Archival note: The source recording ends during the closing discussion.
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Source: Unidentified Historical Recording – Tom I Mens Fall Retreat Vancouver BC Part 2 of 2 – Date Unknown.mp3 File: tom-i-tom-i-mens-fall-retreat-vancouver-bc-part-2-of-2-aa-2010-archive-14402.mp3 Duration: 00:41:52
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That, I get a lot of stuff, you know, through e-mails, you know, coming in the computer. That's the most galvanizing thing I've ever read. It's particularly galvanizing for me because I've seen it so many times personally. You know, not just once or twice, but I've seen that repeatedly over the years. And it's always a sad thing to see when you see that go down that way. You know, I had a good friend who was a Methodist minister.
Fine guy. You know, he had a nice church up in the state of Virginia. And was a good guy with a family. Very respected in his community. And a real good guy. But you just never know what's going on on the inside. You know, that he did just exactly, not exactly the same thing, he didn't take a rope. But here he was, a very successful minister in a large town. One day he got to the point that the best thing he could think of was drive out in the woods and shoot himself.
And so it happened, my God, just over and over and over. I'll tell you one other one. I could tell you a hundred, but I'll just tell you one other one. I had watched at the door one night, saw a guy come in that I knew a little bit. And he'd never really gotten into, he visited an awful lot. But never had really gotten in, didn't belong to a group or anything like that. I'm going to start dressing.
But he just was one of those guys that you see around. And I saw him come in one night. So I started over there to catch him. And I was just going to, how do you do, and welcome him into the fold. And he saw me coming and he bolted out the door. Well, I don't know, that just brought out the hunter instinct in me. So I took off after him. But I swear to God, the boy was fast on his feet. And so I'm chasing him around the church where we met.
And later afterward, I thought, my God, suppose some news folks have been filming. This is the way they do it. Oh, Jesus. But same thing happened to him. He got away and then wound up shooting himself in front of his family. And so it just happens. A lot of times we deal with this sort of thing at the nuisance level. Guess what, he's not very serious about it. He's not getting in very deep. He's not doing anything.
But I tell you, those cases bring home to me very vividly that if I really want good, solid recovery, I have to do the things that make good, solid recovery happen. And so I just alluded to it a little bit. When I was getting introduced to the program there and it started to work for me, I did those steps. The best I know how. And lo and behold, if there's ever been a human on the face of this planet that hates a prison worse than me, I'd like to see them because I don't think I've ever met anybody that I could see hated that kind of an existence as much as I did.
I mean, I flat despised it every second that I was there. And just the kind of environment that's not supportive of anything positive or anything like that, just a predatory environment where man is inhumanity to man's routine behavior. And I sat in my cell one night, helpless to do anything about it, and listened to a young fellow get his head beat in with a hammer over a package of cigarettes. A package of cigarettes.
And what goes behind that. Insulting me or something. Just goofy stuff here. And listen to that and do nothing about it. And so even in that kind of an environment, I became literally a free man in every way that counted except physically. Probably the least important. But I became a free man. I became somebody who was functional, who cared about other people. I became a leader. I was respected in an environment like that where you usually don't respect anybody that's not the toughest guy on the earth.
I was respected because I stood up for what I believed in. And I was trusted by people that didn't even know me. You know, just because of the program. It wasn't me. It just gave me the ability to live. And I tell you the thing that, in case you're in the fog, I don't want to give you a sales job with this,
[00:04:59]
but I just want to tell you the truth of what happened with me.
[00:05:05]
You know, I believe without, I don't believe, I know that this program will produce genuine joy. Genuine joy that never ends unless you want it to end. People ask me how long you stay on a pink cloud. We call it a pink cloud or a honeymoon phase or something. People ask me how long that lasts. You know, what I'll say, because it's what I believe, is some people will tell you that it'll run a span and it'll tail off.
That's just flat wrong. That is wrong. You know, it'll last as long as I do the things that make it happen. Not a minute longer, but not a minute less. Because it doesn't run its course. It's a way of life. And just like this guy was talking about there, that he didn't get into the whole program. He just got into survival level at the superficial level instead of becoming a free man. And that's what happened at the institution.
I guarantee you, I never learned to like it. I mean, I hated it the day I left, but I was a good citizen. I was a good citizen. And I'll tell you, the kind of thing that can happen, this is the most I'm going to talk over the weekend. I'll get it done, and it's y'all's time. Y'all means all of you. Maybe a language barrier. But what happened with me, all I'm trying to do is do my time. But I became a pretty functional guy.
I was a barber in there. Good job. I wasn't very good at it, but I mean, I was persistent. I wouldn't give up. And cut a guy's ear off one time. But it wasn't a whole ear. I mean, nothing to get excited about. It was just the top of it was all it was. But he took real exception to that. He wanted to fight and all that kind of stuff. But I'm the only guy in there that could legally have a straight razor.
That changed his mind. He didn't want to fight. He wanted to back off and cuss. I let him do that. But anyway, I did that. I made it a practice. I made it a practice in the group. I would give people their going home haircut. And, you know, you want to do the best you can when somebody's going home. They want to look good as they can. And so I'd always take a little time with them and try to get them.
And when I'd get a guy in the chair, it was amazing how many times I saw this. I'd get a guy in the chair that had been active in the group, you know, that I thought looked like a pretty decent member. And I'd get him in the chair and say, well, you're getting out. Hey, where are you going? Detroit. What are you going to do? Going to work at Ford, you know, or General Motors or somewhere. Okay. And I would say, where are you going today?
And I can't tell you how many guys I've had that would just jump back in the chair and look at me and say, man, you're serious about this stuff. I said, you better believe I'm serious about it. Serious as a heart attack. And I also had the job of giving the welcome back haircut. I guarantee you I took time with that one. Because, very frankly, I learned as much from losers as I do from winners. Now, I'm kind of a cold-blooded dude that way.
I mean, I will flat capitalize on losers. Because I want to learn from folks who teach me how not to do it. And so I get guys in the chair who come back and say, I want you to tell me something. No junk. Tell me what happened. Why did you leave here and then turn right around and come back? And it nearly always would be the same thing. Well, I meant to do something. I meant to get there. And you've heard the story yourself.
I don't need to recite it. But that taught me something. I learned a lot from losers. When it was time, yeah, I've had a lot of remarkable things happen in my recovery that really defy imagination. I had a guy, I was not a guy, but I was called in when I'd been in there about three years or so, something like that, on a 15-year maximum sentence, the parole eligibility would be one-fourth of the maximum.
When I only had two years in, the parole commission sent for me, the state parole commission sent for me to come over to some office building. So I went over, and the chairman of the board met me at the door, and he introduced himself, and he said, you probably wonder why you're here.
[00:10:01]
And I said, well, it had occurred to me. He said, about once every 10,000 cases, we'll pick out a case that you think is a remarkable example of restoration or rehabilitation or something like that. And he said, we decided to take a look at your case. And I said, well, I appreciate that. That's quite an honor. And it really is. If you're one out of 10,000 cases, it says this is worth taking a look.
And he told me right away, he said, but I'll tell you up front, we're not going to parole you, because the crime is too serious and the time served is too short. And I told him very honestly what I believed. I said, I agree with you 100 percent, because even though a crime like mine is what they call a casual offense, you can't get any more serious than two lives, and there is no adequate punishment.
I mean, you can stay there forever or be executed over and over. There is no adequate punishment. But there is such a thing as just a reasonable kind of a balance in that thing. And so I knew that it was just premature. And so sure enough, exactly what he said, when the eligibility time came, I walked out. He told me I'd walk out that gate, and I did. Fully prepared to go. Went to the street. What I had was a strong program.
Good thing I did. Good thing I did. Because I tell you, everything that calls itself AA and flies the flag ain't it. I'll tell you that. We've got an awful lot of stuff that flies the flag that doesn't even look like AA on its worst day. And when I got out, I'm looking forward to being right in the heart of all the good stuff. You know, we're going to be doing it just like the General Service Office and all that.
The first meeting I went to when I got out of that institution was the worst meeting I'd ever been to. I'd never been to it. If we'd have had a meeting that bad in prison, somebody would have got hurt. I mean, don't get me wrong. But it was going on just like it was good. And the group that I was planning to go to had one member. The one that had written me a letter got hired back by a company, and he moved away by the time I got out.
And the only thing left was one old man. I mean, he was old. I'm not talking about like us. This was an old dude. And he was the treasurer. Well, there wasn't nobody else. So he was the treasurer, and he literally kept the money in a coffee can. And with him, the biggest problem with him would have been putting money in it and not taking it out. But anyway, he was the only sign of life. Great old fellow.
Great old fellow. But, I mean, he was pretty much over the hill. And so I hit the street, and I'm coming out of a live wire group. I'm coming out of a strong group where we're hustling and moving and doing stuff. And I hit the street, and it looked like death is on somewhere. I mean, good God. And my first thought was the city is 25 miles away. The biggest city in the state was 25 miles from where I live.
I said, shoot, I'm not staying here in this rinky-dink, Mayberry-looking thing. I'm going over to the city to get some action. Then a troubling thought occurred to me. When do you become responsible? When do you step up to the plate? When do you take some responsibility? When do you have some ownership over the lack of a good solid group? Well, the answers were obvious and troubling. And I didn't go anywhere.
I stayed right there and had a marvelous, marvelous experience of developing Alcoholics Anonymous in a town. Wonderful experience. He can tell you what page he's on. I think it's 164 where he talks about the thing of when you get to a town and you don't know who's there and whatever. Start it. Start something. Get something going. What a marvelous experience. And I had that experience. I'll give you one example.
APC, Cooperation with Professional Communities, where we work with people who capture alcoholics, is basically what it is. And I don't think you'd ever heard of that in that town. I didn't know what I was doing. But back then, we did an awful lot of 12-step calls. You know, where somebody would make a call for help, and then somebody would go see them and work with them. That was what existed before treatment came into the world.
And I got a call one night from a guy that he's the first kind of a high-level manager-type person that had ever gotten hold of.
[00:15:03]
And I learned that people usually make 12-step calls, either because they wanted to get sober or they wanted to get away from their husband or wife so they could get a drink. He was of the latter variety. And so I messed with him. I always made it a rule on 12-step calls that I wouldn't let him drink until I was convinced I couldn't help him. And then if I got convinced I couldn't help him, I might even buy him a drink.
Yeah, but then if you can't make a sale, make a friend, eh? And so that's a good investment for the future. So one night I had this call with this guy, and he was obviously the one that was escaping his wife. So I rode him around, messed with him about 3 o'clock in the morning. And finally I said, where's your favorite bootlegger? I thought I knew everyone in that county. He knew one I didn't know.
So he named a woman over there, and I swear it looked like an opium den in Calcutta. It was a mess. Drunks laying everywhere. And there had never been a raid in the history of that county, but they decided to have one. And so I looked out the door, and here come police cars from everywhere. Surrounded that house, you would have thought, my God, they had a riot going on. And all it is is just a bunch of crumbled up drunks on the floor.
But here they came, storm troopers charging in. And they're hauling these drunks. And I noticed one cop kept looking at me. He cut his eyes open at me. Finally he couldn't stand it anymore. He came over there, and he said, Mr., what are you doing here? I said, you wouldn't believe it. And he said, well, try me. And so I told him what I'm doing. He said, you're right. That's the damnedest thing I've ever done.
And so we visited. He gave me the drunk. Didn't lock him up. Gave me the drunk. And gave me that old rotgut whatever it was. It had never seen a liquor store, I promise you now. Some of them built that thing. And gave me that. And from then on gave me help. You talk about cooperation with professional community. From then on, I think he wrote my name on the jailhouse wall. If you've got a problem with one, call this guy.
Call this guy. And that's how the group got started there. It was just that kind of stuff, just rolling. And when I left there two years later, we had 60 people in that group. That's all it takes is just one person with a little fire, a little bit of imagination, a whole lot of willingness to jump in and do the work. And stuff happens. You know who the winner was. You know who the winner was. This guy right here.
And I grew enormously from that experience. Did things that I'd never done. I had been trained to do stuff like that. But I just jumped in, just following the instincts. I got a higher power. I got a boss. A real good boss. Used to keep me from getting in trouble. So it really, really, really got moving. And so that's who I was. And you never know what's going to happen. When I hit the street, the only thing I wanted, I just wanted to be a citizen.
I never had. I lived in towns, but I'd never been a citizen. I never paid taxes. Never voted. I never had any concern about anything in a neighborhood or anything like that. I wanted to do stuff like that. I wanted to vote. I never had voted in my life. Never paid taxes, unless they took it away from me. Because I never did give it to anybody. They'd just take it if they wanted. And so I wanted to do stuff like that.
And when I had been, I want to just tell you about a few things that happened. I mean, this is not Disneyland or something, where just remarkable stuff happens every day. But I really believe that when God has work for me to do, the way will open up. I don't believe that. I know that. I know that without any question. And if there's anything blocking, my higher power will take care of it. What I'm talking about, when I hit the street, for obvious reasons, I had on my parole papers, this man should never operate a motor vehicle.
Never. And that was fully understandable. Fully understandable. And I never even considered. I accepted that. It's a fact of life. And when I'd only been out about two months, I'm on parole from a maximum custody facility. I'm stationed in the state of North Carolina. My parole officer came to me one day and he said, Tom, you're really active. And I said, hey, thank you. And I said, yes, sir. And I thought he was going to say I needed to slow down.
I knew I wouldn't. And he said, wouldn't it help you if you could drive?
[00:20:03]
And I said, yes, sir, but I can't. As if he didn't know. I mean, my God, he had the parole papers. And he knew what the verdict was. And he said, well, let me check it out. And he did. And then he called me just a short while later and said, can you meet me at the Sears store uptown? Now, this really does sound country. But, well, it is. But Sears store was where the license counter was. He didn't have an agency.
He had a counter. And so my sister drove me up. I could see my guy standing back there. I walked up to him. And he introduced me to the fellow I didn't know who was the license examiner. And so we outed. And the guy said to me that I didn't know. Mr. Logan, my parole guy, says that you might be interested in having your driver's license. And I said, well, yes, it would be helpful. And don't ask me to explain it because I can't.
I can't. What I do know is that my boss has a different rule book than what most people have. And just stuff happens, you know, that I don't need to understand. And I'll never understand it. But the guy asked me that, and he handed me a driver's license. Didn't even ask me if I knew how to drive. I don't need nothing. No test. Nothing. I mean nothing. Didn't even pay for it. Only cost $4. I think I could have paid that.
Ain't legal, is it? But I've been driving ever since. It's what I'm talking about. When God has a word for me to do, I can't explain that. Any lawyer could tell you that isn't supposed to happen. But I've been driving now over 50 years with that, not the same license, I've changed it a few times. But an amazing thing, eh? And stuff happened. I went to prison the second week I was out to visit an AA group.
Two months later, I was a Southside sponsor. I'm trusted to be the trusted servant to give the leadership in that facility. And a marvelous thing. I was a DCM. Five months after I was out, I was DCM for my district and state. So things were going very well for me. Really good. And one day, I'd been out just about two years. Not quite two years. And I got a phone call one day, and a few of you in here know this.
It's an unbelievable story, but you can believe it. The phone rang and I stayed at my mother's house. So I got on there, and the guy on the phone was somebody I had met once. He was one of those that came from the headquarters and would go out and visit facilities around the state. And he apparently was visiting a facility where I sponsored the AA group. And I think somebody told him to go by and give me a little encouragement or something.
And so he came by and we probably spoke for two minutes. And that was the guy on the phone. I remembered him. And so he told me what he said. He said, Mr. Ivester, we are expanding the rehabilitation program in our prison system, and we were wondering if you would consider accepting a position. That still sounds ludicrous to me. To this day. On the day of that phone call, there had never been one person on the face of this earth who had ever been employed as a professional employee in a prison system.
And I knew that. I was well aware of that. And I knew they weren't going to start with me. But I said to the guy, the first thing I said was, do you know who you're talking to? And he said, yeah, yeah, yeah, we have checked you out. And, of course, they had. And I'm on parole from a maximum custody institution in the state of Michigan. And they obviously knew that. And I told them, that's good. God, I'd rather do that than anything I could imagine, whatever it is.
But I knew it wouldn't happen. But sure enough, when God has work for us to do, walls come down. I didn't say when I want to do something. When God has work for me to do, walls come down. I don't care what they are. They do come down. I know it. I don't believe it. I know it. And so this guy told me that, and I thought nothing would ever happen. My state, the little old redneck state of North Carolina, and we are not the liberal capital of the world.
We are not known for bold new innovations.
[00:25:00]
No. I can understand the Dominion of Canada doing something like that. But North Carolina, good God. But it did. And so I was employed as a rehabilitation officer. And I'm just out. I mean, my God, I've just barely got my uniform off. And I'm going to work as an official. I had to do something. One of the things we're going to talk about a little bit this weekend is how we fit into this world and how we fit in and make this world work around us.
Some of that this weekend. But here I'm walking in a place where no man has ever stood. No man. It's a lonely place, eh? It's a lonely place. I had a sandwich one day a while back with a fellow who walked on the moon, one of the astronauts who walked on the moon. And I was just intrigued with that. Tell me about it. I wanted to hear it. So he told me about it. And it's fascinating to me to be walking where man has never walked.
And I've done the same thing. Didn't think about it until afterwards. My planet was a little lower than his. By the way, in talking with him, he was telling me about his ongoing projects. He's still in aerospace. And he was telling me about the project. And I listened to him. I was just fascinated. I didn't understand it, but I was just fascinated with how much he knew. And so he's telling me all about it.
When he got through, he looked at me. You know how people do in a conversation. Look at you now. So what have you got to say? What am I going to say? Well, I saw the moon come up last night. That's the best I could do. And so he looked at me. And I said, have you ever thought about using AA traditions in what you do? You would have thought I'd smacked him in the face with a wet salmon or something.
Hey, tradition. I said, yeah. I said, now I've listened to you. I've listened to you explain in great detail that you guys know how to shoot a rocket. My God, man, you can shoot it a million miles away and make it come within two inches of where you're pointing. You know how to do that. Your problem is trying to get a team of people that can get it done without killing each other. And he said, you know, you're right.
Well, it is. It's never the technology as much as it is the technicians that don't fit. And so he said, the rocket scientist said, you know, I'm going to go home and get it. I've got that book at home. I'm going to go home and take a look at that. He says he's going to let me know how he's doing with it, but we'll find out. We may have the AA flag planted on the next planet. But, you know, that's the thing.
We see them in a meeting and then you see how it fits into life, you know, in so many ways. And I say that because when I went to work and I'm standing where a man's never been, who do you talk to about problems of concern? Nobody. Nobody. You've got to have somebody to share it, just like Bill and Bob. They shared the experience. Nobody to share it with. And so I had to rely on my higher power. I relied on AA traditions.
I later finished up in a university in correctional administration, but that's not what gave me a great career. What gave me a great career are the principles I live by here. I went to work on the first job I was given, and I would have kept that job forever. I would have been happy to keep it forever. Now, I'm going to tell you this and tell you you can go to the bank on it, but it sounds unbelievable.
From the day I got my first job in recovery, after I got in recovery, from my first job until the last one when I retired, I hope it's my last one, that I've never applied for one single job. I have never applied for a single job. Promotion, transfer, pay raise, nothing. Now, I'm no prince charming, you know, wonder boy in hiding. I'll tell you why I think that career has been like that for me. For some reason, I think AA principles guide me to give my very best of what I do.
And so that's what I did. I treated every job I had as if it were the most important job on earth. I gave it my best because that's what tells you who I am. If what I do is sloppy work where I just got to get by instead of get quality work done, that's who I am. And so what I did was give every job I had my very best. And somebody, I guess, somebody just be kind of watching you. I know I've hired hundreds and hundreds of people.
And I hire people who want to do something.
[00:30:01]
I hire people who want to work on behalf of an organization. You let somebody tell me how dissatisfied they were with their last job, be hard-pressed to hire them. But I don't want to hire sore heads. My God, you can produce enough of those. You don't need to hunt more, so. But that's what I did. I just gave my best to every job, never applied for a different one, and went to the top of my profession.
My profession was the most unlikely one you could imagine. I'm going into corrections. Can you imagine a guy sitting in a cell in a penitentiary, and he's thinking about what he's going to do if he ever gets out? Yeah, I think I'll go into corrections. I'll show them how to do this stuff, man. I'm going to be a warden. They put a net on me. I mean, they went flat and put a net on me. But that's exactly what happened.
I went into corrections. I started working. Then I got recruited into supervision, management, directing some programs, and then finally warden of a prison, and several. I was warden of several prisons. It's a weird place to be, but the program prepared me for it, better than anything I'd ever done. And so I had an absolutely great career, a great career. And put in 39 years. Found out I was the oldest rat in the barn.
I said, shoot, man, this time. I also learned they paid me about as much to not work because I didn't work. I said, hey, man, I'm going to take dad to go play. So that's why I'm doing this. That's why I'm here tonight. So anyway, it's just I tell you that because every recovery doesn't end with a noose around you. I've still got time to do that. But I don't have any plans, any concerns that that's going to happen.
I've been given a life that's truly beyond anything I could imagine. Married that little girl from Saskatchewan a little over 42 years ago. And she still, she doesn't speak very good English, but she's still. We've got to speak in southern a little bit. And we have a couple of little Canadians Americans. Life's pretty good. Kids have done well. Daughters are psych graduate. She'll get back to this planet in time.
Psych majors will do that to you. And my son is a physician. He's he specializes in high risk maternal fetal medicine. He deals only with cases that other doctors have got too much sense to deal with. So they turn them over to him and let him take all the risk. Boy, you better get a law degree to go with that. And he's leaving next week to go over. He does service work in his field. He just wants to do something where he gets the payoff that nobody can buy.
And so he goes over to Africa. And for the last few years, he's been going over to Ghana for a couple of weeks every two years. And he's trying to help young Ghanaian physicians learn how to move into the high risk category. Great work. Great work. Well, obviously, I'm very proud of the boy and the girl. They're fine kids. Well, they're old folks now. They've given me grandchildren. So there's hope for them.
And so I guess the point is, guys, I just thought I'd spend a little time tonight just talking about this. This is just one case. But it's anybody's case, you know. And so what I did was give a broken and wasted life to this simple program. And it's given me back a life that literally is beyond my wildest dreams. I could not imagine, drunk or sober, thinking of a life like I've had. It's been absolutely great.
And it's just started. Man, I've got a lot to do. I have people tell me all the time, I need to slow down. And every time they tell me they're going to slow down, I look them over and say, if I slow down, will I get like you? What I said a little earlier is true. It's not party line, but it's certainly true in my view. This honeymoon or whatever you want to call it, this thing of the fourth dimension is what we call it in the group, this fourth dimension of recovery, where we start operating on the spiritual rather than the material.
That is absolutely available. All I've got to do is do the things that bring it to life. So I'm looking forward to it. And by the way, just real quick before we close here, we've gone a long time for a short session. Before we do, let's just take just a few minutes and then anybody that's got a particular area that you'd like to see us just as a group get into and spend some time on while we've got it out of the traffic and we don't have the horns blowing and hopefully no phones ringing much.
Anybody, anything that you'd like to touch on for sure?
[00:35:03]
Yeah. Yeah. People's experience with and how to do the steps with newcomers. I have found that there's a lack in it. And when we started doing step groups in my area, everybody went, you know, thank God they can send their sponsees to the step group. And maybe that's the way to do it. I don't know how it was done in the past. Tell us how people's experience is. How to get people to do those steps, which I wish I had done right away.
At a minimum, we could get some good examples of that in here. Just like I indicated to you, I've come a long way through. There's no perfect way to do it, obviously. But if you do what's laid out in those steps, but it sure helps to be accountable to some other people. So, yeah, that's very good. We'll make a point of that thing. Is anybody going to write this down? It's recorded. Nobody listens to that.
He's the president. He told me he was in charge of everything. Any others? What about relationships? Relationships in recovery. Like if you're in a relationship with another person that's in recovery, that person has a little more hope, the experience strength and hope, than the person that you're in a relationship with. How about if we deal with just the principle of unity in relationships? Yeah, it's awfully important.
You don't want to make it too specific, because it'll rule out as much as it will get. But yeah, good stuff. I would like to, maybe if we could touch on Tradition 10, and to see exactly how the organizational completeness between the steps really amalgamates more fully in, as you said, the personal relationship. How can we do more after that? Tradition is very much what this whole business about unity in relationships is about.
No matter what kind it is. Thank you. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. You know, there are a couple of examples I gave you. What I tell you, those will flat eat you alive. And I honestly believe that you're never free until you deal with it. We'll flatten it. Yeah? You've got one I've heard you speak for, the structure of your group. Do you know what's happening maybe three months in advance when you set up your group meetings?
Because most meetings I go to, like nothing, nobody knows anything until it's who's going to talk. You know? And I think you said you set up well at about there, but cover that a little bit. Yeah, that's a good point, yeah. The structure of the group. Well, that whole thing we're talking about, on this not drinking, going to meetings, that whole thing, what produced the guy with the rope around his neck?
Yeah, great, we'll do it. Right here. Just something about getting through the dark moments in recovery. About what now? Getting through the dark moments in recovery, right? You know, the blackouts and everything, and you know, just being in a chair, and I hear all the statements and everything, but I know it's a few days. I know exactly what you're talking about. I have gone through those dark caverns.
I know what you're talking about for sure. Yeah? Just from working with newcomers, your experience with the pace that you would take the guys in the 12 steps. I've had experience with short versus long, and just from your experience, do you find that you kind of pace it up over the course of the morning? You know, you basically do it. There's a thing that's going on right now where you realize it's like over 8 days that they can manage the steps, which I think is fantastic, but then there's also groups that are more than 3 months, and just how you get engaged in work.
Yeah, good point. Yeah, how we deal with our new people has a lot to do with our future. Whoops, excuse me there. Yeah, great, you got that one. Yeah? How do you keep it interesting over time? You know, it's great, you're the most important person in the room for people that are here longer. You know, I see a lot of people leave AA after they've been sober for a long time or have been fighting 10 years, 15.
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Maintaining the interest over time. Yeah, I sure agree that newcomers are the most important person in the room unless I'm there. Laughter Yeah, I'm a real sweetheart Laughter Yeah There are lots of people talking about, you know, taking people through the steps in AA because you've been around for a while, right? And I hear people say that they've been sponsored by a downline of Dr. Baldwin and all, right?
And then when they finish, you know, they process they stand up at the podium and they talk about I'm a recovered alcoholic about that statement. You know, do we fully recover? Or is it when we're throwing dirt on our grave? We'll visit that neighborhood. We will visit. Good neighborhood. I don't even know how to phrase this, but some providing some hope or renewed direction for chronic relapsers. We have a lot of people that are close to us.
It will seem like they're cross-threaded. They come in, they spend a couple of weeks. They go out, they come back. They have this big feeling of guilt and shame when they announce that at a meeting. It'll seem like they're going to get it and then they're back out again. Some of these folks are with us for five, ten years. And we really feel powerless on how to help them to get what we've got. And it's almost like some of them are just examples that, you know, no human power or some of us don't care.
I hope everybody understood what Chris just said. He was talking about the perennial slipper. The guys that just come in over and over and over. Retread and riding the same dead horse, you know.