Audio
About this recording
- Topic
- A Design for Living Panel — North Texas Roundup Dallas
- Speaker
- Larry J. & Bob D. & Glenna W
- Date
- 2015-08-16
Transcript
Source: Larry J. & Bob D. & Glenna W – A Design for Living Panel – North Texas Roundup Dallas – 2015-08-16.mp3 File: larry-j-and-bob-d-and-glenna-w-a-design-for-living-panel-north-texas-roundup-dallas-2015-08-16.mp3 Duration: 01:16:12
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God's grace and the help of the people in Alcoholics Anonymous and certainly the 12 Steps of AA. My sobriety date is the 18th of September, 1972, and for that I'm very thankful. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership.
We are self-supporting through our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization, or institution, does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety. If you will, join me in a moment of silence followed by the Serenity Prayer. Serenity Prayer. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
Welcome everyone to the 3 p.m. Saturday afternoon nap time workshop. I've already got word from folks that have been here longer than I have to instruct my panel to keep it peppy, because we've— and short, and short. I wouldn't count on that. And because folks are sleeping, and we got to keep you awake. But if you must, go ahead and doze off. We understand, especially you younger folks. There's a couple of people in the room that have a tendency to try to intimidate me, and they're successful most of the time, you know.
Our workshop's afternoon is based around the theme of the conference, A Design for Living. And that sentence is complete: that works in rough going. And it's been said yesterday afternoon in the old-timer panel, and some people kind of alluded to that, that had a design for living that didn't work. And I'm sure we all have some familiarity with that. I don't know that I ever had a design for anything. You know, because I just was, you know, face on all the time.
There was really no real plan. I had plans, but I kept them to myself. Most of the time, I planned things for my family and then tell them later that we're going to be doing that, and they all have other commitments they have to go to. And, you know, that's living without any type of design for living for sure. I'd like to read a portion from the book that kind of wraps up for me the results of the work done.
And the first nine steps, lots of work gets done. And I think in that first nine steps that we begin to develop, maybe a lot of times even unknowingly, we begin to develop this design for life that we're going to get into and embrace and become second nature to us. The promises, and I'm not going to read the promises, but the promises in the book are, they've kind of taken on a life of their own in a lot of meeting clubhouses and stuff.
They hang them on the wall with the steps and traditions. And the promises really are the results of actions taken. And they don't just happen. There's a lot of action has to be taken. We were—there was one time I was on a panel one time, the topic was Society of Alcoholics in Action, and I was a guy that I was—I had a lot of activity. I was an active dude. I mean, really, really active. First ten, eleven months in Alcoholics Anonymous, there wasn't a member in Dallas, Texas, any more active than I was. But there were many who were taking a lot more action than I was taking. I was just active. Activity with purpose is
[00:04:59]
action, and I had to learn that the hard way.
[00:05:01]
So anyhow, after following the promises, as we look at the tenth step, and there's a lot of real—there's a lot of truths in here, and then there are some rather strong suggestions as well. As we look at, the thought brings us to Step Ten, which suggests we continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along. We vigorously commence this way of living as we cleaned up the past. We have entered the world of the spirit.
Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for a lifetime. Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help.
Love and tolerance of others is our code. And we've ceased fighting anything or anyone, even alcohol, for by this time sanity will have returned. I have to pause here. Every time I read that, I have to pause here. And this part of, as we lay it out, this design for daily living, this part, it's like they just kind of come along with a rubber stamp and validated the Second Step. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
And here it stamps it right here. And so we have been restored. We will seldom be interested in liquor if tempted. We recall from it is from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes. That is the miracle of it. We're not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation.
We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition. It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We're headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle foe.
We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all our activities. How can I best serve Thee? Thy will, not mine, be done. These are thoughts which must go with us constantly. We can exercise our willpower along this line all we wish. It is the proper use of the will.
When I started making some preparation in my own head, which is I never go in alone. I knew that we needed, this thing would work and move smoothly if we had two AA members added into this panel. I'm really not—the panel, I'm supposed to be the moderator, so I'll try to do as much moderating as possible. But I called Bob up in Las Vegas, and he has some recollection of that phone call. Bob's a busy guy.
Am I supposed to be on that panel? Yeah, you are, as a matter of fact. He didn't say, Did I agree to that? He just assumed that he had agreed to do it, that I wasn't the kind of guy that would just, you know, bring him up here without notice. But Bob is a guy that I admire a lot. I've been in Bob's home. I've spent time with Bob. I know what kind of AA member Bob is. I've seen him work. I've seen the evidence of his work.
[00:10:00]
And so I know that he's a right guy for this. And then Glenna W. from Language of the Heart Group in Colleyville, Texas then came to mind, and I know Glenna. I've been in her home. I've had the privilege—hard to get that out, Dusty—I've had the privilege of sponsoring her husband for a number of years, and I know the kind of member that Glenna is. I know where she comes from in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Her sponsor and I have been dear friends for many, many years. And so I know that Glenna is the right, or a right person for this job. There are a lot of people in this room that could do this, but these are two folks that will do us—will do an ample job in presenting this and keeping it peppy. And you need that because I can feel myself losing my pep up here a little bit. And I'm not really into feelings because nobody ever cared how I felt about anything anyhow. So if you will help me welcome to the mic, Glenna W.
from the Language of the Heart group in Collierville. She's always a hard act to follow. All right, my name's Glenna Walker. I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date's January 15th, 1991. I'm eternally grateful for that. I have to get my butterflies flying in formation, and so I may shake and quake up here for a little while, but I'll promise you I'm not drunk or in DTs. I'm from a sponsorship line that tells me that I need to do my homework, and so I did my homework. This is just what I do because I've been told to do it. I think that was my—going referring to our design for living, that was the way I did things when I was not in a program, was my design for living was, I ought to do that.
I ought to look that word up, but I'll do that later, and then later never came. You know, that was my design for living back then. So now when my sponsor says, You need to do your homework, I go ahead and do it because if I don't, well, I'll get in trouble with her for one thing, so I don't like that. So my first thought was, I need to look those two words up, design and living. So here's what I came up with.
The design for living is an outline for actual existence. And that for me is saying a lot because when I got here, I was not existing. I was just there. I was a vegetable. In 20 minutes, and I forgot to look at my watch. When I was in my teens, I decided I needed to do what everybody else did, and that was drink and smoke. And I didn't like beer, so my friend, my very dear friend, brought me a pint of gin, and I found out I liked that a lot.
And so I drank that that night. That was my very first real drunk, and that was my very first real blackout. So I'm here to tell you I may not be an alcoholic. It's just on hearsay that everything that I've done in the past could possibly make me an alcoholic because I don't remember any of it. Like Valerie, I've had one of those crawling instances, and one of the things that can bring me out of a blackout in my perfect design for living when I was drinking was somebody hurting me.
And I was trying to crawl across my parking lot to go to my friend's house to get some more booze, and she grabbed me by the hair of the head and made me stand up, and she said, Don't do that in front of our neighbors. And I said, Okay. That's all I remember. So I guess I walked the rest of the way. I didn't crawl. That night was my incomprehensible demoralization night. I drank with them, with three other people, 12 bottles of champagne, got into my liquor cabinet and started drinking sweet.
Booze, you know, Grand Marnier, Harvey's Bristol Cream, stuff like that, that grasshopper stuff. And so I proceeded for the rest of the night to throw up. I was in a blackout. I would have died that night. I'd already lost my family, which was something—I'm one of those people that said, I never lost anything in AA. I never hurt anybody but myself. And I came to the conclusion when I looked up one day from the podium and said, You know, I think I lost the whole family.
My husband left me because I had been coming home from work. Left me because I had been coming home from work, going into the bedroom with my
[00:15:01]
bottle of wine and vegetating in there for the rest of the night, drinking my wine until I passed out. And he found somebody that was alive, and he left me for another woman. My 14-year-old ran away, and I kicked my 18-year-old out. But I had never hurt anybody with my drinking. My design for living back then was just perfect. And here's the really sad news, and I know nobody in this room can identify with that. I could drink like I wanted to after they were all gone.
That's the sad part. Did I miss them? Sure. Did I want to commit suicide? Sure. I will tell you the good news in the way I live today. I have my two daughters back in my life and their families. I have my grandchildren in my life. My grandchildren have never really seen me drunk, or drink, rather. My oldest grandson saw me drunk once, and he was three, and he swears he doesn't remember it. But I got dropped off at their house because I was too drunk to drive, and I had no key to the house because we couldn't find my keys to my house, so I got dropped off at my daughter's house.
So after I got to AA in 1991, drop-kicked through the doors, God had had it with me. He was like, Okay, you're gone. You're done. You're through drinking. And so I was so hungover after that incomprehensible demoralization trip that I decided I'd go to AA. Now, I had been planning for this for two years. I knew where all the AAs were close to me. And I'd driven through the parking lots, and I'm here to tell you, you can't get sober driving through the parking lots.
But I didn't want to go in because I was afraid that you guys would make me quit drinking, and I knew, down in the bottom of my heart, that I couldn't. I never tried. I never tried to quit drinking until I got here. So I came to AA, and God blessed me, or He cursed me, I'm not sure which, but I was struck sober. I had no craving, and I had no obsession. It was gone. And so I thought I was cured. So I spent some time around AA, which I've heard other speakers here to say they did too, and I'm here to tell you that doesn't work either.
I got in a relationship with a man. He was not in a relationship with me. I had that pointed out to me by a friend of mine, and I didn't believe him. So I went to paradise, went on a bareboat charter. If anybody in here is a sailor, you know what that is. You drive your own boat. And we had a 60-foot boat. There were six people, and I wanted to drink while I was down there. I'm the kind of person that never gets a resentment, but I got one down there.
I had gone down there with these high expectations of all this romance, of sitting on the stern of the boat, you know, lovey-dovey with him. He had no interest in that. So I got myself a little resentment. There was somebody else on the boat that I got a resentment at her too. Tried to put her off on a deserted island. They wouldn't let me. Now, I'm sober doing all of this. So thank God I knew I needed to hit my knees, read my literature, and talk to somebody. I didn't have a phone back then.
In the 90s, you didn't have a phone on those boats. And so I talked to a friend all night long, and it might have helped that he told me he'd drown me if I tried to drink, and I'm pretty sure he would have. And I thought the drink through. And I know if you've been around AA any length of time, you've been taught to do that. So I came here to AA, came back to AA, got a sponsor and worked the steps, and found a design for living that I could live with the rest of my life through thick and through thin.
And we've heard a few people up here tonight to say it's been thick and thin. You know, it's not always perfect. On page 15 is where that, it is a design for living through rough going that Larry was referring to, in rough going. I keep changing the words. Back in 2008, my husband and I woke up at 3:30 the morning of September 16th and smelled some strange smell in our house. And we started investigating it, found out our house was on fire.
We walked out. There wasn't any smoke in the house yet or anything. We got his 80-something-year-old mother out. Fire trucks came. They left.
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They came back. They put the fire out the second time. And, you know, I had a design for living. My sponsor swears that I called her before daylight. You don't call my sponsor before daylight unless your hair is on fire, and I guess mine was. I remember walking up and down the street in front of my house, not a busy street, thank God, and I was on the phone and shaking and crying. And the next thing I know, it's getting daylight, and some guy in a cowboy hat is walking across my lawn, and I said, What are you doing here?
And he said, Well, I found out about you had trouble and you needed somebody to come and help you. And I said, Well, how did you find out? Well, your sponsor called her sponsor, and her sponsor told my wife, and my wife called me. And I said, Yeah, that's how it works in AA. Everybody, it was there to pitch in. I had yards full of AA people for three weeks. They make you do an inventory on the little stuff, and we had 25 people a day in our backyard inventorying the little stuff.
Our agent told us he'd never seen any inventory that was 157 pages. Usually they're about 20. We inventoried every toothpaste, every toothbrush, every bar of soap. They told me to do it. That's what I did. But the design for living that I'm living now, the AA group of principles kept me sane through all of that. I always like to tell the story of we moved into an apartment. We'd lived with our daughter for a week, and then we moved into an apartment, and it was an upstairs-downstairs.
His mother was not able to go upstairs, so he and I ended up in the kids' room upstairs, and the closet was this big. And he'd gone off to work or something, and I was trying to get ready to go start back to work on a Monday morning, and I could not get my clothes in the closet or out of them. It was just too tight. And I just finally fell up on the floor and started crying. And actually throwing a tantrum.
Nobody there to hear me, so I could have gotten by with it. But I realized that I had a better way of living than that. And so I just kind of rolled over on my knees and I started praying, God help me to accept and adjust. That's the design for living that I've been taught: accept and adjust. I have no control. All of a sudden, an idea came into my head that if I'd get rid of those clothes from 1991, I'd probably have more room in my closet.
And so I took out, I don't know, six boxes of clothes, gave them to my friend to take to her church, and I had a nice big closet that I could get my clothes in and out of. It doesn't always come that fast. Sometimes I have an idea from God, and it is not a good one. You know, I need to check with my sponsor most of the time, but I thought maybe for cleaning out my closet, I didn't have to check with her.
On page 28 it says, We in our turn sought the same escape with all the desperation of drowning men. What seemed at first a flimsy reed has proved to be the loving and powerful hand of God. The new life has been given us, or if you prefer, a design for living that really works. My design for living has got to be around Alcoholics Anonymous. And boy, I loved what Bob said last night about, you know, we can just fade away if we're not careful. There's been, you know, many—I've got two committed meetings a week, and then I go to Carswell Women's Federal Prison once a week, and my sponsor tells me that's not a meeting. That's service work.
Feels like a meeting to me because we're in a meeting with these women and they're alcoholics behind the bars, but that's service work. So I have to go to my committed meetings. This is not a committed meeting. This is service work. So I can't count this, you know. I can't count being up here as part of that. So that's part of my AA program, that I don't just fade away. Work with others, you know. Sometimes I'll very cautiously say, God, I could have another sponsee in my life if you think I need one, and boom, the phone rings.
And I'm okay with that. I just know that if I don't work with others, if I don't—the 12th step is the design for living. There's—now I'm getting out there again. Butterflies in a row. On page 81, it says, Our design for living is not a one-way street. It is good for the wife as for the husband. Well, you know, this one probably came out of to the wives. So I'm very thankful, though, that I'm married to another alcoholic in recovery that's a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. He understands when I do alcoholic things.
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He was thinking today when Tom was talking about having his wife's sponsor on speed dial that he ought to do that. I'm going to hide and watch. We don't call each other sponsors. We probably have permission to do that if we really sat down and talked about it. We don't meddle in each other's programs. But we can say things like, Don't you think you might need a meeting? You know, when you hear that, you know that you're not acting right anymore, that you're not being a loving and affectionate spouse.
We've brought the traditions into our home as part of a design for living. Did I think this stuff up, or did we think this stuff up on our own? Absolutely not. You know, our sponsors are totally involved in our marriage, in our life. When I call my sponsor about my husband, she always gives me some instructions. And then when I call back and I'm still about my husband, she wants to know if I followed her instructions. And if I haven't, then I'm to go back and follow her instructions because she knows that this works.
These instructions work. I learned how to fight from reading page 117 of the Big Book. Now that's a real design for living. I didn't know how to have a fight. We call them group conscience now. We don't call them fights anymore. But we just, we did not know, neither of us, I don't think, knew how to have a discussion where we didn't agree with each other as an outcome. And we now can say, Well, I don't agree with that, but this is the way it's going to be because this is the way it has to be. Whatever the, you know, sometimes that goes on for a while.
Sometimes it's a very quick solution. We have also tried to introduce the traditions as part of living to our ladies that we carry the message to out at the federal prison, and of course to my sponsees and his. So, you know, the design for living, it isn't a one-way street. We have to share that with others. You can fill in the blanks here. It doesn't have to be a spouse. I think it needs to be— For me, I need to understand that I'm going to be trying to do the next right thing for the rest of my life.
But one of the things that I love in our Big Book is in Bill's story. It's on page 13 and 14. I'm sorry I'm going to read this because I couldn't possibly memorize it. But this is, to me, the whole design for living. My friend promised, when these things were done, I would enter upon a new relationship with my Creator, that I would have the elements of a way of living which answered all my problems. Belief in a power of God, plus enough willingness, honesty, and humility to establish and maintain the new order of things were the essential requirements.
Simple, but not easy. The price had to be paid. It meant the destruction of self-centeredness. When I got here, I had no selfishness and self-centeredness. I was an honest person, and I wasn't selfish and I wasn't self-centered. That's why I didn't need to do the fourth step. It meant destruction of self-centeredness. I must turn in all things to the Father of Light who presides over us all. My friend had emphasized the absolute necessity of demonstrating these principles in all my affairs. So when I'm leading a newcomer meeting or when I'm working with a sponsee and they keep trying to pin me down on what the principles are, I can send them right here that the principles are.
I'm going to give up this intolerance, this lack of being able to follow instructions, the things that Larry read, and I'm going to be working on—and it is work, I will have to work on it—I'm going to be working towards perfection that I'll never, never ever reach. But I'm going to be a better person every day if I can. And then there's certain days when I'm not. I had to make amends to the whole AT&T store not one time several years ago.
So, you know, yeah, I can do it. So I want to close with this reading. The joy of—this is from the Twelve and Twelve—the joy of living is the theme of AA's Twelfth Step, and action is its key word. Here we turn outward toward our fellow alcoholics who are still in distress. Here we experience the kind of giving that asks no rewards. Here we begin to practice. Rewards. Here we begin to practice all 12 steps of the program in our daily lives.
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That's my design for living, so that we and those about us may find emotional sobriety. When the 12th step is seen in full implication, it is really talking about the kind of love that has no price tag on it. So emotional sobriety is what my reward is for this new way of living. Thank you. Thank you, Glenna. One thing I failed to mention in my early moderation was the floor mic. Some of you may have noticed there is a mic out in the middle of the aisle out there, and if you're new to these type of things, you might be wondering what that mic is for. That's for you.
We call this a workshop, and the only way it will become a workshop is if someone uses the floor mic. That floor mic is if you have a question for anybody up here on the panel, then you go to the floor mic and ask your question. If you want to direct it to someone specific, then do that. And if you just have a question that you'd like to hear answered, then I will select one of the two presenters to answer your question, if possible, or at least give it some dialogue. Sometimes we don't get a full answer; we just get dialogue, and we're kind of used to that in AA.
Most times when I ask another alcoholic a question, I get my answer is usually another question, because we answer questions with questions. What do you mean by that? So anyhow, at this time, help me welcome to the mic Bob D. from Las Vegas. Thanks, Larry. My name is Bob Daryl, and I'm an alcoholic. I came up here and I—thank you, great, great talk. I met her and saw all these research done, all these papers, and I felt kind of intimidated. At least she looks like she cares. I mean, I got nothing. But I sat here and prayed like hell, and so maybe something, God will cook something out of my experience that'll be useful. And at the very least, I hope I don't embarrass my sponsor sitting in the front row. I was thinking that if you were to ask me what this meant at different times in my sobriety, you would have gotten really different answers.
At six months sober, if you would have said, Bob, what does AA's design for living for you look like? And then you asked me at five years sober, and at ten years sober, and at twenty and at thirty, it changes all the time. It's always different. When I was new, I would have probably told you to not drink and go to a lot of meetings, because that was what I knew. Dr. Bob… Said his prescription for recovery, he wrote it out on one of his prescription things, was trust God, clean house, help others.
And I think that's right. But in my experience, it just seemed to unfold in my life backwards. I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, and my trust in God would come much later. My cleaning house would come much later. And what I did for a long time in Alcoholics Anonymous was I threw myself into 12-step work and helping others, and hospitals and institutions and 12-step calls and service commitments. And looking back, that was perfect for me. There's a line in the book, in Working with Others, that says, Nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics.
I think it's getting closer to God and developing a trust in God's really great, but you have to stay physically sober to facilitate that experience. And so I was thrown into the best thing I could have been thrown into was a lot of service and a lot of action in Alcoholics Anonymous. A lot of action that I didn't know for some time was buying me islands in my day and in my experience where I was temporarily free from me.
[00:35:03]
And it allowed me to stay physically sober in the rooms. And then what happened is through that vehicle of helping others and sponsoring guys, my horizons and view of Alcoholics Anonymous started to broaden. And I remember I was, I did like a lot of people do here in my early sobriety, I wrote a 40-page… Fourth step of everything I was ashamed of and, you know, playing doctor with a little girl in the neighborhood. You know, all that little disgusting, you know, stuff that you kept secret, you know, you don't want anybody to know about.
And I shared it with someone until his eyes glazed over, and it was fine. It was fine. I got some secrets off my chest, and that was fine. But it wasn't what they talk about in Alcoholics Anonymous. And what happened to me is I was, I was, I'd gone to, I went to a lot of conferences and a lot of seminars. I just went to everything. If something was going on in AA, I'm in. I'm in. And I went to a Joe and Charlie thing that a bunch of people were going to down in California, and I heard, I remember hearing them talk about the fourth step, and they were pulling stuff right out of the book.
And I was, I remember thinking, I'd never heard any of that before. This is really different than what I had done. And right after that, I had a guy who I was sponsoring who was really in bad shape, and he was a chronic relapser, and he had done the life story inventory, and he was suffering from, I mean, suffering, I mean resentful at everybody. He was angst up about everybody, and I helped him. It's odd. Before I had ever used the format in the book Alcoholics Anonymous and ever written a fourth step out of that, with that format, I sat down with a guy I sponsored and I helped him to do that.
And I'll tell you something, I saw very clearly how to do it from helping him in a way that I couldn't have seen how to do it if I was just about me. The Hindus have a saying that the student doesn't learn the lessons until he becomes the teacher. And that guy, as a result of trying to help him do a fourth step, I started to understand a little better what the book was talking about. And so consequently, I got to a point in my sobriety.
Where the 12-step work was keeping me physically sober, but I was having a hard time outrunning my depressive tendencies because I'm a depressive. I'm a Bill Wilson type of alcoholic. And Bill's answer was also my answer when he said in his story that he would sink, he'd be overcome with resentments and self-pity. I don't like the word self-pity. I prefer the word depression, actually. When you say, I don't want— self-pity is such a squirmy word, isn't it?
You know, you could— did you ever have somebody come up and say, Are you feeling sorry for yourself? Ooh, ooh, ooh. Now if you come up to me and say, Are you depressed? Yes, I am. I mean, right, right, that's a better deal for me, you know. I like the— but it's really the same thing. It's just that I just get me on me so to the point where I'm just— I'm drowning in myself. I'm cooking in my own emotional juices.
And I got to the point where I could not run it anymore much. I remember hearing Chamberlain one time at our intergroup— God, he just floored me when he said it. It was right about this— that was a little bit earlier than this, but he said, You eventually get to a place where you can no longer put anything between you and you. And that's what had happened. I was trying to outrun my alcoholism with a tremendous amount of action and activity in the fellowship and in service in AA, but I hadn't done the other legacy.
And I hadn't cleaned house. There was a lot of amends I hadn't made. There was a lot of stuff. I made the—I did like a lot of—I did the amends that were breathing down my neck from the courts and, you know, my parents, because people in AA pushed me into that. But I still had a lot of unmade amends yet. But I hadn't done the work. I hadn't done the fourth step in the book, so they didn't look like amends yet.
When you put yourself in the place of the other person and then see it from their side of the street, then you kind of go, Oh, that wouldn't have been nice to be them after what I did. You know what I mean? You start looking at it from an entirely different angle.
[00:40:00]
And so I didn't have a lot of amends just yet. And so as a result of helping this guy, I was able to sit down when I, as a result of my suffering in sobriety, and do a fourth step out of the book and then start to make some amends and clean house. And it was a tremendous experience for me. From that point to this, when I'm angst up and I'm agitated and I'm in a bad spot, I've never again, after doing that out of the book, been able to convince myself it's you.
I kind of know. You know, you kind of—you kind of—because if you go through your whole life and look at every resentment, every conflict you've ever had, and come out the backside of it and realize that you were the source of every one of them, that it wasn't your perception was skewed, that you were wrong in every single case, that changes guys like me. And, but I still didn't have a relationship with God. But it was beginning as a result of some of the amends I made were very amazing, the end results of them.
My life started to change. And I was starting to make amends to that I didn't, I wouldn't have thought I even owed when I was in early sobriety. And I guess what it says in the Fifth Step promises was starting to come true. It's not until after, after you start cleaning house that the book says, and so now you'll begin to have a spiritual experience. You'll start to feel the nearness of your Creator.
And I guess in some sense that was happening, even though I don't like to think in terms of that. I don't want to ever come off like a religious guy in AA, but I was really starting to actualize an experience with God. But there was a whole football field of distance between being there and trusting God day in and day out in my life. I think I came here with a couple default positions that were almost, almost hardwired into me.
One of them was me. My default position is me. No matter what's going on, it's always me. How's that have to do with me? And the book says repeatedly over and over again, and we turn our attention to someone we can help, you. We turn our attention. So they're asking me to try to install a new default position, which is very alien to me because I like basically thinking of me pretty much. And you're asking me to think about others and How I can help, and, I mean, I want to think of the important things in the universe: me, basically.
So you're trying to help me to do that. And I always—I had another defense position, default position, was when something was wrong, it was someone's fault. When agitated—you know, there's a line in our book. It's a funny line. It says, We pause when agitated. Oh, I attacked and blamed when agitated. I mean, that was my deal. And pause when agitated and turn my consciousness towards God and try to get back, check the litmus test that Bill talks about in Step Ten.
He said, You want to know if it's you, Bob? Want to know if you're really the problem? I know it looks like it's them. Want to know? The litmus test is, Bill says it's a spiritual axiom: that when I'm disturbed at all, no matter what the cause, there's something wrong with me. So if I'm disturbed, I'm the guy that's out of line here. I don't like that. It's more—I liked it better when it was you. So you're trying to put another new default position in me, that when I'm having a problem inside of me, that the problem is inside of me.
It looks like you caused it. It's not. And I got to change my position to you. And a lot of times that means making amends, or just shifting the way I'm relating to you and perceiving you and coming at you in life differently. And I was a very self-reliant person by nature. I'd always been that way, even though the evidence in my life was overwhelming that this, it wasn't good for me. I'm the kind of guy, if my natural disposition, if I'm in trouble, is I want to go somewhere and think.
I want to go somewhere and think. That's just natural for me. I'm a thinker. I withdraw up into the freaking control center where I try to run
[00:45:00]
the universe, right? It's like the bridge of the Starship Enterprise where you got the screens and all that stuff, and I go up into the control center, try to figure it out. And you guys are telling me that I gotta let go and start to trust God. Well, that sounds really good, but what do you do when you're afraid? What do you do when you just found out your wife's been sleeping with one of your best friends and one of your sponsees for the last year of your marriage, and that's why you're in divorce court?
What do you do when you find out that one of your employees who you trusted for eight or ten years has just got you for a quarter million dollars and you don't know if you can survive it? What do you do then? How do you trust God then? And I tell you, I think sometimes guys like me, my whole life comes down to, what am I gonna do here? There's a great line in the book. It says, We get crushed by self-imposed, which means I kind of did this, didn't mean to, but I kind of made a decision based on self, put myself in that spot.
We're crushed by self-imposed crises you cannot postpone or evade. I did it, didn't mean to. I did it. I put myself in this spot. It's coming at me. I got no maneuver in here. I don't know what to do. And it says we're crushed, but to face either God's everything or He's nothing. He either is or He isn't. And you're asking me to show up in my life like I mean that. How do you show up in your life when you're scared, like God really got you?
And I tell you, I was probably 20-some years sober before I found myself in situations where that was starting to become a little easier for me. I could talk about it very well for a long time in AA, but I couldn't do it. And it was years here of being forced to trust God before I started, I think, trusting God, to really rely on this thing that seems—the evidence is overwhelming—that whatever's running the universe is very crazy about me and loves me, has no taste, but loves me.
And to actually start showing up in my life. And I have conversations, and in everything that I find here, I share it with the guys I sponsor. And when I find something and I try to start doing it, I try to help them to start doing it. And it seems to make it better and stronger within me by helping someone else. I think anything you give away here becomes—you get a greater ownership of it. And we have—I have a lot of conversations with guys that I sponsor all the time about, what's it look like?
What does a guy who trusts God look like? What does he look like? How does he conduct himself? How does a guy who really meant the decision in Step Three, how does he live his life? And then let's try to go out there in the world and be that guy. Let's try to kick it up and walk it. See, I couldn't, I didn't do that for a long time here. I'm like some of us that, I get this ego problem, and my ego thinks that knowledge and information will give it power.
So I studied the tradition. I was in eight or nine years in general service, learned the concepts and the traditions, did a service manual study group for about a year and a half, which is a, that's a real crowd pleaser, I'll tell you. And we knew a loneliness such as few do. I studied the traditions, but not because I wanted to be a more useful member of this community. I wanted it because I thought the knowledge would give me power and I could lord this over people.
I remember going to meetings, and if I caught some people in a traditions break, I got excited. You know what I mean? Right? Very egocentric. I was puffed up with myself. I did the same thing with the steps as I started to learn about how to do a fourth step. I started lording it over people. It was like the good dope syndrome. I got the good dope. I remember I got some guy said, some guy contradicted me in a meeting one time. I was about eight years sober, full of myself.
I went up to him after the meeting and said, You don't even know what you're talking about. You never even worked the steps.
[00:50:01]
He said, Yes, I have. Okay, what's it say on page 66? He didn't know there was a quiz. I mean, he looked at me. He wouldn't even answer me because he knew I was an idiot. Right? I'm an idiot here, right? But my ego had grabbed onto this stuff, and it was—I was trying to grandize myself with it. And, you know, with the guys I sponsor, I don't know that that's an unusual phase to go through. The self—ego grabs everything, and we self-righteous stage.
And then eventually, you know, if you're like me, you wear that out. There's some people, I guess, that make that last for a long time. But I started feeling really bad about myself being that guy. I started realizing that I was creating separation. I was, you know, you put my behavior at that time up against the first tradition, and I was a bad example of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I didn't want to be a disunifying force in AA.
I didn't want to be a force of conflict. And because I—my ego had taken the steps and traditions before I had, I think, I guess, I don't know. The last many years, I tell you, I really love what's happened in my life. When I get upset, it's like it's become like an automatic thing. I know there's something wrong with me. I may not be able to see it clearly exactly what it is, and I'll have to talk to someone because sometimes I can't.
You know, when you're disturbed and you're trying to look to see what's wrong, sometimes you can't see what's really wrong because what you're looking for, you're looking with. Because the real—it's a shift changer. So sometimes I have to talk to someone who's not emotionally involved in my life, and they'll go, Oh. You're trying to run the show. Oh yeah, I am. Oh, you think you're right. Yeah, I do.
You're living on self-gratification. Yeah, I am. You're making this all about you, aren't you, Bob? Yeah, I am. And I need your help for that. I guess I'll always need your help for that. And sometimes the guys I sponsor are the greatest reflection of me I will ever see. I think I really get why helping other alcoholics is our number one primary purpose, because it seems to facilitate everything else.
I've gotten closer to God sometimes by trying to help other people get closer to God. I've done a better job of cleaning house as a result of helping other people to clean house. I've become a better member of Alcoholics Anonymous because of the people I sponsor, because I don't want to be a bad example to them. And I'm not a perfect example by any means, but I've continued to up my game here as a result of my involvement with people in Alcoholics Anonymous and the guys I sponsor. And so maybe when Bob said, Trust God, clean house, help others, I guess that really is the formula.
What else do we got, really? She mentioned a line that really is—it's a very dramatic line, but it's very true. Bill said, There's a price that has to be paid. It means the destruction of self-centeredness. I often wondered what he really meant by that. The reason I wonder that is that I not only have I been unable to destroy self-centeredness, I don't know anybody that has. I can crush it down, but it grows back like a bad tumor.
I think I'm sort of like a toilet, the back of a toilet tank. You can flush it and I'll empty out of me, and then I just start filling up with me again. I don't mean to. I really don't. And it pains me to be that way. But it's like, it's, I guess it is what it is to have a chronic spiritual malady, which that means is I will always have an inclination to fill up with myself, and as I fill up with myself, I develop problems with you, and problems with God, and problems with myself.
And so Alcoholics Anonymous, maybe Bill, what he meant is that the price is a price that we will always pay. As it grows back, I have to try to reduce it and destroy it again. Or as Harry Tiebout said, we must have ego reduction at depth.
[00:55:03]
And Tiebout talked about how it grew back. It does. I know I've heard people in Alcoholics Anonymous that say frightening things to me. I've heard them share in meetings things like, the subject will be self-centered, and they'll say, I used to be self-centered. Wow. Wow. How did you? I always want to look for the lobotomy scars. How did you do that? I mean, how did you do that? And I think it's just, it's just show and tell here.
That's all. You know, sometimes it takes guys like me a long time to be here to trust you and trust God and trust Alcoholics Anonymous enough to be genuine and let you catch me with my spiritual pants down when they're down. And they're down sometimes, because no one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. But I love the fact that I am a part of a community that's trying, sometimes pathetically, but we're trying to struggle towards the light and away from ourselves.
I like that. I like that we have a common solution here, and it's to get, reduce ourselves and help others and trust God. And in the process of all of that, God seems to show up. You know, my understanding of Him today is different than it's ever been. And I'll say one more thing. Ten to fifteen years ago, I got to a point where I was having a hard time praying. I had all these set prayers, and I said them every morning, every… It was like meaningless after a while.
It was robotic. And a guy said to me, If you want to have a relationship with God, why would you throw prayers at Him? Would you do that with someone you're trying to develop a friendship with? Was every time you'd go up to him, you'd just chant something at them and leave? I mean, right? He said, Why don't you talk to God like you'd talk to someone that you trusted and you were their friend? And I started conversational dialogues with God in the morning and at night, and sometimes through the day. And sometimes I don't know the difference.
Sometimes it's almost like I'm talking to myself. And maybe when I'm talking to God, I am. I heard somebody say one time that God's more of you than you are. Thanks for listening. Okay, I'd like to thank Bob and Glenna for their comments. Now, the mic is open for any questions that you may have of our panelists. And feel free to come to the mic with your question. We've all, yeah, we've all got a story, and I want to hear them all.
But sad to say, I want to hear your question. So let's have it. Thank you, ma'am, for coming to the mic. Thanks for asking us to ask questions. Yes. My name is Kimberly. I'm an alcoholic, and my sobriety date is June 13th of '98. And through this, I've had some experiences where, like you talked—I'm sorry, I'm going to get teary-eyed—where you talked about maybe going through a period of recognizing your own self-centeredness.
And I'm just wondering what was the thing that helped you most? I end up feeling bad about myself in Alcoholics Anonymous sometimes when I go through that four-step process, which I'm in again right now, thank you. And what was the thing that helped you the most as you went through that period of identifying your own self-centeredness and sitting there in it? We'll say move to the next level, where it became a joy again.
Thank you, ma'am. Bob, that was for you. I don't like to think in terms of levels. I mean, I suppose you could. I get full of myself sometimes, and I only know a couple things to do. As I try to be transparent about what's going on with me, I will ask God for help. I'll talk to Him about it, and I will throw myself harder at trying to help others. When I was— Trying to help others. When I was going through my first divorce, where I actually discovered my wife had been sleeping with one of the guys I sponsor, and it was really a bad period of time in my life.
[01:00:01]
I'd have three, four guys in my car, and we'd just go from meeting to—I mean, I just, I was doing—I was probably going to 10, 12 meetings, 15 meetings a week. I was doing a lot of hospital and institution stuff, a lot of 12-step work, and it always got me through it, you know. It doesn't necessarily get me through it like laughing and snapping my fingers, but it's designed to reduce me down. If I'm going to develop a life of self-forgetting, then I have to be busy with others and acting like someone who's kind of forgot about himself. Dr.
Paul one time said that it's amazing how problems will die of neglect. So I take my focus off of me and I go help people. I don't know what else to do. Thanks, Bob. Yes, sir. Thank you. My name's Kenny B., and I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is October the 10th of 2012, and it's because God loves me more than I can love myself that I'm sober today. My sponsor told me that we were going to be working the steps one through 12, and I'd like Bob to give me information on chronological order because I— I feel as though I have something to offer the newcomer and people coming in, and to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers, Step Twelve.
But I heard you say that one of your sponsees, at four months, was sponsoring someone else, and I didn't understand the chronological order there. And also that you worked a fourth step with someone when you hadn't worked the fourth step yourself, I believe that's what was said. And I have a lot to offer the newcomer that comes in because I feel for these gentlemen that are coming in, and we give out a newcomer's packet, and how many times do we never hear from anyone calling from that newcomer's packet?
And so I try to get their phone number and call them and leave everything open to where they feel comfortable and they feel welcome. So could you help me in what I need to do to help people along the way? Because, of course, I've not worked all twelve steps, but I want to take and carry that message. Bob. I mean, I will, but I don't think it's— Okay. I mean, I will. Yeah. Yeah, that was directed to you, though.
We'll have to have you answer it because it was directed to you. I can answer part. Yeah, Larry said he could answer it for me, and he probably would say exactly what I wanted to say. If you've got sober in the last 25 years, AA is a little different today. In the 1970s, some of you will remember this, there was not a lot of Big Book consciousness. There was not a lot of— there was a— I got sober in a group that was big on making amends, helping others, doing service, and praying.
But as far as following some order out of the book or something, I remember the days where you could go up to most old-timers in AA and say, How do you write the Fourth Step? And they'd send you to a Twelve Step and Twelve Traditions study group. Matter of fact, most of them, if you ask them, Is it talk about that in the Big Book? Can you tell me what pages? you'd get dumb looks from people, because the fellowship, for the most part, in a lot of parts of the country, had lost touch with that.
It was so—we just did, we just threw ourselves at AA. And we did a lot of service. We did a lot of meetings. We helped a lot of people. We picked up a lot of guys. We gave guys rides. We went to hospitals, institutions. We tried to clear up the wreckage of our past, and we did all that. And then years later, this Big Book consciousness started to come along, and some of us started going, Oh, that's good.
Oh, I think I can see where that would probably would have saved me a lot of pain back in my early sobriety if I'd have done that like that. And I get that. I get it. I don't argue with that. I try to help. I watch guys I sponsor go through the process in sort of following the timeline and the order out of the book, and they get a lot happier quicker than I did, which I don't really like that a lot, but it's good.
But I go with it. I go with it. And so you got to understand, that's the way AA's changing. The stuff I talk about was my experience, but we muddled through a lot of this stuff back then. You know, we didn't know that much. Anyway, if that helps. Thanks, man.
[01:05:00]
Yes, sir. Sir. I'm Wynn from the Lake Highlands group. Hey, Wynn. First of all, I want to comment on the best amends I ever made. Is that okay? I beg your pardon? I want to comment on the best amends I ever made. Okay. My two daughters, Nicole and Wendy, I was in AA when they became teenagers, and the old-timers, who were former friends of Bill Wilson personally, they told me to take them to Alateen, and they liked it so well they didn't miss a meeting on Sunday nights at the Richard Group for two years.
I'd take them to see my mom in the nursing home, their grandmother, and then I made an AA meeting while they made their Alateen meeting. Nicole graduated with a doctorate degree in chemistry, and Wendy double majored in business and merchandising. Neither one of them abuses drugs. Neither one takes drugs of any kind or abuses alcohol. So I owe that to that best amends. The question I had is I've been an AA sponsor for 20 years, and I'm presently sponsoring a guy, and we had a close friendship before that.
And now he has—I went in the hospital with cysts on my pancreas, and I was supposed to take care of my cat, and he wouldn't return my calls when I got to the hospital. And so it turns out he was drinking again. Well, I had lent him my copy that Cersei wrote a note on, Cersei that formed so many groups in early AA here in Texas. Cersei's book is Two Different Ways to Walk a Person Through Twelve Steps, utilizing the Big Book and then going into more detail.
And so this sponsee, when I got out of the hospital, I went to see him. And I saw he was drunk and I blew up. I'm bipolar, which doesn't help any. And I said, You're fired, not because you're drunk, but because you wouldn't return my calls. Thank God my sponsor took care of the cat, which was a miracle and a blessing. But at any rate, before I went to the hospital, we was walking through the steps, and we got to the fourth step, and I loaned him Cersey's book.
He lives two blocks away from where I live, so I thought, Well, it's okay. And he'd been honest, open-minded, and willing at that time. Now he will not return the book. Last night I cooked a slab of ribs, had him over for a rib dinner, and I offered him a special documentary I knew he'd really like, book. And I told him, he said, Yes, I like that very much. And I said, Okay, I'll give it to you if you'll return my Cersey's book.
And he keeps, Oh, I have to find it. He lives in a little one-bedroom apartment just like me, and he knows where everything is. He's highly educated, highly organized, and now he's been drunk a month and won't return the book. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you what I do. If you after this meeting is over, you and I can visit. I've had some experiences with folks, not personal, but with guys that have gone through what you're going through, and I'd be real happy to visit with you for a couple of minutes on that. Thank you.
Yeah. My name is Oliver Manuel. I'm an alcoholic. Hey, Oliver. My last sobriety date was March 10th of 2001. I want to thank both of the speakers. I absolutely love this program. I was an angry, arrogant atheist when I got into this program, and I had zero chance of finding a higher power because I wasn't going to buy any religious stuff. And only the 12-step program was, in fact, the only chance I had.
Two comments. I also had memorized a huge number of prayers, and I would chant them, as you mentioned. My latest sponsor sent me a document that was apparently written in the late 1930s by a friend of Dr. Bob's. I don't know if you've seen it. It's like a three- or four-page How to Listen to God. It's absolutely beautiful, because I didn't know how to listen. If there was a higher power, I wanted to tell higher power what my plans were and hopefully get his approval, or hers.
The design for living, which I am slowly arriving at, is like flying through life by the seat of my pants.
[01:10:00]
I don't know what's going to happen. I don't need to know. And I went through life as a control freak. At any rate, thank you, and I'll pass. Thanks, Oliver. Howdy. My name is June, and I am an alcoholic. June. My sobriety date is May 16th, 1988. I'd like to comment on doing the steps. With 25 years in the program, I also had two 12-year periods of not drinking before that. Just whenever I wanted a drink, just say, Lord, I want a drink, and the desire would go away. And sometimes that was repeated many times a day, and so forth. And then each was followed by a relapse of one year of daily drinking.
I've also moved 25 times in nine different states. So what I'm saying is, I've been around AA in a variety of places and found things different in different places. And of course, AA was very different 25 years ago. It was strictly alcoholics. And then there came a time when NA began, but it didn't seem to be successful. So addicts began coming into AA, and AA seemed to be split. And some of them would say, We are alcoholics.
Nobody else is wanted. And others would say, Addiction is addiction, and so forth. And actually, I think they're both right. There is a difference chemically in the body, but they are the same emotions. I've worked diligently through the steps three times. My first sponsor told me that it was very important to work the steps in the order that they are given. And I didn't believe it at that time, but I did what I was told.
And the second time I went through with a book, I don't know if I dare say a RAF book, which took two years, and it was diligently and in order, and it made sense to me. And the last time was done with— Well, we started out as eight women doing them together and ended up seven because one lady's husband liked her better when she was drinking, and that happens. But I think it's important to do the steps as they're given, but that doesn't mean that we can't be a help to newcomers, no matter where we are in the steps. I think we rub off on each other with whatever we have within us.
So I think both ways are right, that you can be doing 12-step work, and you ought to be, even if you're coming early and making coffee, that you should be doing and greeting people. But I think it's important to do them, you know, when you go back over them several times, you see the wisdom in the order that they're done. Jane, we appreciate your comment. Thank you. Three minutes. Got three minutes left on the CD.
If you want to get recorded, you better get up there. Dusty Walker, alcoholic. Dusty. And I really appreciate—I really felt like I heard a lot today from you guys. I really appreciated what you had to share. It had a great deal of value to me, and I heard voiced some things that I felt like that I'd been doing, but I didn't know how to voice it. It sounds like that I'm not ever—and correct me if I'm wrong—but I think I heard I'm not ever going to be able to completely get my tank empty and keep it empty. I'm always going to be self-concerned.
But if I'll just get busy and concentrate on you guys, I can push myself out of my head for a little while. And I do have permission from my sponsor to come to the mic. I was going to ask you, but he was there. So is that basically what I heard, that I'm always going to be self-concerned, but I can push it out if I'll— Dusty, in my experience with you, is that there's probably a good chance that's going to happen.
Yeah. Yes, ma'am. Hi, I'm Carol, alcoholic. My sobriety date, hi, is 12-27-2000. Hi, is 12/27/2005. I have a question for our first woman that spoke. I apologize, I don't recall your name. Glenna. Glenn. Excuse me, thank you, Glenna.
[01:15:02]
Hi, Glenna. You read something from one of the books. Could you tell me what page it was on, so that I could write that down and go back and read it? When Glenna gets done here, then this will be the end of the workshop, and we're going to break for dinner. Thanks for your question. Thank you. She'll take care of that. Okay. Glenna Walker, alcoholic. The things that I read were from page 15. That was referring to A Design for Living.
Page 28 refers to A Design for Living, and page 81 refers to A Design for Living. Where I read from Bill, what he was talking about, My friend promised these things, that was page 13 and 14. The very last thing I read about the joy of living is AA's theme is the Twelve and Twelve, page 12. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Okay. Thank you all. Thanks for attending this afternoon, and if you will, we'll close this meeting.
Loud Bob and Glenna and I to come down to the floor, and we'll close with the Our Father. Thank you.