AA Speaker – Deandre M. – Ventura, CA – 2008
Deandre M. shares how finding the right sponsor and working the steps saved his life from Skid Row. An AA speaker on staying sober through service and spiritual action.
Deandre M. from Watts, California grew up in a housing project where alcoholism looked normal, and by his early twenties he was homeless on Skid Row. In this AA speaker tape, he walks through his journey from hitting bottom at 24 years old to finding a sponsor named Dennis L. who taught him that working the steps isn’t just about feeling better — it’s about learning to stay in the program and serve others.
Deandre M. describes hitting rock bottom on Skid Row at 24 years old and entering a rehab facility called Warm Springs, where he got his first exposure to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and the power of community. An AA speaker on sponsorship, he explains how his sponsor Dennis L. taught him the steps not as a self-improvement program but as a spiritual practice focused on staying sober and being of service. The talk emphasizes that long-term recovery requires daily spiritual maintenance, a relationship with a Higher Power, and a willingness to help others rather than chase self-improvement.
Episode Summary
Deandre M. opens with raw honesty about growing up in the Jordan Downs Housing Projects in Watts, where he saw his mother make alcohol look fun and where the disease took root early. He describes his drinking years as a calculated game — using stories, feelings, and manufactured crises to justify drinking, while telling himself and everyone around him elaborate lies about why he needed a drink. The modus operandi chased him through his late teens and into his twenties as he bounced between Watts, Inglewood, and downtown Los Angeles, working what he calls “a triangle of service to his disease” instead of unity, service, and recovery.
By 24, Deandre was living on Skid Row, beaten down literally and figuratively. His grandmother told him he looked like “a bomb” — matching what he’d become inside. His aunt directed him to a hospital, where a referral worker sent him to El Centro. There, a man named Ronnie told him the most profound thing he’d ever heard: “You’re 24 years old, you’re living on Skid Row, and you’re not going to make it.” For the first time, Deandre believed someone. He got on his knees and prayed, and Ronnie gave him bus tickets to a hotel while arranging his entry into Warm Springs Rehabilitation Center. Even then, on his last night before rehab, Deandre smoked a roach off the ground and drank two 40-ounces just to prove he still had agency. He checked into Warm Springs on May 28, 1991, and his sobriety date is May 29, 1991.
What follows is his introduction to AA as an AA speaker and the broader recovery community. At Warm Springs, he experienced the structured life of a residential facility — morning prayers asking God to keep people sober, reflection on what kept people sober the day before, discussions of meetings attended. He noticed the big tree covered in AA chips and, in the mind of a newly sober know-it-all with four weeks, decided the group was inefficient for complaining about a chip shortage when the tree had all the chips they needed. He almost suggested shaking the tree for chips until he looked around and realized he was the only Black person in a room of 38 men in a wooded area — and backed off fast.
Upon leaving Warm Springs and moving to Lancaster, California, Deandre attended the Open Door Fellowship meeting at a noon gathering. There he met his sponsor, Dennis L., a man who made him laugh but also challenged him in ways that initially infuriated him. Dennis didn’t just teach him steps one, two, and three; he taught him what steps one, two, and three meant — what they required, how they functioned, and why doing them mattered beyond feeling relief.
Deandre was suspicious. He’d completed his step packets at Warm Springs and thought he “knew” the steps. He’d even manipulated the bylaws at Warm Springs to extend his tenure as AA steering committee chairman beyond the allowed six months. Here came Dennis, a white man, seemingly trying to slow him down, to keep him from progressing. But Deandre listened anyway. Over time, Dennis taught him something that became the spine of his recovery: the steps turn into humility, but humility alone isn’t a cure for alcoholism. What Dennis was building with him was a relationship with AA itself — not based on feelings, approval, or what others could give him, but grounded in a relationship with a power greater than himself.
Early calls to his sponsor were short and direct: “Hi, I’m not going to work the steps.” Dennis would listen and then, as a responsible member, would bring the steps anyway, whether Deandre wanted them or not. This drove him insane. He didn’t like how Dennis spoke, what he said to other people, the way he carried himself. But Dennis stayed sober, and so did Deandre. Over years, their relationship transformed from antagonism into deep respect.
Deandre shifts here into one of his core messages: the difference between being in AA to better yourself and being in AA to be of service. He critiques long-term members who’ve started thinking they’re here to feel better, to work on themselves, to improve. He calls this “divine intervention messing that up” — redirecting his focus from self-improvement to showing up for others. He talks about respecting meeting formats, showing up at someone’s house and being respectful, sacrificing how he really wants to feel to make sure someone else gets what they need.
He addresses sponsors and sponsorship directly, pushing back against rehab-created checklists that tell newcomers what to look for in a sponsor. In therapy, the customer is always right. In AA, members don’t mind telling people they’re wrong. AA can run on two or three drunks; growth toward a solution matters more than numbers. He challenges the idea that newcomers can use AA as a shield to avoid dealing with real life outside the rooms.
One of the most powerful sections comes when he reads from page 85 of the Big Book: “It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels… For alcohol is a subtle foe. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.” He describes his morning — the motor that starts the moment he wakes, the constant noise in his head that he calls his obsession. He needs his Higher Power every day to stop that motor. His mind tells him he only needs to do it when he’s feeling bad, but he knows better. He calls this “breakdown maintenance sobriety” — waiting until you owe something, until you’re broken, to show up.
He thanks long-term members for sticking around, for being the backbone of the program. He tells a funny story about a split in his home group over whether to use one scoop or two scoops of coffee in the maker — a joke about tribalism in AA, about how easily recovery communities fracture over nonsense when the disease whispers division: young versus old, Black versus white, brown-eyed versus blue-eyed people. He ends by telling newcomers that if they hear something tonight, they need to tell somebody else, because keeping it to themselves makes it mean nothing.
This talk is about staying in AA, not just getting sober. It’s about the sponsor-sponsee relationship as a spiritual practice. It’s about learning that recovery isn’t self-improvement — it’s service, daily maintenance, and a relationship with something bigger than yourself.
Notable Quotes
I was 24 years old, living on Skid Row, and I wasn’t going to make it. And for some reason, I believed him.
You might want to join us. We do not want to join you. And a lot of this stuff that he would tell me seemed rather arrogant. It didn’t seem very loving. But for some reason, he’s still sober and so am I.
It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.
The safest place to hide from the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is right here in the meeting. So safe. This is a safe place. Really safe.
When we get into tribalism in AA, you know, the young people over here, the Jewish people over here, want the black people over here, the browneyed people. When we get into all of that, I don’t think we’re really into all of this.
Step Work
Hitting Bottom
Early Sobriety
Acceptance
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Sponsorship
- Step Work
- Hitting Bottom
- Early Sobriety
- Acceptance
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
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. My name is DeAndre and I'm an alcoholic.
Good to be sober. Uh thank you Debbie for your warm welcome and your uh hospitality over uh at your home. I have already uh violated the F-word policy, but I did not do it from the podium, and I'll make amends for that by not using it during my pitch.
Want to welcome anybody that's new uh to the program. Uh saw a lot of new people stand up, some of the new people that we brought along with us. Uh want to encourage you to get to another one of these meetings as soon as possible.
Um and and try not to get loaded in between them. Uh, I'm just really really excited about being in this area. I I I drank a lot in this area.
Several years ago, I used to live in a little town called Camaro. Uh, and yes, it was at the hospital state grounds, but it was it was in the back uh the staff housing where the California Conservation Corps uh station was located. And man, we had some fun back there.
Let me tell you, when we were coming over that little uh hill, as you come down into Yaslo Valley up in here, I just a a a little feeling just went back up in my neck. uh remembering uh the sick old days and uh running around uh in those hills back there behind that hospital man, not giving a darn about nothing and making sure that we had something to drink, you know. Uh I grew up in a town called Watts, uh which is quite a ways from this one.
And uh I lived there for 14 and a half years. I come from the Jordan Downs Housing Projects in Watts. Uh the local gang color there is blue, which is why I'm wearing red tonight.
I'm a changed man. Grateful to be sober because of that. And part of the insanity of living in that community is that uh alcoholism looks okay.
Uh, based on what I've read in Yao's book and whatnot, uh, alcoholism is not a bad idea. My mother made alcohol look fun when I was a young boy. And, uh, I love drinking.
Uh, drinking went right along with uh, how I was thinking. And, uh, if you be new, we know that your way, too. I mean, that's part of the reason why I think when somebody said something at the rehab I finally wound up in about this being an illness or a sickness, it just sort of rubbed me the wrong way because when I started out getting drunk, it was because it made me feel uh okay about not being drunk.
You know, I don't know if that's a tongue twister for some of you, but what makes me thirsty is not uh drinking. I when I don't drink, then I want something to drink. And so what happens is I do all these things before I drink again.
And uh and then when I do all these things, I tell you that that's why I'm drinking, you know, because I did all this stuff, you know, and and I'm a real human being. When I do certain things, I feel a certain way. So I add that on to my little story on how I'm going to get drunk again anyway.
So I I I confuse you and my mama and them and tell you about all these things I think I'm doing and all these feelings I think I'm feeling so I can do this sort of voodoo act on you and get a drink out of the situation regardless. I don't know if anybody in here can relate to that. heard a lot of laughing and clapping and stuff earlier, but that kind of modus operandi chasing me around like that for the amount of years in which I drank gets a little frustrating.
I can't get a handle on it. So, what happens is I live in this community and then all of a sudden we're riding the bus out to the San Fernando Valley, my sister and I. uh which explains the proper diction when I talk, but I really am from Watts.
And uh we would catch the bus and be in the bus program and we would go out there and we would have a good old time and we would stay up all night. They used to have a late bus for our school. Kind of like a junior alcoholic booster club where where you didn't really have to go home on time.
you could just stay and be late and do the late bus. And I'm a real alcoholic. I know how to stretch being late.
I really know how to make that look good. And uh and we would just catch the late bus. I'd go and I'd drink with my friends out in that valley and then I would come back home smelling like an alley.
And my mother would ask me, "What is going on after school?" And I said, "What are you talking about?" Well, she says, "Last night I could smell alcohol on your breath when you were asleep. I came into your room and I smelled your breath. You were drinking at the school." And my only response to that was, you know, I eat a lot of candy.
And if you eat a lot of candy, there's a lot of sugar in candy. candy has certain fruity uh odors to it and uh that's why my breath smells like that. Now, if you want to talk about being addicted to candy, I can relate to that, you know.
Uh but my mother immediately started criticizing my drinking. And you know, I I I just felt really at ease with uh being uh completely out of my mind when it come to that front drink, you know. And uh what happened was I got chased out of that community and I had done as much damage over there as I possibly could, you know, and my uh early um surrender period where I'm almost headed to rehab is kind of like that little gingerbread man story, you know, run as fast as you can.
You can't catch me. I'm loaded, man. And I would just sort of run around the community and people would be trying to catch me.
you know, the police would be, you know, or my mother would, you know, or it just all of these people were trying to get a handle on me because I was completely out of control and I needed to be drinking and I didn't have time to be dealing with these people, you know, and uh so what I would do is I would just switch locations within that little sector there and I would go on foot from Watts to Inglewood to downtown Los Angeles and I would walk that and just sort of have my little triangle if you will of you know being of service to my disease you know and instead of unity service and recovery. It was a Jordan Downs housing project and downtown Skid Road. I would just work that triangle.
Okay. All three sides of it in order to uh be a successful failure. And uh it takes a lot of hard work to be a successful failure.
You got to be irrational and you got to ignore all help at all costs. I'm talking about real help. I'm not talking about refusing to get another drink out of somebody.
I'm talking about real help, like total abstinence, for example. Somebody suggesting that uh is someone that really doesn't understand how I feel. And so what happens is I run out of that community and I wind up being told by my aunt, she said, "You know, we're not going to let you in the house anymore, but we will let you sleep on the floor of the garage over on King Boulevard there." And uh and I remember going over to that uh house and sleeping on the garage floor.
And uh one one day I was headed back over there to camp out and my grandmother uh pulled up behind me on the street and before I had left Watts, two of my close friends had beat me up pretty bad. And I wound up with a sling and a little cane that I was walking around with. And my grandmother had pulled up behind me.
My grandmother is a very wellrespected woman in the community at that time. And she told me that I looked like a bomb. and she nailed it.
You know, she had matched the way I felt on the outside uh by what I had turned into on the inside. So, I was pretty much a dead man walking, you know, and uh and I remember just hobbling on back to that garage and sleeping. And then that next morning, my aunt told me to go down to uh Big General Hospital and see if there was somebody over there that could assist me for real, you know.
And uh and I went on over there uh to the to the big general hospital and it looks nothing like the general hospital on television at all. and uh wound up over there and I went into the little service area, the little human service people area place and there was this little old white lady sitting in a little booth is all I can remember and she said, "Uh, we don't have anything here for you, but go down to this little place called El Centro, which is a little referral agency place for alcoholics and drug addicts and things of that sort. And I went down there.
I hobbled on over there and I met this man, this Mexican guy named Ronnie MSAS. And uh Ronnie MSAS told me the pro most profound thing I had ever heard in my life. He told me that I was 24 years old.
I was living on Skid Row and I wasn't going to make it. And for some reason, I believed him. and he walked out of that little cubicle and I got on my knees and I prayed and I asked God to help me and uh Ronnie came back with these little bus tickets and he told me that I was going to take these bus tickets and go to this hotel on 7th in Vermont and come back to his office on a daily basis until he could put me in some sort of a program and a miracle took place.
I didn't sell the bus tickets and I proceeded to go back and forth from his office on a daily basis for several days. And on the last day that I was at that hotel, this little Jewish guy went and bought two 40 ouncesers and we drank those two beers and talked about the crisis in the Middle East for about four hours because I'm going to start my recovery. And um and I went down to Ronnie's office and he told me this morning, he says, "Go down to the Volunteers of America building over right around the corner from Fifth and San Julian and go in there and call a woman named Yolanda at a facility called Warm Springs Rehabilitation Center." And I got on the bus and I went down to that building.
And before I walked in the building, there was a little roach on the ground in front of the door. I know this is an AM meeting and don't nobody in here know nothing about weed or marijuana, but I picked that roach up off the ground and I hid it and smoked it and walked around the building and went in to start my sobriety. And I picked up the phone and I called Warm Springs and Yolanda answered the phone and she told me that I had to be clean and sober for seven days.
And I told her that I did not have seven days of sobriety and we were going to have to push this back a little bit cuz I'm surrendering but I'm not ready cuz I still got a plan or an idea or something other than what somebody's telling me in regards to real help. and uh and she told me to get on the van anyway. And that was on May the 28th, 1991.
And my sobriety date is May the 29th, 1991. I've been sober ever since. So, my story is really, really not all that exciting in regards to uh being stuck at the beginning and fighting the process.
And so, I'm going to go into that a little bit. One of the uh things that happened to me when I got on that van is I went up this long meandering road into Warm Springs. It's kind of like the road to Jericho.
And uh I remember just feeling really sick and very very uncomfortable. And uh I don't know if anybody besides my close friends here uh who go with me on a panel. In fact, we have that panel tomorrow night uh who've ever been on that road, but it's real spooky and scary.
It's like a forest, you know, and it's real like weird and dark. There's no lights out there, you know, and it's just really creepy. And I remember just going up that road and getting off that van and seeing all these people walking around Warm Springs and these weird little county jackets, you know, and everybody was looking like they didn't want to be there at all.
And uh and everybody was sort of moping around and it just felt like a training camp for zombie people in a movie or something. Everybody just sort of was zombie out. Was no new people up there laughing and answering their cell phone.
Wasn't a lot of busy things happening for a lot of those new people up there. And I remember getting off that van and uh going into the general service building and meeting this woman named Irene. And she was a mean old lady.
And the way I evaluated that is by her asking me this very honest question that she had to ask all the new people. Do you have any clean underwear? She asked me that in front of other people and I thought that was very rude and disrespectful considering the fact that I didn't have any.
you know, and uh part of the thing that she went into was what I needed. And I don't really uh feel comfortable when people really address what I really need. I'm more stimulated when we pontificate hour after hour on things that I want.
That's when I'm most stimulated. But don't be talking to me forever about what I really need. I'm allergic to that as a real alcoholic, you know.
And u what happened was I went over to Sea Dorm. This little guy named Renee, he came over and he walked me over to Sea Dorm. And in Seadorm is when I think I really began to be introduced to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Because in that dorm, what we would do is in the mornings, we would pray. And we would ask God to keep us sober. And then we would start the morning by reflecting on what people had done the day before and what they had done to stay sober.
And then we would talk about the meetings we went to. Uh, and since I was a new person that first morning, uh, I just listened for once. And uh it just seemed like those people really had something special.
And then they had this huge big gigantic tree with all of these AA chips on it. And they all seemed to worship the tree. You know, it always seemed like there was some sort of respect for the tree with the plastic Vegas poker chips with the little and it tripped me out.
I was like, why are these people attracted to this plastic tree? And if you went too close to the tree or if you violated the guy's face who was in charge of the maintenance of the tree, you could be written up for that. He went too close to the tree when he was not supposed to be there, you know.
And so, uh, the tree thing sort of weirded me out a little bit. And then I went to the meeting and they had a speaker meeting and the guy got up and he said, "For some reason it really and and it really scared me." He said, "Hi, my name is so and so and I'm the secretary of this meeting and we're running low on chips." And my mind automatically said, "Well, what about the tree?" You know, you got the tree over there. you just take the chips off the tree and put them in the thing, you know, and nobody would talk about the tree and this the chips that they could go and get and then so aa is sort of strange.
There's some strange things happening here. These people are constantly asking for stuff that they already have. They're crazy.
I have four weeks of sobriety and I am going to suggest that we do something about this tree. I am tired of hearing them complaining about how we don't have enough chips for the meetings. We shake down the tree.
We save a couple of dollars. And I brought it to the meeting in the morning. We were all sitting around the tree and uh and and I looked at we had a chairperson for each dorm, a chairman of the dorm.
And I addressed the chairman. And I, you know, I raised my hand and I said, you know, um, it's come to, you know, all of our attention that, um, there's a shortage of chips in the meetings and we have this tree here with all these chips on it. And everybody, there's 38 men per dorm in Warm Springs.
There's about six dorms. And all 38 of those eyes, the sets of eyes, just sort of looked at me and I looked at them. And then I thought about where we were in the woods, wooded area.
A lot of negative things happen in woody areas, especially when you're primarily the only black guy around, you know. So, I kind of backed off that issue and we dropped it. And just trans uh trans transitioning out of that rehab and going into the community, I moved to a town called Lancaster, California.
So we go from the only black guy being in the forest to the only black guy being in the desert. You know, you got to be the center of attention. And uh and I went on down there and I went to a little meeting called the Open Door Fellowship Hall of Alcoholics Adobe.
And in that meeting, I met a man named Dennis Lee uh at a noon meeting one afternoon. And uh and he made me laugh. I felt like getting drunk that day.
I had been sober for a little while and he was saying something funny in the meeting about how dirty the floors were. It's a high entry level group and uh just sitting around in there, man. And I I wound up talking to him after the meeting and and he was telling me things like, you know, you know a lot about steps one, two, and three.
It seems that you know that, but I'm going to teach you what I know about steps 1, 2, and three. And that kind of threw me off a little bit because at Warm Springs, I had completed my step packets. So, I knew about the steps, but he wanted to talk to me about what he knew about the steps and what he had learned about the steps out of his book.
And uh and I remember looking at him with sort of a you know a scance as a big book would say and I looked at him and I thought to myself he doesn't want me to really do well around here. I can already see that he's trying to challenge me because I'd become the AA steering committee chairman by the time I had left Warm Springs and I changed the bylaws so they couldn't vote me out. and we were only allowed to do it for 6 months and I got my friends and we we manipulated the bylaws and I did it for 9 months and u so I could I could clearly see that we got a white man here trying to keep a brother down is what's going on.
He want to slow me down in my pro my progress. I'm moving on in my life and he's trying to you know uh so I went ahead and listened to him anyway and uh what happened was uh Dennis Lee took me through the steps. He took me through the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
And he taught me a whole new way to live and he taught me how to not leave here. And a lot of people are taking people through the steps, but they're not teaching people how to stay in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I don't think that that's a good idea because if I take a look at these steps, they simply just turn into humility.
And I have uh two problems with just being left with humility. First of all, I don't really know when I'm practicing it cuz my ego is bigger than all outdoors. And second of all, humility is not a cure for alcoholism.
So what he was showing me through building history with this program and developing a relationship with AA that's not based on how I feel, what you need to give me, or what I should be giving you. You know, it's based on a relationship with the power greater than ourselves. And one of the things that I learned through trying to deal with this man is that he drove me insane.
I did not like the way he addressed me. I did not like the way he talked to other people when I was around. And his wife looked like a parrot.
And uh big book says that uh we need to find a man with a real answer and there are women here tonight. So when we use the term man in aa a lot of times we need mean human and uh and we had and I had to find somebody with and he and God just did that for me. And you know what happened was we build a relationship with each other to where I would call him and talk to him about how I was not going to live in humility andor work the steps.
That's basically what most of those early conversations were about. Hi, this is DeAndre. I speak to Dennis.
This is Dennis. Hi, I'm not going to work the steps. And I know a lot of new people here tonight think that they are talking about all these other great things, but in early sobriety, most of the time, that's all a new man or woman is really telling me over the phone.
Hi, my name is whoever. I'm calling to speak to you. Are you there?
Yes, I'm here. Hi, I'm not going to work the steps. Are you going to take this call or not?
And as a responsible member in the program of Alcoholic synonymous with Time Sober, it is my responsibility to bring forth the steps regardless if you don't want to work them or not. Now, I know some people are looking for friends when they come here. He told me to buy a puppy.
And a lot of the relationships that I see in AA now are based on popularity rather than clarity. And as Dr. Bob would say, uh, I feel sorry for you.
You know, I I I've learned how to be unpopular and alcoholic synonymous in order to live uh a spiritual way of life that that works for this alcoholic. I'm not here to win anybody over. If you don't want what we have, we agree with not wanting what you have either.
In fact, we're trying to get rid of it. And I know a lot of new people are struggling just as much as people with time silver struggle. And that's why we use the steps.
You might want to join us. We do not want to join you. And a lot of this stuff that he would tell me seemed rather arrogant.
It didn't seem very loving. But for some reason, he's still sober and so am I. And what happened in that relationship is it turned into something that AA needs an example on how to get through the steps, stay here, and be here for new people so we can get them through the steps.
See, a lot of times with long-term sober, I start thinking that I'm here to better my life, that I'm here to feel better about myself, that I'm here to work on myself, that I am here to get you to work on me so I can be who I think I really want to be, which is someone I have no idea of anyway. But it just makes me feel good when I help you run game on that idea. I don't know if anybody in here can relate to that.
And what the program and my higher power does is it takes this thing we call divine intervention and it just messes all that up for me. And I wind up being here for you. And then I can get off my butt and go to work.
And then I can show up at your meeting and try my best to respect your format. And then I can go over to Dustin's house where his parents are and be respectful. And then I can sacrifice how I really want to feel about something in order to make sure that you're getting what you need.
You might want to try that. If you don't have a lot of time sober, you may wind up with more time sober. It's a beautiful thing to be caught up in the altruistic movement rather than this obsession of self-improvement.
It's a neat thing to be a part of the process rather than helping people create more mess, you know. And that's what he was teaching me. and he's sick this week.
He's not doing well. Congestive heart failure about four days ago and he's in the hospital still thinking that they're going to let him go and that's not what his wife is telling me. And I just feel a little uh upset with myself about uh the games that I played in the earlier part of our relationship to not really value what this man did for the guy you're listening to.
So, if you're a newcomer, I hope uh that you find a man or a woman in this program who makes a lifelasting impression on how you drank and why you would want to just be sober. Because if you do not find someone like that, you're probably going to be stuck with your own crap. And it feels beautiful to be free from arguing with him about anything.
Now, I know a lot of people are uncomfortable with following along. Uh, a lot of people are saying that um that they need to make sure that all of their demands are met before they will work the steps with someone. And uh the rehabs have now been telling our new people what to look for in a sponsor.
And there is a certain type of a check sheet that the newcomer should leave the rehab facilities with and then they should go out amongst us in AA and sort of see if we meet a certain criteria you know and if we don't meet that then that newcomer should go and find someone else and I'm here to share tonight without using words that I normally news that that's not how we roll. See, in therapy, the customer is always right. Somebody's got to give that ID number over for the medical insurance and all stuff, but in AA, we don't mind letting our customers know they're wrong.
You know, we don't mind that. We have no problem with that. In fact, we can run this thing on about two or three drunks.
I know a lot of us get stimulated with the numbers and we see all the people and yay, we're so big, you know, and uh I don't think we try to grow in size in a I think we grow more toward what the solution is. How do I stay sober tonight? I don't care if three or four or five people are going to help me do it, but how do I do it?
You know, and that's what I've been learning from you people. How do I not get drunk tonight? And how do I not use that as an excuse to not deal with life out there?
Because these people don't care. You know, they really don't. Most of them don't.
I've been out in this community and and and I work. I have a job. I'm very functional.
And uh I cannot tell my boss, hey, look, you know, uh this is my AA ID. I'm going to be laid all this week. Been sober going on 17 years and uh I got a lot of stuff going on here.
Excuse me. Move over to everybody down on the floor now. Aa here.
If you're a newcomer and you are going out of these rooms and trying to use us as some sort of a shield to not deal with real life, as Dr. Bob would say, I feel sorry for you. One of the things I'll share and then I'll start winding down.
I know everybody is dying to get out of here to go help somebody. a meeting. You know, the safest place to hide from the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is right here in the meeting.
So safe. This is a safe place. Really safe.
One of the things I want to read here is something that really disturbs me as a longtime member in AA and I was trying to avoid this for so long and it's right here on page uh 85. And real quick, it says uh it is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do.
For alcohol is a subtle foe. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.
Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities. How can I best serve thee? Thy will not mine be done.
These are thoughts which must go with us constantly. We can exercise our willpower along this line all we wish. It is the proper use of the will.
So, in other words, uh cuz I hear people saying that they need a break, that they're tired, that they're sleepy, that they got finals, that their boss looked at him funny the other day. Mom don't want me to go. It's too much money.
Gas costs a lot of money. I'm too busy. I got my whole life ahead of me.
I got potential. That drug is I saw some people smiling. You know, man, you know, when somebody out there tells us we got potential and we're still drinking, that means we going to get some money, man.
We got it coming in. And potential. Only thing potential about most of us is we're about to be potential alcoholic, you know.
But anyway, it's this busy me me, you know, in my I'm talking about my head me. You know, it's like you wake up in the morning, you know, you get I get up in the morning and I rise up and the motor just starts. And it just sort of, you know, and if I don't get into that meditation, if I don't answer that phone, if I don't pray and ask my higher power to rescue me from me, I am telling you that that little thing is going.
It's going. And I lie and I tell you that's not what it is. One of you guys are going to wind up going, "What's that noise?" Because you hear it.
It's a It's a really high pitch sort of a faint sound. You hear it? You hear it, don't you?
You hear it? And what happens is I need my higher power to to get in there and stop that every day. My mind tells me that I don't need to do it every day.
I only need to do it when I'm feeling bad. He used to call it breakdown maintenance sobriety. You know, show up every time they owe you something.
Yeah, you got a cake. They owe me a cake. Hey, I'm here for my cake.
What's the I'll wrap it up by saying, you know, if you've been sober for a little while, I really want to thank you. You know, I really want to thank uh the people with long-term sobriety tonight. We're always hooping and hollering for new people, and I think new people are very important.
I think new people are the lifeblood of the program, but I am not a phabotamist, and I don't like being in a room full of blood. Need some meat, some backbone here. and these people with this long-term sobriety, if you could just hang around here, please.
If you could keep just coming back to our regular participation meetings, if you could please come to some of our book studies, you people with time sober. We really need the help. You know, I've never gone to an AA meeting and heard anybody running around going, "Where are all the new people?" I mean, now the courts are making sure that we don't need to do that, right?
But you let the coffee guy not show up and there's going to be war. Where is the coffee? I'll tell this last little story and I'm going to sit down.
I've ran out of time. Uh we had controversy going on at my home group one year. It was about the coffee.
We had controversy because uh we were trying to figure out if we were going to put two scoops in the coffee maker or one scoop in the coffee maker. And the group split up. We had the two scoop people and we had the one scoop people.
And I happen to be a two scooper, by the way. I will always vote two scoop. It's never going to change.
Down in my soul, I am a two scooper. And if I ever see a one scooper looking at me the wrong way, there's going to be hell to pay. One scoopers get on my nerves.
You know, come around here, they barely want coffee. You know, they think we all should barely want coffee. But one scooper ain't nothing, man.
And when we get into tribalism in AA, you know, the young people over here, the Jewish people over here, want the black people over here, the browneyed people. When we get into all of that, I don't think we're really into all of this. If you're a new person, I hope you heard something here tonight that you can tell somebody else.
Cuz if you just keep it to yourself, it ain't going to mean nothing anyway. Thanks for letting me share. Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise.
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