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Source: Clif G. & Bob D – Steel City Woodstock (2024) – Long Form of the 12th Tradition – Date Unknown.mp3 File: clif-g-and-bob-d-steel-city-woodstock-2024-long-form-of-the-12th-tradition-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 01:09:00
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Hey everybody, I'm Cliff Gooding. I'm a grateful alcoholic. I'm sober since August the 15th of 2001, and for that short amount of time, I'm as grateful as I know how to be. And gosh, it's good to be back here in Pennsylvania. And it's wonderful to be here. I want to thank the committee, and particularly Nancy, for extending the invitation for me to be here this weekend. It's just wonderful here. Weather was very similar to Oklahoma. I got off the plane, it was about the same. Just no ice, so that was good.
I'm grateful to have an opportunity to do this with Bob tonight. I'm a big fan. I'm a big fan of all the speakers this weekend. You know, I'm kind of a groupie of everybody that's here this weekend, and so you guys are in for a real treat this weekend with the group that Nancy's assembled to take you through the steps this weekend. And so I'm excited to be a part of it. Bob and I were trying to figure out what we were going to do, and I kept pestering him and saying, what are we going to do? What are we going to do?
And he would say, well think about that. God will show us the way. And I'd say, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? And he'd say, God will show us the way. God will show us the way. And so he came up with what I thought was a stellar topic, really. I thought it was really good. It was, here's what we can do. How do we make people make amends to us? Which I thought was great, and then he calls me Wednesday and says, no, I've got a better one. Let's talk about the long form of Tradition 12.
I went to sleep on him right then, just right to sleep. He was like a hypnotist. But the truth of the matter is, when you're at a Woodstock deal like this, it's a perfect thing to talk about. Because my friends talk about this ought to be a step in and of itself. The 12th Tradition ought to be a step in and of itself. And so when we think about the traditions just generally, when I think about how they differ from the steps, in the steps we identify the problem in step one.
We identify the solution in step two. And then we spend steps three through 11 talking about actions we do to achieve the end game, a spiritual awakening. Now in the traditions, much like the steps, Tradition 1 identifies the problem, disunity. How do we get unity going? How do we bring unity here? And Tradition 2 identifies the solution, God. But unlike the steps, Traditions 3 through 11 talk about things we don't do in order to achieve Tradition 12, spiritual anonymity.
And so I know that some of you are quite familiar with the long form of Tradition 12, but I thought I would read it anyway. Because I hate being read to, so I'm going to read to you. Seems fair, right? And finally, we of Alcoholics Anonymous believe that the principle of anonymity has an immense spiritual significance. It reminds us that we are to place principles before personalities, that we are actually to practice a genuine humility.
This to the end that our great blessings may never spoil us, that we may shall forever live in thankful contemplation of him who presides over us all. And when we think about that, when we think about what a great thing, the things we don't do in order to achieve that. And I think anytime you want to talk about humility, you've already lost it. I mean, it's immediately out the door. I give a three hour talk on humility, I'm not doing that tonight, but it's kind of like spirituality.
The minute you begin to tell me how spiritual you are, you've already lost it. Humility is much the same way. If we try to talk about how humble we are, we've already lost it. In and of itself, the recognition that I am humble, or I'm doing these humble things, in and of itself dissipates the humility that we strive for here. When we look at the traditions, when we look at what they mean to us as a fellowship, as a society, if we didn't have the traditions, we would be lost. We probably would have never made it as far as we have today.
I remember in one of Bill's writings talked about when they got all the rules in, that if they had formalized the rules, they had all been effected at the given time, that none of us would have made it. And certainly none of those in the 1950s would have made it if the rules had been implemented. And so the traditions talk about how we need each other, but it goes beyond that. In my opinion, in my experience, the traditions go beyond the we of the fellowship.
The traditions, when we look at the spiritual principles behind the steps and traditions and the concepts,
[00:05:05]
taking these spiritual axioms, spiritual principles of the traditions, and bringing them off the wall and to our group, that's certainly good. And I have a home group, it's called the Altered Boys We're Men Stag Group in Oklahoma City, we meet on Wednesday night. It's a three legacy group. We participate in all three parts of that triangle, recovery, unity, service. And I think collectively, when we find groups like that, we find very strong foundational groups.
So when we look at this idea of spiritual significance in the traditions, when we take them off the wall and take them outside of our meeting rooms, how does that look? Well, I don't know about you, but when I arrived on the shores of Alcoholics Anonymous, if someone would have said to me, Cliff, write down your top 100 problems. Selfishness, self-centeredness, they don't ever make the list. They never make the list. You know why? I'm a giver. You knew that.
You knew I was a giver when I got up here. Always with a hook, right? Always with a hook. I'm like the Godfather. Someday, I may ask you to do a favor for me, kind of deal, right? You can wake up with a horse's head in your bed. But Tradition 12 calls for something else. It calls for selflessness. It calls for sacrifice. When we read our book, it talks about, particularly in Chapter 5, it's interesting that in our book, the word surrender is never used, although we toss it around in Alcoholics Anonymous a lot.
But there is a word that is used over and over again in our book, and that's the word abandon. And if you don't know what the word abandon means, because I didn't know when I first got here, I think I'm really smart. My sponsor used to send me to the dictionary college. Boy, go look in the dictionary. It means to walk away from, to walk away from. When we get to Tradition 12 and we look at that, and my whole life, I have built my whole life around selfishness, self-centered.
The root of my problem goes deep. And now I need to abandon that. I need to walk away from that position in my life. And the book says in order for me to do that, I have to have God's help. And so in these traditions, when we look at this idea of the principle of anonymity and its spiritual significance for a guy like me, how do I take that tradition, how do I take the traditions of alcoholics and alchemists and take them into my home? How do I do that?
Now, I'm a guy that's been married four times, so I'm really alcoholic. I'm not even sure you really qualify for alcoholics and alchemists if you only had a couple, really. But one of the things about that is because I'm selfish and self-centered, I don't know how to be selfless in a relationship. You know, people talk all the time that relationships are 50-50. I don't believe that. I think relationships are 100%, 100%.
But I've got to be fully committed to the relationship. And although that's certainly true in my romantic relationships, I need to be that committed in my relationship with my friends. I need to be that committed to the people I work with. I need to be 100%. I wish this made me look taller over there, but it just really doesn't. It doesn't, though. I've got to be committed 100% to those relationships.
And when a guy like me, who's selfish and self-centered, comes into a relationship and is asked, because all my life, you know what I believe, 50-50, and I keep score. There might be some scorekeepers in here, I'm not sure. If you've had more than one marriage, probably. But I'm a scorekeeper. And what this tradition asks me to do is to lay down the scorecard. What the tradition has asked me to do is to be more aware and attentive to the survival of the unit than to my own survival.
My own survival as a married man depends on my relationship with my wife. And it calls for me to lay down selfishness, self-centeredness, for the survival of the spiritual, marital unit. It also calls for that idea in my business relationships. If I go into business relationships selfish and self-centered, I lose all spiritual significance. If I go into those relationships with the idea I'm just going to get mine, but I have found that in my work, in my job, when I go in and try to bring love, compassion, and understanding to the relationship, whatever that might be,
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in whatever relationship I'm in, when I choose to bring that into the relationship and pray for those things when I get there, it's an amazing amount of spiritual significance that happens. Now I'm a guy that, I'm going to tell you, I'm a lot more addicted to comfort than I am sacrifice, you know, on certain days. I remember when I first got here, my sponsor wanted to talk about service work. And you all know there's two problems with that, service and work.
But if I'm going to apply this kind of spiritual principle of anonymity, the key here for me is sacrifice. The key for me is to set aside what I want to do. The steps, the traditions, the concepts are all about a reformation process. We're talking here about transformation, that the steps have this transformative process on us. So do the traditions. The traditions have a transformative process on us if we allow them to bring them into our lives.
They have spiritual significance to me if I bring them into my life and bring them to the relationships I have. You've probably heard people say this in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. Well, this is a selfish program, you know. Is it? Bob was talking before, he mentioned this before, and it was so profound to me. If we didn't have the traditions, the AA would be a self-help program. And that's what I think they're talking about, that this idea that AA is a selfish program, that doesn't line up with what I read in our literature.
As a matter of fact, in A Vision for You, they talked about that there was a point in time that certainly we went out and worked with other people to stay sober, but there was a point in there where that was transcended by the desire just to be helpful, the desire to come and be of service. That works when I have spiritual significance in my life. That happens when I'm sacrificing. This ideal of reformation, the whole purpose of this is to reform me, but I've got to be engaged in that process.
I have to be engaged in a process with my wife. I think one of the best things that ever happened in our relationship was my wife is a long-time member of the Al-Anon Family Program. She would like to tell you if she was here that she has 45 days longer in Al-Anon than I do in AA. She brags about that. Her recovery date is July 1, so from July 1 to August 15, it's a big topic everywhere we go. She'll walk up on the people in the street and say, ask Cliff how sober he is, right?
But our whole relationship changed when we began to take these traditions and begin to bring them into our marriage, when we began to look at each other as this spiritual unit that we were a part of, that that relationship had to become the focal point, much like our AA group becomes a survival point, if without you there's no me. For that marriage to survive, for any marriage to survive, this idea of the spiritual significance of anonymity, and that was the idea of sacrifice.
I'm sure that in looking at this 12th tradition, how does that look? What does that look for me? If I'm sitting in an AA meeting, how does this idea of spiritual anonymity, how does that work for me? You ever get caught in an AA meeting and get caught up, hung up on the messenger and not the message? You ever done that in an AA meeting? They call on Bobby and you go, holy. You know, one of the things that's happened for me is, because I have, I can be guilty of that problem in Alcoholics Anonymous.
And to get spiritual significant about this tradition in my life, a guy said to me one day, he said, I believe what you ought to do is listen for the malady. Rather than listen to what, listen for their malady. Listen to where the malady shows. Try to empathize with their pain. Try to find the malady when they're talking. And my gosh, the script flipped. That I didn't have to identify with the messenger, I could listen to the message and identify and hook with the malady.
And I quit being too much judgy of you people, you know. Because, you know, AA's full of conundrums, isn't it? You know, you come here and they say things like this. We're all equal here, but stick with the winners. That's it, you know. Now I've got discernment, okay. How else does this show up? How else does this 12th tradition show up in my life? How do I treat people in public? How do I treat them in private?
in public and then how do I treat them in private? You know, am I your friend
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when I meet you on the street and I'm great to you and then in private you know I just ridicule you, I talk about you, judge you. How does that line up for a guy like me? If I'm going to bring that kind of spiritual significance into my life then you know what we say here is that how I, it's real easy to to be a you know just almost, you could almost ascend at the coffee pot really you know just really spiritual there on any given night just almost reach water walker status right? But when I get in my car and I'm on the road how does that look for me? Do I bring that kind of significance of what I say versus what I do? And do I bring that into full fruition not just in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous but when nobody's looking in the wee hours. How about this one? Can I do things and not get caught? I don't mean bad things, not like Rebecca.
Not like that. But I can't you know can I do those good things and not tell anybody about it? Can I have that kind of anonymous life? You know it's one of those things where you know what I used to Laurie would send me across to go get green beans and so there I'd go. I'm off on a mission to get green beans and I go over and get them and I get the giant and I'm bringing her back and I bring him back to her and I say okay here they are green beans. She said no no no no we're Del Monte people you know that we're not giant people. Now prior to Alcoholics Anonymous I don't know how you people were but if I'm in the bread aisle they now have a giant in the bread aisle. I just put it right there. But today what I've learned in Alcoholics Anonymous is I go all the way back with the giant back to the green beans and put him back in his rightful place. Get the Del Monte and bring it all the way back. This spiritual significance of that doing the right thing. Doing the right thing. How about this? Have you been to a park? Were you a person that when when you went shopping when you went to the grocery store that when you were done with the shopping cart you just released it in the wild? Just there it goes. Just Paul I'm just releasing it in a while.
Just go. Just hope you find your tribe. Because what happens is my selfish self-centered mind says things like this. That's job security for those guys. It's like littering. I litter so the trash guys can pick stuff up. I mean I got it. This is not this is rudimentary. It's not hard to figure out. But the spiritual significance is that is this is that when you go to the bathroom and it's on Saturday and you're at this mall and it's it's a pit. I don't know how it is in the ladies room. Been a while since I've been in there. But in the men's room on a Saturday at a mall it's a pit. It's a pit in there. Pick up something you know. How about this? Tell the guy who's cleaning up. Thank you. There's some spiritual significance in the idea of thanking the guy who's got the worst job at the mall. Thank you. One of the things I learned is when that when I go shopping I just will go to wherever we go to Walmart or wherever and I just break because I just go gather up the wild Mustang shopping carts you know. You just bring them back to the herd you know. It's just the it's just the oaky in me. I just got to bring them back to the herd man. But there's significant spiritual in that. In this 12th tradition you know we we look at the short form of the tradition and and we talk about spiritual anonymities principles will before personalities in our steps and our tradition. And the idea of all that is that my my job here my job here is to make sure that I am a part of the whole. Just a small part of this great whole this tapestry of Alcoholics Anonymous. And it's certainly my responsibility when I come to Alcoholics Anonymous to not damage it and not damage my group. And it's certainly my responsibility once I have this transformative experience is to go out make sure I don't harm anybody else. You know I'm going to talk about this tomorrow but there but this piece of me that I have harmed people over and over and over again. That I carry that selfishness and self-centeredness that idea that I have that I I'm right it has to be this way. You know I'll die on
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whatever hill is necessary on any given day you know. Rebecca was talking about not talking to people you know I'm that guy that if you cross if you if I'm mad at you you're off the Christmas card list forever. There's no sometimes I mean you're forever he's just X'd off. And I think my job in this in this whole idea is to remember what I said to this in that our great blessings may never be spoilers. Spiritual pride. I could be guilty of spiritual pride you know I I'm always I always find it funny when I'm talking to some guys that have like six or seven months six or seven months people are wonderful by the way because they know everything. And you get somebody who's trying to get sober they're in and out they're in and out you know. And they say things like this why can't he just get it? And I look at them like dude you were living in a dumpster six months ago man. But we get this spiritual pride and we forget the blessings that we've been given right. They spoil us. We allow ourselves the ego the resurrective powers of the alcoholic ego get resurrected again. And I'm back on this deal I was not I'm gonna say after COVID. I went had a sit-down with my sponsor and I had to spend a couple days with him. And about the end of the first day he sent me down he said Cliff I'm gonna tell you something you're being self directed again. You know how easy it is here for us to get one degree off? You know one degree off. And I know we're here we're all about spiritual progress not spiritual perfection. But one degree off. I was giving a talk down in Florida one time there were some Navy guys in the audience. And I was talking about one degree off. Well they did the calculation for me because I used to talk about leaving New York sailing to London. And I said you get one degree off you end up somewhere. Well they did the calculation for me. That was thoughtful of him I thought. And they said they came up and they had this calculation already for me. They said Cliff if you leave New York headed for London and you're sailing and you get one degree off you end up in the south of France. And I thought this is perfect. I end up in some place I didn't intend to go with people I don't know who I don't understand in wine country.
Right? That's what happens for me. And it's so easy for me to become spiritual prideful here and forget about the blessings that I have. You know it's easy for me to go I've gone through periods in my sobriety where the blessings that I've had have has almost crippled me. The bottoms in those were almost more difficult than the bottom in sobering up. A bottom in alcohol it's synonymous without drinking that that emotional bottom here. My wife came to me I was about nine years sober and I'm helping a lot of people you know some people are buying me an airplane ticket asked to go somewhere. I just had finished chairing our area conference about 1,800 people. Just was elected the alternate area chair. I mean I'm making a name for myself in an anonymous program you know which should give you some indication of how bad it was. And my wife called me she said I'd like I need to talk to you and I thought well I can help her she's probably got a problem yes help her with that. She sat me down and she said I don't know you you're physically sober but you're not spiritually sober emotionally sober and you got to go. And at nine years sober I got kicked out of my house again because you know why I forgot the many blessings that were given to me. I got in this position of spiritual pride this idea that you know I have got it figured out and maybe one day you people I can minister to you significantly enough that you too may ascend you know up here with me. Just really sick really sick and so I got I remember going to my sponsor and saying tell him the sad tale of woe you know and people have been trying to tell me but I can't hear it can't hear it and I remember telling that and I don't know if you've ever said something to your sponsor and then think if I change the subject right now maybe they will maybe they'll just forget it won't even remember what I said and I remember I remember what I just came out of my mouth I go you know I got to get back to basics and it's like God himself with a
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little silver hammer just went ding of course it's all basics here trust God clean house help others that's all we have here there's all we have here there's none of us ascend to guru status there's none of us that get here and have some kind of epiphany I don't have any illusion that anything I'm going to say this weekend is going to change the trajectory of anybody's sobriety but what I do hope to achieve this weekend is this that it starts the conversation that it starts the conversation on the ride home in your room at night it starts the conversation at the dinner table it starts the conversation around the fire pit it starts the conversation about whatever it is that you're on your heart that you swore up I don't know what I'm going to do about this that spiritual sickness that spiritual pride we sometimes find ourselves in that's the deal that's the deal here and by taking this traditions and apply my taking this specifically this this 12th tradition this idea of anonymity this idea of sacrifice this idea of selflessness in my relationships this idea that you know how can I help you today and not forgetting that you're not getting to a place where I'm once again a baffled lot getting to a spot again where I'm one degree off not getting to a spot where I forget it's a we program not a me program and that my sole purpose here is to do the very best that I can do for you the very best I can do for you and as crazy as that may seem which is contrary to everything I knew about life on the day I arrived on the shores of Alcoa Sonoma so the days I arrived on the shore of Alcoa Sonoma I believe my job was to grab all I could before you grab it it's not just you know this idea that get what you can get what you can and more and then when I get here by process of these steps this reformation transformative process applying these traditions in my life this idea of service sacrifice selflessness the spiritual anonymity that I'm shooting for this idea this perfect idea that the steps hold these perfect ideas that the traditions hope is if I can come here and you know late the whole point of sacrifices every day I have to lay down a little more of me to help you I gotta find a way today to lay a little bit more of me down and find an avenue to help you thanks for listening that was great I'm Bob I'm an alcoholic and I've been sober and free from all the things that alcoholics of my type used to soothe their abstinence since October 31st 1978 I have a sponsor who knows they're my sponsor which that's important your sponsor is not sure they're your sponsor your sponsor and yourself kinda and I have a home group and I have jobs at that home group and I am delighted to be a member of that group I'm proud to be a member of that three legacy group very important in today's world I you know I had a spot my I think sometimes we're brought together by divine appointment and my first sponsor truly was perfect for me he was a five percenter what I mean by that I heard that the first time I ever went to a general service conference in the area and I heard a trustee say that he thought five percent of the fellowship did ninety-five percent of the service in 12-step work and my first sponsor had been he he was in everything in AA he was involved in everything he'd been a delegate he'd started a couple conferences retreats he was on the board of one of the places he was a I mean he was just all in I met him because he brought up he was the first guy in Las Vegas to do hospital institution work he brought a meeting twice a week into the detox I was in that's how I met him and I asked him to sponsor me which there were moments I regretted that later but I'll tell you I told him I said I'll do anything you ask me to do not knowing how much stuff he would want me to do and he pushed me into everything
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and I try to use everything, even AA, to soothe myself. And I don't know I'm that way, but I'm that way. So because of his nudging me, I spent nine years in general service, involved in area service, general service. I can't even tell you how many tradition workshops I sat in and I never internalized any of it. I intellectually grabbed onto enough of it that, so I could apply it to membership and so I could go to meetings and watch for tradition breaks. You know what I mean? It's like when you find one, it's like Christmas, you know.
And I used all the knowledge of that for self-grantizement and I had really very little, very, very little personal application to these and I was probably sober close to 20 years and I ain't right. It's my secret and I ain't right and it's my secret. And you know the book says an alcoholic will know a loneliness such as few do. I was starting to experience that subtle separation again, you know. And I was in my head a lot and I was, I've been through the steps so many times. Oh my god, I did, used to do big book step workshops. I started those in the early 80s and I'd go through about the eighth or ninth time, go through the steps again and a guy said to me, why don't you try looking at the 12 traditions, the original version, the one written by Bill Wilson, not the short version written by Earl Treat, but the Wilson's version. Why don't you start looking at those as if they were a set of principles for your personal application and to live by. And sometimes in AA you get to places where you got nothing to lose, you know. And I thought well okay, I'll start looking at that stuff and to my amazement, and I had a company, very successful business and for many, many years I started running the business. We'd have staff meetings and we'd talk about the principles of the traditions. I never said this is from AA. I just would take the AA part out of it and just use them as principles to conduct the business with. And it's funny, non-alcoholics think they're great. Alcoholics go, yeah, I don't know. And why is that? Because we are extreme examples of self-will run riot. Normal people, not so much. And the 12 traditions will reduce, if you could live those, you're going to have ego reduction in depth. So I started looking at some of these.
And the first tradition changes my approach to life. It changes my, it's the approach in my marriage, it was my approach in business, it's my approach in AA membership with my sponsees, with everybody. That our common welfare should come first. Well that's not easy for a me first person, right? I think let's respect your welfare. It's important after me, but a push comes to shove and it's about what I want versus what you want. Well, come on. What I want takes paramount. So in other words, you're asking me to put you before me. When my whole life as most selfish self-centered people are, it's me before you. Now I like the bragging rights of a humble servant, so I'll dress it up on the outside. Because I want people to think I'm, he's a giver.
But when it really comes down to it, I'm a me first person. And you're asking me in this tradition to do that. And why? Why would I do that? Because of a problem that is the essence of what I face when I get sober. A lack of unity. There was a great letter that was written from the psychiatrist Carl Young to Bill Wilson in the early 60s. And Young said something to Wilson I think is paramount. He said that he suspected as a result of working with Roland Hazard and countless other alcoholics that the alcoholics thirst for
[00:35:01]
alcohol is not really a thirst for alcohol. He said he thought it was a low-level thirst of the alcoholics being for unity. Or if you're more religiously minded, a union with God. And you know why I believe that's true? Because just to the degree, and this is not consistent, but just to the degree that I'm a surrendered servant, do I feel connected here? Do I feel one with? And just to the degree that I'm wrapped up and concerned and worried about me, do I feel separate and apart from? And I think I drank alcohol. Because alcohol did something for me that it only does for alcoholics.
It doesn't do it for other people with various other problems. Gambling, drugs. It does it for alcoholics. It gives you a sense of unity and connectedness. Many, many, many times I would go into a party or a bar, especially bars, and I'd be sober. I don't like bars when you're sober. You know they're not, they're just stupid people in bars when you're sober. You need to drink to just fit. And I'd go into the bar and I'd just be judgy. You know, just everybody I look at, I'd just pick them out, stupid people, you know, just be like that. And about four or five drinks in, boy, they just, I was wrong about all of them, wasn't I? I mean, it was just, I start to, about seven drinks in, we're shooting pool together and planning our vacations, and you know, I mean, oh my god.
Do you ever get so drunk that you feel connected to people in such a way that you're saying things like, I love you, bro. I'd die for you, man. I mean, just, oh my god. You feel connected and one with the universe itself. Now that's spiritual. The spirituality was in the unity. The problem is, I couldn't sustain that. Alcohol wears off. It's back to just being me, separate and apart from again. But I drank alcohol because it created a sense of unity, something I yearned for. Against the backdrop of a lonely guy who doesn't fit anywhere, that's pretty heady stuff. And so here I am, an alcoholic synonymous, sober a number of years, and I started to realize something. That my personal, this is me, not the group, my personal recovery depends upon a unity here with AA, and with you, and with life.
That I have to do alcoholic synonyms for the same reason I drank alcohol, to get connected here. And my life depends on it. And so I started looking at these, and you know, the second tradition is so, well first of all, it's the, in the short form, I like the addition in the short form. Even though I like, I'm a long form guy. It says our leaders are but trusted servants. Well that defines alcoholic synonyms as the only organization on the planet where you come in a big shot and work your way up the servant. I mean, that's, you know, we're the only place like that. But that this, that there's something happens when we come together for the purpose of recovery. I go to my home group, I get there an hour before the meeting starts, and I do service, and I plant myself at the door, and I think greeting is one of the most, one of the greatest jobs in alcoholic synonyms. To remember how awkward and terrible I felt when I came to AA and I didn't know anybody, and then try to make a difference at that door. And I do that, and I love doing that. And something happens in alcoholic synonyms when we come together for the purpose of recovery. There's something in the midst that's greater than the sum of the parts. In a strong alcoholic synonyms meeting, where recovery and helping new, where the purpose is not narcissistic, the purpose is other-centered, you can feel the presence of something in those meetings. I think it's God. I think it's the promise of the second tradition that God, this ultimate authority, is expressing himself through this consciousness of this group.
And God talks to me in AA meetings. If I'm respectful, if I pull my head out of my butt, if I listen, if I'm not on my phone, if I'm there, God will talk to me. And he's talked to me hundreds and hundreds of times in AA meetings. And we've all had some experiences like that, where you're in a meeting and you're not doing very well. And you talk to your sponsor and you're just
[00:40:02]
like, you know, and here you are sitting in a meeting and a stranger will start to share, and it's exactly what you needed to hear. Exactly. Who's the choreographer of that? And that is the ultimate authority, expressing himself in this consciousness. And, you know, I've gotten sidetracked. You know, in AA it's easy to imagine that you're here for a long, a lot of different reasons. I think there was a period of time I was in, I went to young people's meetings especially. This is many decades ago. I was just, what's your primary purpose? Getting hooked up, you know. I mean, now I wouldn't have said that because it'd make me look stupid, but that was kind of it, you know. Or to share. That's why I didn't like speaker meetings in my early sobriety, because I couldn't talk. I think my name, I thought my name was, does anyone want to share, you know. And I'll tell you today, I love speaker meetings because I just sit there and let God talk to me. I don't have to worry about what I'm going to share. I just sit there and let it happen. But that wasn't always the case. And so why do I come, why am I a member of AA? In the long form, it's much different than the short form. Short form says desire not to drink. I don't, that's not even on my radar. I haven't even thought about a drink in over probably 45 years. But in the original third tradition, Bill says membership should include all who suffer from alcoholism. I'm an everyday member of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And I have service commitments. I sponsor people. And I have a sponsor. And I work the steps. And I try to, I stumble through step 10 and 11 every day. And I do all of that because I suffer from alcoholism. Now on a good spiritual hair day, I don't know. I don't think I'm suffering. I feel good. I'm good. I'm good. You can ask me, how are you doing? I'm doing great. But all I have, he was talking about just getting a little bit off.
Just get a little bit off. And I start to suffer from alcoholism. But it doesn't appear that way to me. Here's what happens when I suffer from alcoholism. It's like inside of me, I got this mechanism. I don't know what to call it. So I call it the noticer. And the noticer comes on. And when the noticer comes on, I just start noticing things about you. You know what I mean? Things that somebody should straighten up, you know. So I just, and I'm fine, thank you. But my God, everybody around me is stupid and just, oh. And once again, as Chuck Chamberlain said, there was one problem that contains all problems. And that was conscious and unconscious separation between me and you, and me and God. And I start doing this. And I don't even know I'm doing it, because my ego, as I'm separating myself and judging you, my ego is convincing me. It's chattering in my head. And it's using my voice, which is very deceptive. And it's telling me how I'm right. I'm not judging you. You really are stupid. And I'll build a case.
A case that I can go around and convince people. You're stupid. You're doing it wrong. And so I can suffer from alcoholism. The end result of suffering from alcoholism is depression. Depression is not necessarily an SSRI deficiency. Depression is one of the main spiritual symptoms of untreated alcoholism. It's mentioned in the book many times. Bill Wilson struggled with it. My sponsor struggled with it. That's why he did a lot of AA. And that's why I do a lot of AA.
Alcoholics Anonymous is the perfect, it's the perfect treatment for everything that happens within me once I quit drinking. Because I'm an alcoholic. You take away the alcohol, I'm left with the ick. And I need to treat that. I come to Alcoholics Anonymous because I have a sobriety problem. And if I don't do AA, you know what happens to guys like me? We will suffer our way back to a drink. And I went to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1971. And I needed AA then as much as I need it today. But I didn't, I spent almost.
Today, but I didn't, I spent almost, over 6, almost 7 years of hitting these horrible bottoms and swearing, they were so bad, I'd be swearing to myself, sometimes sobbing uncontrollably,
[00:45:04]
I'm never doing that again, and I'm even going to go to those meetings, and I go to meetings and I drink again, and I don't know what's wrong with me, 1978, here in Pittsburgh I tried to take my own life, I was in, I was in a lot of treatment centers here, I was, I think I was the 12 step practice dummy of Pittsburgh, a lot of people tried to help me here, but you can't help me because I fit the old adage, you can always tell an alcoholic, you just can't tell him much, and I'm defended, and I don't know it, and I'm suffering from alcoholism, and when I got sober in 1978, my first sponsor gave me a purpose in my life, I didn't know what he was doing, I thought he was just inconveniencing me, but he wanted me to do a lot of 12-step work, and he wanted me to do a lot of service in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I made the deal with him, I'll do anything you ask me to do, and I started doing it, and I remember the night, I was in a depression again, and I went to 20 meetings a week, because I discovered something early sobriety, depression has a hard time hitting a moving target, but I was sitting there, I'm between, I'm not doing nothing, I'm just by myself, and I don't know about you guys, but when I'm by myself, you know what I like to do? I like to think, I like to ponder my life, have you ever pondered your life and spiraled upward? Not me, I don't, I ponder my life and spiral into a depression, I'm sitting there, and it's bleak, and the future is bleak, and everything I think about is gonna happen, it's not gonna be good, and this job's no way, on and on, it's horrible, horrible, horrible, and I'm suffering, and I ended up on a 12-step call, through a bizarre series of circumstances, and I ended up spending the whole evening, until this morning, with a guy who was in bad shape, he was in bad shape, and when I finally, when they finally admitted him into the hospital, and I was driving home, I got it, because I was driving home, not only am I not depressed, I felt a rightness in me, that was very similar to the first time I ever got drunk, and you say to yourself, oh my God, I want to feel like this the rest of my life, I remember, I said that to myself, driving home, watching the sunrise, thinking to myself, just everything in my life was perfect, it was just right, my life had righted itself, as a result of these actions, and that was the, that was the morning I claimed what my sponsor had been trying to offer me for some time, and that's a primary purpose, that means it's before me, I think most of us get sober, and we have a primary purpose, it's ourselves, you know, me, me, what about me, you know, if you, I remember when my sponsor, pushing me to do 12-step work, I'm brand new, I'm only out of detox a couple days, a week maybe, 12-step work, be on a panel, oh God, it was just one, over, just relentless, and I said to him, I said, don't you think I should work on me for a while, oh my God, you'd think I peed on Bill Wilson's grave, I mean, oh my God, and he wanted me to forget myself, which is very hard, if you're obsessively self-concerned, to forget yourself is very difficult, and so I claimed that primary purpose, and you know, in the traditions, Wilson talks about the three things, I think in today's world, it'd be four things, but he says money, property, and prestige, you know, how many people do we watch leave Alcoholics Anonymous and seeking prestige, and seeking money, property, or you know, the other one he didn't mention, but I think in today's world, he would, is sex and relationships, those things will divert a guy like me from my primary purpose, because they stroke self, and all of those things can give a guy like me an illusion of control, an illusion that I, with enough money, I can, you know how much money I need, I figured it out, I know exactly, I need just enough money that I don't have to trust God, you know what the dollar amount of that is, five dollars more than you will ever have, so, and prestige, you know, in our 11th tradition, Wilson says something that's, God, this opens a can of worms for me, he says we must never promote
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ourselves, friends can recommend us to do things, we never promote ourselves, and we were talking about this at dinner, my first sponsor, I was, he had me chair the Alcathon meeting, meeting slot that my home group had in the holidays, my first holiday sober, and I was scared, I was terrified of public speaking, and I didn't know what to do, and I just, I'm a nervous wreck, I don't want to forget, everybody's going to be looking at me, and I said to him, I said, well, who do I call on, I'll never forget this, he said, don't call on anyone who really wants to share, I'm the chair, I've been a chairman of a conference of one sort or another for most of my sobriety, and this, we started, 20 years ago, we started a conference called State Line, and it was first year, it was unbelievable, I mean, we had, they started naming it, they gave it the name, the Woodstock Bay, because we had, you know, Sandy Beach, and Tom Iverson, Clancy, and Cliff, oh my God, it was just, Clint Hodge, it was just, it was, Ralph was there, it was amazing, it was so good that we don't know what, we don't know if we should fish or cut bait, I mean, it was like, spinning, wow, my God, this was amazing, and a guy comes up to me after the conference, and he says, yeah, it was pretty good, he said, you know, I talk a lot about the steps, I said, oh, good, that's nice, he said, matter of fact, I'll get you a set of cassettes of me talking about the steps, okay, fine, okay, he said, matter of fact, you don't need these other people, I could do the whole weekend, and what I said to him, a more spiritual person probably wouldn't have said, but I enjoyed saying it, and I said, I made it up on the spot, it's become true, I said, well, I bet you you'd be amazing, but it's in our bylaws, and now it is, it wasn't then, it is now, we can never have anyone speak who ever asked to speak, and he looks at me like, he doesn't know if I'm screwing with him or what, and I just walked away just kind of feeling that little warm spot in here, you know?
And why would Wilson say that? Why would he say we never promote ourselves? Because of selfishness and self-centeredness truly is the root of my problems. That's like arming the enemy. It's feeding something that should be starved. And I get it. I get the inclination in there. What about me? Look at me. You should have me. You should have me, me, me, me. But for me to do better here, I have to put these principles first.
In the eighth tradition, you know, Wilson says very explicitly, our 12-step work is never to be paid for, never. You know, in the early 40s, there was a guy named Jack Alexander. And Jack was one of those crackerjack investigators. You know, he'd find fraud. He'd find it all over the place. And he'd heard about Alcoholics Anonymous. And some of the things he was hearing about, A, he was skeptical. He found hard to believe that we were an organization of people that just served, that just helped other people, and we did it without any self-grandizement, without any prestige, without any property, without any money.
Nobody gets paid here. We just do it, as my grand sponsor Chuck Chamberlain used to say, for fun and for free. And that was true. And he investigated us, and he was amazed. There was nobody here with self-serving motives. These people are legit. They just exist, and they live their lives as if helping other people is the main deal for them. And they're on the square about it. I'll tell you, there's parts of this country, if Jack Alexander came to write that article today, he would see a different view of us.
He'd see people that are getting paid huge amounts of money to be sober coaches, people that are making millions of dollars off of all kinds of things, selling stuff. I don't think Jack Alexander would have had the same opinion of Alcoholics Anonymous today that he did in the early 40s.
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Our 12-step work should never be paid for. And I think this is the place we come to give, this is not the place we come to take. Why would I take here? Alcoholics Anonymous has given me a life beyond my wildest dreams. If I lived to be 120 years old and I served Alcoholics Anonymous every day of my life, I couldn't repay the debt. Truly. I remember Chuck Chamberlain one time said something, when he said it, it gave me goosebumps.
He said, we can't really see the light that AA brings into the world. If we could really see it, it would be so bright it would burn our eyes out. I don't think we even see, we see hardly any of it. How many people, they say a practicing alcoholic negatively affects 10 people. How many people does a guy who's all in, who's made all the amends and faced the people he didn't want to face, who's paid back all the money, who's devoted his life to helping others and their families, how many people does that guy affect in a positive way?
How many times you make amends to someone and he's so astounded that you paid him back the money, he starts thinking about somebody he owes money to and maybe he should do that. And the ripples, the ripples go out. Alcoholics Anonymous is an amazing place. And it's all the 12 traditions are designed, I think, with the steps and maybe sometimes more than the steps, for what Harry Thiebaud said we must have, ego reduction in depth.
And these principles practiced as a way of life will ward us, will protect us against the chronic nature of alcoholism. And the chronic nature of alcoholism is that you can surrender here, you can reduce your ego to nothing almost, and it grows back like a bad tumor. And you never get free of it. That's why I'm very active in Alcoholics Anonymous, because I have this ego disorder that will maneuver me back to drinking or taking something.
It just does that. I have to stay… For a guy who wants to be a big shot, I have to somehow keep pushing myself trying to be smaller. And I do it from service. One of the things I do two to three times every week is I go down to Skid Row. And I'm on a panel with a couple guys I sponsor usually into one of these detox meetings. I mean, you'll see stuff in these places you can't believe. I mean, you can go that far down. Yes, you can.
And I'll be there. And these guys don't know I spoke at Pittsburgh at a conference. I'm the guy that made them turn the TV off. That's who I am. I'm the annoyance. I'm not a big shot there. And I'm the guy who's there because I know that some of those people will die if something doesn't happen to just change their actions a little bit. And so I'm there thinking about them. And I'm there trying to say something that they'll identify with and encourage them to come out of there and come with us.
I'll come and pick you up. Come with us. I belong to an active group. We will make you feel welcome. We feed you at every meeting. Come with us. And every once in a while you catch one or two, you know. And for the five or ten that didn't make it, the one or two keeps your light lit. I got a couple guys right now. They're just brand new. I always need new guys because I don't want to be the guy who only sponsors people over 30 years.
Because, come on, if you're 30 years sober and you've had a foundation here, your ability to reduce my bondage of self is very limited. I need some crazy people. I need some nuts. I need some guys that are like Chicken Little and the sky's falling. I need those guys. And I always have a couple. I always have a couple. I found a life here in service in Alcoholics Anonymous. Cliff talked a lot about the 12th tradition.
Tradition. I'm sad to tell you that after nine years in general service and many, many, many tradition workshops, I didn't understand what they meant in the
[01:00:00]
Twelfth Tradition. Now, I could read the words and I understand the English, but when it says principles before personalities, here's what I thought. I thought they meant that I should put the principles of AA, which I assumed were love and tolerance, as our code, love and tolerance, acceptance, forgiveness, before, let's get honest, your difficult personalities. I was sober a long time before I realized the truth. There's only one personality I have to put those principles before in its mind. I am the source and the seat of all my judgment and my opinions and my conflict and my separation. I don't need to put these principles before your personalities. Your personalities are what they are. They're fine. They're none of my business unless I'm playing God. But I gotta put these principles before my egocentric, judgmental, opinionated, selfish, self-centered and fear-driven personality or else I'm capable of destroying myself sober. You know, one of the things it talks about in the Third and Fifth Tradition, and you'll hear this in general service, you'll hear a lot of workshops on this, is the singleness of purpose and singleness of solution. And we don't, and if you look at the Sixth Tradition, we don't have an opinion and we don't do anything that would even imply endorsement of anything other than what we have here in Alcoholics and Homelessness. So we're not against nothing. If you want to, if you do a Bible study in your home, that's great. We're applauding you. Just don't call it AA.
Because if you call it AA, it implies that AA endorses that. And we're not against it. Matter of fact, if it helps you, we're good for that good. But we don't do anything that even implies endorsement. And so, in Alcoholics and Homelessness, I've learned to try to find myself yearning for one of the promises in Step 10. And if I could have this in all areas of my life, and the promises were placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected, even from Bob and Bob's judgmental mind. Because when you're in neutral, you can rev your car engine all you want, you're not going anywhere.
You're just in, you're neutral. And I think that's just an amazing thing for a guy like me, to be neutral. Because I don't want to be in conflict. And I know what it's like. I've been through periods. I did it with the Big Book and the Steps. You know, I'll tell you one little story, it's kind of pathetic. You know, I was one of the first, I was the first guy in my area to ever do Big Book weekend stuff, you know, that kind of stuff. And it got to my head, well, where else was it going to go? I mean, you know, Jesus. And I remember, I was in this meeting in one of the clubs, and the subject was Step 4. And I sat there, and I'm listening to everybody share, and nobody knows what they're talking about. But I know, and this is one of those meetings where the chairman calls on people, I know at the end he's going to call on me, and I'm going to clean this mess up, straighten everybody out. You know, I know that, I know that.
And the end of the meeting comes, and he hasn't called on me. Now I'm sitting there, and I'm fuming, because I'm the only one that knows anything in the room, which is a lonely business, I'll tell you. After the meeting, I go up to him. And this guy's sober. The chairman is sober longer than I was. I was sober maybe, I don't know, 8-10 years, probably. He's sober longer than I am. He said, what did you think of the meeting? I said, it was a horrible meeting. He said, I thought it was a good meeting.
Nobody you called on, I don't even think, has worked the fourth step. He said, no, these people, they had some nice sharing. I don't even think you've worked the fourth step. He says, I've worked the fourth step. I said, oh yeah? What's it say at the bottom of page 66 and the top of 67? Huh? Huh? Huh? And he's looking at me like, what's wrong with you? What's wrong with you? And I'm sad to report that my ego could take the life-saving principles and actions of Alcoholics Anonymous and use them for self-righteousness and self-grandizement.
[01:05:00]
And use them even to separate me from you. When in truth they're designed to connect me with me and you. But the ego has no end to its hypocrisy. It will use anything. And the problem with self-righteousness is self. I'm feeding something that should be starved. And everything I'm talking about comes from my personal experience and the inclinations of having chronic alcoholism. I don't drink because of actions I take in Alcoholics Anonymous.
No, I'm a real alcoholic. Because alcohol, I did my share of drugs. But I did them to control and enjoy my drinking. Or to control and enjoy my abstinence. Because I had an abnormal reaction to abstinence. And alcohol, if you're the guy in the book that Dr. Silkworth talks about, if you have that one thing, that definitive thing that distinguishes you and sets you apart as a distinct entity from people with all kinds of other problems, then you have an abnormal reaction to alcohol.
And see, alcohol, there were drugs, different times in my life, you'd say, what's your drug of choice? Ah, this, that, this. Alcohol is not my drug of choice and never was and never will be. It was my drug of no choice. Because if I drink alcohol, I've got no more choice. You can end up in the hospital, as I have on a couple occasions, and be forced for a short period of time to take narcotics, and you can have some leeway with that.
You can even be diligent and have some choice and get off of it early and be okay and be fine. You go to that same hospital and the doctor comes in, as he did with me after a motorcycle accident, and say, listen, this is non-negotiable. If he would have said to me, instead of morphine, he said, we're going to give you 4 shots of 100 proof vodka every 4 hours. First time he gave me that 4 shots of vodka, I'd have been leaving that hospital, running down the street with that robe in the back, flapping, because I'd need to get to a liquor store.
Because alcohol is not my drug of choice. It's my drug of no choice. And I don't think, I think it's a lost art to interview people like it talks about in our book. We don't care what other problems you have. We all got other problems. We got a load of problems. But can you drink? Because I've seen members of AA come to AA and stay sober for 15 years and drink successfully. And they don't like it. That's the biggest travesty in the universe.
People who actually can drink don't like it and they don't want to. I mean, that's crazy. I was at a halfway house one night and this newcomer, he was so funny. He'd been relapsing for years. He says, OK, I know now. I finally know for sure I'm an alcoholic. But if I wasn't, I'd get drunk every night. I just wanted to hug him. I'd just say, yeah, me too, man. Me too. Me too. So I suffer from alcoholism.
That's why I do everything I do in AA. It's just to keep it at bay. Keep the madness, the selfishness, the obsessive self-involvement and self-focus at bay. Never goes away. But if I can keep it dialed down enough, I can live comfortably with you and with God and with myself. Thanks for listening. Thank you.