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. If you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-rise.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. And now, let's give a special Santa Barbara welcome to our main speaker who is JS from Hermosa Beach.

>> Good evening, friends. My name's Jay Stennet and I'm an alcoholic and God's doing for me today what I couldn't do for myself cuz it's a little bit after 8:00 on a Friday evening and I have not had anything to drink all day today and I haven't sniffed any glue or done any of those other things that I found to be so consoling either. So for an alcoholic of my variety that's that's a pretty amazing thing.

Could I see the hands of all the people that are in their first year of sobriety? Yeah. God bless you.

What a wonderful group you have here. What a wonderful group you have here. Um my purpose in coming to participate at a meeting.

Uh what I'm asked to asked to share is I'm here to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. And it is my most fervent prayer that tonight I'm gonna say two or three things that are either going to offend you or inspire you to go out and have a cup of coffee over this next week with somebody who you admire and to talk about this program that we call Alcoholics Anonymous because that's how I learned about AA was coming to the speaker meetings, listening to the people talk and figuring out what I thought about what it was that I thought they said. Going out to coffee, smoking lots of cigarettes.

We could smoke in those days. And uh and uh you know, judging them, trying to figure out how can they possibly stay sober thinking like that and you know, and that's how I learned about AA. So, I bring you greetings from my fabulous wife, Adele.

Adele's got uh 18 years no drinking. Uh I have uh my sister Regina, who if you're in Las Vegas and are wondering how to uh stay sober, she uh and her uh husband Greg uh attend the morning meetings at uh Stairway 2 in Las Vegas. She wants me to always tell you that she's not just a weekender.

She's there every day. And uh they're there at the morning meetings. Uh, and I came to you on the second day of May in 1979.

And although I found it necessary on a lot of occasions, you know, like I said, I haven't taken the front drink. And all these people that I just told you about, they've all been sober for their first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. So, if you're new with us, relapse does not have to be part of recovery.

Now, we all have our own stories and no story is superior to another. So, it doesn't matter what your particular story is. But if you're sitting there tonight wondering when your relapse is going to come, you don't.

It does. It never has to because you don't ever have to feel the way that you feel about yourself ever again because of this thing that we call Alcoholics Anonymous. Now, um I feel that I'm one of the poster children for the idea that alcoholism is a genetic problem.

You know, alcoholism doesn't run in my family at Gallops. Um you know, I already told you about the sober people. I got a brother-in-law, Douglas, who died of cerosis of the liver.

My my stepmother, Marcia, died of cerosis of the liver. My uh father, uh Jim, died of complications from alcoholism. and I'm not drinking and I walk free today.

And if you go out into my cousins and uh my aunts and uncles, I mean, just the amount of legal fees that these people have paid as a result of this of this illness and yet I walk free today and it's an amazing thing. See, I didn't know um I was born in Elsagundo, uh California, which if you need a reason to drink is as good as any. It's kind of an Oxnard delsur, you know.

Um, we uh, you know, you got on one side of the on one side of the the town, you got the the Los Angeles International Airport. On the other side, you got the defense contractors. On the south side, you got the uh the second Chevron refinery once the town got its name.

And then on the little strip of beach in between the town and the Pacific Ocean is the waste treatment plant for the entire county of Los Angeles. So toxicity is just a way of life, right? You want to get right with your environment.

Now, my dad was a was a uh was a good-looking guy that moved fast and played hard and uh drank a lot. And my mother didn't drink anything at all and needed to badly. I come from one of those homes where the violence did not come from the alcoholic.

It came from the non-alcoholic, you know. And uh and for all my family's weirdness, and there was a bunch um you know what these people did is they they uh they clothed me. They made sure I got to school.

They taught me to love books as at a young age. They taught me good c table manners. And uh they introduced me to God as they understood God.

so that no matter how far down the scale I went, I was given the tools to crawl back up. And for that, I am forever grateful. So, uh, I was a short guy in school, right?

I don't know if you remember the short guy. I can't throw the ball as far. I can't run as fast.

But when I got to be 12 years old, I found something that I could do really, really well. Metabolize beverage alcohol. Obviously, this is a gift from God.

And when you've got a talent, you pursue it, right? And so, I did that. But I had no idea that what I was was alcoholic.

I had no idea that I'm part of a group of people about 10%. That when I put alcohol into me, it does things to me that it doesn't do with 90% of the population. Example, by the time I'm 16 years old, my idea of a good time was to take a rack of reds, a high-powered seditive schinol, three of them.

Wash it down. Thank you, brother. Wash it down with a with a quart of spinata wine.

In 90% of the population, when they do that, what happens is called synergistic effect. The pills and the booze get mixed up. The brain literally starts to shut down.

People forget how to breathe and they choke on their own vomit. With me, I'm looking for car keys and to make short-term romantic commitments, right? 90% of the the population near death.

Me fun. Now another part of this disease I have this alcoholism I suffer from a thing called blackouts. I define a blackout is operating the body with no knowledge of what's going on.

In 90% of the population when they drink enough to black out they like get tired and they lay down. They get a little sick. With me I wake up with life forms with which I was unfamiliar when I left the house that morning.

If you have woken up with a life form with which you were unfamiliar in the morning, you might want to take a look at whether or not you're one of these allergic types. So, I've got this physical allergy to alcohol. Then the other way that this manifests is is what we call the obsession of the mind.

And the way it goes is We should be drinking. We should be drinking now. We're not drinking.

We should be drinking now. Look at all these lames. Let's go have some fun.

I can't stand being around people that aren't having fun. And it's like the middle of third period and I'm a junior in high school and I have no idea that I'm alcoholic. I have no idea.

Not only that, but I have this peculiar mental twist that I actually believe in my heart of hearts that if my mind thinks it, I got to do it. Most people don't do that. It's only in Alcoholics Anonymous that you say, "Oh, if I think it, I think I got to do it." That people go, "Yeah." So, I got this physical allergy.

I got this obsession of the mind. And then there's this phenomenon of craving that I have that sets me apart from 90% of the folks on the planet. Okay?

And and it's it's been around so long that the Chinese have a proverb about it. And the proverb goes like this. The man takes a drink and then the drink takes a drink and then the drink takes the man.

Now, does that happen every time? No. But did this ever happen to you?

You come home and they've changed the locks and they got the alcoholic luggage waiting for you. Two hefty bags with all your belongings. Obviously, this is a mistake, right?

So, you pound on the door and they're not opening. And finally, you pound on it enough that the lights start coming on in the neighbors cuz obviously it's a mistake, right? And they open the door and they're crying.

They go, "What the hell are you doing here?" Now, I don't know about you guys, but when I drink, I get very literal. So I say, "Well, I said I'd be home at 4:00. That was Tuesday afternoon.

This is Thursday morning. Where the hell have you been?" I was busy. Doing what?

And it isn't until I come to you that I learn about this phenomenon of craving. That one drinks too many and a thousand's not enough. that as long as I stay away from the front drink, I'm fine.

But when I take the front drink, I can't tell where I'm going to end up. Now, does this happen every time? No.

I mean, all I did was I got off work. I went and had a few pops with the boys. And then we we went out and we had a few more drinks and then we drank until uh closing time.

And then we went to an after hours spot. And then we uh got up uh we we went and opened the doghouse and pushed some food around on a plate and then went and got some money and got some of that Peruvian marching powder and we drank all through the day and all through the night and I'm home because it's the only place that's open. And she looks at me and she says, "You knew my mother was coming over to have dinner with us and you couldn't get here.

Get the hell away from me. You don't love me. you'd rather drink with your friends.

And I don't realize that what happens is the phenomenon of craving. This ever happened to you? They look at you and they say, "No drinking at work." All right.

And no drinking before you come into work either. Well, all right. Now, I don't know about you guys, but I hate to pay retail.

So my idea of a ideal career path in these days was to tend bar preferably during the day so that I'm available for the evening's activities. Right? So okay, I'm not going to have anything to drink.

I go I I leave the bar. I go have a few pops. I get home early.

Everybody in this no room knows what early is, right? I'm through the door by 1:45 a.m. I'm home early.

I'm home before last call. So then I I I I lay down. Now in those days I had good sponsorship.

For those of you who don't know, sponsorship is someone who is willing for fun and for free to share their scar tissue so you don't have to suffer as much. And this example was a guide taught me to keep a cold beer iced next to the bed. So when the booze had washed through me, the depressant alcohol and I popped up at 4:00 a.m.

I could drink it down and go back to sleep for another couple hours. Good effective sponsorship. And so I did that.

Then I get up about 6:30 and I go and get in the shower and I have a couple beers to get in the shower. And you guys all know what a good shower is, right? It's one where you've got a place to set your beer and an ashtray, right?

and go and get ready to get to work. And and and you guys all know that the reason I'm having a few beers to get ready to go to work is because I'm taking the bus, right? And you know why I'm taking the bus?

Cuz I can't afford to get the VW micro bus out of inound because I got another driving under the influence and I barely could pay for the lawyer. And so I'm a man of the people. I'm taking public transportation.

And uh I get down to Pioneer Square and I have another couple of beers and I walk in and I my tongue is just a little thick and my employer looks at me and they goes, "What the hell is wrong with you? Didn't we just talk about this yesterday? You said you weren't going to have anything to drink." And I look him dead in the eye and say, "I have not been drinking cuz I know like you know that beer is not drinking, right?

I mean, it's a food. And the people who tell you that beer is drinking are the same kind of people that are going to tell you that smoking pot is doing drugs. Poppycck.

It's what you do in between doing drugs, right? I mean, it's from God. It's natural.

And and you'd rather drink than work for us. Here's your money. Get the hell out of here.

my alcoholic life. I could not differentiate the true from the false. So I was living in my pinto.

I wasn't homeless. It was just my outdoorsman phase. I got arrested another few times.

And over a vodka rocks, my father asked me, "Do you think you have the disease?" And the still small voice inside of me, that voice that I've heard all of my life, said, "Pay really close attention. Maybe you'll get the lawyer paid for." And so I paid attention. He said, "Why don't you go talk to this guy?" So I went and I talked to this guy.

He said, "Meet me at the Howard Johnson's in Culver City at 7:30 tomorrow morning. Don't have anything to drink. No beer, don't smoke, no pot, nothing.

How did he know? So I go and I meet this guy and he starts talking about himself and talking about himself and he had problems in his life and he met Alcoholics Anonymous. No more problems talking about himself and talking about himself and I really need something to drink and he's not closing me.

So I said, "Look, do I need psychiatric treatment? Do I need religion? Do I require hospitalization?" And he looked at me and he said,"Listen, Trick, a hospital program will cost about three grand.

If you can get your hands on $3,000, go out and drink that money up and when you're done, call Alcoholics Anonymous. They do it for fun and for free." Wow. So, I uh I went home to my grandmother's house and I poured myself a water glass full of Davies County, Oldfashioned Kentucky bourbon with three ice cubes and I drank it down.

and I called Alcoholics Anonymous and I ended up at a noon meeting on the second day of May in 1979 at the old Manhattan Beach Club and I went vibrating into that meeting at 12:30 cuz I didn't want to get there on time. I didn't know what I was getting myself into. And people started talking at me and I couldn't understand why they were talking at me.

But see, when I'm busy drinking, you can tell that I've spent a lot of money getting my hair done maybe six months ago. So, I kind of look like the Sphinx. My hair's my my fingernails are long and I'm starting to get the zups cuz I haven't had enough to drink yet.

When I light a cigarette, it looks like I've called in a napal strike. And a miracle happened. These men and women did not talk about their day.

They talked about alcoholism. They talked about what they used to be like and how they'd been liberated from it and they weren't that way anymore. And the third guy that talked was a guy by the name of Butcher Joe.

You can always tell Butcher Joe. And Joe, uh, you know, how do you guys get sober without Butcher Joe, you know? and uh and he uh he talked about when the family left how he cried the big crocodile's tears and inside he's going yes now we can drink and there isn't anybody that's going to bother us and I understood that and he talked about knowing just how deeply to cut himself so that they couldn't put a butterfly on it that they'd have to take him to the emergency room and get a little stitch and he could get a drink on the way.

And I understood that. And he looked right through me and he said, "You don't have to feel the way you feel about yourself ever again if you're willing to do what it is that I've done." How did he know? See, I'm a geek.

I'm not a computer adept. I will mutilate myself. I go into bars and I I set up a bet with the bartender and I will eat a beer glass in order to get money so I can keep drinking and I haven't had to mutilate myself since that first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous because I bought the package.

Now I'm sitting there and they got the steps on the wall and I mean come on. But I saw that they had a language. It wasn't the language that I'd use, but they had a language that described the problem.

And I didn't I didn't know what the problem was. But as I sat there, what happened is these women and men started talking. There was Butcher Joe and there was China Joe and there was Smile and Pete and there was Sam Tap and there was Joyce who'd just been let out of the nutouse that morning.

and instead of going to the tavern, she'd come to the meeting and they were all thrilled. After the meeting, a miracle happened. Four guys were there and they were going down to the beach to play cards and to look at girls.

And they invited the new man along. And they explained Alcoholics Anonymous to me. This is aa kid, we don't use no dope here.

Wow. I was horrified. See, but I didn't understand until I'd gone to that first meeting that I had to stay away from the first drink.

And they said that if I was smoking non-habit forming marijuana that sooner or later I'd have to cut the cotton mouth. And you guys all know how to cut cotton mouth, right? You have a couple of beers and that's not drinking.

And if you're doing that Peruvian marching powder, you need a double Bombay on the rocks with a twist, just to take the edge off, right? But that's not drinking. And if you're getting spiritual and you're dropping a little LSD, you need a gon of Red Mountain to settle you through the experience, right?

They said that was drinking. Who knew? Do you know why they call it non-alcoholic beer?

CUZ IT'S NOT FOR ALCOHOLICS. I didn't know. So, I almost drank my third day and uh I had been too cool to get a copy of this book, Alcoholics Anonymous.

And uh the guy at the bar, I walked up to him, the coffee bar. I walked up to him and I said I I made it back to the Alano Club. I said, "Talk program to me, please." And he stopped what he was doing.

And he got me a copy of this book and he sent me home and I started reading it cuz uh I wasn't sleeping in those days. I was just walking and sweating and smoking and walking and sweating and smoking. They they told me nobody died from lack of sleep trick.

And so I'm I'm reading the doctor's opinion. And in the doctor's opinion, Silkworth says that for these alcoholic types, the only therapy that we have is abstinence from alcohol in any form whatsoever. That means even if it's got a little bit of alcohol in it, can't use it.

You know, it's it's like, well, I'm keeping it in the refrigerator to be social, right? And do you keep baby laxative on a mirror on the table just in case somebody comes by and wants to snort some cocaine? Um, you know, I mean, it's it's it's not it's not sobriety if you're drinking that They told me some really important stuff.

Like if you go into the pharmacy and the product that you're buying is sold with a shot glass on the top, read the label. Now, I've been stuck in places like Idaho when they didn't sell booze on Sunday. And what do you do?

Oh, thank heaven for 7-Eleven. Come on. We'll just pretend it's cream deth on the rocks.

Right. Nyquilt. It works.

You know, it does. So, I got this thing that I'm I'm I'm alcohol. And I keep reading through the book.

I miss on, you know, I mean, there's Bill's story. Oh, great. The stock market crash in World War I.

Oh, boy. I was really fascinated. You know, I wanted something contemporary.

I wanted something disco. That's why we don't change the front of the book. I mean, can you imagine how awful it was getting sober wearing that gear?

I mean, that whole genre of music was designed to make you drink. Um, anyway, so I'm read I miss on page 13. The entire program's there in a page and a half.

And I kept reading and I got into we agnostics. And in we agnostics at the end of the story there's a story of Fitzmail our our southern friend. And and in it he talks about you know he's he's he's sweating it out and and he hears this voice and the voice says who are you to say that there is no God?

And he gets down on his knees and he and he says this prayer and he has this experience. Well, if you're withdrawing from alcohol, we agnostics is written really elegantly. And when I got to that point, I wouldn't say that that's exactly what I was saying, but it was how I was living.

And uh so I got down on my knees and I said my prayer. And my prayer was this. I don't know from Jesus or Buddha.

I don't know the talma, the Torah, the Upanishads. Just please get me the top. I said, I'll do whatever these dried up old geeks say to do.

Just please help me not to drink. And I believe at that moment I'd finished the first three steps of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. It was a perfect prayer.

I'm still sober. I went to the meeting the next day. I'm sitting there sweating on a Nagahide couch at the Alano Club wearing the bad t-shirt, chain smoking.

Woman walks in. She's got a bun in her her hair in a bun. She's got a black dress on.

Support hose, correct shoes. Black says, "Oh, young man, you're new, aren't you?" HOW CAN YOU TELL? SHE SAYS, "I didn't tell you the secret of Alcoholics Anonymous in four words." What are they?

Find God or die. Oh, NO. Not that.

Not that. That was during the Carter administration. 28 years later, I can tell you this the secret of Alcoholics Anonymous in four words.

Find God or die. But this is Alcoholics Anonymous. And we will never tell you what kind of God you must find, but you must find one.

You must find one. And the group works really really well in the beginning or your sponsors concept might work really really well but you must find your own. And the thing that we have to offer you is a set of spiritual exercises.

These steps which when done not agreed with will produce a relationship with a power that will solve your problem. Well, what about atheists? This is Alcoholics Anonymous.

If you want something to meditate upon, meditate upon this. There are no referrals from Alcoholics Anonymous. There is no place where you can go and say, "Aa sent me.

This is it. This is the bottom of the social order. There is no lower place to go.

Okay? If you want something else, go pay long green for it or go stand in the parking lot and talk about how they don't understand you. But if you feel that you must quit drinking liquor and other mindaltering substances and that you need help, we know that we have an answer for you.

And it always works if you go about it with one half the zeal that you were used to showing when you went about getting your next drink. I'm an active AA guy and I maybe do about 10 15% of what I did drinking and using. And the seduction of of this society, this materialism that is that has engulfed us is so bizarre because all it says is you can't.

There is not enough time. But see, this is alcoholic synonymous. I can't, but we can.

And there is enough time for all things here. So, I'm scared to death. This woman's just frightened me out of my mind.

I got a sponsor at that meeting. Guy was taking a cake for four years. Um, I uh and and I will never be able to repay that man and his Allenon wife.

And God bless the Alenon people that are here. Um the Alanon family groups are more important than alcoholics and animals because in the family groups an entire family can get well and in AA it's the only the alcoholic. Um, just an opinion.

I got it from a guy who died with 45 years of sobriety, Gordon Cleveland. And uh, so I I can never repay those people cuz I'd show up on on his his his porch at like 3:00 in the afternoon, baffled, and she'd open the door and put on a pot of coffee and let me sit there and smoke and shake until my sponsor got home. When I was 22 days sober, I was reading the big book unsupervised.

We could do that in those days. And uh and I I read where it says if you don't do an inventory, you're going to drink. So I ran to my sponsor.

I said, "I'm going to drink." He says, "No, you're not." He told me a couple stories. He said, "Look, get really jacked up on coffee, go home, look at the door." He said, "Think about where you lived, where you worked, your family members, uh life forms that you woke up with, who you hate." He said, "For intellectuals like you, entire political parties will be fine." Um he said, "Uh he said, uh write down who you stole from." And I did. It took me about 4 and 1/2 hours.

Was it a fearless and thorough moral inventory using all four counts? No. Was the greatest hits?

I mean, I woke up with a yak. You know what is except yak again, yak again, yak again, yak. You know what needs to be in that inventory is all the stuff that's on that rotisserie that you call your brain that goes around and around and around and you've been telling your stories about him and her and them for years and years and years and that's what you write down.

He said you get three sentences on why their names on the list. Nobody's life's that interesting. This was before newcomers had a union.

It was we didn't know, you know, we did what they told us. We went to a meeting every day. Um and and so I did it.

He came over the next day. I read it to him. We burned.

We said the silly prayers and we burned it. >> Oh my god, what happened to your eighth step? You know, it was all right there on my mind.

And by the time I'm three weeks uh four weeks sober, I'm out making amends. I'm a fully vested member of Alcoholics Anonymous. Have I done any other inventories?

Of course. But the thing was, I got out and and went after it. I started sponsoring people when I was 28 days sober.

I called my sponsor when this guy asked me, "What do I do?" He said, "If he's sick enough to ask you, you can't hurt him. Every man and woman in this room, there is a life whom you are here to save. And if you haven't done the work and you're not here and available, what will happen to that woman or man when they walk through the door?

Everybody should sponsor. It is the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. There is nothing else.

The first nine steps is to just clean you up enough, patch you up enough that you can begin to do the work. I started making amends immediately. I went to my grandmother, Alice.

Alice uh had taught me how to tend. I just owed her a little money. I said, "Grandmother, I owe you some money.

Here's some of the money. Always take money. They've heard enough about your intent." The spiritual experience happens when what we do is we go back and we look the people whose trust we have violated in the eye and we say, "I'm sorry.

this is the spiritual crime I've committed. I stole money from you. Here's some of the money and what can I what else can I do to make it right?

And she looked at me and she grabbed the money and she headed towards the door. I said, "Where are you going?" She said, "About four years ago, you and I had a conversation and you told me that you didn't believe in God anymore and I went down and I put your name on a list at church and uh me and the girls have been praying for you and I need to go down there and report to them that my grandson has been restored." Spiritual terrorism. It's highly effective.

Now, I'll tell you spiritual terrorism 101. When you walk into an AA meeting and you see an empty chair, cuz we all know somebody who needs the gift of sobriety, walk up and tap the chair and say their name. Get some other people to do it.

And don't give up and see what happens. In 1985, the artist formerly known as wife, got sober, and it was an amazing event in my life. And we picked three people.

Her best childhood friend, my sister, who was missing in action with her self-employed Colombian boyfriend, and my friend Judy, who was hopping cocktails at the saloon we were working at. And every time that we went to a meeting in the moment of meditation for the alcoholic who still suffers, we said those three people's name. Within two years, all three of them got sober.

All three of them picked up one-year cakes. And the two that got sober in AA are still consecutively sober. And the woman uh who chose to drink again, she chose to drink again.

Have you ever been sitting in a meeting and somebody runs in and they say, "Did you hear about Arie? Arie drank with 32 years of sobriety. Be afraid." Now, I know Arie.

Arie last went to a meeting during the Reagan second administration. He resigned from AA. What we have to offer, we are a spiritual group of men and women involved in action.

This is not something where you get to, oh, I got mine and run home. The the holiest place in the world is being in a birthing room. The second most sacred place in the world is being in a room when another person passes from this life.

But the third most sacred place is a kitchen table where you sit and you turn pages and you read with another person and you're there at the moment that that person goes, "Oh my god, I did that. This might work for me." And then when that person, you know, see, I drank away my soul and I came to you and you gave me these these spiritual exercises and I was no longer an animal. My soul was reignited and it's been a wonderful, wonderful ride.

You know, when I go home tonight, my wife is thrilled to see me. We have a sober household. And we don't agree with the 11th step.

We actually do it. We do what's there in the book. You know, if I have any prayer for you, it's that you'll follow the 11th step that's in the book.

And that when you get up in the morning, that you'll sit there with, you know, who whatever sentient being you live with. you know, your cat will work too, but you know, if you've got roommates, whatever, if you spend the time because that's the time that this whole thing gets put into gear. You know, I've got a daughter who's 19 years old who's a disc jockey at clubs in Hollywood.

You know, it's her turn. And uh but I've never hit that child and she's not afraid of her father. And that's not where I came from.

the chain broke with me and uh and I've had all the good fortune and many of the misfortunes that any man or woman can have on this planet. But I used to be walking the streets looking for a cigarette and enough to drink and nobody wanted to see me and I didn't want to see anybody. And now people call me when their children are born and they call me when their children are dying.

And all I do is show up. I don't have any answer except that I can help make any experience, no matter how joyous or how tragic a sober experience and it's a wonderful, wonderful thing. One more story and then I'll get down.

Now, everybody in this room knows that the reason that you don't want to take the third step is that you're going to end up being a missionary in some weird third world country, right? Because that's not cool. It's much better to have crusty pants and be laying in a gutter than to be out doing weird stuff.

Well, when I was 20 years sober, I turned my will in my life over to the care of God as I understood God. I was out on a on a retreat having a good time. And uh and uh then I went home and I went I I stopped at this church that I that I go to.

And when I say church, I'm not saying what you think I'm saying. You know, it's a place where women and men get together and and and and and do some spiritual stuff. And so I'm I'm there and this guy gets up and he goes, I'm going to go to Bise, help build a church.

Who wants to go? And I'm thinking, I don't have the time and I don't have the money and you know, that's good for other people. But uh I remembered that I'd done this third step.

And so I get up and I say, "Oh, I'm going to go." And I go home to my nice Jewish wife and I say, "I'm going to go build house for Jesus down in Central America. I don't have the time and I don't have the money." She says, "Oh, honey, just ask your customers. They'll send you for entertainment value." And so I did and they did.

And they all had the same prayer. Don't let him touch any power tools. So, I get down there and I'm down there for about 3 days in the jungle in Central America and these nice people that I'm with and I but I go to meetings wherever I am and and I I just I want to go to AA.

So, I walk up to this Guatemalan priest and I say, "You'll alcoholics anonymous." And he starts to cry and he goes, "You so I'm Alcoholics Anonymous." And there in the middle of the jungle of Central America, that man told me his story and I told him mine. See, any time that I'm out there doing stuff, God, as I understand, God always sends me you. Always sends me Alcoholics Anonymous.

You know, I think you ought to pray and meditate the way you drank and used. Go out and try it all. See what works.

But if you're ever around anyone and they say to you that Alcoholics Anonymous is a lower form of consciousness, just smile and back slowly towards the door cuz they don't know and they don't need to know. They're part of 90% of the population. They are not bodily and mentally and spiritually different and they you can't explain it to them any more than you can explain to them all the other things about us getting sick.

Because this is Alcoholics Anonymous and we do whatever any spiritual teacher has recommended doing. We clothe the naked, we feed the poor, we go to the hospitals, we go to the jails. And what we really do here is we raise the dead.

And if you want something to do with your life, if you want it to be to be a rich and glorious and inviting thing, try doing Alcoholics Anonymous. Get out there and and and screw it up something. make it, you know, make us proud.

There's a man by the name of Aubrey Mina and he said, "There are three things that are true. God, human folly, and laughter. The first two are unfathomable.

So, let's do what we can with the third. God bless you. Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise.

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