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Source: Myers R – BOX OF CHOCOLATES – 2025-02-27.m4a File: myers-r-box-of-chocolates-2025-02-27.mp3 Duration: 00:47:38
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Thank you, Ramona, I, I, you're a sweetheart, I, I, I do love you, and, and I, it's so fun being on this meeting, I, I, I've gotten myself into a little cul-de-sac with a bunch of meetings these days, and it, it, it, I get so spread out, and every week, every week, Chris says, you gonna go to Box of Chocolates this week, and I'm going, I don't, I only have one night a week that I'm not on a meeting, and I, and it's Thursday night, and I get, get, get sucked into a bunch of other stuff, but I miss so many of you, I miss seeing you familiar faces and, and it's just, it's just pretty special. Who knew, who knew that there would be people that I would know on these Dat Gum Zoom meetings that I would be so emotional every time I see them, it just makes me, it's just a big surprise, I didn't know it would ever be like that. The, for those that I haven't met, my name is Myers Raymer, I'm very grateful recovered alcoholic from Central Texas down north of San Antonio, my sorority date's January 15th, 88, two months after my twin brother sobered up, and he'll tell you that every time too, he, he, he'll just, I'm three minutes older than he is, so I'm the more, the wiser one, but, but he did get sober two months before I did, finally. Pretty, it's pretty special. I, I, Chris took me to my very first meeting, and, and I, I remember walking in, and I fell in love with that room, and with those folks, and, and I, I gotta tell you, it was a, it's pretty special. The one consistent thing about AA worldwide is that the rooms are always filled with the nicest people I've ever met in the universe.
I mean, just absolute sweethearts. Their meetings may vary some, and their ideas may vary some, and whatnot, but, but the, at the core of everything is a bunch of nice people that I can't wait to be around. Pretty, pretty cool. I'm one of these guys, I remember Chris crashing and burning in high school, and then later, I mean, it was just one disaster right after another one, and I would look at him, and I'm going, so far, that has not happened to me. I managed to drink, I'm one of those kind of guys that sort of drank recreationally for a lot of years, and then finally got to a place to where it began to completely fall apart, and, buddy, when it started, it was epic how quickly things crashed and burned, and I began to understand what hopelessness actually looked like, and I remember Chris seeing me really drunk one night at a, at a, he'd come over, and we were doing this big feed for a bunch of people, and, and he, I remember him looking at me, and he would go, you know, it, it does not have to be like this, and, and there was something about what he said, and the next morning, I got up and drank a bit and went to work and drank a bit more, and then about six o'clock that afternoon, I said, I'm, I'm gonna be done, and then the following day, he took me to my very first, first AA meeting, and I spent some years in pure heaven, not drinking, not doing those other outside issues, and things were, things were, were terrific.
It seems to me like 80% of the AA community, their story and my story seems to shift a bit here, because a lot of people get sober, stay sober, and everything is groovy. My deal is, I get sober, stayed sober, and then things got much better, really groovy, and then not so groovy, and then it just fell apart. By the time I got about four years in the, in the rooms, I am obsessing about a lot of things.
I'm a kind of a mental wreck at home. I'm dealing with anxiety issues, and we get some medication to fix that, and then I'm dealing with depression issues, and I, we can't seem to figure out what that's all about. I'm starting to manifest some craziness, and some of you all could relate to, to that. The irony in all of this is that I haven't worked the steps. I haven't, I have a sponsor in name only, and I'm going to six meetings a week, and I'm just simply a nut job, and I had a guy one time in a meeting, he said, Myers, you're nuttier than a squirrel turd.
And I thought, yeah, that makes sense to me, and, and because it, I was, the, and most
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of us have seen this. If you've ever sponsored somebody, you've probably watched this, this, this kind of way that this manifests, where we get clear of booze, we get clear of dope, and then we, it drifts off into something else, and now we're dealing with porn, or we're dealing with food, or we're dealing with gambling, or we're dealing with something. Somebody would ask me years later in a meeting after I got better, and they would say, Myers, did you never not, did you, did you not notice restless, irritable, and discontent?
And I went, I noticed it, but I've never read the book, so I didn't even know what it meant, and so it was kind of a frustrating place to be. I'm, guys, some of you all can relate to some of this stuff, like, I'm eating a half a gallon of Blue Bell ice cream every night, and my face is about this big, like this, I look like a little stick figure with a great big head, and, and the, the, some of you all that live in other countries, Blue Bell ice cream is something that's pure magic, and it's like, I'm hoping, if I get to heaven and there's no, no Blue Bell, we're going to have to have a chat.
We got to work out some kind of deal, because it, it's just, it's amazing stuff. Anyway, I'm eating a bunch of that, I'm buying clothes I don't wear, I'm buying music I don't listen to, I'm, I'm buying, I mean, I needed, I wanted to learn how to fly, and I'd already been doing a bunch of training, but there's something about the, the FAA doesn't want you to take a check ride when you're drunk. I think they're being picky little bitches, was what I think, but the reality of it is, is, is, they didn't want me in an airplane loaded, and so when I got sober, I thought, okay, I'll go take a check ride, and I'll be okay, but in order to take a check ride, I need to be in my airplane, not a rental, so I got to go buy an airplane, and then later, I buy another airplane, and then later, I bought another one.
Now, I just say it, y'all, who needs three airplanes? I got a text message the other day from a guy, we were talking about stuff, and he said, Myers, I've got six motorcycles, and I went, you're my homeboy, you, you get this, six motorcycles, golly. I don't recognize that, that I'm trying to scratch an itch there, that I can't seem to scratch, and I've watched lots of people do the same thing. They'll, they'll buy stuff they don't need, and, you know, I'm buying tools.
They used to call me Myers Ramer, the tool whore, because I'm buying thousands of dollars worth of tools, and I have a company, I have a building with my name on the side of the building, and I can write all this stuff off. My wife walked up to me one day, she said, Myers, what is that? And she points to this, the thing I bought, and I said, I don't know, really, but it's bad, I mean, it's really special.
I didn't even know what it was. I, it was just insane. Well, y'all get the picture, but with all of this manifesting, and then my depression eating me alive, I can't hardly function. I can't work. My wife is my business partner. She's the smart one. I'm just a strong back and a weak mind, and so I'm working hard, but when I finally got to a place where the depression was so bad, I couldn't go to work.
I couldn't deal with it like this, and so I'm at a place where I don't know what to do. So, I, I gather up my stuff one night, and I, and I, I remember going to a meeting, and I was going to, I'd written a little note, and I was going to do this little fall on my sword thing at the meeting and tell people I was leaving AA, and, and I was going to miss them terribly, and it was going to be just this kind of, you know, tear-jerking thing, and, and I start talking, and this guy, this guy named Horse Jim, he said, he said, Myers, he said, I don't mean to interrupt you, buddy, but let me, I think I've got the solution to your problem, and I went, dude, tell me.
I'm, I'm all in, and he said, I, I think you may be one of these guys that just needs to be in a meeting every day. I'm already going to six a day, and, and I remember looking at him, and I went, oh, okay, and I, I remember taking the little piece of paper that I'd written the notes on, and I wadded it up, and I put it down on my, my big book, and I, I remember walking outside that night, and I crawled up in my old Land Cruiser, and I put my head down on that steering wheel, and I cried, and I cried, and I cried.
I wept like a little kid sitting out there on the street. I didn't know what else to do. I mean, I, I don't, I don't want to die. I don't want to, I don't want to drink again. I don't want to, there's got to be a solution. Some weeks later, I called Chris, who now lives in the hill country where I am now, and I called Chris, and I just said, I don't know what I'm going to do, and Chris said, you know, I've been trying for years to get you to pay attention and, and kind of wake up to what we've been talking about, and I said, I know, I know.
I don't, what, what do you think I need to do?
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And he said, you need to get your butt out of that meeting where all y'all are doing is just talking about stuff, and go over and meet that old guy, I gave you his name, Cliff Bishop, and go talk to him, and they do a book study every week, and just go do the book study, and I thought, man, I, I don't know. I can't imagine intellectually how this is going to make any difference at all, but it did. It, it did.
I went and met him, and he was, he was a loving old bastard, and, and just old as dirt, and, and it was, it was a funny thing. He, he cared enough about me within minutes of meeting him. He cared enough about me to tell me the truth about what was going on, and I remember him looking at me and said, you know, Myers, I did, I don't have much hope for you. I don't know that I can, I can change this, the direction of where this is going, but if you'll stick with us for a little bit, we'll see what we can do, and I, my plan was to go to that meeting for three months, and I was going to go back over to that old home group, and be a big book guy, and kind of, you know, yeah, I know all about that big book.
I was just going to be an idiot, but, but I never did go back, y'all. It was the craziest thing. I never did. I, I stayed with those folks, and we studied, and, and started another book study after that, and had two a week, and, and we were awakened to a bunch of pretty cool stuff. Let me tell you why I talk about this stuff at all. I mean, obviously, the story, we, we want to relate a little bit. I get it, but the, the, there was an eye-opening event after event after event that happened after I got involved with these book study guys.
Everything began to shift. I want to tell you a real quick story. There, there was a guy named Dave, I think that was his name, that was a winter Texan that used to come down to Texas from someplace up north every summer, and I was working part time for a treatment place down in South Texas, and we had just closed our big bindery in, in, in Dallas, and I was just doing this every, every month. I'd go down there for ten days, and teach Big Book, and then go back to Dallas, and not really sure what I was going to do, and ended up staying down there for seven years.
It was pretty amazing how it worked out, but, but we were at a meeting one night. We used to take all these clients down there, these, the, the patients that were there, we'd take them over to this meeting, and this guy always shared last, and, and so he starts telling this story about taking his dog to the beach, and he didn't have a leash on it, and the cops got called, and it got ugly, and it was back and forth, and anyway, we're sitting there looking at the clock going, okay, buddy, just finish up, and I mean, what he's talking about has nothing to do with anything, he's just telling this story, and, and so he finishes the story, and then he sits there for a second, everybody thinks he's finished, and then he says, and before anybody steps in, especially those big book guys, and he pointed to me, and he said, I want you to know something that you need to know.
This book is about how to stay sober one day at a time. It has nothing to do about how we live our life, and I remember, I mean, I literally have smoke coming out of my ears, and I'm thinking, I'm in here with 60 patients from this, this hospital, and, and he's, he's talking about this crazy stuff like that, and I'm going, seriously, I didn't say a word, and the next day in big book, one of these guys said, Myers, I'm surprised you didn't jump in there, and I'm saying, buddy, I, I gotta tell you, I have, I've had the great blessing of being able to travel all over the world, and I've been in a lot of meetings everywhere, and people will say, well, you know, all AA's the same, isn't it?
And I'm going, no, not at all. If you're lucky enough to be in an area where people are doing what the book asks us to do, you're golden. It's going to be a pretty sweet deal, but what if you're not? What if you were raised, I never held anything against that Dave guy. God love him. I mean, he, he, we teach what we're taught, is an old saying, and, and it's the truth. If that's all we've ever been taught, that's what we'll teach, and that was my problem.
That was my, my nightmare, is that all I had been taught by the nicest people in the universe was that if I just go to enough meetings, I'll stay sober, and if I stay sober, I'll be okay. Well, so enter this cat that I always talk about. Enter Don Pritz. So Don Pritz is a, is a, an old dude out in Denver, Colorado that sobered up in the federal penitentiary system in the early 60s, and Don got out of, out of the penitentiary.
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studies. But in an old talk that Don did like that, one day I'm listening to it and Don said, I'm concerned, now this is Don talking, not me, Don goes, I'm concerned that these days we seem to be talking more and more about sobriety and less and less about recovery. And it was the first time that I've ever connected the dots that we had indeed as a fellowship in a lot of places, not every place, but in a lot of places, we had moved away from the idea of what recovery looks like.
We recovered from a hopeless state of mind and body. And we moved from that idea, which is, it's unbelievable how many times in the Big Book, it's one of the most reoccurring themes in the text, over and over and over again. Help and count how many times the word recovered is used. On page 90, they ask you to introduce yourself that way. Introduce yourself as a man who has recovered. And we ignore it.
And we buy into the idea that just sober is enough. Some of you, it may be okay. You may be fine. But having sponsored hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of men over the years, I'm telling you, it is amazing how many men have been sober 15, 20, 30 years, 40 years, and they are so amazingly unhappy. It's painful. And I'm not judging anybody because I'm the poster boy of that path. As Mark Houston used to always say, I smell more.
There is more. And I think it's smart to pay attention to it and at least give it a shot, at least give it a try, and see if maybe I'm missing some of this stuff. I mean, even the A.A. Grapevine magazine, our meeting in print, so to speak, even our Grapevine magazine had a cover a couple of years ago that said, just don't drink and go to meetings. Maybe they were just running low on ideas for a meeting cover, I mean, a magazine cover.
I don't know, but it's frustrating when we paint that kind of a picture. And so one of the things I love to do when I'm working with new people is to ask them, tell me what A.A. looks like to you. Tell me what you're dealing with, where you are. And I'm amazed at how many people have just simply got in, got sober, and then began to drift sideways. And then they don't really see that they're drifting sideways, they don't understand that.
But it's an amazing deal. Let me ask you a quick question. How many of y'all have ever, some of you have maybe experienced this, but how many of y'all have ever realized after you got sober that you began to see things that made you uncomfortable about who you really were, authentically who you really were? I mean, it's like, again, I'm the poster boy for doing this stuff. It's like I'm sober and I think, I mean, if you ask me what my problem is, I'm going to tell you my problem is Canadian whiskey and methamphetamines.
That's my problem. And you get that out of the picture, I'm supposed to be okay. Everything is fine. But what do you do if you wake up one day and realize that you're a conniving POS, that acting like a petulant three-year-old? I mean, I can remember my wife looking at me going, Mars, really? I mean, I'm jumping up and down like a little bitty kid over things that are just, damn. She's looking at me going, grow up, just put the big boy pants on.
Golly, you're killing me here like that. And I realized that she was telling me the truth. She was trying to be as straight with me as she could. I want to tell you another real quick story. There was a guy in our early AA group that I'll call him David just because it is, it's not his name, but David disappeared. We had 32 meetings a week in that club and he disappeared one time and I didn't see him for three or four days.
I didn't see him at all. And he showed up at a meeting and he was walking across the parking lot and I said, David, are you okay? And he goes, yeah. And I said, where have you been? He said, I'll tell you about it inside. And so we get down in the meeting, set up, and David was going to tell us a story about where he's been. And he had gone to some psychiatrist thing and working with a therapist and they were trying to help him figure out what he was going to be good at, a career choice.
And I thought, this is special. I said, what did they find out?
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And he said, well, after three days of testing, the therapist came in and said, well, David, you know, the good news is, is that you're healthy, that I'm a little concerned. You seem to be a perfectly well-adjusted adolescent. And David was 45 years old. And I remember thinking about that and looking at him like that. At first, I kind of just stared and then I went, holy cow. How could it possibly be that I am in the same position that he is, that I didn't realize who I was?
Go back sometime and read from the ABCs all the way over to page 63, where the third step prayer is. Go back and read those two and a half pages where Bill Wilson stops talking about alcoholism completely, doesn't even mention it. But he bitch slaps us with this weird idea that selfishness and self-centeredness, that could be the root of our problem. And you kind of go in like, really read it and just do it tonight.
Read it. And then in the morning when you get up, read it again and then noon tomorrow, read it again. And then and then I'm telling you, you you will be able to see unless you're just really for yourself and you're just pushing back. I was that guy just pushing back against it. If you'll read it, a lot of us will see that we are the stage character that Bill Wilson's talking about, which is hard for a lot of us to get a grip on.
Wait a minute. I'm a stage character? No, I'm not. I'm I'm I'm Mr. Special. That Cher in the meeting the other night when I had people, I mean, they wanted to applaud after I finished Cher. Y'all see how crazy this is? My head tells me that like that. But but. My wife wouldn't say that. She would say something completely different. I am a classic stage character and as inauthentic as I can be, I leave a meeting being a spiritual giant and then by the next morning I'm out at the airport riding motorcycles and flying airplanes and I'm cussing and gossiping and acting like an absolute jerk.
And there's nothing authentic about me. I care nothing about my character. All I care is what you think about. If we're voting on something, you bet your life. I'm watching who's OK, I'll vote with him. You see, that's what inauthenticity looks like. And that was me for a long time. I've had people ask me, well, how do you tell if you're the stage character? For sure. Let me tell you how I. If you are drifting sideways one, you'll start being hypersensitive to what restless, irritable and discontent looks like.
It'll manifest and you'll go, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Why do I? Why do I keep thinking about slugging that guy in the nuts? I mean, he's sharing something in a meeting and I'm just going like, why would he share that? I heard that yesterday. Why would he? This is exactly what the stage character looks like. Ask yourself. I don't I won't say that any place else except this meeting. Sorry. I did. I got carried away.
I'll be I'll be. I'll do better. I promise. Go back and look at the promises. Go back and read the promises, fifth step, ninth step, 10th step. It doesn't matter which read those promises. And then ask if they've manifested in your life. Is this is this is this just rhetorical stuff that Bill Wilson wrote or could these promises be real? Well, I always thought it was a joke. I mean, we're walking hand in hand with the spirit of the universe, really?
I mean, I and then after I started doing this stuff and I started doing what they're asking me to do, everything changed. And then I started reading those promises and went, holy cow, they're not kidding. This is a game changer because it's starting. These things are starting to manifest like that. This is this is huge, huge stuff to actually see who you really are. I think it was brilliant that Bill Wilson wrote those two and a half pages where he did and put them right there next to that third step right before that.
Because if you read it and you realize how. Compromised you are. Now, I'm not talking anything about booze or addiction. I'm talking about how just as individuals, men and women, how and how we're compromised. And we seem to to co-sign it. We seem to be OK with it like that. But once you see it, it's hard to unsee it. Once you see how selfish you've been, it's hard to unsee that. And fortunately, we've got some inventory right there that we're getting ready to do.
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And then all of a sudden we're we're faced with this coolness in six and seven where we get to admit what's objectionable and ask God to remove it. I mean, it's the perfect path to a completely different way of of living your life. It's just it's just a good deal. Cliff Bishop, the guy that sponsored me for years like that for decades, he was sponsored by Joe McWaney of Joe and Charlie. So that's where the book stuff started.
That's where, you know, you can kind of see where all of this is going. Joe would come down from Arkansas and from Little Rock, and he would stay with Clifford in Dallas. And I would come over and spend time with Joe and McWaney and Clifford. And we would eat breakfast together and just visit. We did it a lot. And one of the things it Joe never missed an opportunity to ask me questions. And it was like he enjoyed making me squirm.
And he was really, really good at it, too, like that. But one of the things that he said when I said, Mars, let me ask you something. Do you think you can overcome self by exerting more self? And I went, oh, yeah, you bet. You bet. And and he looked at Clifford and Clifford looked back at me, and they both kind of rolled their eyes. And it would take me a little while longer to connect dots and realize that if selfishness and self-centered is my problem, why do I need more of it?
I don't I don't need to go that direction. I need to go in the other direction, running and screaming away from all of that. And things would would would get better. I asked Joe one time, I said, Joe. Sometimes I think you're trying to make it easy on me. I know you are. I know you're kind like that. But I'm always concerned, though, that I don't know, maybe I'm making it too complicated. And he said, Mars, I've been trying to tell you for two years that you're trying.
You're too complicated. You need to understand. And I said, can you make it simpler? And he said, oh, yeah, Bill, Dr. Bob did it. Everything that we do is about our time with God and our time with God's kids. Step twelve and step eleven. We're either going to do this stuff and focus on this stuff or we're not. But I'm amazed at how many of us get sober, get things on the path, get that girl, get that truck, get that job, get everything.
And then all of a sudden we just drift away from the things discipline wise that we're supposed to be doing. I always I always tell the story and it always makes me laugh still like that. There was a lady that sent me an article one time from the Akron, Ohio, some intergroup office there in Akron. And I read it and it didn't I don't know, it didn't hit me with anything. I just I said, thanks for sending that.
And she said, you didn't see it, did you? And I went, what are you talking about? And she said at the very bottom of that page, read what it said. And at the very bottom of that page, it said alcoholics, the only group of people on God's green earth that takes what works and then stops doing. And I remember going, damn, it's because because it's the truth. It's the truth in my story and it's the truth in the stories of so many people that I know.
We take what works and then we just simply stop doing it. We drift sideways. We quit putting the emphasis on the things that were were important. Let me. Let me let me tell you a couple of things that there are. How many of you all have ever spent enough time in these rooms that you had these aha moments where you just everything is kind of the same and then all of a sudden somebody said something?
It's usually some knucklehead in the back of the room. It's been there three days and he says something. You go, wait, stop. What what is this? What did he just say? And all of a sudden you connect up these things like that. Clifford in these big book studies, we'd have two hundred and twenty five people in those book studies on Tuesday night and he'd go, Myers, look, look right here, Cliff, let me finish and then we'll we'll talk about I'm chairing it and he goes, no, you I've never seen this there.
And I'd start laughing. I go, yeah, I know. But it's the absolute truth. And one of the things that always blew me away that I never saw before was how many times work and self-sacrifice for others is used in the big. I mean, it's a it's a complete game changer how often this stuff comes up and and then. It comes up so often that it's that it's. It comes up so often that it should be carved in stone and glowing and we'd see it and we couldn't
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unsee it, but the reality of it is it comes up and then we just ignore it like, well, yeah, I'll get around to that stuff. There's another piece of that. How many times is the word approached used in the Big Book? Twenty-four times. Approached. We weren't supposed to wait in meetings for people to come see us. We can, but what Bill and those cats originally came up with, the first 100, was this idea that we were supposed to approach folks, that we were supposed to go get them and pull them with a vision of how amazing their life could be transformed if they just do what we do and then we need to be clear on what it is that we're trying to do.
Listen, I talk about this all the time, this idea. Go back and look at There Is a Solution and More About Alcoholism. Five different times. Now I'm sounding like a book nerd, aren't I? I swore I'd never get this way and all of a sudden I find myself this way. It's just, but that's okay. Five different times they refer us back to There Is a Solution and More About Alcoholism because those two chapters explain what alcoholism is. So if you got a Big Book, no, you don't even reach for it. I'm going to read a little piece right here because I just want you to see this. I'm on page 17 at the very bottom of that page, two-thirds of the way down. The feeling of having shared a common peril is one element in the powerful cement which binds us. I'm going to hold my finger right there so I don't get lost.
It's one element in the powerful cement. When Chris or Brian or somebody shares something, a story with me like that, and we can relate, this is pure magic like that because you can connect on a level that you can't connect with anybody else like. It's important stuff. But look what Bill wrote next, which is just part of me loves him for doing it, part of me hates him for doing it because it made things a little more complicated for me to get.
Look at what it says, but that in itself would never have held us together as we are now joined. Ah, crud. The tremendous fact for every one of us is that we've discovered a common solution. What's the common solution? You need to know what alcoholism is and how to teach that, the physical component and the mental component and the spiritual component, which they'll talk about later like that. But if you don't understand that part of it, you're going to be pretty ineffective at teaching it. Then all you have is your story.
But what if our stories don't line up? I mean, I could tell you a story about Chris P. I could tell you stories about his stuff like that, and they're completely different than my story. There's a lot of barnyard animal stuff in there. There's a lot of other things. I mean, it's pretty, no, I'm just kidding you. Chris is going, where'd he go? No. Y'all understand what I'm saying like that? We have to have more than just the story at some point in time. We're going to pull them with that story. And then at some point they say, stop, quit. Don't do it. Don't talk right now. Look at Jim's story and Fred's story. It always makes me smile. Jim's story and Fred's story, both these cats come in, gets over, leave, get loaded again, and then they come back. And in both of the illustrations in Jim's story and Fred's story, they say exactly the same thing.
We told them what we knew about alcoholism. It didn't say we told our story again. It said we told them what we knew about alcoholism, which is a game changer because you can pull them with a vision of the damage they've done. You can pull them with all of that information. They can relate on that level. But at some point in time, you got to give them some hope that there's a different way to live our life, that there's something that's going to change everything about who we are and what we are. The problem with my early sobriety in that first bunch of years that I was sober is that everybody was there wanting to share their story and it was beneficial, but at some point it ran out of steam. There was nothing else worth listening to. That's the reason why statistically we have so many people coming to AA, but not so many staying in AA because we're not offering what they need, which is just, and I'm not being judgmental necessarily. I just, I want to be as kind as I can be about it, but I also want people to take a hard look at it and realize at some point in time, we got to go, okay, let's talk about the solution. Let's talk about what this looks like. If your recovery is centered around going to a bunch of meetings,
[00:35:01]
you're going to struggle. If your recovery is centered around a relationship with your creator and the ability to affect change in the lives of other people, then there's a really good chance that not only are you going to stay sober, but there's a really good chance that your life is going to be completely transformed. That's some heady stuff. Truly, truly it is. I think this is the reason why I'm so passionate about this stuff. I want to wrap some of this stuff up real quick. I am. I'm 10 years sober and I still have never sponsored anybody. I'm convinced that I'm not going to be good at it. If I'm going to suck at it, there's no reason to drag somebody with me, so I'm just not going to do it. I said something one night to Clifford and he was really frustrated with me. You could tell he was like, I mean, I remember he invited me into this little back room and he took his glasses off and he looked at the ceiling and he just kind of, he said, Myers, I want to tell you one more time and then I think we're probably done. I thought he meant done until the next meeting on Thursday. What he meant was we're done done. He said, unless you can figure out a way to get clear of this idea that all you have to do is sit in meetings and you'll get spoon fed what you need to hear, this program is about action. One of the actions that they talk about is work and self-sacrifice.
Until you get busy sponsoring people and carrying the message, you're not going to reap the benefits and this is always going to seem kind of goofy to you. I remember thinking, well, what do I do? He looked at me and said, tomorrow night I want you to go to Salvation Army. I said, okay, I will, but I go every Tuesday when you're out. I mean, every Wednesday when you're out there, I go. He said, I know, but you don't do anything, Myers. You go out there and you get on your phone and you pass a few books out and you wave at people you know at the facility, but you don't ever do anything. He said, tomorrow night I'm going to get you to do some stuff. I went, okay, that's good. I show up out there at the Salvation Army. It's a huge facility in Dallas. I go out there.
There's 170 men in this room and I'm looking around and Clifford's not there and Don's not there and Ed's not there. Nobody is there but me. To this day, they swear that they didn't set me up, but they did. They did. Nobody showed up and I'm facing all of these guys all by myself and I've got one choice. I can either, well, two, I can either walk out the door and say, screw it, and we'll lose the gig, which we've had forever, or I can stay and do it. I did and it went pretty good. We got through it and at the end of it, this guy says, hey, Mr. Myers, can you come back tomorrow night? I went, yeah. How many of y'all have ever had conflicting emotions at the same time? There's one piece of me that was going, holy cow, that dude just asked me to come back.
I couldn't remember anybody ever doing that. There was another part of me that went, damn, if I had just walked a little faster, I could have got out that door and I could have milked this for 10 years. I'd go, yeah, I carried that message out to Sally. That's what my plan was. Well, it didn't work that way. The next morning, I was completely changed. I'm looking at the clock and it's early in the morning. I haven't even gone to work and I'm thinking about the talk that night. I'm thinking about what we're going to study. I'm thinking about what we're going to do and I call Clifford. Along about two o'clock in the afternoon, my wife, again, my business partner, looks at me and said, well, get in the game. What are you doing?
And I'm going, well, I got to go back over to the Salvation Army tonight. And she said, what time? And I said, it's eight o'clock. And she said, it's two o'clock in the afternoon, Myers. Come on. And I went, OK, OK. I'll see you later. I got to go. I got to go get ready. And so I go home, get ready, go all the way back over there and walked in the door. And we had I always laugh about it like that because I felt like Jimmy Swagger. I was real hot and I was sweating. And I had my big book up like this and I was walking in like this and we were going to have us a big old time with the big book. And and it was awesome. We got through the whole thing. I don't know how, but we did. And at the end of it, this guy said, Mr. Myers, will you sponsor me? And somebody else goes, me too, me too, me too. And I ended up with four people that I was sponsoring that night at that gig. And and all of a sudden I'm sitting out in the car calling Clifford going, Clifford, I got a real problem here. I got four guys that just asked me and he started laughing. And I said he he said, I'll get back with you in a minute.
[00:40:03]
And I guess he kept laughing because eventually he called me back and he said, OK, I'm ready. I'm ready to talk. And we we worked it out. I don't know of anything in my life that has changed who I am and what I am and why I'm around more than being of service and being able to help other people. And I gave up a long time ago trying to figure out. How many of y'all have ever crawled up in your head, talked yourself out of something that you really needed to do? I mean, I've seen men do it with relationships. I've seen people do it with jobs like that. I'm just like, I can't leave. Well, they're going to fire me anyway, so I'm just going to quit. I mean, I'll crawl up in my head and I'll just make this. Well, she's going to dump me anyway, so I'll just I'll dump her like that. And then later you think back and go, what the hell did I do all that for like that? I'm telling you, the worst place you can be is up in your head. I think that's the wisdom of Bill Wilson. And the first 100 was that they were trying to say, I mean, stop and think about this. If Bill Wilson sitting in the Mayflower Hotel had sat there and not done anything, the action he took was picking up a phone and he started making telephone calls. But can you imagine what would have happened if he just stood there another 10 minutes up in his head, rocking back and forth? They're laughing down the hallway. He's going to go down there and have one beer. No, just three beers. I'm just like, you already know where it's going like that. We would never have been here.
I mean, it was a pure miracle that it worked out the way he did. But in order for the miracle to happen, he had to get off his butt and do something. And that's why I'm so I'm so fixated on the idea of trying to be of service and go do some things like that, because I want this to be as transparent as I can. For four years and years in Dallas, I carried the message to the Salvation Army and to Homeward Bound, another place where they're pulling people right in off the street for years and years and years. And I would go out there Wednesday night and Friday night. I'd go to either one of those places. And and I got to tell you, there are a lot of mornings when I would wake up and I would I would just kind of open my eyes early in the morning and look out the window and I'd go, it's Wednesday. Oh, damn, it's Wednesday.
I got to go to Salvation Army tonight or I got to go to Homeward Bound tonight. And and then I would go because that's what we're supposed to do. And I would go over there and I'd walk into this building that smelled like it's a concrete building that's two stories tall that look that smells like urine inside. And it always it always smelled the same. Every time I'd walk in, I put my hand over my nose like this because it I'd go upstairs, sit in the hallway because they didn't have rooms up there for us. And we do this meeting in the hallway. And then after the meeting, they'd let us walk out on a on a fire escape and walk down outside. And guys, I'm telling you, I'd get done with that thing and I'd walk out on that fire escape and I would take my first fresh breath of air and I would look out across the skyline of Dallas and the sun would be going down and you could see this epic picture. And my homeboys and girls would be downstairs cutting up and laughing in the parking lot, leaning against their trucks. And we'd just be having I'd go down with them and we just had be having a big old time like that. And I'd crawl in my truck and put on some old Marvin Gaye and I would drive all the way back an hour drive back to where I live. And and it would be like pure heaven on that way back. If I could make you do something, if I could make you willing to do something, it would be get involved with anything, any way that you could carry a message of hope to a bunch of folks that may never make it to AA.
We always think that they will, but statistically, most don't come. Most of them will will will fail before they get to us. So if you can go someplace else, my home group had 52 meetings a week other than our meetings where we were carrying the message, 52 meetings a week. And we had 13 places that we were carrying the message on Wednesday alone. But it was a game changer. If you're not sponsoring, come on, come on. Let's let's get busy.
I love being sober. But more than being sober, I love the fact that a crusty old bastard from Central Texas could affect change in people's lives that he never thought that he could. We were laughing at a Bible study of the day, somebody was talking about miracles and they wish that they could see one. And I started laughing. about miracles and they wish they could see one, and I started laughing. Some of them in there, a lot of the people aren't in our program, and I would see them in there, and they said, wait a minute, you've seen miracles?
[00:45:01]
And I went, yeah, thousands of them, thousands of them, come on, it's crazy. We should be locked up or dead, and we're here burning up a little time with a crusty old guy. Listen, I love y'all more than you'll ever know, and if I can help in any way, y'all let me know, okay? Thank y'all. Super Myers, for sure, thank you so much. Thank you, everybody, for joining us tonight, where you never know what you're gonna get.
You have to keep coming back. We surely hope you'll be here next Thursday. Our special guest is Billy N. from Palm Springs Garden, Florida, and yeah, that's a good one, y'all. If you like this meeting, please do as Bill Wilson said, pass it on. You can help others right from your phone or computer by telling them about this meeting. Billy N. is invited to hang out on the back porch with us after the meeting, and Myers, do you have any closing comments, and will you close us out with a prayer of your choice?
Well, I would, I gotta tell you, I get real emotional when I look across this gallery and I see how many of you I've seen for years and years and years, Tali, and some of you guys just dab, some of y'all just make me weepy when I see you like that, because it's just so, you've been around and you're doing the same stuff and helping folks, and it's always a trip to be a part of this fellowship. I do have a prayer, some of you may have heard it, it's an old school prayer called the Lord's Prayer, and I'll say it real quick, and we can get on down the road.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil, for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen. Woo! Good job, Meyers! Thank you, Meyers.
Thank you, buddies. Thank you, Meyers. Thank you, Meyers, that was wonderful.