It can’t feel good, man. It cannot feel good shaking your fist. I’m sober, I’m in AA, but I’m not working the steps. I know that I, I, I, I have no business in early sobriety trying to

have a relationship. It is so tough to be in meetings and to see these women as children of God. What are some practical actions I can take in becoming a gentleman and a respecter of all women? Wow.

It’s a great question. It is. And I would suggest by the thought put into the question that you’re making, you’re making a good start. Yeah.

Yeah. There’s just… I’m not gonna joke around with that. That’s a heartfelt– That’s a good question, and it’s heartfelt, and, and that’s my answer.

I think you’re making a good start. Bring– Keep that out in the open that that is your desire to be that kind of man. Talk openly about that. If you struggle with that, bring that struggle to other men in AA who will support you in achieving that goal.

It’s a very honorable goal. Um. Oh, already did that. What are some examples of God’s grace in your life?

Um, I– It would be simpler to talk about… I mean, I, I would just have to say I can’t think of anything that would be excluded from that. Yeah. There’s no area of my life that isn’t an example of God’s grace.

One, I’m alive. Two, I walk the earth a free man. I have purpose and value. I have a sense of family.

I have a sense of community. I mean, God, man, me, I’m a hopeless alcoholic drug addict, so self-involved and riddled with fear. I got survivor’s guilt.

I’m the poster boy for post-traumatic stress disorder. You know what I mean? I, I mean, I– Trauma. I mean, there’s n-…

I had a therapist before I got to sobriety tell me that I was damaged beyond repair and she couldn’t help me. By the way, now I’m doing much better than she is. She couldn’t have been a g-… I got a therapist.

I mean, what kind of statement is that to make to a human being? Very therapeutic. You’re broken. Get out.

Pretty much what she said. And I healed in AA. I healed in AA. So I mean, God’s grace in my life is in every breath.

You know, the trick is my being aware of that, is my being always aware of that. So I really appreciate the question because you remind me that that’s the case. You believe AA groups are also grounded in the Big Book carry a strong message, uh, carry a stronger message than those that aren’t? You know, I thought that Don answered that great.

Uh, you know, he’s like, he, you know, he doesn’t want to act superior to a meeting that doesn’t function out of the Big Book. All, all I can say is, my answer to that is I go to meetings where I hear the solution being presented to the people in the room. Those are the meetings that I wanna go to. And I believe the strongest solution to any problem I may have as a, as a recovering or non-recovering alcoholic is found in the Big Book.

Did that. Wow. We may have solved all the problems here tonight. Yeah, you did.

Good job. What? Good job. Yeah.

Uh, what is your, what are, what are your feelings on people identifying themselves as alcoholic, addict in an AA meeting? Like, I’ll just tell you what I do. Like I said, I identify as an alcoholic in an AA meeting, right? I don’t think it’s necessary for me, and I am…

But there is no question that I’m an addict. I don’t feel the need to single myself out. The way it was put to me was, “You’re gonna go to an AA meeting. How about we do it at, at, the AA way?” Oh, yeah.

We don’t put Earl’s spin on it. We don’t defiantly say, “Well, damn it, I’m a drug addict, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna demand my place in AA as a drug addict.” All right, knock yourself out with that. You know, and when that beats you to death – … maybe you’ll have to do something different.

‘Cause it’s my– I’m trying to become a part of here, not proclaim my independence every possible opportunity. That’s my disease in effect. My recovery, for me to come in and say my… There was a guy that used to go to this meeting, and he used to get up, and every time he shared, I’d just roll my eyes.

I don’t know why this guy just got under my skin, but he did. He– Every time he’d share, he’d say, “Um, I’m an alcoholic and my problem is Paul.” “Hi, Paul.” Two weeks later, there he is again. “I’m an alcoholic and my problem is Paul.” “Oh, crap.

Hi, Paul.” Over and over and over he does this. One day I got c– And I’m thinking, “I gotta stay out of it. I gotta pray for Paul like I mean it. I gotta stay in the solution here.

Paul is an opportunity for me.” Then one day Paul gets up and says, “My name is… I’m an alcoholic and my problem is Paul.” He shares, then they call on me, and I went up and I couldn’t help it. I just said, “My name is Earl and I’m an alcoholic and my problem is Paul.” And the minute I said it I thought, “Damn it.

I wish I had that back.” ‘Cause Paul was out there going, “Oh.” That was like a shot in the head for Paul, right? And I don’t know. I’m sorry, Paul, but for Christ’s sake, will you stop that? Just get in the car with the rest of us, will you?

My name’s Earl, I’m an alcoholic. Ew. I don’t get… I mean, I c– it’s true.

I’m an alcoholic. I’m a drug addict. I suffer from survivor’s guilt and post-traumatic stress disorder. On occasion, I find myself still self-centered and afraid at the, uh, 25 years of sobriety.

I mean, I could go on and on and on, and people say, “Well, that’s all the time we have tonight, ladies and gentlemen.” The p- The po- the purpose of the podium is for purposes of identification. If I say I’m an alcoholic, you know what I’m doing, when I– y- right? We got it, right?

He’s an alcoholic. We got it. Do you shoot heroin, Earl? Extensively, yes, right?

Did you do all these other drugs? Can you pick a category of drugs you weren’t really interested in, Earl? Didn’t really care for the methamphetamine unless there was nothing else around. You know?

Then let’s get a dump truck full of that stuff and drive nonstop to Seattle. Let’s- Go see Don, paint all the houses in his neighborhood. Sure. I think I covered what’s really going on here when I said, “Hi, my name’s Earl.

I’m an alcoholic.” Yeah, alcoholic addict is redundant. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I mean?

It’s like, it’s like saying I’m, I’m, I’m Earl and human. My name is Earl. I’m a human and a person. My name is Earl, and I’m a male human person.

It’s just… Come on. It’s just, “I’m Earl and an alcoholic.” Enh. Got it.

Tell my story. There’s drugs in my story, and I usually when I talk about the drugs in my story, I, I, I make a point of saying to the alcoholic only, I’m talking about drugs. Identify as an alcoholic. I’m talking about drugs because I’m a child of the sixties, and we were very, very focused on the drugs.

Our parents were the alcoholics, and we weren’t gonna– we were g- we were, we were carving out our own identity. We weren’t gonna kill ourselves like them. We’d drink ourselves to death. We’re gonna kill ourselves in a whole new way.

Very focused on the drugs. The fact is the drugs would come and go. Alcohol was the only thing on the table. Booze was the reliable stuff.

Ultimately, alcoholism ruled the day for this drug addict. So when I come to AA, identify as an alcoholic, I go to CA or NA, identify as an addict for purposes of identification so that the people that n– ’cause the guys who are alcoholic only, they’re not gonna go to NA. They’re not gonna go to CA.

They’re gonna go to, oddly enough, Alcoholics Anonymous. And forever and always, those guys need to know their position in this is respected by the rest of us. It’s a– The world’s gone nuts with this demand for respect. My thinking is it’s ass backwards.

What we need to do is show it. So I show respect to my elders, and I show respect to those guys. How do you get your non-alcoholic wife involved in recovery? She gets a little resentful about the time I spend working with others and going to retreats.

I think that all these relationship questions, first off, every relationship is different and needs to find its own way to its own balance because you have to consider the individuals in the relationship. That makes it incredibly subjective, and there’s no cookie-cutter response to any of this stuff. I happen to be married to a woman who is sober but can occasionally say, “I think you’re, you’re gone too much.” And I look at her and I– and basically my response to,

“I think you’re gone too much,” is, “Well, if you think I’m gone too much, then I’m gone too much.” ‘Cause she’s a reasonable woman who is in recovery and supports my being of service on the levels that she knows it’s appropriate for me to be of service. When she says, “You’re gone too much,” I say, “Okay, then I’m gone too much,” and I dial it back. I didn’t speak for fifteen months very recently ’cause I don’t need to be speaker boy to be a good AA member.

To honor the gift I’ve been given, I have to speak. So it’s a balancing act. That’s what my elders tell me, so that’s what I am aware of, and that’s what I choose to do. Um, but if your wife wants to get involved in recovery, then she’s married to an alcoholic.

Recovery is, is I would suggest not just available to her, but quite possibly necessary – … depending upon how recovering the other partner is. The Al-Anon Family Groups are a remarkable thing. Have– There’s tremendous legitimate recovery there for those people.

And, and I hold them in high regard. I’m not an alcoholic who makes fun of, of Al-Anon’s. I don’t. If it weren’t for the Al-Anon’s, most of us would be dead.

Yeah. First of all. Secondly, our– they’ve paid a terrible price for our alcoholism and their association or proximity to it. They deserve as much recovery as we do.

I think the real difference between an alcoholic and an Al-Anon is simply the, uh, physical phenomenon of craving, the re– lesser aspect of the disease. We have the physical phenomenon of craving. They don’t. The obsession of the mind, the greater aspect of the disease is identical in both communities, and that’s the devastating aspect of the disease, the illness, the, the, the larger aspect.

So great respect for Al-Anon, would recommend it to anybody. And I think Al-Anon, though, is just like any other 12-step organization. If you go in there, you gotta find your people, and you gotta find your meetings, and you gotta make a commitment to go and find your place in it. Because I hear a lot of people say, “I went to Al-Anon and didn’t like it.” Of course, I never hear alcoholics say, “I went with AA and didn’t like it.” Never hear that.

What are the keys to working with newcomers? Loved what Don had to say about that. I think for you to be honest, right? To approach them with an attitude of, uh, of love and tolerance.

Absolutely. I don’t– I, I’m– As again I said, I’m not for the, uh, uh… I think honesty without love is just another form of abuse sometimes, and I think that kicking around the newcomers or holding them responsible for things that nobody’s ever told them is a travesty in AA.

I mean, um, that– And I, I was talking with Lee about it earlier. You know, a lot of people come in through treatment centers, and I agree with Don. I think treatment centers have a remarkable place in the continuum. I’m a product of an intervention and a, and a treatment center.

I couldn’t stop drinking. Couldn’t stop. And it took intervention and taking me out of my element and giving me a, a, a period of triage and stabilization essentially for the dust to settle enough before I could see the reality of my own life and then try to engage in AA.

It was vital to my survival. So I’m a big advocate of that, the right and proper use of that. Are there abuses? Absolutely.

But I don’t focus on that little bit and say, “Oh, see, there’s an abuse there. There’s a treatment center that’s crap, so they’re all bad.” No, that attitude is crap. Are there bad treatment centers? Yes.

Are there horrible AA meetings? Yeah. I mean, you can’t judge an entire community on this little fringe group or that group or this thing or that thing. You gotta look at the big picture, and I think that the treatment centers do a lot of, lot of good.

But here’s where I think there’s an– This is, I think, another way where I think AA has changed because there have been outside influences that have affected AA. I think that a lot of people coming into AA are coming out of treatment. In treat– The treatment community and the recovering community are two entirely different things. The treatment community’s job is to break down an individual’s resistance to being involved in a 12-step program of recovery, the 12-step community, the recovering community.

But that bridge, something’s got to occur. In treatment, they’ve got to let these people know that you’re in a pr- a place right now where we talk about your feelings so we can discover what’s going on with you, so we can see what your resistance to, to, to AA is, so that we can attempt to address that here so that you can successfully go to AA. So we talk about your feelings to uncover those things.

When you go to AA, if nobody, if nobody tells these new guys, they come into AA meetings and they sit around and they start talking about how they’re feeling ’cause that’s what they’ve been doing, and appropriately so in that community. They come here and start talking about their feelings. And I don’t– And I agree with Don.

We don’t jump up and go, “What kind of crap is that, kid? What are you doing here?” We don’t do that. Get the– Take that stuff outside. And we– And, and we run off an alcoholic.

We run them off. Shame on us. Shame on us for allowing that to occur. That’s not a code of love and tolerance toward others.

That’s self-righteous indignation. That’s self-righteous anger, the dubious luxury of the normal man. I cannot tolerate that kind of behavior. It scares the hell out of me when I see it ’cause I know that that can cost a life.

What we need to do is we need to pull the new guy aside and explain to him what we do here in a loving and tolerant way, that we understand he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, and it’s incumbent upon those that have gone before him to turn to him and explain to him, “This is what we do here. We don’t sit around and talk just about our feelings. It’s a program of action.

There are actions that we take here.” You can certainly talk about a pro– your problems in AA. Hopefully, what you will do is if you have a problem, you say, “Well, you know, my relationship with my wife is really strained right now, and here are the tools I have found in AA that I am going to use to address this problem to make it possible for me to, to address this problem and my wife in a way that is honorable and dignified and does not create additional wreckage by using these tools.” That’s what I think we should be doing.

So the keys to working with a newcomer are c- are know that the guy’s a newcomer. Know that he’s new. He doesn’t know what’s going on, and it’s incumbent upon me to give him something. And I don’t wanna give him as Earl sees it or some West Side spin, right?

I, I wanna give him good old, solid, old-fashioned, right down the middle AA. That’s what I wanna give him, and that means I’m gonna go tell him, “This is what we do here, and we can’t hold you responsible for that until we’ve shared it with you.” That’s what I think. I’m with the two guys that clapped.

It’s so funny, isn’t it? You get into it, right? Like I just did right there, and people are going, “I don’t know. Do we clap for that?” Kinda got some strong feelings about that.

Yeah, I do. Yeah. Pl-please tell us in, in– some of the most important things your sponsor ever said to you. Um, he said to me before there was a big book, before there was anything, there was one alcoholic down in the dirt sharing his experience, strength, and hope with another

that they might rise out of a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. You must be in contact with other recovering alcoholics. Read your book. Work your program.

You’ve gotta get into this fellowship, and you’ve gotta participate. That’s what he told me. He said, “Program is vital to your survival. So is the fellowship.” I must be among my fellows.

He told me that. Man, has that been the truth. He, uh, um, he just had lots of so many wonderful– And just said, you know– Uh, his, his way of saying we don’t get into it was his way of saying, “You know, we cease finding everything in everybody.

We have to or we, or we perish,” right? That, that, that idea was put to me in such a wonderful way. And it wasn’t so, uh, uh, so much what he said as, a-as his example. Donald didn’t tell me a lot, but he showed me.

You know? When he would say we go to meetings 30 minutes early so we’re there to talk to the new guy who’s there and is, you know, anxious and doesn’t really know what to do, and we show him the ropes and we tell him what’s going on and we get him a big book and we get him a seat. We help him get a cup of coffee, and we make them feel welcome.

So 8:30 meetings, you arrive at 7:30. That was what he told me. And you stay till the end of the meeting, and then you share with people afterwards. And if you’ve done the work the 12 steps and you see the guys in their first 30 days raise their hands during the meeting, what you do is you go to them at the break and you ask them if they got a sponsor.

If they don’t, you plug them into the group. Let’s go. We take care of each other. So and, and so when I would go to meetings and get there at 7:30 for an 8:00 meeting, Donald was already there with another new guy setting up the chairs, right?

He showed me. He showed me. He was an remarkable example of Alcoholics Anonymous. Are we done?

Man, there, there’s a man up here. He’s probably… I think he’s dreaming. He’s dead asleep.

I’m kidding. Okay. You wanna– Shall we wrap it up? Come on.

It’s been a long day. You want more? You– What do you want? More.

More. There’s like f- other guys in there going, “Shut up.” “Shut up. I’ve had it with this guy.” Two more. How’s that?

There you go. All right. More. More.

One more. One more. What is the difference between addiction and alcoholism? Nothing.

Alcohol’s a drug. It is. Ethyl alcohol, it’s a drug, just like the other things are drugs. And by the way, if I’m not mistaken, I’m supposed to, uh, uh, um, identify with the feelings, not the facts.

And I’ll guarantee you, as a cocaine addict, heroin addict, alcoholic, barbiturate addict, benzodiazepine addict, cocaine and methamphetamine addict, probably left something out, but that oughta cover. Psyche- enough psychedelics to get classified legally insane. My experience of all of those things in, are– they lead to exactly the same place.

Pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization, completely cut off from God and my fellows. That’s where they all go. So are they the same thing? They are…

All roads lead to mayhem- With drug and alcohol addiction, right? That’s why I love… My favorite three words in the book are, “And then oblivion.” Right? Bill’s story ’cause that’s like, well, there it is.

That’s– They all go there. They all go there. So alcohol a-addiction, alcohol, same thing. But I stick to my guns, man.

I’m in here. My name’s Earl, and I’m an alcoholic. That’s it. Peace.