities and Stuff, But This Stuff Will Start Coming at You and You Just Need to Know What That's About, It Means That You're Being Effective and What the Dark Side Would Like is that we have a Fellowship full of ineffectual people sitting around talking about our day, drinking a lot of coffee, going home, talking crap, you with us? And nobody's helping anybody.
I was talking at a CA Conference, I'll give you the example, this is the last, I promise, and we're going to go, I've got time for you to ask questions, I'm still early. Very early, keep going. When the room shifts you can see it, it's like a unit, everybody yawns at the same time, it's like okay, it's time to go. You get sucked into the vortex. I'm at a Cocaine Anonymous deal not long ago and I'm doing a little pitch and my wife's there and it's
[00:50:02]
fun, there's about 200 people in there and just a little lathered up, I love doing Cocaine Anonymous and they're a fun bunch and we're having a good time, it's a little fundraiser and we do the deal. This friend of mine in AA has come over with us from Fort Worth and she's sitting with my wife and so I'm watching and at the end of the meeting they say, do we have any newcomers? And there's 3 or 4 people, you with us? A lot of people had come over just to hear me speak and so there was a bunch of newcomers in there, but do we have anybody in there first 30 days? And there was this little girl that raised her hand and she was a fried pie, you could see it, you didn't have to ask, you could just…
She still had a Bic lighter just glaring in her eye, I mean I just, she just, so hurt, so she didn't even look up, she just, you know, she's just spiritless and I'm looking at my wife because it's a soft spot with me and I'm looking at my wife and she's looking at this little girl and this other lady's looking and I do my little pitch and everybody says thank you Jesus afterwards and hug necks and pass cards and I'm watching and rooms are clearing out and they're locking chairs and they're cleaning up and they're talking shit after smoking and chasing… She's still sitting over there. She's come with some people from the halfway house, they're fixing to leave. And I look at this girl over there, not even in our house, and she's got a big book and she goes right straight across and it's over and I just start to think about my child and how many different ways she's been effectively helping. This is serious. I look at the other door, this lady just came at her, and our door they say she hit two other guys, and then we let go, and then we let her go. You see where we're at? Where's our primary purpose? What's our job? Sitting here listening to a good speaker telling us what to do, right? And you've got a girl that stood there for a minute and she didn't care at all. Not one person, not one person, two hundred people, got up and shook her hand. Why? I don't want to be critical, I don't want to be critical of our fellows, I'm saying this is what we do. When we get so psyched about it, we forget what we're supposed to be doing. Our job was there for her, it was not there for me, it was not there for the social, it was there for that little girl.
That's what we do. Everything we do, everything we do is about helping that newcomer. These conferences, don't even get me started talking, Cocaine Anonymous is the worst. We stay in bed doing conference after conference after conference. For what? And the people that need to be there can't afford to come. This ensures I'll be in trouble with Cocaine Anonymous for the rest of my life, and I'm saying that I love my fellowship and I love what we're doing, but we do the same thing in Alcoholics Anonymous. Everything we do. So all of a sudden we get something that we can give away for free. This is what we're supposed to be, free.
Listen folks, I got a pocket full of money today. I can afford to pay some money to get things happening, to do some stuff, to buy a group a case of books. I don't have to look like, let somebody else do it. No, I get to do it today. You know what I also get to not do? I get to not be a bum on the street. I get to not eat out of dumpsters. I get to look myself in the mirror and not want to commit suicide. Because I get a chance to give in your own way. Tonight the prayer for everybody, whoever you're praying to, Mr.
Magoo or Jesus, I don't care who, but the prayer is this. The prayer is this. God, what do you want me to do? Where do you want me to be of service in this group? Whatever I can do, let me be of service. You with us? Some people will roll their eyes and get uncomfortable. More power to you. Rock on. And some of you, you're going to do that. I'm going to say this real quick and I'll let you guys know later. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. It's my own fan. No, listen guys, let me say it. Everybody's waiting for the treatment centers to change things. Everybody's waiting for the treatment centers to come up with another pill or another drug or another modality, therapeutic thing.
And I'm going to tell you something, folks. I love treatment and I work in one. If it wasn't for treatment centers, a lot of us in this room would be dead today. I'm not knocking treatment centers. But treatment centers are not the problem today in our fellowship. There was a day that a lot of misinformation got cranked out of it. The problem is in our own fellowships with people that don't understand what the fellowships are supposed to be about. They don't understand. They're the ones that are killing people with their crap. I'm controversial because I cuss from the podium sometimes. You're controversial
[00:55:02]
because you tell people to slow down and take their time to do the work. Which one of us is doing more harm? That's all we're looking at. There's not going to be another pill to fix us, folks. There's not going to be another advance that comes down. I'm telling you, 75 years ago, Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob got together and they said, listen, I'm going to give you these. We can steal them from the Christians, the steps, however you want to do it. You can combine a bunch of religiosity here. But bottom line is we're going to come up with these things that will guarantee to get these cats connected spiritually. And all you've got to do is take that clear, undiluted message back to the next little fried pie.
Go at it unapologetically. This is what we offer. This is what we offer. The 12 steps, God. This is what we offer. The ability, the opportunity to turn around and be of service to somebody else. This is what we offer. This is what Cocaine Anonymous was about. It is not a self-help program. We are not here for your entertainment. We are men and women, lockstep, on a mission to help the dying brothers and sisters on this earth. And those of you that pick up that tool and jump in the trench with us, we'll have a life like you can't ever imagine. It's not going to be near as hard as you think it's going to be. It's going to be more fun than you've ever, ever imagined. That's what we're looking for. Thank you, God.
Oh, hi. Sorry to disturb you. Hi, my name is Eric. I'm an addict. My question is this. If I have never been through a treatment center, how much good am I doing H&I work? If I have not ever smoked crack, but I am a cocaine addict, and trust me, I am, how useful can I be, either 12-stepping or taking a crack addict through the steps? I don't know. Let me know. Okay, thanks. I have to do it because I lost my mic. You can, it went quick, didn't it?
You can be of absolute help. I'm a cocaine addict. I never smoked crack in my life. I got sober before it hit. But I did mountains of cocaine. I so qualify for this fellowship it's not even funny. I'm surrounded by people. When I go in there, the identification piece is the addiction, and we can talk about that a little bit. But where I get them in H&I is not all of that. We're not trying to be therapists in those H&Is. We're just sharing our hope. They want to know the simple questions. Can I ever get over this? The fact that you come in and introduce yourself as a recovered addict, oh my gosh, we'll just blow you out of the water. They'll all come to you guys, where they won't come to their case manager, they're going to come to you for the straight scoop. Now what's this stuff really about?
Are they blowing smoke? You can talk to them. It's just like most of our H&Is, we're taking meetings in there, so it's just another version of a meeting in a room full of people that desperately need the meeting. You can absolutely be of assistance. Absolutely. Hi, my name is Sam, I'm a drug addict. Hey guys. The question is about, would you mind to give me any great tools or example how to slap newcomers with his hopelessness? How to help them to face and see how hopeless he is? The party line BS in treatment is this.
Let's show him all the damage that he's done. But that's not going to do it, because one, the book says we're not going to remember the consequences of even a week or a month ago. So you can talk about the DWIs and the car wreck until the cows come home, and at the moment, you might get them to cry around it, but a week later, they've forgotten it. The ego starts to rebuild itself, and pretty soon we're feeling comfortable again. Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob understood, we've got to stress the hopelessness of the disease. Cliff Bishop, my buddy up in Dallas, talks about it, says what we've got to do with every alcoholic and addict is give them a good case of alcoholism and drug addiction. We've got to show them what the disease is by talking about the phenomenon called craving coupled with the mental obsession.
Talk about the times that they did not want to drink, did not want to do dope. I absolutely Absolutely no because I've done the experiment a thousand times I'm gonna go get by a quarter gram of cocaine and I know I'm gonna go back over there just by a bunch later But I'm here I am gonna do it again. And I said, oh they go. Oh my god. I've done that now We're starting to talk about the hopeless. Did you have anything in you that could stop you from doing that?
No, they see that then they realize how powerless they are. That's true powerlessness
[01:00:00]
Okay, then how I slap his face with that tool and actually face him to see the pain, I can't, to make him feel… You don't have to. Did you understand what the grinder is? You don't make them. How many of you guys have ever tried to make somebody do something that they just flat weren't going to do? It's as this. You can either identify with me or you can't. Have you ever done dope when you didn't want to?
It's a yes or no. Have you ever been able to, ever said, I'm going to do a little bit and done a lot? You follow? Okay, but some people, they, no, I've never done. Then I, there's nothing I can do for you. I can't help you with that. But when you sum it up, no matter what, 16 years old or 60, gay, straight, black, white, I get all of them. It's the same, the same thing that ties us all together. Once I start to use, can I control how much I'm going to use?
Second piece, choice. Given sufficient reason, can you stop? If they threatened you with your kids, could you stop? Well, maybe. Then I can't do anything for you. If you still think you can do that, go try it. Get another DWI. Get arrested again. Lose another job. Then come back. Does your experience show that you are truly powerless over this substance? That's what I was talking about earlier, about picking people too green.
Sometimes we're trying to convince people that haven't had enough experience to be convinced. And that's our mistake, not their mistake. Did that answer your question? I hope. My name's Gary. I'm a crack addict, alcoholic. What about the individual who has gone through the steps and who is relapsing? Are they capable of taking someone through the book? Once they get back on solid ground, they are. I'm not going to get somebody that's smoking crack in a parking lot coming in here and telling me how to get sober.
Us old timers are not going to buy it and the new timers are not going to buy it. I mean, we're not stupid. Sometimes the only thing that we don't have is a little credibility under our belt. But do I believe that somebody needs to be punished because they've relapsed? No. Let's get them back on track. Why did they get loaded to begin with? Nine times out of ten, it's because they stopped working with others.
They got complacent. They stopped looking at their own program. You follow? They weren't in all three parts of the program. And they got sick again. That's what happens to us. Untreated alcoholism, untreated drug addiction. It can come back. It doesn't ever have to come back if we continue to do what we're supposed to be doing. Make sense? My mother's the greatest about it. She says, when's your debt to those fellowships going to be over?
And it's like, Mom, my mom never saw me eat out of dumpsters. You with us? With her, she just sees that I'm traveling every weekend. She sees the stress it puts on the family, but she doesn't understand the joy that comes with it. But I can't do what she wants me to do. I got to do what I know I need to do. So I keep sponsoring people and I stay in the trenches. I'm telling you guys, we have a tendency in all of our fellowships to eat our wounded.
Well, he relapsed. Screw him. Now let's go on to the next. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Come back. Pick up a chip. Start again. Pick up a key tag. Let's go again. Let's get on some solid ground and then let's start sponsoring. Well, should you fire all the people you're sponsoring? Why? The one thing that's going to keep you sober is working with others. And now you're going to fire everybody. Why?
We're going to punish you a while. Rub your nose in it because you fell on your ass. We need to stop doing that. We need to start working with others. We need to stop firing them. Pick up more. People don't relapse because they sponsor too many people. People relapse because they don't sponsor enough. Jenna, alcoholic. What happens if you see that your teenager is heading down the same road as you?
I have a 16-year-old. I think Layla said it earlier. The only thing worse than drowning is drowning and not knowing what's going on. And that's the problem. My father was an alcoholic and I watched him. And then for 19 years, I drank and drugged just like my dad did. But I always used him as a touchstone, you know. And it's like if I'd have known what alcoholism was, would I have stopped any earlier?
I think I would have. I don't know. But it's easy to say I wouldn't or I would have. But knowing it, you can see it. And then what we can do is do this. In the United States, we do this scared straight crap. This dare stuff. And I'm sorry, but I don't agree with it. It's just ridiculous. It doesn't work with real alcoholics and addicts. I have an illness that's diagnosable. But you're going to try to scare me well.
You follow? Or use guilt against me, you know. Next time you got loved ones in the bathroom puking their guts out, say, hey buddy, if you really loved me, you'd stop. You know, it's like you can't rationalize it.
[01:05:01]
But if you can see her and she's going down the road, you can explain to her that this is a genetically predisposed illness, the possibilities that she could have it. And this is what the symptoms look at. Don't talk about DWIs and all the bad crap that could happen because it might not. Some of you guys in this room have never hit a bottom like some of us others have because you're insulated by your beauty, by your intelligence.
A lot of you guys in here are insulated by your money. You will never hit the skids like some of us hit. Stop waiting for that. What happened in here? That's what tied us all together. What happened in there? That's what we're looking at. So, talk to her. Get her a little cheap copy of that anonymous press book. You can buy them anywhere for like three bucks. And give it to her and say, baby, why don't you read this?
And maybe you can kind of see what's coming to you. It's about control and choice. That's the best you can do. Yeah, yeah. I wish somebody had done it for me. I'm Scott. I'm a cocaine addict, a heroin addict, and an alcoholic. And I feel that, like I just joined, I've been in CAA for around 20 months now. And when I go to NA, I go to AA. I just joined an AA group. And it's a solutions program that I joined.
And it's a good, powerful group. But they say that you present yourself as an alcoholic. We don't want to hear that you're different or you're better than us. If you say you're an addict, I'll drive you down the street and take you to the right meeting. You're just at the wrong meeting. And I don't feel that that's the right message. For a newcomer, you made it there. And welcome. Not I'll drive you down the street because now I feel I'm different.
And to feel that, for a newcomer, I keep an open mind. And I joined the group. And it's a really good, strong group, Prince George Group in Hamilton. And that's the message to me. Anybody, like I'm an alcoholic. I might not be one today. But if I start drinking, I know where it will lead me to. Any and other addictive personality. Whatever I put my, you know, and I'll pick up. And the alcohol will take me there or any other mind-altering substance.
You don't want the answer? Yeah. Traditions already tell us what the answer is. There's no such thing as an addictive personality. I'm going to tell you this now, and we need to get past it. This idea is crap. It's treatment center fostered, and it's crap. It's crap. Addictive personality means that I've got a bunch of character defects, and I'm trying to shove it all under the same carpet called addiction.
And it's not true. Alcoholism and drug addiction is fatal, and it's progressive. And you either are one of us, or you're not. If you have a problem with alcohol, you're welcome to attend. Do not introduce yourself as a drug addict. If you do, you are wrong. The traditions say so. We're there for the newcomer. You want to talk about confusing the newcomer. You with us? Let the little alcoholic walk into the room he's supposed to be, and all we talk about is methamphetamine that night.
And we have done him a huge disservice. Same story, second verse. When we come back, that's why I love Cocaine Anonymous, because we're so open and inclusive. Anybody in this place can come. You find the fellowship that you're most comfortable in, and go there. But be respectful to that. I've said it from a million podiums. It's like me going to the gynecologist with a toothache. No, but you're both doctors, aren't you?
It's all the same thing. No, I'm sorry, it's not the same thing. You'll follow? When I'm sitting in AA, I introduce myself as an alcoholic, because I don't want to separate anything. The treatment centers are the ones that started that stuff. I'm an and-a, and that's the big joke out there. You know, I'm a this, and I'm a that. I want to be a part of this group, and I'm going to get up. My name is Chris R., and I'm an alcoholic, and a drug addict, and a sex addict, and a compulsive gambler, and possibly an overeater.
You with us? And of course, everybody that was coming this way, now has turned around and gone that way, because I've separated myself from the group I'm in. I just want to be a bozo like the rest of us on this bus. I don't want to be better than you. I don't want to be worse than you. I don't want to separate. It's what drives me crazy when I hear people come into AA meetings, or even in CA meetings, and they start introducing themselves, and then we get to hear a laundry list of the medications that the doctors have got them on.
It's like, do you think we give a rat's ass? We don't care. If you're a cocaine addict, you're with us. Come on, let's go. Don't separate yourself from the rest of us by anything. So go to the meeting that you're most comfortable with. Just introduce yourself appropriately, and go on down the road. It's no big deal. It's none. You're welcome. You with us? People hear us from these deals, and they say, well, they're kicking people out of AA.
Nobody's kicking anybody anywhere. We're just saying, if you've got something to share with an alcoholic, and you have experience with that, share it. If you don't, shut up, because you could hurt somebody. Make sense? You could hurt somebody. Real quick, I heard an international AA speaker from the podium say,
[01:10:09]
if you are taking any kind of antidepressant, you are not sober. Okay, now, that's not true. It's somebody's opinion. You follow? I'm not a big fan of antidepressants. I was on them a long time, and I thank God, when I got sober, I got off of them. But to share that from the podium, how many people did we see? Of course, what happened is that we documented cases of people leaving those meetings saying, but I want to be sober.
And so they just stopped taking their medication. Instead of going to a doctor and getting weaned, they just stopped taking their medication. They destabilized again and committed suicide off themselves. Now, who's responsible for that? I don't think anybody from the podium was trying to be mean-spirited when they said that. But what they did was they misspoke. They talk about something that they knew nothing about.
Telling somebody to get off their medication? Are you nuts? You don't have to like it, but you do have to shut up about it. One-on-one, maybe visit with them. Y'all understand what we're saying? So it's the same thing. Talking to somebody in an AA meeting about drugs, and they don't know anything about it, maybe there's some misunderstanding going on there. So singleness of purpose, the traditions, that's what it talks about.
That's why there's over 260 12-step groups out there to talk about anything under the sun that you want to talk about. There's a 12-step group for you. Clutters Anonymous. Get out of here. Get out of here, absolutely. But you see, we're laughing about it, but there's some people that they can't move in their houses because they got so much crap around them. It's a life-and-death situation for them, but we're laughing about it.
You with us? It's like me going to a Sex Addicts Anonymous meeting. There are people out there today that are dying from that, but I'm laughing, making jokes about it. How dare I? Make sense? Okay. I want to talk about the solution. You can talk about it. Just introduce yourself properly and talk about the solution. Introduce yourself properly and talk about the solution. You're welcome. Thank you.
Question? Dead on. Alcoholic, Peter. I would appreciate, Chris, maybe you explaining many meetings I've gone to, I don't hear, I'm a recovered alcoholic. I hear many people saying I'm a recovering alcoholic. If you could differentiate between the two, I'd appreciate it. Thank you. When I introduce myself as a recovered alcoholic or a recovered drug addict, this is what it means. It means the obsession to drink has lifted.
The obsession to use drugs has lifted. It doesn't mean I'm perfect. It doesn't mean I'm cured. It means that the obsession has gone away. Once the obsession goes away, I can do lots of other things that we talked about earlier. I can focus on lots of other areas of my life. The book says on the title page of the big book that we use that we can recover from alcoholism. 31 places in the basic text it says that we can recover.
It only uses the ING word one time, and that's with our families. With our families, we're always going to be recovering. You follow? There's always going to be some more work to be done, because it was years before I could go into a room and mom didn't grab her purse. And it's like, but now today she can. And so we're recovering. It's a long process. But recovery can happen within weeks, days. I mean, who am I to judge that?
If I get active and start doing the work, then the miracle happens and then we get well. Guys, I'm telling you again, that's what most of the people out there in the world take shots at us about is that recovery. It came from treatment centers who didn't want us well, who wanted us sick. Now the other flip side is everybody says, well, if you introduce yourself as a recovered alcoholic, that means you're well and you're done and you're done.
Guys, I've been in recovery for 20 years. I will be in recovery, I hope, for the next 20 years. But I am as well as I'm going to get. The book tells me to introduce myself as a man who has recovered. I'm doing 12-step work with a nice young adult. I've done it a thousand times. Listen, buddy, this program is so wonderful. It's great. And then you can, for the rest of your life, be recovering. You know, one day every day, just a little bit better.
Oh my God, he just wants to shoot himself. Why would he want to stay in the fellowship like that? It's like we were talking about that lady in Oprah. I wanted to shake her. You know, come on, please, get with the program. You can recover. You might not. But if you don't, it's your fault. But if you do the work, you will recover. The obsession goes away. We need to talk about the power that is this program.
People come up all the time, we're laughing about it. Well, I don't know if I've had the spiritual experience or not. You haven't. If you have to question that, you haven't had it. If you're still thinking about drinking and drugging, if you can't come and go as you please, if we can't all go to Zanzibar tonight, I mean that other place than that. and have a Kool-Aid and watch Sinful Nude Women,
[01:15:00]
oh my gosh, if you can't do that, you're not recovered. Don't take it out on me. Let's work the steps, let's get them finished, and then let's recover so we can do that. Y'all with us? When I was in Edmonton, the first time I went to Canada, I was in Edmonton, and their Cocaine Anonymous Club was right over a techno bar. Now, I come from Ingram, Texas, buddies. Ingram, Texas. Like, I mean, it is country with a K.
A lot of inbreeding going on there. No kidding. I mean, it is like Appalachia of Texas. You hear that banjo up in the air? It is country with a K. And so we get this techno business. I says, guys, let's go. Let's go down to that techno deal, because I'd never been down there. And they says, no, we can't go in there. Why? We're cocaine addicts. So am I. Let's go show me what this is about. What a little mass thing.
Let's show. Can't go in there. You're not recovered. You're not recovered. If being an alcoholic and an addict, and you can't go places, and you can't do certain things. And early sobriety, guys, I couldn't either. But I worked the 12 steps, the obsession lifted, and now I can go. That's all I'm saying. Why not get me free from alcohol and dope so I can be a prisoner? Make sense? You can recover, guys.
You can get sick again, too, if you stop. My name is Carl. I'm a recovering cocaine addict. I've celebrated my one year five months ago, and I'm sponsoring five sponsees. Two of them are doing good in the steps, and three of them, they're not doing so well. Every time I try and help them to start their steps, they start it, and then they stop. What advice could you give me to help them move on on their steps?
Do I have a question? He's got that Canadian thing. Hard to understand. The only thing he didn't do is say, hey, about six times. Not much, except take them to first step. Anytime anybody's dragging their feet in any part of the steps, I take them back to first step. What is it about this powerlessness piece, the fatal nature of this illness, aren't you buying? And then I light a match under them, and I get them going again.
But understand this, folks. A lot of people come in here, and very few people actually want to do this work. Even in the best case scenario, guys, with some great, I mean, come on, guys. This is like preaching to the choir all day. This is like being in heaven with you guys. But I'm telling you, they can come into the best group just littered with people like you and still not get it. If you're ready to get sober, just about anything's going to get you catapulted.
If you're not ready, you're going to come up with any excuse in the world not to do this work. People are always asking me, I had a guy fire me. I was sponsoring him, and he fired me, and I'm just old. I'm just devastated about it. Oh, buddy, I get at least one a week fire me. Are you nuts? I mean, that's just exactly what happens. Some of those cats are going to get it, and some of them are just not going to get it.
It's not their time. I don't know. When all the stars line up and stuff, my job is just to make sure that they've got the clear message of hope, they know what to do, and when they're ready, pull the head out of their butt and do the work. That's just it. Yeah. Honor. Thank you, sir. Go to the bathroom for me, will you? Can we have another thank you for Chris, please?