AA Speaker – Bill C. – Springfield, MO – 2009
Bill C. from Springfield, MO explores sponsorship as the heart of AA recovery. An AA speaker discussing the original purpose of sponsorship, step work with sponsors, and carrying the message.
Bill C. from Springfield, MO spent 24 years building a sponsorship-centered approach to recovery, grounded in what the early AA founders actually did. In this AA speaker tape, he breaks down the forgotten history of sponsorship — pulling directly from the Akron Manual and early AA documents — and argues that working the steps with a sponsor remains the only real action in Alcoholics Anonymous, not just attending meetings.
Bill C. discusses sponsorship as the core mechanism of AA recovery, sharing excerpts from the Akron Manual to show how early AA members understood the sponsor’s role in guiding newcomers through the steps. He contrasts “strong,” “medium,” and “weak” levels of AA involvement and argues that sponsorship — not meeting attendance — determines whether recovery actually happens. Bill also shares personal stories of how his relationship with his sponsor taught him honesty, accountability, and how to confront character defects through direct, difficult conversations.
Episode Summary
Bill C. opens this talk by painting a picture of what early sponsorship looked like — a bartender named Larry Larkin standing in a parking lot for 45 minutes with a newcomer, no agenda, just presence and interest. That simple act of kindness became the foundation for everything Bill now teaches about the sponsor-sponsee relationship.
But this isn’t a sentimental talk. Bill digs into the actual history. He explains that sponsorship didn’t originate in the Big Book — it came from the Oxford Group, where the term “sponsor” meant someone who would vouch for you. When Ebie Thatcher found Bill Wilson drunk outside Calvary Mission, he told the doorman, “I will sponsor him in.” That’s where it started. Early AA members went to hospitals recruiting people, and when those prospects got out, their sponsor would bring them to meetings and essentially say, “This guy wants to get sober. He’s legit.”
The Akron Manual — written around 1940-41 after the Big Book was published — captures what those early guys actually believed. Bill reads excerpts that are almost shocking in their directness. “Alcoholics Anonymous is 100% effective for those who faithfully follow the rules. It is those who try to cut corners who find themselves back in their old drunken state.” “You have in your hands the most valuable property in the world, the future of a fellow man. Treat his life as carefully as you would your own. You are literally responsible for his life.” These weren’t casual relationships. Sponsorship was serious work.
Bill then addresses a myth: the claim that AA had a 75% success rate that’s dropped to under 5%. He walks through what the research actually says — that number came from the Foreword to the Second Edition of the Big Book, and when you dig deeper, it was probably closer to 30-40% of those who “really tried.” Early AA screened prospects before meetings. We don’t. Times have changed, and that’s not necessarily bad.
He introduces Tom Powers Jr.’s concept of “strong,” “medium,” and “weak” AA involvement. Strong AA meant taking all 12 steps, practicing rigorous honesty, doing daily prayer and meditation, going to multiple meetings weekly, and actively sponsoring others. Medium AA started hot but cooled off over time — one meeting a week, occasional step work, less prayer and meditation as life got busier. Weak AA left out whole chunks: the God steps, the inventory steps, or both. Weak AA members often said, “All you need is meetings and the first drink,” and survived mainly through constant meeting attendance.
Bill’s observation is direct: there’s a whole class of people in AA who believe that *going to meetings* is *doing* AA. But if a sponsor isn’t guiding someone through the steps, if people don’t have a real relationship with a sponsor, they won’t confront their character defects. The meetings won’t do that work. When sponsorship is weak or absent, meetings become group therapy sessions where people share about their day instead of working a program. Bill doesn’t blame the meetings — he blames the lack of sponsorship infrastructure.
He then describes his own sponsor’s approach: read the Doctor’s Opinion, write notes, read it back aloud, read through all 164 pages of the Big Book (not the stories), work the steps together, do the inventory, do the Fifth Step. Before a year sober, Bill was sponsoring his first guy at his sponsor’s direction. His sponsor told him, “You can’t be a member of AA if your name isn’t on the 12-step list at central office.” Bill thought there were ID badges. He was terrified and motivated by ego — he wanted to look good, to be the biggest, baddest AA member around. His sponsor didn’t lecture him about motivation; he just had him take action. As the behavior changed, the motivation changed.
For 24 years, Bill has sponsored the same way: read the book together, do step work, invite people into his life and ask them to invite him into theirs. He’s learned a lot since those early days. His personal success rate is probably 75-80%, but that’s “of those who really try” — the ones who don’t disappear, who don’t cop an attitude, who actually *use* the sponsor relationship.
Bill addresses a common objection: “I don’t have anything to offer.” He calls this low self-esteem and a character defect to be worked on, not an excuse to avoid sponsoring. His issue was the opposite — he was arrogant, wanted to gather a flock, gave 20-minute lectures on how people should live. Then one day he realized: if he’s telling someone else how to live but not living that way himself, that’s hypocrisy. Sponsorship forced him to walk the talk. Every lecture he gave had to become real in his own life. That’s how character defects get confronted — not in meetings, not in isolation, but in the crucible of a real sponsor-sponsee relationship.
He shares a pivotal moment with his sponsor: he was angry at something his sponsor said, and instead of complaining to others, he went and told his sponsor directly, alone, one-on-one. His sponsor cried and apologized. Bill learned that conflict doesn’t mean the relationship is over. He learned honesty and responsibility. He learned that you can’t protect yourself by avoiding people — you have to lean into the discomfort.
Bill holds firm on one principle: men work with men, women work with women. He acknowledges the rural scenario where there aren’t enough women, and he respects sponsors who make that call responsibly. But in Los Angeles, with plenty of women who work the steps, he won’t sponsor women. Not because of ego, but because he believes women and men can manipulate each other in ways that keep them stuck. His role is to help them find their own kind.
The second half of the talk moves into what sponsorship actually *does* — how it shapes a life. Bill tells a story from early sobriety: a man whose mother was dying came to him in the kitchen asking if he’d go to the hospital. Bill didn’t want to. He didn’t think it was his place. He was doing this sponsorship thing to look good, not to get “that real.” But he said yes. When they got to the mother’s bedside, Bill sat down, breathed, and felt a wave of peace come over him: “Everything’s okay, Bill. There’s nothing wrong here.” He held his sponsee’s hand while they prayed. His hand relaxed. That’s intimacy.
That experience opened a door. When another friend’s eight-year-old son was dying of leukemia, Bill’s sponsor went with him to the hospital. They visited almost daily. Their job was to give the father some relief, some laughter, some human connection. When the boy died, it changed Bill’s life.
His friend Patrick got sober after years of lying — telling his wife he was on AA retreats while he was in a hotel room. When Patrick got lung cancer years later, Bill and his sponsor learned how to pack the wound in his back so he could still come on retreats with them. Patrick said one of the most powerful things Bill ever heard: “If you’re not grateful, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.” He said it dying, close to death. Bill was there when Patrick died.
Then Bill circles back to his father. He hated his father for years. When his dad turned 70, Bill made amends to him. Ten years later, his father made amends to him — not because Bill asked, but when it felt safe. Bill’s dad never hugged him as a kid, but at the end of his life he couldn’t keep his hands off of him. They shared AA together. When his father died of cancer, Bill and his mother nursed him. They changed his diapers. Bill got to see his parents as lovers after 62 years of marriage. AA and Alanon had saved their marriage and kept the family together.
When Bill’s mother got cancer years later, she was in tears, thinking she’d lost her dignity. She said, “I never raised you to do this.” Bill told her: “Yes you did. I grew up in an AA house where people were saved. I live in that same kind of house now. Roll over.” He changed her diapers, and they entered intimacy that wasn’t physical — just loving care and presence.
Bill closes with a question: What if he’d said no that day in the kitchen? What if he hadn’t gone to the hospital? He doesn’t know if it would have changed everything, but it taught him something essential — he can’t figure out how this thing works before it works. He’s not in charge. The actions he takes today might ripple into his life 10 years from now in ways he’ll never predict. And what’s taught him these lessons? Working with people. When he gets on his knees and asks for help, he’s sent people to work with. And you have to give it away to get it.
Notable Quotes
If you’re going to confront your defects of character, you’re going to have to learn how to deal with you, not just send you away.
You are literally responsible for his life. That’s how serious these guys were.
I look them right in the eye and tell them they are not broken. You’re just fine. You couldn’t have come here any other way than the way you are.
Everything’s okay, Bill. There’s nothing wrong here. Everything’s just as it should be. This is not a mistake. It’s just fine.
You have to give it away to even get it.
Step Work
Big Book Study
Step 12 – Carrying the Message
Spiritual Awakening
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Sponsorship
- Step Work
- Big Book Study
- Step 12 – Carrying the Message
- Spiritual Awakening
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
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Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength, and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. We hope to always remain an ad-free podcast, so if you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-onrise.com.
Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. Um, I think all the rest of the committee is off having dinner without me.
They ditch me. So, uh, why don't we do this? What I'd like the way I'd like to start this uh I call this kitchen table AA and it's about sponsorship primarily and every one of us that came into Alcoholics Anonymous or Alanon, somebody was kind to us.
Somebody got us a cup of coffee, told us what was going on, saved us a chair, remembered our name the second time we came back. Maybe that person or people, one of them ended up being our sponsor that took us through the steps. So when we start this off with a moment of silence and then the serenity prayer, let's try and picture in our mind who it was that greeted us and was kind to us and just took a few minutes.
Usually we don't remember what they say, but we sure remember how they felt to us. Let's try and get in touch with that just for a moment. One of the guys I remember about that was a man by the name of Larry Larkin.
Great big guy. Used to be a local bartender in the beach area. So, a lot of people knew him and he knew everybody.
And one night I stood out in the parking lot with this man. I didn't know him at all. And he talked to me for 45 minutes.
We just stood out there and talked. And I didn't go home right away after the meeting like I'd been doing. He kind of cornered me and talked to me and I always thought I went home that night really feeling good like he really had an interest in me.
Later I found that Larry would talk to anybody. I just happened to be the one he captured, you know, but God knows how many lives that man saved because he was like that. Um, a little history.
I mean, you you've had some history if you uh watch Wall-E and listen to Mel, which was just excellent. And I I I really enjoy Wall-Ally's stuff and and uh and it was it's been really interesting meeting Mel and talking about that history and where we came from. Um sponsorship, as you'll hear many people say, is not mentioned in the big book.
That's not true. Uh Wall-E made the caveat that it's not in the first 164 pages. That's true, but if you read the stories, it's all over it.
Um the Oxford group group used the term sponsorship freely. It's where the term came from. Uh it's how they operated.
Henrietta Sberling was an Smith's sponsor. Um, and when uh Ebie Thatcher came from the Oxford group to look for Bill Wilson, he did that at the guidance of his sponsor Roland Hazard. And he went and found the worst drunk he knew, which was Bill Wilson.
Uh, one of the ear my my sponsor is a historian and an archivist and he talks about the time that when Wilson went back looking for Ebie and he was drunk, the guy that was standing by the door at Calvary Chapel, Calvary Mission, wouldn't let him in because he was so drunk. Now, you have to keep in mind that what he was trying to get into was a room where they were preaching to a bunch of drunken street people. So Wilson must have been roaring drunk if they wouldn't let him in cuz there was already a room full of them in there.
So on a scale of 1 to 10, he must have been pretty polluted. And uh Ebie saw him by the door and he said to this man, Shep that was by the door, "It's okay. I will sponsor him in." And that term sponsorship was used as you had somebody that would vouch for you.
And you got to remember in those days people weren't showing up to AA meetings. Number one, there weren't any. And later when there were some meetings, nobody knew where they were.
People weren't, you know, they weren't dropping them off to go to the AA meeting. Guys, wives weren't saying, "You need to go to a meeting." You know, they didn't know anything about it. So what these guys would do is they would go to the hospitals and they would recruit people.
They'd go from bed to bed and say, "Are you ready to quit drinking?" And if they'd say no, they'd move on to the next bed. And that guy would then bring that person when he got out of the hospital to the AA meeting and became his sponsor, would vouch for him and say, "This guy's cool. He wants to stop drinking.
Let's let's talk to him." So, fast forward a little bit in 1939, they came out with the big book. Now, the motivation for the big book, if you know any of the history at all, is Wilson needed to raise money. All of them did.
As they were all sitting around talking, they go, "What are we going to do with this thing? We're working our butts off here. If this thing's going to grow, we're going to have to come up with some capital." Well, the first idea is, "Well, let's publish a book.
Let's print a book. And if they know, people know the book is coming out and it's going to hit the country by storm, we can sell stock certificates to raise money based upon the publishing of the book." So, they printed some worthless stock certificates and sold them for 25 bucks a piece, which was a lot of money. In 1939, as Wall-Ally pointed out, I mean, the cost of the book would be like a hundred bucks today.
They were charging $5 for that book in 1939, which was a lot of money. It's not the $5 of today. You know that sometimes you put that in the basket because it just doesn't have as much value as it did.
So, they were looking for a lot of money and this book was the um source of that. So when they passed the book around between the people in Akran and New York, they edited it and they took out, if you've ever heard one of the early lithographs of chapter 5 where it talks about rules and directions and you will and it doesn't say we, they softened it. They softened it from the reality that they knew to try to be attractive to bring people in.
And they changed some of it. They softened it up. Fortunately, so they publish the book, the book goes out, they get some response.
They're basically disappointed. They had to pay all the people their money back for the phony soft certificates. And uh and then Bob Smith wrote a document, probably had a little bit of help, but I think it's mostly him, called the Akran manual.
And the Akran manual, depending upon who you talk to or how you look it up, was either printed in 1940 or 1941. This they made this document up after the big book was written after the the language of recovery had been established, which they didn't really know for sure. But that book, we quote that thing chapter and verse, page number, paragraph.
It's like it's a Bible. And you got to keep in mind, it's a pointer at best. And it was a sales tool.
And this AAN manual, I think, more describes what they were actually doing. Now, I'm not promoting this as the way that it should be because it really kind of cracks me up. And I think as Wall-Ally says, you need to know where you're coming from, where you came from.
This is where we came from. This is what these guys knew. You got to remember around this time, they weren't allowing women in AA.
Uh Dr. Bob came home one day and found some guy and some girl having sex on his examination table at the home. Their immediate response to that was, "That's it.
No more women. See what they do." you know, a bit chauvinistic, you know, why did I bring that up? Um, anyway, I'm going to read you a few excerpts from the Akran manual.
Once again, I'm not promoting this as how it should be, but this gives you an idea where these guys were and how they felt about sponsorship and about what the core and the crux of the program was. So, I'll just read you a few excerpts. This is from page two.
Explain that we are not in the business of sobering up drunks merely to have them go on another bender. Explain that our aim is total and permanent sobriety. Not once does it mention in this document one day at a time.
Not once. They don't even allude to it. Definition of an alcoholic anonymous.
An alcoholic anonymous is an alcoholic who through application of and adherence to the rules laid down by the organization has completely foresworn the use of any and all alcoholic beverages. The moment he wittingly drinks so much as a drop of beer, wine, spirits, or any other alcoholic drink, he automatically loses all status as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. AA is not interested in sobering up drunks who are not sincere in their desire to remain completely sober for all time.
You're out of here. No slippers. No slippers allowed.
To the newcomer, it is your life. It is your choice. If you are not completely convinced to your own satisfaction that you are an alcoholic, that your life has become unmanageable, if you are not ready to part with alcohol forever, it would be re better for all concerned if you discontinue reading this and give up the idea of becoming a member of Alcoholics Anonymous loser.
A word to the sponsor. You must fulfill all pledges you make to him, either tangible or intangible. If you cannot fulfill a promise, do not make it.
You have in your hands the most valuable property in the world, the future of a fellow man. Treat his life as carefully as you would your own. You are literally responsible for his life.
That's how serious these guys were. Alcoholics Anonymous is 100% effective for those who faithfully follow the rules. It is those who try to cut corners who find themselves back in their old drunken state.
Rules. Before long, you will have a new thrill. The thrill of helping someone else.
There is no greater satisfaction in the world than watching the progress of a new alcoholic anonymous. No whiskey in the world can give you this thrill. Above all, remember this.
Keep the rules in mind. As long as you follow them, you are on firm ground. but the least deviation and you are vulnerable.
As a new member, remember that you are one of the most important cogs in the machinery of AA. Without the work of the new member, AA would not have grown as it has. You will bring into this work a fresh enthusiasm, the zeal of a crusader.
You will want everyone to share with you the blessings of this new life. You will be tireless in your efforts to help others, and it is a splendid enthusiasm. Cherish it as long as you can, for you are ready to sponsor some poor alcoholic who is desperately in need of help, both human and divine.
So, God bless you and keep you. Here's one of my favorite parts of this. This is just killer.
I could just imagine these guys sitting around coming up with this. You aren't very important in this world. If you lose your job, someone better will replace you.
If you die, your wife will mourn briefly and then remarry. Your children will grow up and you will be but a memory. In the last analysis, you are the only one who benefits by your sobriety.
Seek to cultivate humility. Remember that cockiness leads to a speedy fall. They had issues.
There were must have been a couple of arrogant people around there then. Medical men will tell you that alcoholics are all alike in at least one respect. They are emotionally immature.
In other words, alcoholics have not learned to think like adults. That's a little rough. At meetings, don't criticize the leader.
They were already people were bitching about the leader and bitching about the meetings already. I love that he has his own problems and is doing the best to solve them. Help him along by standing up and saying a few words.
He will appreciate your kindness and thoughtfulness. Don't criticize the methods of others. Strangely enough, you may change your own ideas as you become older in sobriety.
Remember, there are a dozen roads from New York to Chicago, but they all land in Chicago. How soon you will be cured of a desire to drink is another matter. That depends entirely upon how quickly you can succeed in changing your fundamental outlook on life.
For as your outlook changes for the better, desire will become less pronounced until it disappears almost entirely. It may be weeks or it may be months. Your sincerity and your capacity for working with others on the AA program will determine the length of time.
Alcoholics Anonymous is based on a set of laws known as the 12 steps. Laws years of experience have years of experience. years of experience have definitely proved that those who live up to these rules remain sober.
Those who gloss over or or ignore any one rule are in constant danger of returning to a life of drunkenness. Thousands of words could be written on each rule. Lack of space prevents, so they are merely listed here.
It is suggested that they be explained by the sponsor. If he cannot explain them, he should provide someone who can. That's the Akran manual.
Um, I've got a signup sheet here. If you want to put your I'm going to be reading some other documents and stuff. If you'd like to get copies of this, I'd be happy to email it to you.
You can put your name, email address, phone number, and city and state, and I'd be happy to do that. Uh, I've got some cards here you can get. And for the tape if you play this later, uh, my email address is billcitchta.com.
And my phone number is 310-7928013. So you can sign up on the list. And I also send out like daily quotes and from different sources, not all big book stuff.
And uh, no chain emails, no dirty jokes unless you specifically request that. Um, so that kind of sets the stage. What these guys were doing is they were sponsoring each other.
Now, there's this thing that you hear that we had a 75% success rate and now it's less than 5% or whoever whatever doomsayer that you listen to, that percentage changes. And uh, they're coming. They're coming.
It's the mother ship. So, um, not recently in, uh, 2008, bunch of AA guys got together and they put together this alcoholics anonymous recovery outcome rates contemporary myth and misinterpretation. Um when you look back in the past and you try to come up with what the percentage is, usually this number 75% comes from the forward to the second edition in the big book.
Um Wilson rarely used that. Uh probably it was closer to 30 or 40%. Uh when they said the first 100 guys that helped write the book, there were only 77.
They lied to us upfront. Uh most of the people that wrote the stories in the first edition of the big book, a good percentage of them uh drank again. Several committed suicide.
Um they had the same problem we had. And they screened them before they came to the meetings. They screened them.
We don't do that. Nor do we have the luxury of doing that. Nor do I think it would be a good idea if we did that.
Times have changed. Uh the operative term in that phrase when you hear that is of those who really tried. What do they mean by really tried when they talk about the 50% that stayed sober and the 25% that got sober and stayed sober after a slip or two of those who really tried.
What are they talking about? Well, there's some CDs over there there that I noticed the first time I've ever seen them by of Tom Powers. Um Tom Powers was a guy recently passed away.
He was quite old and he helped Bill put together the 12 and 12. He split off from AA because he felt that Bill had issues that Tom got a resentment and he ran off and he started in upstate New York an organization that's still around today called All Addictions Anonymous. And his son Tom Powers Jr.
some years later in the 60s got sober and he wrote a thing a really interesting document in the 70s called Gresham's law and alcoholics anonymous. Gresham's law is an alcoh is a economic term and it says that bad money will chase out good money in the market if they're valued the same. And I won't go into detail about that.
You can read this and see I'll send it to you. But in this he talks about he equates this to Alcoholics Anonymous and he's talking about what he sees as uh a bad entity a bad movement within AA that is chasing out the good. That's his analysis and he describes it and in it he describes the three levels of involvement in AA.
He kind of equates it in one document I saw he equates it to like a medium, weak, and strong cup of coffee kind of a thing. And I'm just going to read you quickly the kind of paraphrase it a little bit, his description of strong, medium, and weak involvement or effort. Strong um strong AA was the original undiluted dosage of spiritual principles.
Strong Aas took all 12 steps and kept on taking them. They did not stop with the admission of powerlessness over alcohol, but went right on right away to turn their wills and lives over to the God's care. They began to practice rigorous honesty in all their affairs.
In short order, they proceeded to take a moral inventory, admit all their wrongs to at least one other person, take positive and forceful action in making such restitution as was possible for those wrongs. Continued taking inventory, admitting their faults, and making restitution on a regular basis. Pray and meditate every day.
Go to two or more AA meetings weekly and actively work the 12step carrying the AA message to others in trouble. Medium. All of us have done medium.
The medium AA started off with a bang pretty much like the strong AAs except they hedged or procrastinated a bit on parts of the program they feared or did not like. Maybe the God steps, maybe the inventory steps, depending on their peculi particular nervousness or dislikes. Take what you can use and leave the rest.
But after they had stayed sober for a while, the medium AAS eased up and settled into a practice of the program that went something like this. An AA meeting a week, occasional 12step work, leaving more and more of that to the newer fellows as time went on. Some work with the steps, but not like before.
Less and less inventory as they became more and more respectable. Some prayer and meditation still, but not on a daily basis anymore. Not enough time due to the encroachment of business engagement, social activities, and other baggage that went along with the return to a normal life in the work a day world.
Weak. The weak AAS are a varied lot. The thing common to all of them was that they left big chunks of the program totally and permanently out of their reckoning right from the outset.
Sometimes the God steps, sometimes the inventory steps, often both. Weak AAS tended to talk in terms like all you need to do is stay sober is go to meetings and stay away from the first drink. Most of the weak AAS who were successful in staying sober were pretty faithful meeting goers.
Since they were doing so little with the principles, their sobriety and their survival depended more exclusively than did those of the strong and medium AAs on constant exposure to the people of AA. That's Gresham's law. Now, here's what I see in AA along those lines.
There's a whole group or class of people in Alcoholics Anonymous that have come to believe that doing AA is going to meetings. That that's AA. Doing AA is go to lots of meetings.
Don't drink in between. And what you see when you go to a meetings where people are sharing about how their day went constantly and it's that kind of a group therapy sort of thing that many of us complain about or we see that as this encroaching death nail of Alcoholics Anonymous. Those people that are doing that don't have sponsors or maybe they have a sponsor that they're not talking to that they're not working the steps with.
Or maybe their sponsor is sitting next to them in the meeting and that's what their sponsor is doing them is bringing them to meetings and this is what we do here. This is what we do. If they had a sponsor to share about these issues in their life with or they had a group of friends even that they could do that with, they wouldn't do it in the meetings.
There'd be no need to do it in the meetings. If there's a strong ethic of sponsorship in an AA community, the meetings will reflect that ethic. And the people that are singing the death nail of AA, usually the approach is we need to change the meetings.
There needs to be rules. People shouldn't say this, they should say that. There shouldn't be so many discussion meetings.
There should be more book studies. You know, in the past they didn't have discussion meetings like this. You know, the this is killing people.
People are dying because they're not getting the message. I disagree with that. I don't think we can control the meetings.
Our traditions tell us that every meeting is autonomous. And who am I to say what somebody needs as a doorway into Alcoholics Anonymous? And I know for a fact that the message isn't in the meetings anyway.
The message comes from me. The message comes from the sponsor. The message comes from the person that you ask to help you through the process.
It's not in the meetings. The fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous is something to be survived. This is the character defect center of the known universe.
I mean, you'll hit on my wife, you'll borrow money from me, and you won't pay me back. I'll give you a job. You'll do a crappy job and somehow it'll be my fault.
That's my personal favorite. Then you won't show up to my birthday party after all I've done for you. No.
And when the meetings are comprised of the fellowship. Now my home group, the Herosa Beach Ben Stag, the epicenter of sobriety, is different, of course, but uh as I'm sure your home group is as well. But there's this whole focus on what the meetings should look like, what we should say there, and what we should do.
And I just disagree with it. I I think the meetings is where we find each other. That's where we go to.
We find each other there. And if somebody's really looking for help, you know, it's our job to to seek that person out. My wife took her little nephew that got court ordered to go to AA meetings.
He's he's really happy about that. And she took him to a 4:00 in the afternoon meeting at our local Alano Club. They have five meetings a week.
They call themselves the happy retreads, which will give you some indication of the content in this meeting. And she had never been to one of these. I was on the board at the Alano Club, so I I'd had to suffer through a few.
And uh she went there and she came back and her mouth open. She goes, "That was appalling. I've never seen anything like that in my life.
It was horrible. It was just horrible. And I said, I just laughed.
I said, 'What did you do?' She goes, I raised my hand and shared, you know. I said, 'What did you do to those poor people? And she just talked about recovery.
Talk about recovery. And uh but I don't know what your doorway should be, you know, or what it's going to be, you know. I mean, we've joked for years about noon meetings, you know, and noon meetings are for people that don't have jobs.
Night meetings are real AA meetings, you know. Daytime meetings, I don't know what those are. Morning meetings are very weird.
What are people doing going to AA first thing in the morning and they hold hands and sing? I was in general service and somebody came into the GSR meeting at District 1 area 9 and we're complaining. He says, "In the morning meetings at the Alano Club, they're singing.
You have to come stop them from singing." And I just you just roar. You know, I mean, there's got to be rules and laws. Everybody wants to make a rule or a law.
You know, one of the beauties of Alcoholics Anonymous is is it's just anarchy. You know, it always was. You can see it in the Akran manual.
They're bitching about, you know, don't blame the don't talk about other people. It's already starting. You know, I believe what the heart and soul of Alcoholics Anonymous is is sponsorship.
I believe very strongly on a couple of different levels why that is. I believe it's the mechanism that the manager uses to cause us to confront our defects of character to hone us to give us the experiences it takes for us to deepen emotionally that without this process we will never confront those things. It it won't come up in any other way and we make excuses for it.
They say, "Well, I do other things besides that." There is nothing else you can do that will take the place of that. That's all these men did in the 30s and 40s and 50s. When my dad got sober in 1954, that's what he did.
That's what they had him doing. He was going out on 12step calls. He was bringing guy I have many memories of him bringing some stranger into the house and bringing him into the living room and I'd have to leave the living room while they pounded on the book and pointed their finger at him and told him the same lame ass stuff we tell them today.
Not much has changed. You know, I don't believe the program of Alcoholics Anonymous has changed much. Not the program.
I'm talking about the program, the 12 steps. There they are. A lot of other stuff has come into a some of it's I think very positive.
We've learned a lot over the years about alcoholism. We've learned a lot. You know, people talk about going back to what it was like.
Uh Tom Iver that's been quoted here a couple of times this weekend told me he says there were no good old times. These are the good old times. He says everybody talks about those glory days.
He says, "I don't ever want to have somebody having a seizure in my car next to me ever again." He says, "It scared the hell out of me. It was horrible. I thought the man was going to die and I didn't know what to do." He says, "We don't want him having seizures in the AA meetings anymore." We talk about it like it's some kind of nostalgia, like it's really fun, like it's cute or something.
He says, "It's not cute. I remember that. It was awful.
It was frightening. We didn't know what to do." You know, Bill Wilson wanted hospitals across the country. Remember he went to Rockefeller, wanted to get money, wanted to build hospitals across the country.
We have that now. Recovery is available at all levels of society. The reason the kids are coming in is the parents today have an option.
when they see their kid child dying from methamphetamine usage, they can grab them, have them shipped off to Utah where they hang them upside down in from a tree and beat him with birch twigs for 6 months or so to give them the outdoor experience and do a little behavior modification. Then all you people ship them out to California to these goddamn places that send them to our meetings. The kids are coming in because recovery is part of our lexicon today.
It's not a bad thing. This is a good thing. This is what Wilson wanted.
My father and and Chuck Chamberlain and a bunch of other guys in the 60s were working on a project that Bill called the big 12th step. And the whole idea was to get back to Washington DC somehow and get the government to recognize alcoholism as a disease along with the American Medical Association so they would quit incarcerating us and put them into put us into recovery to get the insurance industry to come on board and start funding recovery facilities rather than putting us out on the street or in prison. And when that happened, when the cover recovery industry raised up and began doing that, it set off an adversarial relationship between Alcoholics Anonymous and the professional community.
We did not handle it well. We still about them to this day. We call them spin drives and they dump addicts on our AA meetings.
We snivel and whine and cry about it constantly. And when I came in in the mid 80s, people would sit in the meetings and read newspaper articles about the atrocity of these recovery places and all the money they're making and and all the alcoholics were going there getting jobs, you know, and everybody was complaining about it. And I came through a recovery place and I came walking in there and I felt like you didn't want me.
But I'm big enough and arrogant enough and loud enough that I just took it as a challenge, you know. And now in my home group, when these kids are coming in, the last five or six or seven years that it's been happening, most of the old guys in my meeting that I got sober with have left because they say, "We're not a daycare center. What are all these kids doing here?" I mean, it's appalling.
It's appalling the attitude. Isn't this what we want? Wouldn't we rather them come in and get sober at 16, 17, 18 rather than spend another 10 or 15 years out there killing themselves and someone else?
It's not about you feeling comfortable in the goddamn meeting. It's about recovery. The meetings aren't aa It's just my opinion, but it's a really good one.
My sponsor, when I asked him for help, he told me to come to his house Thursday at 5:00 and read the doctor's opinion and make notes in the margin of what I agreed with and what I didn't agree with. And I did that. And then he had me sit there and read it to him.
And each week when I went there, we had an hour to an hour and a half. He was working. He he was married.
His wife had just gotten sober. And uh and we read the book together all the way to the end, not the stories, but to the end of the 164. And he worked the steps with me.
He and you know I mean he sent me home to do my inventory and I suffered and whined about it for a while like Wall-E talks about you know it only takes 10 minutes. Well we've evolved I think a little bit beyond the 10-minute four-step inventory I would hope and uh you know and I did my inventory and I did my fifth step and I felt like a member of AA after that. I had a distinct impression like I'd really joined this thing and I went about the process of making amends and before I was a year sober, I was sponsoring my first guy at his direction.
Another thing he told me, he says, "You can't be a member of Alcoholics Anonymous if your name is not on the 12step list down at the central office." I thought that's where they handed out the ID badges. So, I ran right down there and signed up. You know, I didn't wait for him to send me a form.
I was scared to death that I, you know, and I was motivated by self. I've always been motivated by self. I wanted to look good.
I figured if I was going to be an AA, I might as well be the biggest, baddest member of AA there is. I'm trying to make a name for myself in an anonymous organization, you know? I'm not sure exactly what that is, but I don't think it's really healthy.
And uh but it's part of the growing up process, isn't it? I mean, if we wait around for good motivation, we'll wait forever, you know? I mean, you just got to get in there and get your hands dirty and and the motivation will change as the behavior changes.
So, when I started sponsoring guys, I did the same thing he did with me. And to this day, it's still pretty much the same format. But I've learned a lot since then.
In 24 years, I've learned a lot. I think I'm a better sponsor. I don't know if my success rate is any better, but I can tell you my personal success rate is probably better than 75 or 80%.
Is that of everybody that asked me to sponsor them? No. It's of those who really try.
The ones that don't disappear at the forep. The ones that don't cop an attitude with me. You know, I've had to tell guys, I go, "You don't want what I have.
I don't fire guys, but I tell them I finally I'll look at them. You don't want what I have. Why do you say that?
Because you don't do what I do. You know, you don't do what I do. Why?
What are we doing here? What do you call this? You keep calling me your sponsor.
Really? You know, what are you doing? Are you working the same?
You know, and the answer is, of course, no. But they can walk around and go, Bill C's my sponsor. You know, what does that mean?
You know, Jason Stinett's my sponsor, you know, but if I never call him, what good is he? If I'm not working steps with him, what good is he? If I don't bring my stuff to him, what good is he?
He I don't have a sponsor if I'm not actually using him. If I don't have a relationship with him. So, over the years, my approach to people has changed.
And here's one significant one. One of the things you hear in AA is you'll hear people from the podium say in different ways. They'll say, "I'm a sick puppy and I hope I never get well." That I'm not recovered.
I'm recovering and that will never stop. You know, I've got the ism. It's not alcohol anymore, but I've got the ism.
I've got alcoholic thinking. I heard one guy one time, we used to have a local guy that was 30, 40 years sober, and he'd say, "I'm living proof that you can stay angry and still be sober." And I go, "God, now there's something to shoot for." You know, I want what he's got. His aa nickname is Rotten Ron.
You know, I mean, jeez. So, we have a tendency to tell people in many different ways that you're broken. You're broken.
and you're an alcoholic, you're broken and we're going to heal you here. I don't do that anymore. I look them right in the eye and tell them they are you are not broken.
You're just fine. You couldn't have come here any other way than the way you are. This is your path and you're on the path and you're with us now.
You're going to be okay, man. And you're okay right now. Right here, right now.
There's nothing wrong. And I believe that to the bottom of my heart. You know, all of us get here with a lot of regret and a lot of remorse and some guilt and some shame and some of us more than others.
But that was our path. Our greatest weakness becomes our greatest strength. That story is like gold.
People will attach themselves to us because of that story. And especially if we heal from it, if we recover from it. I'm not a sick puppy anymore.
I'm not a childish, immature little boy anymore. I'm not I have self-esteem. I feel pretty good about what I see.
I have no secrets from anybody, which is kind of embarrassing sometimes, you know, but I have no more secrets. Everybody knows everything, you know. I mean, what do I have to protect?
You can't take anything from me that I wouldn't give you. You know, you can't hurt me. You can't injure me.
And every time my heart breaks, it breaks open. I've recovered in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I know that there's more to come.
I look at guys ahead of me and I see that glint in their eyes. I see men that are 70, 75, 80 years old that have a very childlike demeanor about them and that glint in their eye, you know, and they're still sponsoring guys and they're sponsoring kids and they're having a great life, you know, along with liver problems and kidneys and all that crap that comes with age, you know, but life is still good. That's the gift that we have here in AA.
And I try to carry that in my when I'm working with guys. But I do the same thing, you know. I read the book with them.
I sit and I read the book. We read Bill's story again and again and again, you know, over and over and over. And I put together little groups and I use a handbook that we go through and we all go through the steps together.
It takes about six months, you know, try to mix up the curriculum a little bit to keep it interesting, to keep their interest and to keep my interest as well, you know. And if you invite me into your life, I'll come and I will invite you into my life. And you have to make the choice whether you really want to come.
If you really want this, one of the rules that you kind of hear that is debated is men work with men and women work with women. I was doing this kind of a workshop thing and I brought this up because I feel very strongly about that. I think it's important that men work with men and women work with women.
And I know that there's a lot of guys that sponsor women. And I heard this one guy say, he says, 'Look, I work I live in a rural area where there aren't many men women in AA and when women come in and they need help. I can't tell them no.
And my wife knows about it and I make sure I'm not alone with them. You know, he had his rules that he lived by. And I stood there and I could not argue with that guy.
There was no argument if it was like that. But I live in Los Angeles and you'll hear this thing that there aren't women that work the steps, that I can't find any women that work the steps. Well, I have a list, you know, I have a list.
And I used to turn them down flatly with some cute little aside. And I don't do that anymore. I tell them, I said, "You can call me anytime you want.
I'm there for you. I'd be happy to talk to you, you know, but I'm not going to help you hide from your own kind. because I believe that's what happens.
You know, women will manipulate us if they can. Men will manipulate women if they can, but women are much slicker at it, you know, and they've been getting along forever doing this. And we are just dead meat.
We aren't sophisticated enough to pick up on it. I used to think they all wanted to sleep with me. Why do you laugh?
Then I real Hornet. And then I realized I was a father figure. And then I realized I'm a grandfather figure.
Evidently, they think I'm safe, which is kind of sad when you think about it. You know, I don't like being perceived as safe, you know, but I'm not going to help you hide from your own kind. Men do the same thing, you know.
men do the same thing. Um, my wife is one of those women that works the steps. Uh, she's also one of those men women that did not want to go to women's meetings.
She didn't want to do that. She didn't want anything to do with that. And her sponsor finally made her go, made her come and pick her up and she started going to a woman's meeting and now she's the maven, you know.
And they do cool stuff like when it's birthday week, you know, she'll buy little dolls and they wear hats and they have and I tried to introduce that at the men's stag and they just, you know, they rub on each other and stuff, you know. I thought that would be nice, you know, get in get in touch with our feminine side, you know. I don't fire you.
I didn't hire you, so I don't get to fire you. Um, if I'm going to confront my defects of character, I'm going to have to learn how to deal with you, not just send you away. Uh, one of the things when Jay and I, my sponsor, when we do this together and we've got some PowerPoint stuff and stuff that we do and we go more into the history and sometimes we'll do a weekend long thing about this.
Essentially, what we do is we describe our relationship that we've had for 24 years. And there have been times where I wanted to fire him, where he treated me miserably. And on one particular occasion, he embarrassed me.
He said something that I really felt that I didn't deserve. And I was bitching about him to another guy that he sponsored. We were having great pleasure just eviscerating the little bastard, you know, as we were standing there talking about him.
And this guy, John, looked at me. He goes, "Why don't you go tell him?" I Whoa. That's a little scary cuz see I'm the phony tough guy.
I'm the one with the clip on earring. It's real easy for me to be a badass in public, you know, cuz I'm big and I can humiliate you in front of other people. And I'll do that, you know.
I'll I'll mess with you in front of other people. I'll shame you and I'll confront you and scare you and as long as other people are watching. But alone, one-on-one, I'm impotent.
You know, nobody's watching. There's no audience and I'm scared because essentially I'm afraid of you is what the truth is. So, I had to go back to him and confront him alone without other people around and tell him how I felt, which is really hard to do.
And I cornered him outside this meeting. I took him aside and I said, "You know what? you said to me last week, "I really don't think I deserve that.
You really hurt my feelings, you know, and uh and I would appreciate it if you wouldn't talk to me like that anymore. I don't think I deserve it." And he stood there in front of me. His eyes got really big and he started to cry, which completely screwed me up.
I mean, I'm I'm ready for the fight. You know, I knew we weren't going to punch it out. I outweigh him by about 400 lb.
And uh you know, but I knew that there was going to be an argument. He was going to defend himself. Of course, he would defend himself.
And he stood in there in front of me with tears in his eyes and he apologized to me. He says, "You know, you're right. I should have never said that to you.
I was having a bad day and I'm really sorry. I apologize. It was never my intent to hurt you." And it completely screwed me up.
I didn't know what to do with that. I felt kind of embarrassed for him. You know, it was a weird I had a weird reaction to the whole thing, but it completely changed our relationship.
And he taught me another lesson. He taught me how to be honest, how to take responsibility for your own behavior. I also learned that there can be conflict in a relationship and that doesn't mean the relationship is over.
I don't know these things. When did I ever learn these things? Never.
Guys come to me and they say, "I want you to be my sponsor. Joe doesn't have time for me." And I say, "Well, I know Joe. He seems like a pretty good guy.
What do you mean he doesn't have time? Well, God, he's he's married and he's got kids. He goes, "Oh, oh, you mean he's got a life?" You okay?
Yeah, that's that's the Joe I know. He has like a real life. And and he said, "But he just doesn't have time for me.
He doesn't return my calls and stuff like that." And I said, "Why don't you do this? Why don't you go tell Joe how you feel? Cuz have you talked to him about this?" "No." "Why don't you go tell Joe how you feel and then come back and and we'll talk." They never come back.
Never. One of two things happens. They either go talk to Joe and they solve the problem because Joe will stand right in front of him and say, "Oh, I'm sorry, man.
What do you want to get together?" "Sure, let's make a date. Let's make it time." Cuz you know, there's more to the story. You know what's happening is the guy's calling.
He's not saying, "Call me back." So Joe's a busy guy. He doesn't call back. He gets the message.
He just hangs up. You know, well, we take that personally like you don't care. you know, and uh they either talk to Joe and they resolve the problem or they move on and ask somebody else that won't require them to go talk to Joe cuz the last thing they want to do is go talk to Joe cuz it's too real.
It's too real. So, this relationship with my sponsor is probably the single most significant relationship I've ever had in my life because of these lessons that I learned through interaction with him. So you don't fire them.
You got to deal with them. But not firing them doesn't mean that you have to be nice to them. You know, you can tell them the truth.
You can look at them right in the eye and say, "You don't want what I have. You're not doing what I do." Should everybody sponsor? Yes.
You say yes. Anybody else? Should everybody sponsor people?
No. There's a no over here. Why no?
Cuz some people because some people do not make good sponsors. You're right. But how do I know that some guy doesn't need a bad sponsor?
I don't know. I mean, there there's a group of people that I like to call the parking lot people. They're the people out in the parking lot smoking cigarettes and drinking Red Bulls and they're not coming into the meeting.
They're the parking lot people, you know, and if you go and you ask one of these parking lot people to be your sponsor from the outside that, well, that's not a good move. What's this guy know? He's never worked the steps.
He's got nothing. But if you've got two parking lot people that are out there and one of them asked the other parking lot person to be their sponsor, maybe the parking lot guy will come into the meeting to get some information, you know, to try to stay ahead of the other loser that just asked him to sponsor him. I'm not running the show.
I'm powerless. I think everybody should sponsor. Now, I get a lot of back and forth.
You know, sometimes we'll do a lot of Q&A about this and if you'd like to pipe up, raise your hand. But the reason I believe that is, and you hear people say, "Well, I just don't have anything to offer. Low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence." How do you address that?
How do you address that? I'm intimidated by people. I'm not real.
social. I'm kind of an introvert. I think that's a character defect.
You know, how do you address that? How does it come out? How do you get beyond that?
Now, my experience is just the opposite. I'm very social. I started sponsoring people because I wanted to look good.
My total motivation was to look good and I wanted to be the biggest baddest AA dude in town. And I and I'm gathering a flock, right? you know, I'm I'm gathering people up, you know, to to do this thing.
And uh and you know, most of this is unconscious. I'm just doing what I'm doing. This is all hindsight, looking at hindsight.
Well, the time comes when you're sitting in a room with a guy and you give him a 20-minute lecture on how he should live his life, and he leaves the room and you say to yourself, "Man, that's good I should try some of that." What's that? You know, at best it's hypocrisy. At worst, it's lying.
I mean, you're painting the picture that you're actually doing this. You're full of I'm full of it. I'm the phony biker and now I'm the phony AA guru.
I'm giving you all the great advice cuz I've got good language skills, but there's no depth to any of it. How do I confront that? How do I confront these things?
I think every single one of us, if we're capable of it, needs to lean into this. Sponsoring people is not extra credit. It's not a choice.
It's not a choice. It's the only job there is. It's the only real action that there is in Alcoholics Anonymous.
Now, you'll hear people say, "Okay, I'll be your sponsor, but don't call me sponsor. There's too much ego in it. I'll just be your friend." And I go, "Geez, step up." You know, I mean, that's false humility couched in spiritual pride.
It's not cute. I'm not impressed. You know, it doesn't do us any good at all to pretend to be humble.
You'll never find peace through avoiding life. You know, step up and play your part. Be the sponsor.
Be the guy. You don't hear a teacher in a classroom say, "Don't call me teacher. Call me Gary." There's too much ego in teacher.
you know what would that what would you think you'd move to the next classroom where there was somebody that felt good about himself you know so I I don't I don't agree with all of that I think that we have a job to do here you know you'll hear people in AA say the longer I'm sober the less I know what the hell is that aren't they paying attention you know I mean you can sit around the rooms not do a damn thing and pick some up you know I That's what I did. You know, I mean, the longer I'm sober, the less I know. False humility couched in spiritual pride.
Not impressive. Don't ask them any questions. They don't know anything.
You know, I don't believe I'm 24 years sober. I damn well better know some stuff, you know. Hopefully, I've read the books and seen the movie and, you know, participated a little bit.
You pick some stuff up. Just simple life skills. You know, we don't give advice.
Please, you know, what kind of advice do we really give when they come to us? You know, I mean, what do do we tell them what stocks to invest in? Hopefully not.
You know, it's not like that. The guy comes and says, "I've fallen in love with the new dancer down at the Wild Goose. I think I'm going to get married.
What do you think?" You know, probably not a really good idea, you know, but I' I'd rethink that. Let's take a breath, you know, and let's look at that a little bit. But, you know, if you get married, I'll come to the wedding, you know, that's the kind that's the kind of advice we're giving people.
I mean, people come to us, they want our help. I mean, these guys that are leaving my men's group, you know, because we're not a daycare center. Why do they think these kids are coming to a because it's so hip?
I don't think so. Alcoholics Anonymous has offered me a level of lameness that I didn't know was available. I mean, you got to lame up just to get this thing, you know?
I mean, this isn't hip. A's not hip. We're not cool.
We're not contemporary, you know. This is loser central. I think they're coming here because they need help.
Because they want help. I think it's as simple as that. And if we take the time with them with anybody, with anybody, but especially these kids, I've just fallen in love with them, man.
You know, I just You got to feed them, though. They never have any money, you know. And but it's not up to me to pick and choose, you know.
I don't get to pick and choose, you know. I'm It's up to me to be there for whatever comes into the room for whatever comes. Whatever comes with no equivocation, no no se anybody.
absolutely anybody. Um, God, I wish we had more time, but um, I was I was maybe two years sober and there was a guy standing in my living in my kitchen and his mother was dying and she was in the hospital. He'd been taking care of her for a couple of years.
I'd watched this guy, you know, pop her hip back into place and change her diapers and do all this stuff. And I I'd never been around anything like that. And a matter of fact, I was not in his house.
He would just come and talk to me about it. He didn't always do it with a lot of grace, but he was he was nursing his mother. They didn't have insurance or anything like that.
They really had no other choice. And he was the one that was left to do the job, and he did it. And he finally took her to the hospital, and he was standing in my kitchen, and they called him.
This is before cell phones. They called him on my phone. He had given him my number cuz he he told him that's where he'd be.
And they said, "You better get down here, Al. Um, she doesn't look like she's got much longer to go." So, he got up to leave, but he wasn't leaving. And I knew what he wanted.
And I didn't want to go. I didn't think I needed to go. I'd never seen anything like that before.
It's not my place. I'm just doing this to look good. I didn't want it to be this real, you know, and I and I and you can find a lot of people that will co-sign that stuff that will tell you, "Yeah, there's limits on what we can do.
We, you know, we're just their sponsors. We all we do is read the book with them. Just the black parts only," which is kind of a shame because there's so much in between the lines.
And uh and I stood there and finally I said, "Do you want me to go with you?" and he said, 'ould you please? Now, for some reason, they trust us more than their own family. He had a sister and a brother, you know, and he and he asked me to go with him and he I didn't know this guy very long, maybe a year, something like that.
So, I went with him and we walked in the room and it was horrible. She's all hooked up to stuff and everything. And I went and I found a chair and I sat down in this room and I breathed a little bit.
I just breathed and a feeling came over me. I didn't hear anything. The room didn't change colors, but a feeling came over me.
And the feeling was everything's okay, Bill. There's nothing wrong here. Everything's just as it should be.
This is not a mistake. It's just fine. And it was a feeling.
And I got him and I said, you know, come over here and sit next to me, Al. And he came over and he sat down. And I looked at him and I said, you know, Al, everything's okay.
This is not a mistake. this is the way it's supposed to be. It's all right.
Just relax. And I was holding his hands. He's big guy like me, but he's really a bigger man.
He's a carpenter. He's got great big callous hands. And I was holding his hand and he was gripping my hand really tight cuz he was up.
He was up. He was upset. And we prayed.
We Lord, we said a prayer. And while we said that prayer, I could feel his hand relax in my hand. That's intimacy.
That's intimacy. Emotions, I've come to understand, are very subtle things. And I'm always looking for a head rush.
That's what I know. I want to meditate and have all the cells in my body explode through the top of my head, you know? I mean, I I want I'm a child of chaos.
If things are like if all everything's flying in the air, it makes me feel alive. And I miss stuff like this all the time. All the time I miss this.
But this time I went to a place that I didn't want to go that I was afraid to go to. And I had this experience with this man. And it changed the course of my life.
His mom passed away. A friend of mine called me, a sober friend of mine who had an eight-year-old son who was dying of leukemia. And it took the boy two years to die.
He is the same age as my two children that lived in the house with me at the time. They were the same age, my daughter. And uh and I went to the hospital and I walked in that hospital room where that little boy was dying and he looked like they look like they look like a docowl poster child.
It's just horrendous. It scared the crap out of me. I'd never seen anything like that.
And I I hung around for a while and I left that hospital and I was hyperventilating. And I I said, "I can't go back in there. I can't do this.
I can't hang out there." And I called my sponsor. And my sponsor didn't even know this guy. And I told him what was going on.
And he says, "Well, I'll go with you. I'll go." So we started going to the hospital together. And for the last few months that that little boy was alive, we went there almost every day.
And our job was to try to give the dad Chris a little respit. We would take him outside where he could yell at us. And and you know, one of the things that we can bring to a situation like that, us from AA, is we can bring black humor.
We can say things in the middle of a situation like that that other people can't get away with and make people laugh nervously. We can tell dead kid jokes and stuff, you know, and other people can't get away with it. But he knows we love him and he's been to meetings.
He knows the black humor in AA. The reason we laugh at the way our lives were is because it's not like that anymore. We've gone through hell so we tell really good hell jokes, you know, but we're not in hell anymore.
And we can bring that to the table and we can kind of alleviate some of the pressure in the room sometimes. And this is kind of what we did for my friend Chris. And the little boy died.
It didn't have a happy ending. And I watched that little boy die and it changed my life. My friend Patrick Keelahan got lung cancer.
Keelahan, his mother called him the devil of all liars. And uh and he was he was horrible. He would tell his wife that he was going on retreat with us and he'd go get a eightball and a couple of hookers and go down to the Viccount Hotel.
He was never in the picture of the retreat, you know, and he was taking birthday cakes in AA and he hadn't been ever been sober. And finally, he got sober. Finally, he came clean.
He got sober and uh and we started walking the path together. And some years went by and he got lung cancer. And it took him about two years to die.
And uh Jay and I, my sponsor, he was also sponsor and Patrick, we would bring him on retreats that he actually showed up to and they had an open wound in his back that they used to drain his lungs and we had to learn how to pack the wound so that we could take him out of the hospital and we could he could come on retreat with us. He said one of the most powerful things I've ever heard in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. He said, "If you're not grateful, you ought to be ashamed of yourself." And he was there and he was close to death.
And I was there when he died. I was with him when he died. And you might remember from my talk Friday night, I told you about hating my father, which is a requirement for AA.
And I really hated my father. But when I was a year sober and he had his 70th birthday, I made amends to him. 10 years later, 10 years later, he made amends to me when I wasn't looking for it.
when I didn't need it. When the relationship was safe, don't leave before the miracle. Don't leave.
We could never share anything in our lives, but we shared aa and uh I found my daddy in Alcoholics Anonymous, you know. Was he Ward Cleaver? No.
No, he was my daddy. He was my dad. He was the kind of father that never hugged you when you were a kid, but at the end of his life, he couldn't keep his hands off of me.
It was incredibly powerful. And I started it. I started hugging him and then he started hugging me.
And we were able to go speak together at meetings sometimes and we shared Alcoholics Anonymous. He loved AA and he got cancer and it was he decided he wasn't going to do the chemotherapy and my mother and I nursed him. took about six months.
And uh one day we were standing by the side of his bed, my mother and I, and it was time to change the diaper. And there was no nurse there. He was in the living room of his house.
And my mother looked at me and she goes, "Well, here we go." And we changed his diaper. And I got to see my parents as lovers. They were married 62 years.
62. Aa Alanon saved their marriage. Kept my family together.
AA and Alanon kept my family together when I was six years old when he got sober and I got to see my parents as lovers because she'd seen his butt many times in 62 years, you know, and that's kind of an interesting experience to see that kind of loving kindness. You know, love is work, you know, it's work. It's not an emotion.
It's the action that we take towards somebody that we feel strongly towards. And I watched that happen. And we took care of my father and he his light went into the other room and we had a wonderful memorial.
Man, he always had the phone in his hands and you would call him and half the time he didn't know who it was and he didn't care. It didn't matter, you know. It was his people.
They would we bring AA meetings to the house and and it was it was really quite a celebration. It was a sad sweetness. He was 85 years old.
He lived a good life and he died a happy man and he wasn't he wasn't baldled up in fear and scared to death and screaming and yelling. He was at peace. He was at peace.
He was okay. My mother moved in with Karen and I. And in a couple years after that, she got cancer.
She was also 85. And I nursed her by myself in my house, in the living room of my house. We had her in a hospital bed the last couple of months of her life.
And one day I'm standing by the side of the bed and it was time to change the diaper and nobody else was there. And my mother was a very gorgeous woman. She was always impeccably she took care of herself and she looked a lot younger than she really was.
And she always was very vain and and you know took so she was in tears, you know, because she thought she had lost her dignity. And she looked at me and she said, "I never raised you to do this." And I thought about that and I went,"Oh yes you did. You know I remember that house I grew up in that AA house.
I know what you people were doing now. You were saving those people's lives. You did raise me to do this.
I live in a house just like the one I was raised in. Now I have a sober wife. She sponsors a bunch of women.
I sponsor a bunch of guys. We try to keep them separated, you know, and she tries to pair them up sometimes, which is given the gene pool, it doesn't work out very well, you know. And uh um and I looked at it, I said, "You did raise me to do this, you know.
I remember that house, so roll over." You know, and I changed her diapers and we entered into a level of intimacy that we didn't know was available. And it's not the physical part. It's not the physical part.
It's just loving care and kindness, you know, being there for somebody. Now, some of you might be sitting out there thinking, "You can't do this." Yes, you can. If I can do it, you can do it.
You know, yes, you can do it. We don't run away anymore. We don't run away from things.
You know, it's not up to me to pick and choose what I will and won't do. You know, the next time it was a lot easier. The third time she goes, "Bill, it's time." You know, and it became part of the root work.
it just we became part of what was going on and uh and my mother passed away and we had a wonderful memorial. Now let me ask you this question. The reason I close with this, what if I would have said no to that man in my kitchen that day?
What if I hadn't gone to the hospital? Would that have changed everything? I don't know.
But it brought something home to me. I cannot figure out how this thing works before it works. I'm not in charge.
I'm not the manager. I have no idea that the actions that I take way over here today won't affect my life way over here 10 years later. And that's been my experience.
And what brought that home to me? What has taught me these things? What has caused me to confront my defects of character more than anything else is working with you.
And once again, when I get on my knees and I ask for help, he sends me you. He sends me you. And you have to give it away to even get it.
Thank you very much. Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message.
Until next time, have a great day.