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We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> Morning everyone. My name is Jay Stennet and I'm an alcoholic.

And God's doing for me what I couldn't do for myself cuz it's 10:30 on a Sunday morning and I haven't had anything to drink yet, which for an alcoholic of my variety is a a really amazing occurrence because, see, I'm a morning drinker. I love to drink in the morning. I'd like to thank uh my friend Chuck and the committee uh for being so kind to my family.

you know, I got to bring my fabulous wife, Adele, with me, and it's always great to get the wife in another area code. So, thanks for the excuse. Um, and then also my AA family, you know, to be able to be here with uh uh Bill and and Will and uh and Phil.

We're all ill. Uh, anyway, But uh and to have the opportunity to reflect and write and pray and meditate over the thing that I think is the most wonderful topic there is, which is sponsorship. Now, for those of you who are new with us, my purpose here this morning is to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.

And it's my most fervent prayer that something I say will either excite you or offend you so much that you will go out and have a cup of coffee and have a real discussion about this thing that we call Alcoholics Anonymous. And uh in our book uh this is the fourth edition of the book Alcoholics Anonymous. And uh if you don't have a copy, I'd suggest that you get it.

One of the things that was really important to me when I got sober was is that there were there were men and women who were referring to this literature. And I got sober on the second day of May in 1979 was the day that I came to you. And although I found it necessary on a lot of occasions, I haven't taken the front drink, sniffed any glue, or done any of those other things that I found to be so consoling.

But the uh at that time, the third edition of the book, Alcoholics Anonymous, had only been out for about two and a half years. And there wasn't anybody talking to me about the stories being better in their big book or referring to pageionation that wasn't in the book that was given to me, the third edition. So if you have don't have this book, get it.

Is there anybody here who is fortunate enough to sleep with another person in 12step program? Yeah. If you want to have some real fun, take the new stories in here and try reading them aloud to each other at night.

It's a nice way to build an AA home. Uh in uh there is a solution. It says here uh each individual in the personal stories describes in his own language and from his own point of view the way he established his relationship with God.

That's my purpose this morning. And the way that I got that relationship with the power greater than myself was uh was through sponsorship. And uh have you ever um have you ever had this happen to you?

They look at you and they say, "No drinking at work." Okay. Now, I don't know about you, but I hate to pay retail and uh so I like to tend preferably during the day. So I'm available for the evening's activities.

And so when they say that to me, I Oh, okay. I I won't have anything to drink. And and this particular story happened.

Anybody know the J&M in Pioneer Square? >> Yeah. >> Yeah.

I was one of the four people that helped start Fat Tuesday. If uh I helped any of you get here quicker, I'd like to say you're welcome. Um anyway, I was working at the germ and uh and they said no drinking at work and don't have anything to drink before you come to work.

So I got off work and you know 6:00 and go have a few pops with the guys and uh you get home early. Everybody in this room knows what getting home early is, right? If I'm through the door at 1:30 a.m.

I'm home early. If I'm through the door before last call, it's early. And so I go and I lay my head down and sleep for a little while and wake up about 3:30 in the morning because the depressing alcohol has washed through my body enough that I pop up.

But fortunately, in those days, I had good sponsorship. Somebody told me you always, you know, if you've actually got a bed, um, it's good to keep a cold one next to it so that when you pop up, you can just crack the beer, drink it down, settle down enough so you can get another two or three hours of rest in the body. No problem.

And then I wake up about 5:30 and I start to get ready to get to work at 10:00. Now, the way that you do that is right, you have a couple of beers because as you guys all know, beer is not drinking, right? It's a food.

You know, people who tell you that drinking beer is drinking, they're the same people who will try to tell you that smoking marijuana is doing drugs. >> >> It's what you do in between doing drugs, right? So anyway, I I get myself prepared for work.

And I got to get on the bus, right? And you guys all know why I'm a big fan of public transportation in those days cuz I can't afford to drive because all the driving under the influences I've gotten the high insurance. And so I got to go downtown because the only kind of bar that's going to hire me is downtown.

And I go sliding down into Pioneer Square. And then I stop and I have another couple of beers on the way in. And they look at I I come into work and my tongue is just a little thick.

And they look at you and they go, "What the hell is wrong with you? Didn't we just talk about this yesterday? yesterday you said that you weren't going to have anything to drink before you came to work.

And I look him dead in the eye and I say, "I haven't been drinking cuz I hadn't. I just had a few beers. My alcoholic life is the only one that I knew.

I lived in complete and total fantasy. And I had no idea that that's what what the reality of my life was. I didn't know that I'm an alcoholic.

And the best description I've ever heard is the Chinese proverb. The man takes a drink and then the drink takes a drink and then the drink takes the man. One's too many and a thousand's not enough.

I was born in Elsagundo, California, which if you need a reason to drink is as good as any. It's kind of like a Baja Tacoma. On one side of the town is the Los Angeles International Airport.

On the other side is the Northrep Defense Contractor. On the other side is the Chevron Oil Refinery, once the town got its name. And then on the little patch of beach in between the town of Elsagundo and the Pacific Ocean is the waste treatment plant for the entire county of Los Angeles.

So toxicity is just a way of life. You want to get right with your environment. And I was born into this household uh to a to a father that looked good and and moved fast and a mother who uh who needed a drink really badly and never took it.

So it got really quick around there, you know, and um you know, alcoholism doesn't run in my family. at gallops, you know, and I had no idea. I had no idea.

So, um, that's how I qualify for Alcoholics Anonymous. I want to spend this time talking about sponsorship. We've uh, uh, if you're in this room, you know that if I'm lame enough to be dressed up like this at this hour of the morning on a Sunday, that I probably had a few drinks.

And uh I'll tell you one more little thing. If you're wondering whether you're alcoholic or not, whether you have this physical allergy, this obsession of the mind, and this spiritual uh malady, take what it is that you do for recreation, and then match it what happens with 90% of the population, the non-alcoholics. Example, by the time I'm 16 years old, my idea of a good time is to take a rack of reds, three high-powered sedative hypnotics, second, and to wash it down with a quart of spinata wine.

Okay? In 90% of the population, the part that is not not alcoholic, these people that don't have this this physical allergy that I have, when they do that, what happens is called synergistic effect. this the uh sedative hypnotic mixed with with the alcohol starts to get the brain so loaded that many times people forget how to breathe and they throw up and then they choke on their vomit.

Jimmyi Hendris died that way. Bunch of different they call Hollywood death. Okay, with me when I do that I'm looking for car keys and to make short-term romantic commitments.

If you ever woke up with a life form with which you were unfamiliar before you left the house that morning, you might want to try Alcoholics Anonymous. Um, so on the second day of May, I I was living in my pinto. Uh, I wasn't homeless.

It was just my outdoorsman phase. And uh and I'd reached the point where I drank away my soul. Uh you know how you're like alcoholic's like a cat.

If it gets sick, just kind of goes away and hides. And um I was just driving from place to place and stealing gasoline and drinking and uh and I got arrested one more time and my father was kind enough to bail me out and I was uh and we were sitting in a in a Marriott in Santa Clara, California having a couple vodka rocks and he said to me, "Do you think you have the disease?" And the still small voice inside of me said, "Pay really close attention. He might pay for the lawyer." And uh so I said, "I don't know." And he said, "Well, you can go down to my my mother's house.

She lived in Elsagundo and um and you can stay there and I want you to call this friend of mine." So I didn't have any other plans. So I he gave me some money. He said, "Don't have anything to drink." So, I bought a, you know, a couple tall six-packs of cores for the drive.

And, uh, like it took me about four years sober to be able to use both hands when I drove because I always had to have something, you know. Um, but anyway, I went down to my grandmother's house and I gave this guy a call and he said, "Meet me at the Howard Johnson's in Culver City, 7:30 in the morning. don't have anything to drink.

How did he know? So I went and I talked to this guy. Actually, I sat at the table and he started talking about himself and talking about himself and talking about himself and after about, you know, he had some problems in his life.

He met Alcoholics Anonymous and things got all better and he's talking about himself and talking about himself and I need a drink really badly and I can barely light a cigarette. And so I I figure out, well, I'll prompt him. I say, ' Do I need psychiatric treatment?

How about religion? Do I require hospitalization? And he looked at me and he said, "Well, Trick," he said, "If you a hospital program will cost about three grand.

If you can get your hands on three grand, go out and drink that money up and when you're done, call Alcoholics Anonymous. They do it for fun and for free. Now, I don't know about you, but I'd had a lot of helpers in my life trying to, you know, move me in the proper direction, but I'd never run across anybody that said out loud what you do if you can get your hands on three grand.

of course you go out and drink it up and then you plan your next move, right? And he said, "You'll find it in the white pages of the phone book. Call them up.

See you later." And I went back to my grandmothers. I was so profoundly affected by this conversation that I poured myself a water glass full of Davies County old-fashioned Kentucky bourbon with three ice cubes. And as I was drinking it down, I called Alcoholics Anonymous.

And this woman answered the phone. She said, "Alcoholic synonymous. May we help you?" She said, "Uh, don't go anywhere.

I'll have somebody call you in 20 minutes." The guy called me. HE SAID, "HI, MY NAME'S LARRY AND I'M AN ALCOHOLIC. ARE YOU WILLING TO GO TO ANY LAKES TO STOP DRINKING?" WELL, I'd finished most of my drink, so I was in a fairly agreeable mood.

and he uh said, "Do you have a car?" I said, "Yeah." I didn't tell him I'd been living in it, but and he and I he told me where the Alano Club was, and I w went down to the Alano Club, and I walked in the door, and and uh the woman behind the bar, Ununice, said, "You upstairs." And I walked up these 12 steps into this room of Alcoholics Anonymous, and everybody started talking at me. I couldn't figure out why they were talking at me. But when my hair is long, I kind of look like the Sphinx.

And I hadn't had quite enough to drink. So, I'm starting to get the zups ups. And uh and this guy, this guy uh Butcher Joe was the third guy who shared, "They're all talking at me." And you can always tell Butcher Joe, right?

And and and Joe uh Joe looked right at me and he talked about when the family left, how he cried the big crocodile tears. And inside he's going, "Yes, now we can drink and nobody will mess with us." And I understood that. And he knew just how much to cut himself at work so that he could get away, go get a stitch or two, and that he could drink.

And he told me that I never had to feel the same the way that I felt about myself at that moment ever again if I was willing to do the things that he'd done. And I was willing. I was willing.

I drank away my soul. I hit it up in Alcoholics Anonymous, the lamest place in the world. And I figured I got a moment of grace and I figured that I'd just do this thing.

Now, on my third day, I almost drank and I went back to the Alano Club and Larry was working the the the Hinge and he uh and he got me a copy of the book, Alcoholics Anonymous. I'd been too cool to get it the first couple of days. I was busy.

Didn't want to look like an obvious rookie. Lacking on my little book, you know, are you going to book study down at the beach? Um and uh he uh he got me the book and and and I went home and I I wasn't sleeping in those days and uh they told me at that first meeting that this was the last time that I ever had to withdraw from alcohol.

I couldn't believe it. But yet it was so ridiculous. I said, 'What the heck?

And so I'm walking and sweating and smoking and uh and reading this book and I I I was reading through the doctor's opinion where Silk Work talks about the sense of ease and comfort that comes from taking a few drinks. I understood that and I kept reading and you know I mean I was really fascinated with the stock market crash and sec the first world war. I mean, give me something contemporary.

Give me something disco. Can you imagine how awful it was getting sober wearing those clothes? That gear's enough to make anybody drink.

There were there were meetings, in fact, Clara may have even been secretary one where you needed three gold chains just to get in the door, right? Oh man, >> that was a funny time. Anyway, uh so I kept reading this book, you know, and and and how did they know?

And I got to that point in we agnostics where it tells a story about this preacher son and about how he got down on his knees and how he had this profound experience and and and in there there's a line and it says, "Who are you to say that there is no God?" In religious terms, I was convicted because I may not espouse that. Well, I did espouse it a lot actually. Um, and I certainly lived that way.

And so I did what this guy did. I got down on my knees and uh I uh I said my prayer and my prayer was I don't know from Jesus or Buddha, the Talmud, the Upupanads, just get me the top. And I said, I will 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 done the first three steps. I said it with all the sincerity of my heart.

And that's the prayer was perfect. I'm here with you this morning not drinking. So I went to the I went to the the club the next morning.

Believe it or not, God had not created morning meetings yet. So you had to wait outside the door of the Alano Club at 9:00 for them to open for the noon meeting. It was kind of a zombie walk and and I I went up into the into the room to wait for the meeting and there was this woman sitting there and she had on a black dress and her hair in a bun and correct shoes on and said, you know, oh young man, you're new, aren't you?

How can you tell? She said, I can tell you the secret alcoholics anonymous in four words. What are they?

Find God or die? >> NO, not that. No.

>> And uh 26 years later, I can tell you the secret alcoholics anonymous in four words. >> Find God or die. But the great thing is is that we're an Alcoholics Anonymous.

And we will never suppose to tell you what kind of God it is that you have to find. But you have to find one. You can use the group.

Works really really well. Worked really well for me in the beginning. You can use your sponsors or you can use uh your friends, but at some point you're going to have to find your own.

And how do you do that? How do you do that? Well, what we have is we have a set of spiritual exercises which when done actually produce a relationship with a power that will solve your problem.

Now, if you only agree with it, I'm not sure about that. You'd not drink, but you don't get this regeneration that happened with me. And how is this transferred?

How is this knowledge transferred one person to another? So, I'm sitting in this meeting. I got when I came to AA, I my entire wardrobe was I had a good t-shirt, a bad t-shirt, a pair of Levis's, and some bowling shoes.

I'm the reason you have to give them in order to get them. You know, I said, "Size eight and a half, please." And I boogied with the shoes. And uh so I'm stuck to the N.

Why is it they have Nagahide in the Alano Club? You know, you're just stuck to it. and and this guy got up and he took a birthday cake for four years.

And so I asked him to be my sponsor. And uh I will never ever be able to repay the kindness of that man and his Alanon wife and what it is that they did for me because I was a real alcoholic and I was baffled about how to get through a day without drinking. I was obsessed with drinking.

Every third thought was about I got to get a drink. No, we're not drinking right now. Oh, no.

Okay. And um and I'd just show up on the porch and he he'd still be at work and Bonnie'd let me in and make some coffee and talk to me while I smoked cigarettes and you know and that kindness when I was 22 days when I was reading in the in in in the big book and it said that you know if you don't do your inventory you're going to drink. I ran to my sponsor.

I said, "I got to do my inventory. I don't want to drink." I said, "Fine." And he and his he and a buddy of his who had a long time sat there and told me silly stories about, you know, mammals and non-mammals and and uh things that they'd stolen and things that they'd wanted to steal and things that they were afraid of. And my sponsor said, "Okay, here's the four-step prayer.

What you do is go get really jacked up on coffee." He said, "Sit down at the kitchen table and look at the door." He said, "Here's the prayer. Write it down. God, I don't know what I'm doing.

Help me, please." And then he said, "I want you to think of every place that you lived and every job that you had and every group that you ran with. And if as people from these different phases of your life walk through the door, if your stomach goes like that, write their name down and then you get three sentences on why nobody's life is that interesting. And I did that and then he said, "Write write the sexual weirdness." He said, "Who you hate and who you're afraid of?" And he said, "And then we'll talk tomorrow." Took me about four hours.

uh wasn't I mean it was fairly long. It was no fairly long is not it was maybe five pages legal and I write big cuz I shake a lot and uh and uh and I got I got it done. Was it a fearless and throw moral inventory using all four columns?

No. No. was the greatest hits.

You know, it was the stuff that when my head goes down on the pillow, it always popped up. And I got it out of my head and onto the paper. And my sponsor came and we sat down.

We read the we read the uh stuff and I I said the stupid prayers and then we burned it. Um, and I'm 23 days sober and I'm a fully vested member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I've done some stuff.

I'm not just sitting in a chair agreeing with it. Now, this is the program of recovery that in those days was what we were doing. Wasn't a lot of books.

There wasn't a lot of book studying going on because the telephone was ringing at the Alano Club, you know, and I had a car and they'd say, "Don't talk to him. Go pick him up and bring him back. we'll take care of it from there, you know.

And I got out and I started making my amends and I went to my grandmother Alice who used to have the uh the Oxbow in down on uh down on East Marginal there next to Boeing Field and she taught me how to 10 bar. I owed her just a little money. And uh and I said, "Grandmother, I've stolen this money from you and I'm so God and AA are keeping me sober.

Please forgive me. Here's some of the money." And she said, "What'd you say?" I said, "God and AA are keeping me sober. Here's some money." And she goes, "Thanks." And then she got her purse and her hat and she starts moving for the door.

Where are you going? She said, "Um, about five years ago, you and I had a conversation where you said you didn't believe in God anymore." So, I went down and I put your name on a list down at the church and me and the girls have been praying for you and I get to go down and report that my grandson has been restored. spiritual terrorism.

It works really, really well. Um, in 1985, my then wife Jacqueline uh got sober and it was a wonderful occurrence in my life and we picked three people. her best childhood friend.

Um, our friend Jeanie who was working at a as a cocktail waitress at a saloon that we were working in. And then uh my sister Regina who was missing in action with her self-employed Colombian boyfriend and um we prayed for him at every meeting we went to in the moment of meditation afterwards. Within a year and a half all three of them got sober.

All three of them picked up birthday cakes. And after that, one of them, the girl who got sober in the treatment center, decided that she'd made a mistake. She'd made too much of this.

But Jeie and my sister Regina have not had a drink since um Alcoholics Anonymous. It works. It really, really works.

I'll give you a spiritual terrorism 101. Um because you all know somebody who's really bad. Like you may be in here just getting the heat off, being good for a little while, but you know somebody's got a real problem.

You know the one you're always looking down at if I ever get that bad and then a year later he's worse. So you got a ways to go still. When you walk into a meeting place and you see an empty chair, just walk up and tap the chair and say their name.

I believe that that person may be sent to the meeting. that may be somebody that I work with that saves my life. So, uh, Michael and I, we, you know, in those days, we were just running around grabbing drunks, going to coffee.

Uh, it was, it was a whole different society. The downsizing hadn't happened. The treatment centers hadn't, uh, funneled a lot of people in.

We were busy. Phone was ringing off the hook. Um and uh you know that's the way we became members of Alcoholics Anonymous.

I mean Clara described it so well yesterday that it was in the seeing ourselves in the suffering of another that we that we really got a you know clue of who we were. And uh and then this is uh an opinion. But then when this treatment center started sending lots of people in, what happened is is that the activity got different and we had lots of people who were coming into Alcoholics Anonymous with information that they'd gotten from well-meaning professional people.

And one of the great things that happened is is that Alcoholics Anonymous stayed Alcoholics Anonymous because there were some really, really well-meaning, well-intentioned, brilliant people that wanted us to be all things to all people. And what happened is is that those of us who were here, we went back to the literature and we got in this process of working with people reading out of the book. Now, most folks um you know in that in in those days there that was not going on.

It was not part of the culture in Los Angeles that I know of. And most of the people that were sober in those days, they were not reading the book one- on-one with people. And I didn't know about that.

I didn't know how did I start doing that. The way I started doing that was uh I uh I had this sponsor uh by the name of Fred. Mike had left town and and I had the sponsor Fred Ellison.

Fred was one of the great members of Alcoholics Anonymous. He was a he was a tremendous man. In fact, uh what I did was is that I just uh I I thought about it for a while and I just went and I asked the man that I admired most in Alcoholics Anonymous to be my sponsor.

And he was a busy guy. And he said uh you know, he said, "You may not be able to get me whenever you want me, but he said, "If you ever need me, you will always be able to get me." And uh anyway, so I'm going along working with Fred and and you know, and it's all about, you know, guys like you don't sign up any on any speaker lists um because he knew who I was. See, I didn't get to do this kind of thing until I didn't have anything to say.

And uh and anyway, one day I was I was in those days uh my this is the mid 80s and my my uh my then wife had gotten sober and so I'm back to going to seven meetings a week and I'm you know secretary of the speaker meeting. You know the the people that are the best sponsors in the world are the ones between three and eight years sober because they know everything and they're willing to TELL YOU FOR HOURS ON END. you know, and you know, get a sponsor who still smokes.

You know, they really know the truth. Anyway, uh so uh and I I had a job, a traveling sales job, and and and I'm busy. I'm busy.

And uh during that time, there were a few guys that came to me and asked me to sponsor them. and and uh and there was this one guy that came up and and he was shuffling like this and his glasses hadn't been cleaned in about seven weeks and he'd just gotten out of the Twin Towers, the county jail down in Los Angeles and he was he was just really unsettled on his pins and he asked me to be his sponsor and I said I took one look at him and I said um you know I'm really busy in AA and uh and why don't we get together uh tomorrow and we'll go to the Herosa Beach man stag Monday night and I'll introduce you to some guys who can save your life and uh I was not used to standing up for myself. I wasn't used to giving myself care.

So, I called to report to my sponsor about how much I'd evolved spiritually, the insights that I'd had about myself, my my quest to find balance in my life. And he said, "You did what?" He said, "You go and you find that man and you ask him if you can please have the honor of sharing with him what has been so freely given to you." Did I say no to you? Click.

Fred had been a Marine. and he'd been a numbers runner for the mob in Los Angeles while suffering from blackouts. He didn't want him mad.

And uh so I went and I found Kevin and Kevin had left school in fifth grade and Kevin couldn't read >> and so that's where I started reading aloud with guys because every time Kevin came over and we read together I got a lot out of what was going on. I got a lot was going on. You know, before that I'd had guys, you know, reading and and and then just Are you reading the big book?

Oh, yeah. I'm reading the big book. Ready to do the third step?

Oh, well, you know, are you working on your inventory? Yeah, I'm working on me. Now, I started formatting a little bit.

And then what I did was is because I wanted to grow in effectiveness, I started sponsoring people when I had like 29 days sober. Guy walked up to me and asked me to sponsor him. I went to my sponsor.

I said, "What should I do?" He said, "If they're sick enough to ask you, you have to say yes. Hopefully, you're the lower rung on the ladder. Help him up." Okay.

And uh but what had happened? See, I'm alcoholic and I'm afraid that I'm not going to drink and I'm obsessed with alcohol when I'm new. And every time my sponsored say to me that he thought he might be someplace, I was there.

I never missed an appointment with him. I never missed having Friday dinner with he and his wife where they we'd sit around and talk about sobriety and they'd all laugh at me. She and her allon friends.

And uh Bonnie Bergman died of cancer a long time ago. And uh anyway uh so I I I took out great men, Jack Pros, Ken O'Brien, Fred Ellis, Vern Stamps, and I asked each of this these men what their sponsors did with them. And I took a pad and a piece of paper and I said, "Then what do you do with the guys that they sponsor?" And they were, you know, I mean, when you ask people you admire what they do, they love to talk about themselves, especially if you're buying lunch.

Buy people you admire lunch. If you're secretary of a speaker meeting, you want to make AA a wonderful place to be, ask the speakers if they'd like to come and join you for dinner before the meeting. You know, because they all need to get a bite to eat.

But what happens is is that's how I that's how I got close to Clara, >> you know, it was, you know, I mean, that's that's what I was taught in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I know all these wonderful people just because somebody said, "Hey, I didn't know how to answer the telephone until I was 35 years old. I'm sober 11 years." And I called Dr.

Paul up and I say, "Hey, I I I call Paul up and he picks the phone up and he says, "Hi, this is Paul." How may I help you? Any conversation that I get to have with a person, I try and remember always to say, "Is there something I can do for you?" It's amazing what people will tell you. Just paying attention in a um so I got this stuff and I started working.

I I I mixed some stuff around and I came up with a format that kind of worked for me, you know, and uh and and it changes over time, you know, because this thing about passing the information on is a wonderful thing. But this one-on-one working the steps with people is is is just a great it's a great great thing. Uh Fred died of cancer in 1987.

what am I going to do? I've had one of the great men. And so I when he when he'd been diagnosed again, I I uh I came up with the the sponsor.

Here's the here's the find the sponsor prayer. God, if there be a God, if you want that, you can put that part in. um help me to recognize the person when they come through the door.

And I was sitting at a meeting and there was this guy who got up and he started spouting this hardline big book stuff and I thought Fred wasn't dead yet and I thought, "Oh, I should talk to that guy." And then of course I forgot about it. But a few months after Fred passed, I kept saying that prayer and he this man was at the meeting and I went, "Oh." And then I went and asked him to lunch and I sat down to kind of interview him a little bit and found out that that every area of my life there was something that he had experience in. It was a wonderful, wonderful thing.

Um, it's a wonderful thing to have an AA home. The most important job in the world, aside, of course, from the gsr. The most important job in Alcoholics Anonymous is actually the sponsor's wife.

She's a counter intelligence agent. and a great form uh source of information. When I was courting my wife, I said to her, "I need your help." When I was courting Adele, I said, "I need your help.

Will you help my friends who have no skills at all? Will you help them to get into nice, wonderful, loving relationships?" And she said, "Yes." And our home is a source of nurturing for men and women that are are on the path learning to share wanting to share their lives with another human being. And it's a wonderful thing.

It's a wonderful, wonderful thing. Newcomers come first in our house. It doesn't matter when the phone rings.

It's no big deal. It's no big deal. It's just God on the phone.

Anyway, that's one of the things Fred told me. Well, I'm sponsoring a lot of people. He said, "No, you're not." He said, "Never count the number of people you sponsor." Don't know.

Said, "You're just sponsoring the next person that's on the telephone." So, I got no responsibility. I just answer the phone. Um, so this household that we have is just uh it's a wonderful thing.

You know, there's this these disparaging remarks about, oh, I'm not going to date a woman in the program or aa men are all a bunch of pigs. Okay. Um, but you know, see, if Alcoholics Anonymous is the first thing in my life, how the if if I'm out shopping for a mate, why am I not going to get somebody that that is on this path?

They don't have to be an AA, but Allenon or OA. I had a guy an old-timer one tell me one time tell me look me dead in the eye and say women who are in the program in recovery in the program of Overeaters Anonymous are the greatest lovers in the world because they have to work the program harder than anyone because they walk the tiger every day. And uh and I got one and I got one.

I got mine. And uh uh but you know, I mean, what is it the line the the uh dating an alcoholics anonymous? The uh the odds are good, but the goods are odd.

But can you imagine a guy like me trying to represent that I don't have any problems to anyone? >> >> I mean, if a woman finds me attractive, there are large psychic gaps, okay? And I'd much rather have her at least acknowledge that she has them.

The holiest place in the world is the birthing room to be there when a child is born. The second holiest place in the world is the coffee table where a woman or a man says, "I think this might work for me." This is the greatest privilege that anyone can have. You can actually be there at the moment that somebody's soul is reignited or their spirit is reborn or however you want to say it you know I mean it but something happens and you have the privilege to be there and once you've tasted it it's a wonderful wonderful thing and as you go along you get to go through all the different processes of you know people say oh I don't sponsor their I'm just not good at it.

They'll drink. Read the book. You know, Bill worked for a long, long time before he started to get people even starting to be interested.

And that was Cleveland. Um, you know, and and of all the people that uh that asked me to work with them, I mean, how many actually keep showing up? you know, you have to be pretty badly mangled to end up in my living room.

It's always fascinating who's on my couch, you know, and uh and so we go through this process. Fun thing happened a number of years ago. I was about uh I was 14 and a half years sober.

I was in a big change in my life. My first marriage had ended. I was with my fabulous wife, Adele.

Um, and uh, a guy was busy smoking crack and was trying to uh, get a guy that I sponsor was on the 12step call away from him. He was in the bathroom and so he threw this pamphlet that had been written in Texas. Um, and then Dr.

Paul had put in a format about an unofficial guide to the 12 steps about working at a group. And so I called all the guys up. I said, "I'm coming up on 15 years sober and as a I'd like you to come and join me in working the steps." So, the gang showed up and I think Bill lasted two meetings, went off and formed his own group because I wasn't doing it correctly and he didn't even have the interfuron card to play in those days.

But uh but anyway uh we sat down and this group we started out with about uh 18 of us and it whittleled down to about 14. And and of the 14 12 of us actually did all the stuff and what happened is is I saw for the first time at a group level within a year and a half all these men's lives changed radically. All of us had more fabulous relationships.

Our business careers all changed. I mean, it was just it was just remarkable. And once again, I I was able to see the power in a way that I hadn't I hadn't experienced it before.

And it was it was an incredible it was an incredible thing. Uh Bill talked a little bit about our friend Patrick Keelahan. Keahan.

Try spelling that. uh and uh and his mother uh really did call him the devil of all liars. I have heard him referred to as the sleaziest man in Alcoholics Anonymous.

This guy this guy was in the freight forwarding business and so he was always busy on Friday. And if I sponsor you, there are two things. I want you to go to at least one of the meetings that I go to.

hopefully the Hermosa Beach men's tag. And then second, I we go on retreat every year. You know, you circle these dates.

This is this is the requirement. Everybody knows. So Pat would go, "Yeah, I'm going to be on the retreat.

I'm going to be on the retreat. I'll be there late." And he'd go on retreat. All right.

He'd stop on Century Boulevard, get a couple professionals, couple eightballs, and go to the Viccount Hotel and spend the weekend there. Guy never had a sobriety date much. And then finally he got sober.

You know, he always represented himself as being sober. And in fact, one time I was after he he'd gotten sober, this time he was uh I was driving along and I was out of town on business and I wasn't going to be able to give him a birthday cake. And he's ragging on me about, "Oh, you're not going to be there to give me my two-year cake.

How can you do what kind of sponsor I blah blah blah blah blah." And uh and I thought about it and I'd already given him a two-year cake. He just wasn't he just wasn't sober at the time. I said, "Screw you, Trick.

I DID MY JOB JUST CUZ YOU WEREN'T really there." But I didn't fire Patrick. They don't hire me. And I can't send anybody away who God sends to me.

I They're taking advantage of me. Oh, really? How tragic.

They're eating up my valuable time. Well, get some boundaries, right? >> You know, but you know, we don't send them away.

So, here's this guy. I mean, bad example, number 305A, okay? and he calls one day and he says, "I got lung cancer.

I'm gonna die and I'm afraid." And from the doctor's office, he came to our house and we sat there and we prayed. And it was time. Am I full of or aren't I?

Will I show up? What kind of man am I really? And what I found out is is that I'm an alcoholics anonymous.

I'm a member in good standing of AA and I go where I'm asked and I do the next good thing. There's no question. There's no question.

If you're sitting around wondering what's the next good thing to do and then go do it. And so we walked this man who was 39 years old to the door and uh and it was not easy and it was not fun. But along the line, you know, we had a good time.

We really did. And uh and uh Patrick gave us a lot of gifts and and it was so funny. Adele and I were going to go on our honeymoon.

We were going to leave, go to Hawaii, and he called me up and he said, "You can't go. I'm dying." And I looked at Adele and I said, "We can't go. He's dying.

And if we would have gone, he would have passed. So we just we just never made it to Hawaii until this year." It was seven, eight years ago. Because I'm called to love.

See, when people ask us to sponsor them, what they're asking us to do is to love them. maybe for the first time in their life. And what we get to do is we get to learn to love.

And the longer we love and the better we get at loving, what happens is is that there's fewer and fewer demands that we make about loving and we grow in effectiveness and we enter into this fourth dimension of existence that is beyond description. It is thrilling to live in the fourth dimension and it does exist. It's not something that's just written in this silly book.

If you don't just agree with AA, but if you buy the whole package and you come on this ride, buckle up, baby. It'll never look anything like you think it will, but where you end up is insanely wonderful. You know, it's just amazing.

um and just doing the next good thing. Um I had the privilege of reciting St. Patrick's breastplate with the immigrant mother anointing her son moments before he passed.

I get called. I used to live in a pinto and you see me today walking down the street and I'm picking up cigarette butts and I'm I won't look you in the eye. That's who I am.

And and people now call me when their babies are being born and they call me when their babies are dying. and that seemingly good and that seemingly bad. I can't do anything about that, but I can make the experience sober.

I can help people not to drink through it. You keep sponsoring people and I pray what happen to me happens to you. that everything you know about God gets stripped from you and you stand there after going to the hospital day in and day out and watching people suffering and you know you think about what you'd heard about Jesus he did what he wanted to he was 36 years old had a bad weekend you know you see these people suffering for months and uh and I was I went through this period of about six weeks where I had no connection with God I always had something going What?

And then one night I walk out of the Miller's Children's Hospital and I smelled the night blooming jasmine and it came back because I was willing. I was wanting. I was waiting and it came.

So I won't presume to tell you anymore about God except I can tell you how God smells. And sometimes she smells really sweet. Um, you know, there's I had an experience when I was newly sober where I saw the light and um and I know that everything's perfect.

I forget frequently. You know, I want to get a tattoo and put it on my wife's forehead. Perfect.

because I forget sometimes. And uh dream deep. Dream deep.

Start living. If you're sober and you're involved in this work, drop all your fears and just get out there on the edge and you'll have experiences that are beyond your wildest dreams. You know, I I was sitting around before the beginning of this year going, "If I could do anything, what would I do?" And Frank Bookman, the guy who started the Oxford group, said, 'If you get a chance to ever talk to a person, tell them your deepest truth.

And this is my deepest truth that I had a wonderful, wonderful life in Alcoholics Anonymous. I had all the love. I had everything that a man could ever want.

But when I started adding meditation to my life, my relationship with this world changed and it became a whole lot better, especially for those around me. So I want to suggest to you that the 11th step is not a Chinese menu. From my experience, you can tell that I'm really good praying, right?

I can talk all day long to God. I'm good at it. But instead, I started sitting in the silence.

My life changed. So I'm sitting around, I go, if I could do anything, what would I do? And Frank Bookman, the guy who started the Oxford group, at one point they changed to moral rearmorament to try and get nations to change instead of people to try and stop the Second World War.

And on the on the the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd of December in 1939, they tried to get a 100 million people to sit in the quiet to listen if there might be a solution other than violence. It's the most outlandish thing I've ever heard. And this has got nothing to do with the your political persuasion or where you are.

I'm not t but I am talking about that there is an answer beyond our human consciousness. And so I thought if I could do anything in the world, I'd invite people to get quiet. So I went to a buddy of mine and we started I started this thing called 3 minutes of silence.

I got a card up here if you want it. And it's the number three then minutes of silence.org encouraging people to spend three minutes a day in silence. And on it there's a wheel with a dozen different ways to get quiet, different religions, stuff that's non-religious, just spiritual, just to encourage people to try it.

You know, do spirituality the way YOU DRANK, MAN, DIVE IN. TRY IT ALL. But if they look at you, there's a caveat.

If they look at you and they tell you that Alcoholics Anonymous is a lower form of consciousness, smile at them and move away because they don't have to know. But we know that in Alcoholics Anonymous, what we do is is that we care for the sick and we visit them in the jails and we raise the dead. and they don't know that and they won't understand it and they don't need to on the uh so the the the second day of October was the first time that we got people from all over the planet within this particular format to get quiet together >> and I had a tremendous tremendous experience and some of my friends did too and it was a wonderful thing but what it was was my dream I did my dream and I'm doing my dream and part of my dream that day there's many of you here that I know that I was able to you know bring through my heart that day as I was ramping up to that three minutes you know and uh and my life is not my own Thursday I'm talking to a kid from Vietnam I said I need a friend in Vietnam and uh and he told me some stuff that he's doing and so we're going to go build some schools in in the Meong Delta Why not?

What better thing do I have to do? My father never came to Alcoholics Anonymous. And uh he uh uh he was a bad drunk and uh when his drinking partner, my my stepmother Marca died of cerosis.

The way that they were able to express this is my DNA. This is my family of origin. This is the way they made love.

At the end, they drank salty dogs and ate Vicodin together, alcoholism, the family disease. Anyway, um after she died, I waited a few weeks and I went up and I I drove up and I caught the old man. Um he was sitting in his command post.

He lived 10 miles away or 10 hours away. I just happened to drop by and he was in his command post covered in his own waste. Um and uh and I was able to clean him up, put him in the shower, not talk down to him.

You know why? Because I've been on the 12step calls. I know how to do that.

And I got him cleaned up and I said, "Okay, Dad. We're going to I'm going to take you to detox tomorrow. I'm not talking about you going to the silly meetings, but we're going to go detox tomorrow.

And next morning he said, "No, been thinking all night. Not going to go." And he uh I thought, "Well, you know, I just hit him with something heavy and we'll throw him in the trunk. No big deal." And so anyway, I uh I take him and uh I I want to take him and and he won't go.

So I went and had a quad espresso and I meditated for a little while and I remembered Dr. Bob's line about you know if you want to quit drinking on your own that's entirely your affair and I I let you know and so I I left without any acrimony at all. I just said okay and he kicked by himself and uh and anyway after a while it was uh it was Easter the next year and uh my sister called me and she said, "Dad's really sick.

you better get up there. And so I went up and I saw him and I let him be a cowboy for a day and then I he was living down in Huica had a ranch down there. And so I I take him to the hospital and he's got cancer growing fast and and um and so I I I got to sit there with him and say, "Uh, I don't like the hand." And he said, "Well, what do we do?" I said, "Well, let's go home.

I got the skills. I got the time. I knew how to do it.

Gordon and Priscilla Cleveland had let me in their home when they were dying. I'd walked my friend through Patrick through the door. I knew how to be a man.

I knew how to be a son. And we went home, you know, and a couple weeks later uh he died. And when he died, he his mother was there and my sister was there and and um and uh my sister's been sober.

My sister Regina's been sober for uh uh coming up on 20 years >> and she uh uh she had a conversation one day with him and she was talking about her sponsor and he said, "Well, what's a sponsor?" And she described what she thought a sponsor was. And I'd been talking to my dad about staying away from the front drink and all that stuff and why I don't drink, you know, Virgin Marys and and my dad said, "Well, I guess Jay would be my sponsor." Alcoholics Anonymous. Alcoholics Anonymous.

Dr. Bob's nightmare. It's not in the first 164 pages of the book, by the way.

I spend a great deal of time passing on what I learned to do to others who want and need it badly. I do it for four reasons. One, a sense of duty.

Number two, it is a pleasure. Number three, because in doing so, I am paying my debt to the man who took time to pass it to me. Four, because every time I do it, I take out a little more insurance for myself against a possible slip.

Unlike most of our crowd, I did not get over my craving for liquor much during the first two and 1/2 years of abstinence. It was almost always with me. But at no time have I been anywhere near yielding.

I used to get terribly upset when I saw my friends drink and knew I could not. But I schooled myself to believe that though I once had the same privilege, I had abused it so frightfully that it was withdrawn. So it doesn't behoove me to squawk about it because nobody ever had to throw me down and pour liquor down my throat.

If you think you're an atheist, an agnostic, a skeptic, or have any other form of intellectual pride which keeps you accepting what is in this book, I feel sorry for you. If you think you're strong enough to beat the game on your own, that's entirely your affair. But if you wish to quit drinking liquor for good and for all, we know we have an answer for you.

It works. It never fails. If you go about it with one half the zeal that you're in the habit showing when you were getting your next drink, your heavenly father will never let you down.

Thank you. 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. >>