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We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> Got it. >> I think so.

Does that work? >> Yeah. >> Uh good evening everybody.

My name is Kenny and I am an alcoholic >> and uh welcome to the retreat here. I want to thank uh Tom and Wanita for being my host here and showing me around town and for being our special uh just being really special friends. And I want to thank Audrey for for uh making the call and asking me to come do this retreat and for everybody that's that's here.

So uh before we get started, I uh I think we'd like to maybe just start with a simple I wrote a prayer up here on the board which I will explain. You're welcome to read that if you can. And uh and I will kind of go over what that prayer means here in just a little bit.

But uh first we'll just uh start with something simple. So we'll start with the serenity prayer and we'll get our weekend started. >> God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.

the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. So, uh I am just really incredibly uh grateful to be here in New Mexico to be here at this retreat center and to be here with y'all and I'm really looking forward to to getting to know a lot of the people here in the group and and uh and as we kind of build here this weekend, we'll see what how the format works. Maybe we'll get things in a circle and and get things uh a little more comfortable.

Um I'll take care of just a couple of things, letting you know who I am. Uh I am an alcoholic. Uh my sobriety date is June the 8th of 1989 and I've been continuously sober since that date.

And uh my home group is Drunks Are Us North, which meets in Seattle, Washington on Friday nights at 8:00. So if you are ever in Seattle, we really encourage you to come to our meeting. It's really a uh it's quite a a show on Friday nights, Sarah.

And and we actually once in a while we have to have an AA meeting and get a strong solution uh in the midst of all this craziness. So um we'd hope that you'll you'll come out to Seattle and visit us sometime and allow me to repay this favor. So, I think I'm going to start tonight by just uh kind of telling you a little bit about my story.

And we're just start with some real light stuff and some humorous stuff and uh and just kind of keep it keep it simple. I'll tell you uh a little bit that um you know, it's it's amazing to me to get asked to come do these retreats. It's amazing to me to be asked to come speak places because there was definitely a time in my life and in my sobriety where nobody asked me to speak anywhere.

I mean, it just was because my story was kind of like the, you know, it just was kind of like what happened, what happened, and what happened. And it was uh and it was just this long drawn out thing. And then I would be like, and then I was in treatment.

People be thinking, "Oh, thank God this guy's going to get sober." And and uh and then I'd be and then I drank the day I got out. And and uh you know, it was real heartwarming actually for me. We'll look at that this weekend.

We're really going to spend a lot of time in the book. and and and I just want to say before I even get started that I had an you know that I do have this what happened part of my story today and that's what I've really come here to New Mexico to share with you is I came to share with you that I've had an experience with the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous that has allowed me to live for 17 years as a free man much like anybody else lives and uh and to enjoy this this great life and this this uh somewhere in that process this desire to destroy myself with alcohol and drugs was removed and it was replaced by this uh useful and purposeful life and and and I get to do a lot of really amazing amazing things today and and I've got some really incredible stuff to share this weekend and and I hope that you'll uh um you know my hope is this that that somebody's heart's going to be touched here this weekend by what I've come here to to offer that you'll that something I say will uh is going to benefit somebody is going to have uh you know that there'll be some spiritual awakenings here this weekend and and I said I wouldn't really talk too much about this prayer yet and I and I won't but you know we're here to have a retreat and uh um and you don't have to spend the weekend here to have a retreat you know just uh come as much as you can this weekend and uh um you know and and it's you know a uh The 12 steps is really a spiritual treatment and and one of the things that we you know in in a alcoholics anonymous we treat alcoholism with the 12 steps that is the treatment and so you can look at a retreat as you know if you've already had the treatment and you may find like I do that the ego tends to kind of rebuild itself over a period of time and uh um and suddenly I may be active acting in a way in my life that seems kind of untreated that uh I can come to a retreat and get retreated. And it's really a uh something that came to me when I thought about this.

Uh I wrote this prayer that's up here and I'll and I'll talk a little bit about that this weekend about uh uh about writing prayers. We're all going to have a chance to write write prayers here this weekend and and do some some writing. And uh and nothing I say here, don't let that scare you away.

Nothing I say there's no nothing mandatory here this weekend at all in the least and I really mean that you know that this idea of prayer and meditation we'll do some meditation this weekend this kind of stuff it can't be forced you know it's just one of those things that has to come from within so if there's anything that's said here or or suggested here this weekend that doesn't sound right to you then just don't do it and nobody's going to be offended and I want everybody to be comfortable that's one of the things I said like about the circle and stuff is is it's a more comfortable setting and I want everybody to be comfortable. Tom and Wanita have come out and done the the uh retreat that we do in Seattle and it's very comfortable. I mean, people actually like drag blankets and pillows and people are in pajamas and stuff.

I mean, it's a really comfortable uh retreat. Mike's been to a retreat that I I did up in Durango a few years ago and that was the same way. It was a small group and we just, you know, we got allowed us to get really intimate with each other.

So, I hope that everybody as the weekend will will start to kind of form a a retreat family here and a and a circle uh that uh even if we we stay in this format that people uh kind of start coming in a little bit and and just be a part of this retreat and it will be interactive too. We're going to have a time between each sessions for questions and answers. Um I got into these retreats in really early sobriety and I really thank God for that now.

And you'll hear a lot of that as I tell my my sobriety story about, you know, I just really feel fortunate today when I look back on it and I think about the the the the guys that I got sober with that I got sober at the time that I got sober. I was I was uh sharing with Audrey at dinner tonight about the world convention in 1990 in Seattle. And I would have never went to that had it been anywhere else but Seattle.

But I was happened to be sober in Seattle just coming up on a year and had a really dramatic impact on me and and I met some really incredible people there and uh um you know so I'm just glad I got sober when I got sober and I'm glad I got sober with the people that I got sober with and I'm glad that I ran into these people and they were really big on this work in the big book and they were really big on the work uh the step work and these guys were really big on on retreats and I've come to find that I don't think uh certainly There's never been a time in my entire sobriety that's been more than a year. And I would guess it's must be less than that, somewhat less than a year. But I haven't personally taken the time to do a retreat.

And you know, these are incredibly uh important things in living the spiritual life. People in that live spiritual lives retreat on a regular basis. So I'm really happy that we're here.

Um so I'll tell you a little bit about my drinking history. And I will say this at uh um you know this is a a retreat. It's not an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, but I will say this just just to say it because I I like to say this that I am an alcoholic member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

And what that means is that if I was to take all of the drugs and everything out of my story completely as if they never happened and I just looked at my drinking uh uh I would easily it would be abundantly clear to me. As a matter of fact, I've done that. You know, I've been through the big book from that standpoint and it was abundantly clear to me that I am an alcoholic.

So, uh there is a lot of drugs in my story. There's a lot of talk about drugs and and I don't apologize for for talking about drugs in AA. Uh I'm I'm beyond that and uh but I do let people know that that you know and the reason I don't apologize for that is because I would be incomplete to come here this weekend and try to dance around that.

And I've tried that before and it doesn't work very good for me. So, uh, so that is whatever it is. So, you will hear, uh, my story.

And in case you're ever wondering, just just, uh, I hope I get that point across that, uh, that I drank a lot of booze and I drank for a long time. And it was in there in the beginning, it was in the end, and it was in and it was in the middle. You know, the booze was one of those things that was always always there for me, and it was always my fall back on deal.

Um, so with that, uh, I'll just tell you a little bit about my story and then we're going to take a break and then we're going to come back and we're going to get into some really serious retreat stuff. But we are going to have a a great time here this weekend. We're going to have a fun time and we're going to have a uh, you know, we might have an emotional time, but we're going to we're going to do our best to to uh have some laughter here this weekend.

You know, it's the laughter is one of the best medicines. We're going to try to be humorous and light-hearted and uh but we are going to also look at some really serious serious stuff and we're going to uh um you know, we're not going to hide here this weekend either. We're going to really be uh uh you know, it's going to be a very direct uh from the Big Book weekend.

It's the only thing that that I really know. So, with that, uh um I'll go all the way back to the first time that I ever got really drunk. And there's a reason that I go back that far and it actually shortens my story a little bit going back and and that is that the first time that I ever drank like uh uh I drank several times but this was the first time that I drank with the sole purpose of just getting hammered.

You know, I was just going to go out and get really really drunk. And I came from an alcoholic home. Uh my my mother was an alcoholic.

She got sober when I was 13 years old. Shortly after I started drinking, my mother got sober. She's still sober today.

Uh she got sober in AA. Uh uh my stepfather who I who I grew up with died of alcoholism, drank himself to death and he was homeless when he died. Uh and you know my house was a was the party house.

They would go to the bar and at 2:00 in the morning when the bars closed in Washington State, they the bar would come to my house and that would that was just a normal deal for me. I mean, it was just this huge party and there was myself and my brother and actually a sister who was eight years younger who was just a a toddler at the time that uh uh that I started drinking that were all in this totally insane situation. And the police came a lot and there was arrests and there was domestic violence and it was just a really uh uh sad situation.

And and you know, one of the things that was going on in the house at that time leading up to this this first time that I just made a decision that I needed a drink was that uh I wasn't, you know, I wasn't really taught like the the um uh hygiene and how to really take care of yourself. And it just wasn't, you know, there just wasn't a lot of parenting in the house. You know, there was food and there was a roof over our head, but there wasn't a lot of real parenting.

So I would get up and and I would get myself off to school every morning and and uh and I we just moved to another new neighborhood which was just one after the other after the other because we were renting houses and get kicked out of houses. And we got to a new neighborhood and I went to this brand new junior high school and uh I think I when I started junior high I was 12. I turned 13 shortly after that.

And uh and I was still wet in the bed and uh and I would get up and I would just kind of like uh and I have got over that problem in case you guys are don't you don't need to check your sheets Tom at the bed. I did fine last night. I did get over that shortly after I got sober.

But uh the uh but you know I was still wet in the bed and I would just kind of get up and I would just kind of towel dry myself off and and and throw some clo and try to find some clothes in the basket somewhere and just put these dirty clothes back on and I wouldn't brush my teeth and I was going to school like I was scared to death in school like that. And then I had another thing and I don't really like that that word drug of choice because really I think it's most more of a drug of no choice was the way it ended up for me. But uh just because the term kind of fits in this situation, my first drug of choice was called lack of oxygen to the brain.

And what that meant was that I would actually choke myself and then just before I was going to completely pass out and if you're nodding your head, this it means you're a sick person that you know there's but I would I would choke myself and just before I was going to pass out, I would let go just a second before and I would get this euphoria for like 30 seconds or a minute just be completely out of it. Uh, so I was this stinky kid with bad breath and and I and I smelled like urine. I was wearing, you know, old clothes, coming to a brand new school where I didn't know anybody and then I would choke myself and stag around and stuff.

So So uh, in in junior high, you know, my popularity kind of waned a little bit and and, uh, um, and you know, I I tell that because it is it is kind of humorous looking back on it, you know, and I just and and people really thought this kid is a freak. And I used to hear that a lot like you are a freak and no don't come around me. Don't let that kid touch you.

And it was just a horrible deal. And I and the reason I tell you that you don't need that kind of background to become an alcoholic. I do know that.

Uh I was uh my wife and I spoke at a deal just a little while ago and there was two other speakers there and they both came from these beautiful houses where the parents went to church and went to church every day and they were they were wealthy and they were well cared for and they were they they became just as hopeless as I did. So, I don't want you to take this wrong, but something I've really thought about is coming from where I came from, uh there was something rather soothing about a drink. And and uh it did something for me that I don't know that it would have done for a lot of other people.

And my brother and I mowed this guy's yard and he was a hippie that lived next door. And uh and you know, we thought, well, he's pretty cool. You know, he's a he's a hippie and we knew he drank and smoked dope and stuff.

And so we thought, well, maybe instead of paying us, he'll just buy us some wine. So we thought, well, okay. So we asked him if he'd mind buying uh buying some wine instead of paying us.

And of course, being a good hippie, and this is the the early '7s, and being a good hippie, he had no problem buying wine for 12-year-olds. And so he was like, "Sure." You know, I'd be glad to buy you guys some booze. What do you want?

And I didn't The only thing I knew was my my parents drank gallow wine out of the gallon jugs. And and so I said, "Well, wine." And he said, "Well, what kind of wine?" And that there was that alcoholic thinking that never went away. And I just told him, uh, and I had an older brother and I was doing the talking.

And I told him, I said, "Well, we're not really concerned with the volume, you know, we're we're we're not so concerned about the type. We're most more concerned about the amount the volume here. Uh, just get us the just get us the most you can for that price, you know." So he said, "Okay." Okay.

And he came back with came back and he had five fifths of MD 2020. >> And uh and I love to tell that story because that re that's the reaction I always get. You know, I could just end that story right there because everybody knows where that story's headed.

But but that night, you know, that guy who like would never and I couldn't talk to anybody. I couldn't do anything. And I and I got we got that wine and we told a couple other kids that were in our neighborhood that we had the wine.

We're going down to the schoolyard tonight. And a couple other kids joined us. And even these kids that knew nothing about drinking were telling me, I don't know for sure, but I don't think you're supposed to drink that much that fast.

You know, I think that something bad is going to happen to you if you do that. And I just was drinking this wine as drank as much as I could as fast as I could. And uh there was a girl that was coming home.

She was like just cutting across the schoolyard at night. And she was a girl that I'd seen at the junior high school. And I thought, you know, I thought to myself, you know, with this once I had that wine in me, that kid that I was was just completely transformed.

And I thought, I'm just going to go down and take what's rightfully mine, you know, and I ran down this hill. And I tackled this poor girl to the ground. And I tried to force her to give me a kiss.

>> And uh and I, you know, I was just telling her, "Oh, come on. Give me a kiss. Give me a kiss." And she was screaming and she got away.

And the other guys are, "What the hell are you doing?" And it was just really a scene. And uh uh and the thing about that, you know, I I was already that kind of that freak kid at school. And then, you know, immediately I knew about that and remorsefulness of the next morning are unforgettable that I knew I had to go back to the school being this freak who' now attacked this girl at the school the night before.

And and uh uh you know, and then you know this this the that that makes for more drinking and that stuff. It just kind of started. And the reason I say that that kind of shortens my story a little bit because I can leave a lot of my drinking out and a lot of my drugging out because uh my drinking and drugging never got any better than that.

That was that was as good as it ever got for me. I would drink as much as I could. I would drink as fast as I could and usually I would do something completely over the top.

I would get in a fight. I would commit a crime. I would uh try to fight police officers.

I would uh um I would hit women. I would wreck cars. I was in the hospital.

And uh I never finished junior high school. I was in the juvenile uh uh the juvenile system immediately. I was within about three months of that first drink.

I was taken out of my home. I was uh arrested for burglary within a year of that time. I was uh a homeless kid on the streets shortly after that because they would put me in these these group homes and and foster homes and I would run away and go back to the old neighborhood and and uh and I was breaking and doing auto thefts and stealing cars and getting arrested and and that just kind of continued through when I was about 17 or 18.

I kind of got my act together for a few years and I got my grandpa worked and he had some uh fishing boats that he worked for a family that owned some fishing boats and they were going up to Alaska and he got me a job and it kind of saved me in a way because this was a job where you could you know somehow I just had this really great work ethic and I was able to work really hard and and I kind of somehow got my act together for a few years and it was a job back then and the Alaska fishing industry is a lot different now but uh back then you could drink and drug on board the boat. I mean, it was all kind of a part of the thing. It was just everybody kind of thought this is the wild wild west and there's no police out here and there's nobody watching what was going on.

And a whole bunch of guys, you know, hurt themselves and got killed and the Coast Guard, you know, now you have to man everybody on the boat has to take a drug test before you can even throw the lines and leave the dock nowadays. And I still work in that business. I don't work going on the boats.

I work in in management in that business now. So, it was something I came back to after I was sober. uh you know as a teenager I got introduced to IV drugs and I was uh doing IV drugs from a very early age and and uh um and that started a heroin addiction that was kind of an on-again off-again thing all the way up to the time I got sober and I went through this success in the in my uh in my business and I actually worked my way up from a deckend to an assistant engineer and then I was chief engineer on the boat and then the family that I worked for put me through treatment twice.

and finally let me go. And I couldn't get I couldn't even get sober enough to do that job, you know, in the end. I couldn't get well enough to to even take a job where you can drink and drug on the job.

I was and and so uh you know, I spent the last several years of my drinking and drugging, uh in and out of uh hospitals, in and out of treatment centers. Uh, I, you know, I'd accumulated some stuff during those years and I sold all of it down to the very last little thing. Sold everything that I could get my hands on.

I sold a lot of stuff that didn't belong to me. And uh, and you know, there there came a time I was just kind of existing just living in these motel rooms and living these motel rooms. This is a story I was reminded of last night.

We were sitting around at Tom Wanas and we were telling kind of some some humorous stories and and people were talking about uh falling asleep with cigarettes, you know, how dangerous that is. And and I used to I used to actually think life wasn't quite treating me well when I would because I would I would go buy a whole pack of cigarettes and I would sit down there in one of those hotel rooms and I would light up a smoke and I would think I'm going to sit here and enjoy this whole cigarette and I'd take one dragon and out I'd go and then I'd wake up and be burning my hand, you know, and and I'd be and I'd just be thinking, God, is that too much to ask to just be able to sit here and smoke a cigarette, you know, for Christ's sakes. go through a whole pack and I don't even, you know, I'm in in nicotine withdrawals here and I've just, you know, I've just went through a whole pack and and uh um but I was in a hotel room.

I was in a hotel room in Seattle and it was called the City Center Motel and it's gone now, but a lot of people still remember it. It was one of those places that was full of uh uh prostitutes and and drug addicts and people that were either coming to or going to the penitentiary and and uh um and and there was there there was I and uh um I fell asleep with a cigarette in that motel and started the mattress on fire. And I was laying there and I was just in a pair of Levis's, no shirt, no socks, nothing.

just in a pair of Levis eyes and I was emaciated and uh my eyes were sunk into the back of my head and I had tracks all over my arms and hands and feet and I was just in terrible shape and laying there passed out uh on this mattress that's smoldering. And for anybody that's and I and I know there's several, but for anybody that's dealt with a mattress fire, they're really incredibly difficult things to put out. And I actually ended up later on in life, I I sponsored a fireman and he said, "Oh yeah, you know, when we get mattress fires or couch fires, they just they just take them completely out of the house and they just slice them open and they just, you know, they there's no way to get them out without just completely destroying them." So I got woke up because the smoke was so thick.

I was choking on the smoke in this hotel room. And I woke up and I thought, "Oh boy, I got a situation on my hands here." And I thought, "Well, I'm going to have to take some water and I'm going to pour the water on this deal and put this put this fire out." And uh and so I like got a picture and I poured some water on this thing and then I passed back out on this wet bed and it started smoldering again because that's not the way to put out a mattress fire. Started smoldering again and it got the smoke got thick enough again to where I was choking on the smoke and thank God I woke up.

I mean I would have killed myself and probably a whole bunch of other dope fiends too that would have never woke up in time had I burned that place down. But I woke up and then I thought, "Okay, I got to get serious here." So I took one of the trash cans. They had a nice big trash can and I took it in and started filling it in the shower and dumping that thing on the on the mattress and then I passed out on the mattress again.

And then I finally woke up and I was choking again and the smoke had got down in the mattress somewhere and it was burning again and there's all this water everywhere. And the thing about that is is that uh a couple nights before that, I'd gone on a little paranoid trip and I figured I needed to get the carpet up because there was something under the carpet that needed to be investigated. And I tore and I and I like tore all of the carpet up from this place.

I like tore tore all the carpet up. And then in a moment of clarity, I tried to put all the carpet back and tried to put the molding strips back, you know, to where they were. But with all this water, the carpet's kind of floating a little bit and this room is destroyed.

And I had to take I took a knife out of a pack I had. I had and and I cut this mattress all up and finally, you know, tore the stuffing out of it and got this thing out. And the smoke was so thick I had to open the front door to this motel room.

And it was one of those old style motel where you uh where you actually pull your car up and your bumper is practically touching your front window. and uh and highway 99 in Seattle goes right by where that city center now it's a holiday in express and this is right down close to where the Space Needle is which in those days was really not a very good neighborhood at all and now it's been all cleaned up and all the old haunts have been tore down and and uh but at that time the city center motel and these so people were starting to drive rush hour to work and come and the door was open and I was passed out in that condition on this mattress and there was stuff all over and water everywhere and and somebody of course alerted the manager Hey, you might want to take a look in room number, you know, 108 down there and we think you got something going on. and he got up and started yelling and screaming at me and and I was yelling and screaming back at him, you know, in the way that we do that indignant alcoholic just telling him that if he had a smoke detector in that room, which I reminded him by law, you know, he should have.

and uh none of this would have ever happened, you know, and how this was his fault that I I could have been killed and uh and thank God I got the fire out in time and and I'm arguing with this guy and I'm still just standing in just a pair of soaking wet Levis's, you know, and that was it in that condition. And uh um there was a guy and he's actually 10 years sober in the program. I hope I get get a chance to tell you the story about the the amends I made to him in case I forget.

I made an amends with this guy years later and uh um and he ended up, you know, when I got to the what can I do to make it right part, he wanted to know what the hell I was doing to stay clean and sober. And he's been sober over 10 years in the program now. Uh he was a another addict, uh an alcoholic, but he was a guy that still had a job and still had a little bit of stuff going.

So he had a girlfriend he was staying with and a car. So his job had become stopping by the motel room every morning on his way to work to see if I was still alive or not. And that was really it.

It was a knock at the door. It was uh and this is from another heroin addict knocking on my door saying uh are you okay? You know, is everything all right?

I'm worried about you. I'd like to see you, you know, maybe get into detox or something. He was, you know, worried that he was going to and so that was his deal was coming by every morning and uh uh and Yogi came by that morning and saw this scene outside the deal and pulled his car right up and just got all my stuff and just threw it in the car and said, "Get in the car.

We're out of here." And we got into the car. And the amazing thing about that story is I continued to to uh drink and drug in that condition for maybe another somewhat more than another year. I I I I remained in that kind of condition.

And the thing about that is is that I got into a mends and I remembered about that hotel room and and I can stand here and tell that story in good conscience because I went back and and found the owner of that hotel who'd sold the building by that time and I found the owner of the hotel and I explained the situation and I paid for the damage that I'd done to that hotel room and and uh so I can tell that story in good conscience today. But, you know, the thing about that was is that when I look back on it, I got into this uh amends process and then I remembered, oh yeah, I burned that guy's mattress up and stuff. But the thing about it was is in that context of that day, there was nothing unusual in my life about that.

I didn't call anybody up, tell them, "God, you wouldn't believe what happened to me last night." Like, it was a big It was nothing. It was nothing to me. It was just I was just existing in this hopeless state of mind and body, just existing.

And and there's a place in the book big book where it says you know that we were we were living only you know that we were li existing only to drink. You know the only reason the the days of drinking and drugging for fun or for camaraderie or laughter or that feeling that life is good all that stuff was completely gone. And the only reason I was drinking and the only reason I was drugging was trying my hardest to overcome this compulsion for more.

That was it. It was I just had this insane idea that if I could get enough in this com not that I would even feel good but just that this compulsion for more would go away for a second or two and I could just get a deep breath for a second you know that's I was just at at that place and I existed like that for for quite a while. Uh, I ended up, uh, getting hepatitis real bad and got really sick and ended up in a situation at my mom's house, which hopefully I'll be able to share a little bit about that.

But it was a horrible deal, horrible thing. I was 28 years old and called my mom and she had to tell me, "No, you can't come home because of the the damage I'd done to the family and I told her, "No, mom, you don't understand. I am sick.

I I have to come home." And she thought I was coming home to die. and she told me that, you know, she thought that uh uh you know, my mother thought that uh my mother is is poor and she's still poor to this day. And uh um she's been gifted in that way really.

I mean, my mom just kind of doesn't care about money and it's been a real good thing. She's been able to be of service in the lives of a lot of people because of that. Uh the the uh um but she started saving for my funeral when I came home.

She didn't think I was going to make it. I was that sick. And uh um and I ended up getting a little bit better and you know in front of you know there with my mom watching I continued every time I got a little bit better I would hit the bar and drink and then the hepatitis would get really bad and then I would be sick at her house for another three or four days and then I would somehow con her boyfriend or somebody would somehow I would con my way in to 20 or $30 and I would be gone again and and and the whole time I was telling her I was clean.

It was just a horrible situation and and I you know I put that woman through hell and and I've made amends for that as well and I'll I'll share some of the amends with my mom and we get to amends and we should be getting to amends probably Saturday night sometime. Uh the you know in the in the end for me my last drink I went to a place called the Buckaroo Tavern. And uh the Buckaroo Tavern was a lot like that hotel I described.

It was those same group of people that would drink at the Buckaroo Tavern. And it's the same way now. Sometimes I'll tell that story and somebody will and they'll say, "Oh, that buckaroo, that's a a yepy joint." And Tom and I had that experience.

He showed me this place where he used to drink, but he said, "But didn't used to be like like that." Cuz I said, "Well, that's pretty nice place to drink." No, no, it wasn't then, you know. And uh uh but the uh the buck So some people said, "Oh yeah, the buckwe that's kind of a yuppy joint now." But it wasn't then. and I was down to my last few dollars and I had like maybe $3 to my name and I just got had didn't have enough money to reup at the hotel I was at.

So I packed my stuff with me, left that hotel room. I thought, well, I'll go to the Buckaroo Tavern. This is in the morning.

They were just opening. I'll go to the Buckaroo Tavern and I'll get a pint of beer and somebody will show up. It's going to, you know, somebody will show up and and uh and there'll be somebody that maybe owes me a little favor like I can remind them like, "Hey, remember when I when I was in the fat city, you know, remember I took care of you, buddy?" And I was kind of hoping somebody like that would show up and or somebody would show up and just kind of maybe buy me a drink and and uh so I knew that was my only beer and I I couldn't drink it too fast because as soon as I wasn't buying they were going to kick me out.

And I was in that kind of shape that even in the Buckaroo Tavern, you know, they had their eye on me. They were like, "Okay, we'll give you a beer. Sit over there and be quiet and we'll give you a beer." And uh and I was drinking my beer and I got about halfway through my beer and it started coming back up and I ran out the door of the Buck Tower.

threw up on my way out and uh and that was my last drink and and I I didn't get sober that day. That was my last drink. I I continued to use for another day or two days and I kind of lost track of time and and I actually I really don't have a good recollection of the next several days, but I ended up uh I ended up behind a McDonald's in Seattle and there's two buildings.

There's a a Viking bar that's called Hagars uh which means you know Norwegians and Swedes drinking there. There's this Viking bar named Hagars and uh uh and then next door to that is the McDonald's and in between there's like this facade. So from the front if you walk by you'd think it was all connected one building but if you go around behind in the parking lot there's a space between that building that you can get in and uh and I found that space somehow and I'd also been over behind a store digging around.

I found this big huge piece of cardboard and I kind of made a piece of cardboard lean thing between there so people couldn't see in and I sat there and just kind of existed and I was shooting speedballs and I was telling Tom today that and we'll talk about this more when I get to a men's that you know I don't have any idea to this day where I got the money for that because my memory was spending my last few dollars at the Buckaroo Tavern and as I threw up I got desperate and I did something I don't know what but I had money and I had had drugs and I sat there for a couple of days until of course I was out of money and drugs again uh behind that McDonald's and I could look out uh from that McDonald's if I if I went out I could look across there was a big open parking lot and there was an AA hall there and the people from the AA hall would come out the back of the AA hall. This is actually the big back porch on this hall. It was called Fremont Hall in Seattle.

And uh uh there was a big porch back there and I could see the AA people there and I'd been in and out and in and out of AA I was in my first treatment center when I was 17 and I I I was on about number five at this time and uh um and those are ones I finished. you know, I checked into a lot of detoxes and stuff and then when the fever was on, I was would jet, you know, within 24 hours and and uh but the uh I could see that a a hall, but then I just would go back and I'd sit there and I could hear the drive-thru, too, at the McDonald's. That was the thing that really freaked me out.

I could hear the drive-thru and I could hear them say, "Yeah, I'll have a number three super size with a Diet Coke." And then I'd think, "Oh my god." And I'd think I think what they said was, "Hey, there's a freak back there shooting coke. somebody then I' and then the next guy then I'd hear the next guy pull up and I' and I and I'd think they were saying and then I think they were saying call the FBI and I'm thinking oh my god you know and uh you know I've since found out that the FBI doesn't spend doesn't have a huge budget for those kind of you know behind McDonald's guys but I was convinced you know that the this this the federal government was involved somehow with with uh my not being sober and and uh but I I I knew a guy that I'd actually lived with as a kid. His family lived in the same neighborhood as where I started drinking and I ended up at a at a time in my life.

I ended up living his family took me in and I lived with his family for a period of time. So, this guy was like a brother to me and he was going to AA at that time and he was going to that hall and I knew it. I knew that he would would be there if I would just go and uh and I knew the meetings were about 8:00 and I kind of well what the hell else am I going to do?

I'll go to that meeting. my friend Donner will be there and he and his girlfriend, now it's his wife now, but it was his girlfriend at that time. Uh they'll take me in and they'll nurse me back to health on their couch like they'd done many times.

And uh and you know, I had no intention of getting sober. I had no intention of of wanting to be sober. I had no intention of uh trying to get sober.

It just wasn't there. I mean, I was I wasn't even a want to want to guy. I was just a guy.

I was just in so much fear of what would happen if I actually, you know, had to get sober, of what that would be like. And my experience was always, you know, that I would get sober for a period of time. And that that deal, we'll talk about uh we're going to talk about that tonight when we come back in after the break.

That that restless, irritable, and discontent deal would happen. And I would get to a place where I was actually paralyzed with fear or sober. And I would get to a place where I had to drink, where I had to drink.

uh it was either drink or kill myself. I mean, that was the, you know, I that would be what it would feel like for me to be sober. So, I didn't want to get sober, but I just thought maybe I did need to kind of go through the withdrawals and get my habit down to a reasonable amount and nurse myself back to health and and all those kind of things.

And I went to that AA meeting and uh uh took a seat and uh this guy that I was looking for didn't show up. And I was sitting in the meeting. I just started crying like alligator tears.

And it was a silent deal, too, you know? I mean, I wasn't I wasn't balling, but I just had these tears just and I couldn't stop it. I didn't try to wipe my face.

And I just didn't know what the hell I was going to do. I was thinking, well, I could rob a bank when the banks open in the morning. I that that was really what I was thinking.

You know, I was thinking I could rob a bank. That would that would do it. That would give me a couple thousand bucks.

That would maybe last a day or two. And uh uh and you know I uh caused a little bit of a scene. Some people said some things and I was you know real dramatic.

Uh the junky pride deal is really a dramatic uh condition. And uh uh like I'm so hardcore that kind of stuff and and you don't know what I've been through, you know, and I've been shooting dope since I was a teenager. Uh but uh you know I mean I really was kind of out of gas and this guy came up and I like to say this that I learned about giving from an absolute expert and he's a guy that I still spend time with today.

I was just with him last week again and and uh he's over 30 years sober now. And he came up to me in that meeting and said uh hey my friends and I have been talking and we'll make all the arrangements. If you want to go to detox we'll give you a ride.

we've already called down there and they got a bed. And of course, I'm thinking, well, I was thinking a couple things. I was thinking one about, you know, maybe I better check my social calendar and make sure I can fit this detox deal in.

And uh uh and the other thing I'm thinking is how the hell does this guy know I need to go to detox? And uh uh but it was that it was that kind of a deal. I mean, they didn't they didn't ask, you know, what's your situation?

Nobody asked, "Are you homeless?" Nobody asked. It was just that, you know, they they said, "Do you want to go to detox?" And I said, "Well, yeah, I would go." And uh uh and they took me to a detox in the next city up from Seattle, which is Everett in Snomish County. And it's uh I don't know what to compare it to here, but it's for you know, when you're when you're strung out like that and you're drinking with that circle of friends, you know, your world gets really small.

And that was far enough removed for me to where I just didn't have the game to leave that detox and then panhandle the money and then try to get a couple buses all the way to Everett or all the way to Seattle and then try to find somebody to something to steal and then try to find somebody to to, you know, it just didn't have it in me. And so I got my first five days of sobriety at Evergreen Manor Detox in Everett, Washington. And that guy that drove me to the detox that night was there the night I got out.

And he picked me up and he took me to his home. And uh and then I could kind of hear his girlfriend saying, you know, he was like, "Stay out here in the front room. I'm going to go talk to my girlfriend for a little bit." And I heard her saying, "Well, are you crazy?

Have you seen this guy?" And you know, "What are you doing?" And and then, you know, no goddamn way. No way. No way.

And then he'd come in, "Okay, it's going to be all right. You'll be able to stay here for the night." You know, and uh and he let me stay there for the night. And this guy owned a car lot down at on Highway 99.

And it was the same area where I'd just been going through all that hotel stuff. and he owned a little car lot down there and there was a little apartment that had been fixed up in the back of the car lot. Uh, and he took me down there the next day and he said, "Well, listen, I'll let you stay here for a while and there's some conditions and, you know, have to stay clean and sober.

I have to go to the noon meeting, the 5:00 meeting, the 8:00 meeting. I'll give you a little work here at the car lot." And and uh uh the reason I say I learned about giving from an expert is that guy gave me a place to stay. And uh it's emotional for me even to talk about this even today 17 years later thinking about the the size of that guy's heart.

I didn't know this guy. Never met him before in my life. Uh he took me down to the car lot.

He came by every morning for six months and bought me breakfast. Every morning for the first six months of my sobriety, Al would come wake me up and say, "Hey, let's go up to the Jack in the Box. We'll get a breakfast Jack and a cup of coffee.

Uh he was the first man I ever prayed with in my entire life. First guy that ever said, "Well, have you tried prayer? Let's do a little prayer." Uh you know, I'm so so grateful to him and to his buddies and and he'd give me a few dollars, you know, and and uh you know, again, that that alcoholic indignant deal.

Uh this was a guy and now I I've drove by, he doesn't own the car lot anymore. Uh, and I think part of the reason his business failed and I think part of the reason his business failed is because he was giving all of his money to alcoholics. I really believe that he was spending so much time on alcoholics.

He wasn't really selling any cars and you know, all the AAS were dropping by the car lot because it was a place for a free cup of coffee. I mean, it was just this like a little mini AA at his car lot. And once in a while, he sold a car.

If a customer would really come in and really try very hard, he would sell him a car. And uh uh but you know, I drive by that car lot now and I look at it's a little tiny dirt lot. You know, there's no pavement or anything.

It's just like a little patch of dirt and you can put about eight or 10 cars on there at a time. And I and and he would pay me every day to go out and start them up and kind of get the batteries going or maybe that tire. We'll take those snow tires off that car and there's some other tires out in the ground.

Put them on there and you know, vacuum that car out, kind of clean it up and stuff. And at the time this, you know, being the the the self-centered person that I was, I thought, well, I know what's going on here. What we got here is we got this guy who kind of prays on these people who are down on their luck and aa and he and he cleans them up and then he kind of gets them to work for these slave labor wages down on his car lot for five bucks an hour.

And I'm thinking, doesn't he know I was a chief engineer on a goddamn fishing boat and made a fortune and he expects me to work down here for $5 an hour? that was constantly going through my head. And the the grateful thing now today, looking through the spiritual eye, which we get here in AA, looking through the spiritual eye, and I drive by that lot, and I see that he didn't need any help at all.

You know, he he was partners in that business with his brother. There was two of them. He didn't need any help at all.

This was completely there wasn't enough cars there to need a a lot boy, you know, and uh uh so it was completely from his heart. And uh uh you know, I was going I would I would work there and I'd get a few bucks in my pocket and I'd try not my hardest not to get on the wrong side of a $20 bill. If I got about 15 bucks, say, "Well, I think I'll stop working right there and head up to the hall." It was working great for me for a period of time, but uh you know the anxiety built and physically I was looking better.

You know, I gained a little weight and the lights were kind of back on in my eyes and most of the people at the hall were kind of on to the next newcomer and they weren't paying so much attention to me and and uh and I started getting in this position where I started thinking, you know, the time and day is going to come for me. I'm going to drink again. I'd been through it so many times.

And uh there was a group of guys that were kind of trolling the halls and they called it that, you know, they called it trolling the bottom. And they would go by these halls late at night, 10:00, midnight meeting, the low bottom hall, this this Fremont Hall, they call it the emergency room of AA. And they actually have a sign on in in there that says that the emergency room of AA.

And it's in a place in Highway 99 where there's there's probably about 75% of the people in the meetings at that hall are actually sober and the rest are just street refuge people that are trying to get out in out of the cold, get a cup of coffee and kind of hang out for a while and and then uh go back out. And uh so these guys would come by there and they had this idea that their place in Alcoholics Anonymous after having been through the steps was to go to the meetings not to get anything but to go to the meetings and look for the face of hopelessness and reach their hand out to the still suffering alcoholic as men who have a real answer. And and that's what they did to me.

These guys saw me there a few months sober and uh and I I broke down in the meetings a few times and cried and said, you know, I'm just not getting it. And uh and I was telling people uh I was telling people, I'm going to drink again. I am going to drink again.

I know it. I know I am going to drink again. And good, well-intentioned people in AA were coming up and saying, don't say that about yourself.

That's not the way we do it around. Don't say that about yourself. But these guys said, yeah, you're damn right you will.

you know, without a real without a real answer, you know, without a real answer, you will die sitting in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. And we got an answer for guys like you. We're putting on a little workshop down at Fremont Baptist Church on Tuesday nights, and we're going to take people through the steps.

Uh, and and they also targeted my friend uh Patrick. And my friend Patrick, and I'll talk about him a little more this weekend, too. But my friend Patrick was one day less sober than I.

So, I had one day more sobriety than Patrick. And uh Patrick was also sponsored by Al the Carlock guy. And and Al was taking care of Patrick as well.

And Patrick I had most for the most of the time I'd been able to kind of come up with hotel rooms or people's couches to sleep on and stuff. But Patrick was really truly right off of the skids and and he worked his way up and got sober and and Al was sponsoring him and he'd got himself a little boarding room a few blocks from the car lot where he had a little room in a basement that he'd rented and and he uh had got himself a 10-speed bike and and you know he was I was uh 20 28 at this time almost 29 and Patrick was a few years older. So, it's hard to have have your, you know, it's hard to have a lot of game, you know, down on Highway 99 when you're on your 10 speed, you know.

It's like, but you still, you know, if you're alcoholic, you can you can still do it. You can still kind of have some uh and uh uh but you know, Patrick said, "I'm going to go to that workshop." And he went down there and he came back and said, "Oh, Kenny," he says, "These guys are going to build a spiritual arch to which they're going to walk free, man." And I'm thinking in my mind like I'm thinking, "These guys are going to build this paperiermâché arch." and and uh uh that that was going to be the that was going to be the the deal here was that these guys were going to build this and I was thinking that's never going to work. I've been down to this alter church call deal before and that's never going to work.

Patrick and but at the same time I wasn't going to let Patrick, you know, I was one day sober more than him. So, I was kind of showing him the ropes and and uh and we had the same sponsor and and uh so I was thinking, well, I'm damned if I'm going to let him get a leg up in sobriety on me. So, I started going to that workshop with Patrick and uh and we would go to the workshop.

We'd listen to these guys and then we would deprogram each other after the workshop. We'd stand around, we'd say, "That guy's so full of crap. He's just saying all that fancy stuff to impress the girls." And I don't think he's even done that stuff himself.

I think he's make I think he might even be drinking. We had all kinds of theories and and these guys can't possibly be sober. And and uh uh um but you know, then we'd say, "Okay, well, we'll see you back here next Tuesday." And next Tuesday we'd be back.

And we started going through that workshop. And I started having that experience with the steps. I I I I loved what they were talking about.

It was this message that had depth and weight. It's the message that we're going to talk about and spend some time with this weekend. uh and it absolutely completely and totally uh revolutionized my whole entire attitude and outlook upon life.

Changed the way that I live. Uh you know, I'm not the same person that I used to be. And and there's a lot I want to I'll talk about the steps and stuff, but I'm going to do that in the course of as we kind of go through the steps this weekend.

And and uh um the the thing about the that I will say is going through those steps um you know something happened to me. I had this experience this desire to destroy myself with drugs and alcohol was removed somewhere along that way in that process and I easily stay sober today and and uh you know it's not really a part of my life. I live in that 10step promise of the being in a position of neutrality safe and protected.

I live my life in that place today. Uh um you know, I've got a I've got a beautiful family today. I'll talk to you about my family.

I got a daughter that's 15 years old that's never seen me take a drink. My wife and I adopted a teenager. Brought a teenager into our house, a kid that that needed a hand up, and I'll talk about him.

Brought him into my home. Uh you know, it's just kind of been the the holiday season. And uh this last Thanksgiving, the entire my entire family was at my house for Thanksgiving this year.

You know, my brother was there, my sister was there, my mom was there, my sister's two kids were there, my brother's girlfriend was there, my wife's sister was there, you know, the whole family was at my house and uh and I absolutely ruined a few Thanksgivings, you know, and I uh I showed up at a Thanksgiving in the kind of shape I was like when I was in that hotel room. And I was thinking I was thinking I can't spend too much time in the bathroom. So I came up with this ingenious plan on a Thanksgiving day at my grandparents house where I had preloaded and taped a bunch of syringes to my legs and I went to Thanksgiving dinner that way so that I could quickly just go in the bathroom and get a fix.

And you know like every 15 minutes, oh excuse me, I'll be right back. And I'd head for the bathroom and you know it was destroying my family to watch what was going on. And uh um it was just it was a horrible situation.

And I was sitting there, they they were passing everything around and everybody was eating. And of course, I didn't really feel like eating much, but I was sitting there and I was just looking like I was getting ready to die right there at the table. And they said, "Well, what's wrong, Ken?

How come you're not eating?" And I said, "Well, I think I left my fork in one of the dishes that went around." And my fork was in my hand. And I said, you know, and that was Thanksgiving. And then there were several and that just kind of broke the whole thing down, you know, the whole family just kind of, you know, holy cow, man.

What are you doing? You know, and and you have to be so out of it. And it just kind of it just and and then there were several Thanksgivings that I didn't show up for.

And the heartbreaking thing about those Thanksgiving is there wasn't one Thanksgiving that didn't go by that I didn't say I would be there. There was a lot of those Thanksgivings where I said I would be there and I planned to be there and I just couldn't get out of the house and then I would stop answering the phone and then I wouldn't talk to the family for weeks or months after that. And uh and today, you know, I've got this family and all of those same people that were at Thanksgiving then came and Tom and I were talking about this a little bit, you know, that my family saw me at my very worst condition.

You know, they saw me a couple times in detoxes and when I was in horrible condition and even now, 17 years later, when I say I need to go to a meeting, they are just like, "Oh, yeah, man. Come on. You know, let's what can we help you out?

Is there anything we can do?" They just think it's the greatest thing in the world. They just think that this is the the greatest deal in the world. They don't ever question why I'm continuing to do this or or why I do it to the level that I am because they've seen this dramatic change happen.

And uh we'll talk a little bit this weekend too about uh um is a little bit deep maybe for right now but the you know there is a connectedness you know we are all connected and and especially to our families you know we're connected and and uh you know if you don't have a family you can come make a your family but we are connected and my experience was that uh uh and and maybe there's a few alenons in the room that might not agree with this but But I'll talk to Oneanita about this after and see what she thinks. But but you know, I have a belief that I made people sick and I don't care what anybody says. You know, I know that I made my family sick and I could do it today.

If I was to go home from this retreat, start yelling at my kid and yelling at my wife and and and and drinking it, my family would get sick. You know, I made those people sick. And that connectedness thing uh uh my mom and we'll talk about my mom my mom a little bit more.

My mom was sober quite a while when I was in those hotel rooms. She lived in Vancouver, Washington, which is about a three-hour drive. She would get off work Friday night, and she would drive all the way up to Seattle, and just drive up and down, up and down, up and down all of those those cheesy hotels, hoping just hoping to see me.

She had no idea, just hoping to see me. Just crazy, out of her mind. The thing about that is that is that uh for the most part, my none of my family have been going to AA.

None of my family have worked any steps. None. And you know what?

When I s see my family on Thanksgiving, they're better. I worked the steps and they got better. Ain't that amazing?

I mean, it's a really big deal we got here. Uh um I want to let everybody know that they can just really relax here uh this weekend. We're going to have a great weekend.

You know, we're I've got some really neat stuff planned. Um I'll say it again for the people that that came in towards the end. I'll kind of lay out a little bit.

People, I think, like to kind of get a vision of where we're going. I do this with my sponses when I'm sponsoring people. I don't ever just kind of hit them with something.

I always kind of say, "Well, this is kind of how it's going to work. This is the timing we're on. This is what we're going to be be looking at here in the next few weeks." And uh um we'll take a break here in a few minutes.

Um I think there's something a little funny about the smoking policy, so maybe somebody will make a uh announcement about that. But, uh, we'll take a a break for people to smoke and use the restrooms. And, um, I like to I like to have a timekeeper at these retreats.

It's helpful for me. Um, so we'll turn the mic off here in a minute, but before we we break up, uh, we'll get a timekeeper to help us keep time. What that piece does just kind of go out and tell people, okay, break's over.

Let's come back in, remind people of when the next session is, and that kind of thing. Uh um we're going to come back in in a little bit and uh and we're going to start cracking the book. We'll crack the book.

I'm going to share some of my experience with you. Uh we will have a time for questions and answers. I think I just kind of talked now, so I don't imagine there's a lot of questions yet, but uh we'll do a little firststep deal.

We'll have a time for questions and answers. We'll take another break. Um we'll just do I think we're just going to do one more.

What time is it? It's uh well it's 8:00. We'll see what happens.

We'll do one more session. We'll probably go till about 9:30 or 10:00 tonight and then I think tomorrow morning we're going to start again at 9:00 and we'll let everybody know what the schedule is from there. But uh but my plan is when I while I'm thinking about it, I'll tell you really a little bit about the the retreat here is this and that's that uh you know I really have come to a place where I really believe that these retreats are not actually working the steps.

I think we kind of drive ourselves a little crazy when we try to really get the full 12step experience in a weekend. It it it's it's too much too quick. So, there's a deal on page 55 that caught my attention a few years ago, and I'm paraphrasing here a little bit.

I I would open it up, but I'm too lazy to walk over and open my book. the the uh it says that you know if our testimony helps to sweep away prejudice encourages you to search diligently to think honestly to think honestly to search diligently within yourself then you can join us and it then it goes on to say with this attitude you cannot fail and that's really what I think these weekends are about I think these weekends are about a group of people coming together and my purpose of the as the facilitators try to try to accomplish that, try to encourage you to to uh search diligently, to think honestly, to be open-minded. You know, they say some of these things.

They they actually say with this attitude, you cannot fail. If we've if we accomplish that in a weekend, there's people that will leave this retreat that will not fail. There's people that will leave this retreat and stay sober for life.

I'm convinced of that. Uh that first workshop that I went through, there was a big group of us that started. There was about a dozen of us that finished that workshop.

And those workshops we meet once a week for an hour and a half. And it'll take us about eight six to eight months to get all the way through the 12 steps in the workshops that I do. Those ones actually took a little longer.

We were there probably there a year, but there was about 12 of us that finished. Uh, one of the gals actually died just last year, died of a drug overdose and that left 11. And as far as I know, all of those other 11, myself included, Patrick was included.

Uh, my first step sponsor, Jeffrey was included. Uh, there's I I could go on and name the rest of them, but, you know, they're all still sober here 17 years later. You know, there's a huge difference.

and and I and we we'll see that you know there's a huge difference if you think you're in the solution because you're in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous you're not it doesn't that you know being in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and being in the solution are two different things these people we we came through the steps and we got in the solution and we've stayed continuously sober as a group of people and they're lifelong friends these people I mean I see them and we we light up every time we see each other um the Uh the idea of that too is that is that you know in our traditions the uh the third tradition says you know the only requirement is a desire to stop drinking. That's the only requirement for membership in AA. But if you want to look at recovery from alcoholism there's some requirements and we're going to look at those this weekend.

you know, if you really want to recover from alcoholism, have a spiritual awakening as a result of the steps, there's there's some requirements and you don't have to do them. And and also, I want to say this, too, that that through this weekend, um I am completely comfortable with people getting up and going and using the bathroom or taking a break because we might have some sessions that'll go a little long and people get sore butts and you know, it's hard. Some people can like I'm a guy that I just go to these retreats and I just sit and I just absorb it.

I don't miss any sessions. I'll go to all of them. Uh my wife will maybe go to some some she's going to sleep, some she'll take she'll go read a book and she can't do the whole weekend, you know.

I go to a convention and I'll try to do every step workshop and she'll do maybe two, you know, and and uh uh um so I completely understand if people get up and stretch and and during if I'm if we're talking or we're doing stuff, I just want people to know that's within the bounds. It's not, you know, it doesn't offend me in the least. It shouldn't disturb anybody.

We should just really have kind of a open door policy. So if you feel like you got you're uncomfortable and you got to get up and leave for a minute, uh please do that. So um we'll meet back here in 15 minutes.

Don't go yet. But I'm going to turn off the the mic here and then we're going to uh elect a timekeeper and see if there isn't any other housekeeping announcements. Thanks for being very prompt with the 15-minute break.

And one of our mentors used to say that some of the that I don't think he said some of I think he said the most important time at these retreats is the time in between the sessions when everybody's just standing around visiting. So, we'll try to make sure that we get plenty of that this weekend. uh and that there's plenty of time for everybody to kind of process because some of the stuff we're going to get to will be a uh uh a little bit heavy.

So each session tomorrow I'll bring actually bring a chime. Each session we'll we'll uh start a chime. I didn't bring it tonight.

And then we'll have about a minute or two of just silent uh meditation before each session starts. And uh as we go through the weekend too, we're going to have some longer meditations that will be completely voluntary. There won't be anything mandatory about it.

And I'll give you it'll be the same thing. I'll try to really describe what we're going to do before we go there. So, uh we'll find out if there's people that have never meditated before.

We'll give some some little instructions for meditation and and uh uh but we'll try to uh realize uh a couple of things here um that I'll say before I forget. And that is that uh um a couple of statements of truth. And one of the statements of truth is that I love you.

I love you because uh uh you saved my life. Um I love you because uh you know you've placed me in this position to be here with you this weekend and you've shown up to listen to what I have to say and it's very humbling for me to to be in this position. Um I want to tell you another statement of fact and that is that God is here that uh we don't have to do anything to any amount of prayer or any amount of meditation or any amount of silence to bring about the presence of God that that has already been taken care of in advance for us.

Uh I I want to say that this is uh a sacred place and uh this is a sacred place because we it it's a sacred place for a lot of reasons. It's a sacred place because it's this nice retreat and convention center that I believe is owned by a Baptist church. Is that right?

I should know where I'm at. >> It was Mhm. But you know as you travel around the country uh you'll realize something and when I'm talking about I'm talking about sacred space that communities everywhere create these kind of spaces.

There are retreat centers and places all over the country and there's very rarely a town that doesn't have some kind of a center where people can kind of go to do spiritual work. Uh and and you know we live in a society that really supports us. So, it's a sacred place because it's been created for for groups like us to get together and to come and to to uh seek to know and do God's will in our lives.

But even more than that, it's sacred because we have chosen this place. You know, it's sacred because we are here. Each individual person, you know, has brought uh uh a level to this place that makes it sacred.

We've chosen this place and this weekend to bring some of our problems, some of the difficulties in our lives, some of those kind of things. We've chosen this weekend to to bring those uh uh ideas or to retreat from those ideas and come here. So, um I just wanted to say that so I didn't forget.

Just a couple of statements of fact so we can get a few things clear and out of the way as to what it is we're we're we're doing here. So, with that, we're going to do just a uh a minute or two of meditation. And uh we'll just keep it real short.

Maybe do just a one minute silent meditation. And uh um and I'm going to bring us out of that with this uh prayer that's on the board here. You don't need to follow along with that if you don't want to uh or if you might not even be able to read it, but I'll bring us out of that with with this retreat prayer that I've written up here.

And then we'll talk about the retreat prayer and we'll go from there. God, as we retreat, as we withdraw from all we see as hazardous, all we see as unpleasant, all we see as difficult, as we retreat from positions in our thinking, in our attitudes, in our knowledge, let us rest this weekend in this place of privacy, in this place of safety, in prayer, meditation, and study. Allow this retreat to deepen our awareness of life, our sense of humor, our love for everything and for all, and our desire to live the spiritual life.

Amen. So, uh, this retreat prayer, we talked a little bit in the last session about what retreat means. I know some few people came in, so we'll go over it a little bit, but retreat can mean a lot of things.

It can mean we talked about this uh 12 steps being a treatment for alcoholism. The 12 steps are are specifically designed our AA 12 steps are specifically designed to treat uh this uh human problem of alcoholism and they they do a great job of that. uh so they are a treatment and some people have been through the steps and have experienced the same things that I've experienced which is that uh you know having gone through the steps uh I will have had this spiritual awakening I'll be working with others I'll be kind of living in 10 11 and 12 and there seems to be kind of two schools of thought on this and and neither one is right or wrong they just we're not really going to try to get into too much right or wrong uh issues here this weekend and I'll tell you why because you've asked an interesting guy to to come and share for a whole weekend on AA.

And the interesting thing about it is is that I will come right out and tell you that I have been wrong about almost everything in my entire life. So, you need to take what I have to say with a grain of salt. And and you know, I I will tell you that and we'll talk about this more this weekend, but I was wrong about my mother.

I was wrong about my father. I was wrong about my brother and my sister. I was wrong about my grandfather.

I was wrong about Alcoholics Anonymous and I was wrong about the 12 steps and I was wrong about uh my employer. I was wrong about Al down at the car lot. I was wrong about uh uh NA.

I was wrong about uh um uh I was wrong about God. I was wrong about a spiritual awakening. Um, uh, I was wrong about you all, uh, in the, you know, kind of the big book AA people.

Uh, so, so, um, that having been said, we're not going to, it's difficult for me to draw hard fast lines of what's right and wrong, isn't it? when I come right out with what the truth is, which is that Kenny is a person that that consistently in his life has had a difficulty uh um looking at differentiating the truth from the false. So that's that's that's my deal.

So I'm not saying there's there's a right or wrong here. I'm just saying there is two schools of thought on this and I'll tell you where I currently come from. This one school of thought is that we work the steps once and then we live in 10, 11, and 12.

And that is very good. My experience is that I live do these uh first nine steps living in 10, 11, and 12. Eventually, the ego rebuilds itself and I start once more being living in this place of restless, irritable, and discontent.

And I have consistently found it necessary to retreat from these positions in my thinking, my attitudes, and my knowledge. The things that I think that I know. Uh I've consistently needed to retreat from things in my life that are difficult, hazardous, unpleasant.

Uh, and I I've needed to kind of take a rest and and and that's the retreat. You know, I went through the that workshop that I talked about that was the treatment and I've had to come back and do these retreats. So, that's part of it.

It's also like a withdraw from uh I I um happen to read a lot of spiritual material. one of the guys I really uh have kind of gone back to over and over because I really like his stuff and I'm not making any endorsements here and I won't do that at all this weekend to any particular brand of spirituality or anything but one guy that I've come back to uh is a guy named Emtt Fox and what EMTT Fox says is that the door to the soul opens inward and what that means is you need to withdraw to retreat to get away for a weekend, you know, and and just retreat. Say, "Hey, I'm an open-minded person.

I'll go to this retreat. I'll do these things and I will." The door to the soul opens inward. And if you looked at this door and that door, they open outwards because they have a law that says that door has to open outwards.

I know that's why that door is that way. Because when people panic, what do they do? They push in the physical life.

Well, in the spiritual life, it's just the opposite. You know, we retreat. In the spiritual life, we withdraw.

You got to relax. It's the app. It's the the in the spiritual life when you push and push and push and push.

You're doing something, doing something, doing something, doing something, and it's just, you know, you're pushing, pushing. In the spiritual life, the door just closes tighter and tighter and tighter and tighter. Just makes it worse.

So this is the idea here this week. And uh I talked in the uh in the first session a little bit uh about my mother and for some reason I just feel compelled. I I this is kind of the uh something that maybe I would normally do on a Sunday, but I just thought I'd just pull out the big guns right away.

So uh just to give you an idea of where we're going, this session is going to be the time that we'll spend talking on the first step. And this is out of context a little bit. And my mind kind of works that way.

So you'll you'll notice that we'll move around here a little bit this weekend, but uh uh we will get through and we will talk about each one of the steps to the best of our ability. I actually don't know how far we'll get, but I will tell you this Sunday morning we're going to talk about the 12th step. That's really why I came here was for what I have to share with you on Sunday morning.

So if you've got plans for Sunday morning and you can change them, try to be here. if you can't. Uh I'm I'm happy that this is being taped, I guess.

So, uh um because I've got some really neat, amazing things to share with you about the 12step work that's happened in my life. Uh and just so we're clear about this, and like I tell I told you, I like to let people know where we're going. I've done this retreat.

I've I've I've many times uh I've been sponsored by several different people in my sobriety. I've I've found somebody that has what I want and I will ask them to take me through the steps. Uh I'm being sponsored by a guy right now that doesn't necessarily uh adhere to completely this big book deal.

And that was really good for me because when he started sponsoring me, he said about in the first maybe the second first or second time we met, he said, "Kenny, you know way too much about that big book. So we're going to go all the way through the steps and we're not ever going to crack that big book. So next time you come, leave your big book at home." And it's been a wonderful experience for me.

Uh, but just so you know where we're going here that I've been through the steps with him in a lot of different ways and in retreats. I've listened to a lot of different people. Uh, I told Tom and Wanita about an experience that I had going and sitting through a deal where you actually work all 12 steps in one weekend and it was really kind of an insane deal.

But I I went into it I went into it open-minded. It's not my it's not my deal. I, you know, these retreats, we're not actually going to work all 12 steps because it's just uh um but we're going to get a vision of what your life would look like if you did work all 12 steps.

You will have that when you leave here Sunday if you put the time in. So the the point is is that and the reason we're going to get to where we're going on Sunday is this that no matter how many times you work the steps, it always leads to the same place. And we forget about this sometimes.

We think that I'm going to work the steps and my problems are going to get better. I'm going to do this. My the 12 steps as designed as near as I can tell always lead to looking for the face of hopelessness and reaching your hand out to a still suffering alcoholic.

That's really the whole deal here. You know, all of the rest of this work that we're going to do is in preparation for that. and you know, one of the uh great mentors in AA and a guy that's gone now and but I heard a lot of people call him, you know, they called him one of the great AA sponsors.

Uh um and and he said that he said this isn't the work. This puts us in fe fit spiritual condition to do the work. And I just inherently know that to be true that all of the 12step work that I did wasn't uh it wasn't, you know, I lived a pretty uh poor, selfish, self-centered way of life for a lot of years.

And this spiritual experience that I've had, uh, I believe is meant for me, but it's not meant for me only. There's a much bigger picture here going on. And it's the same way with this retreat.

This retreat is for the people who are here, but wouldn't it be sad if it was only for the people that are here? It is for the people who are here, but it's not for you only. The purpose of this retreat is that we come and we retreat.

We go through the steps. And we are going to be people that leave this retreat with a real answer. And we're going to be people that go to meetings, not to try to get something out of the meeting, but go to the meeting looking to to to bring something to the party.

I'm going to be a guy that goes to the meeting. And when I see the face of hopelessness, I'm going to go up and make an introduction. be a guy who makes the approach.

And uh so that's really the bigger picture is that you know my vision would be that this retreat will touch a whole lot of people that aren't even here this weekend. Doesn't really matter how many people come to this retreat. Uh um Tom said I don't know how many people will be at the retreat.

Could be 20, could be a lot more. We don't we don't know how many it could be. And I I don't it didn't matter because I know what the what the real purpose is.

You know, the the book says you may be but one man with this book in your hand. You know, we started with just one guy with this idea that maybe if he helped another alcoholic, he could stay sober himself. So, the fact that we've got this many people for this weekend is, you know, the the uh ramifications are really quite huge.

So, uh so I'm glad that that we're here. I'm glad we've kind of established where we're going that we will get to the 12step by Sunday. And I told you I'd bring out the big guns right away and I so I will but because I talked about my mother in my in my talk here.

Uh I talked about the the time that I spent down there and you know I ended up leaving her house and I wasn't sober and that was before that deal with the McDonald's and and uh uh um I think that motel deal had already happened and I kind of ended up down at my mom sometime in between that and the Buckaroo Tavern and and existing behind the McDonald's. Uh, and I but I showed up at her house in just absolutely terrible condition at my mother's home and she didn't want to let me in. I called her and she said, "No, you can't come." And and I said, "Mom, you know, I am." And she just heard it in my voice.

I said, "Mom, I'm sick. I need to come home." And she knew. She said, "Okay, come." And I came.

Uh, I called my brother. He met me at a restaurant to kind of be the mediator. I actually had called my brother and asked if I could come to his house.

and he said he said no I've got kids and I can't have you around but I will meet you at a restaurant and just kind of hear you out. So he met me at a restaurant and then he called my mom for me and said well listen you know Ken Kenny does need a place to go and and I showed up at my mom's house. My brother Jeff had given me a ride.

Uh this is an email that I got from my mother. It's dated December 7th, 2005, which was uh 16 years after I showed up. And actually, I continued using, so it's probably about 17 years after I showed up at my mom's doorstep.

My mom does uh a lot of spiritual work. She's a rake master. She's a real kind of a woo woo uh uh earth mother and and we really love her in my family and and uh but she does a lot of volunteer.

She does this tip thing. And what tip is is it's trauma intervention and prevention. And she goes to the scenes of horrific accidents.

And she just has this peace. I didn't know that was going to come, but she just has this real peace about her that she can go into these horrible situations and uh and talk to the mother of the the kid who's just been killed in a car accident or go to these suicide scenes and talk to people. and the police in the city that she lives call her when they've had one of these situations and say, "Nanette, would you come and and and she will go and just kind of uh hold a place, you know, for these people." So, anyways, uh she wrote me this this note, just an email out of the blue, and it says uh it says, "Hi, Kenny.

Once a month, we have a mandatory tip continuing education class for four hours. And last night, our speaker was from a police unit that had just put together a really remarkable film on the meth epidemic here. Several police officers had done this on their own, and now it's getting accolades everywhere.

In one segment, they showed mug shot of quite a few meth addicts who had all agreed to be filmed with the mug shots at different times and different arrests. You could see the huge difference in their looks in a matter of a few months or a few years. One of the men they showed somehow reminded me of you, Kenny.

He was handsome and had eyes that showed just incredible sadness. And his pictures over a period of several years got progressively worse and worse. In the last picture of him, he looked so much like you did when you were trying so hard to kick heroin at my house here in Vancouver.

When Jeff brought you over that night, I would not have recognized you. And it was all I could do not to sob right in front of you. The man in the film looked just like that.

Haunted eyes, sunken face, stooped posture, hopelessness. I prayed all the way home in gratitude. I don't think I've ever completely told you of how much I love God, even if it was for only one thing.

bringing my son back home to me and giving him life and sustaining him. I know this isn't the best venue to tell you how I'm feeling, but I didn't want to wait until I see you again. I just want you to know that I'm grateful that you came to me that night and that somewhere and somehow along the way after that, you found God.

So that's like the the dramatic difference, you know, in my life from showing up at my mom's place and and forcing this woman to start saving for my funeral to to to where I'm at in my life today. Uh um and uh I don't know, I just felt compelled to read that now and and uh and I'm glad I did. I am now actually going to crack the big book, which is one of the reasons why we're here.

And I'm not going to try to read too much directly out of the big book. I don't want to just read the big book to you. Let me I just do want to get an idea of who I'm talking to.

And this group, it's unfortunately this group is too large. I'd like to go around and just kind of give everybody a minute or two. But if we did that, we'd be here for the next two hours without getting around the the room.

So, we're just going to shorten the version a little bit. So, how many people are here tonight that have been through the 12 steps and are actually working with others now? So, that's a that's a majority.

That's really great that we've got that here for the weekend. And how many people are in the steps currently? And and and uh and not the people that have already raised your hands.

How many people that that didn't already raise their hands are here and are currently working the steps with a sponsor? And then how many people are here that have not begun the process of working the steps yet? Well, very good.

So uh and that kind of gives me idea how we can proceed here too. So I'm not going to do too much like direct reading the big book to you this weekend. We can save that most it it would appear that the majority of the people here are have already had done that and uh if they haven't they've got sponsors that are taking them through that process right now.

So there's a really good core uh uh here in Santa Fe. There's a great core with that Monday night meeting. And if I had this to do over again and I actually thought about this, I would switch it up and I would come on a maybe I'd come on a Friday and stay till a Monday and go home on a Tuesday so that I could come to your Monday night group.

And someday I will I'll make a point of comments because I just hear great things like there was a group of people that came over to Tom and Wanita's house and and had a little potluck on Thursday night and they shared with me the format of the meeting. And so you've really got this great base of recovery. So, for most of us, we're going to be kind of going through this retreat process that we talk about.

And and uh but I'm going to leave it all in simple enough terms that that uh uh that this retreat would help or this set of uh tapes will help anybody that goes through this. I will tell you that if I was sponsoring you, just to get this out front, what we would do is we would meet once a week and we would meet for an hour and a half and uh and I would read the book to you and we would start at that title page. We'd start off with a uh we wouldn't be using this retreat prayer.

We'd be using a prayer that I use called the set aside prayer that I think uh several of you know, but it's that that's not terribly important. You start we start with a prayer. uh I give them a few things that they can kind of use in their life and we start with the the three legacies of AA of unity, service and recovery and a prayer and we start going forward.

We look at all the forwards and we just kind of do this deal where we have had this idea that the solution for alcoholism is contained in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. uh that if you want to know about Alcoholics Anonymous, you read the the the book and I will take people through that book the same way that group of people in that workshop took me through that book and we're going to go through it just one paragraph at a time. If there's a word we don't understand, we're going to look it up in the dictionary.

We use pens and highlighters. So, we're people that uh color in our books and and uh uh and and we make sure that we not only do we look at that, but we do everything that it says all the way along. And the people that that wrote this book had these experiences, you know, these experiences where they say, you know, the great truth is uh just this and nothing less.

That we've had these these these experiences that have revolutionized our whole attitude and outlook upon life. And and they say they've been rocketed into a fourth dimension of which we've not even dreamed. And and you know, we can recreate that experience.

They've left this book that shows us precisely how they have recovered. Um, and one of the things that that uh I've really come to believe doesn't matter where you're at in the literature, it doesn't really even matter, I don't think, what 12step fellowship that you're in. And I I do carry this message to to to people that whether it's AA or Allenon or NA or one of any of the other uh um 12step recovery groups, I think you should be interested in where that came from.

And this book that we're looking at this weekend, this is the grandmother of all 12step programs. There was not 12 steps before Bill sat in his kitchen and wrote the 12 steps out and they were published in this book for the first time in history. So, you should be interested in that regardless of what other literature is out there to come back to this core deal where they say, "We're going to show you precisely how we have recovered and these are people who found permanent sobriety." And uh uh and so if you're interested in that, you know, the idea is that you that that you go through this book paragraph by paragraph and you do everything that it says.

And it's a big book do instead of a big book study. And you do everything that the book says all the way along. So when it gets to the third step, we do a third step.

When it gets to inventory, we do inventory. And and uh so that's what will happen if I sponsor here this weekend. It's going to be different.

we're going to have to kind of uh uh you know digest some big chunks along the way rather quickly. So, we're going to do that starting in the first step. And there's a couple of things that that we'll we'll look at.

Uh the first thing that I think we'll look at, we'll just jump right up into the the doctor's opinion. And you know, we're leaving behind the forwards to the first edition, the circle and triangle. And we're doing that kind of intentionally.

We're doing that strictly for the amount of time that we have and kind of the place that this group is at too. Um I'm in a third edition here and I I should have brought a fourth edition so I had the right page number but I think there's only one page difference. So in the third edition uh I'm at uh 25 26 page 26 in Roman numerals and the third edition for those of you that have your books and want to follow along you can.

I think it'll be 27 in the fourth edition and that's the bottom paragraph says men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. Uh the you know the the doctor's opinion had some great things about it. It was written in two different letters and the first letter uh the history of AA tells us was written by Dr.

Silkworth and and if you go back and read that and I'm just putting this in context this paragraph if you go back and read that it's pretty light stuff. It's kind of yeah these guys did you can rely on what they have to say and and it's you know it's it's a it's almost it's almost an endorsement but not completely and you know these guys had an experience if you go back and look at the forward to the second edition one of the big things that happened for both of these guys was was this doctor's opinion had a huge effect on Bill Wilson and Bill Wilson went down and was talking with a guy Dr. Bob who had repeatedly tried spiritual means to solve his alcoholic dilemma but had failed.

So this guy knew what the answer was. He knew that the answer was in the spiritual life. He was with a group of people that made amends and admitted their shortcomings and and uh and and believed in helpfulness to others and dependency on God.

He was with a group of people like that before. But he couldn't stay sober until Bill gave him Dr. Silkworth's description of alcoholism and its hopelessness.

He got that hopelessness and that's really what our first step is. You know, people have known what the answer was for a long time. But but Dr.

Silkworth just was a guy that was able to put the problem in these concise terms. And after he wrote that first letter, which was just a little short short of one page, uh they said, "Come on, Silky. You know, we know you're holding out on us here." And he was he was a little reluctant to endorse the spiritual way of life because he was a very prominent well-known doctor in his field of treating alcoholics and drug addicts.

And he did not feel comfortable uh in exposing himself to saying, "Hey, there's a certain type alcoholic that we really can't help. We don't even know what to do with these people." And the answer is probably a spiritual answer. But when he wrote this second letter, he really let let it fly and he just laid it all out there that that that you know these are people who need an entire psychic change and there's very little hope of their recovery.

And and he goes on to say that uh you know these powers of good that lie outside our synthetic knowledge and that this uh sol that this solution must come from a power greater than themselves. if they are to recreate their lives. He uses this language in here that's very powerful spiritual language coming from from a a doctor of his time.

Uh and then he goes on to say in there that that he clarifies it for a minute. He kind of catches himself in this letter and he says he says, "Hey, if any of you guys are wondering why I'm endorsing this deal, you know, why don't you, I'd like to use different words, but you know, why don't you come down here to Town's Hospital and see the despairing children and the sad wives and the hopeless condition and and you know that that I deal with in my every single day and even in my sleeping moments. Come down here to Town's Hospital sometime in New York City if you don't like the fact that I'm endorsing the spiritual answer." Uh so that's kind of the shortness of the doctor's opinion, but uh it's kind of like a synopsis, but I think if we were to really draw it down even to a shorter thing than that, it would be this one paragraph.

This one paragraph I really think is uh the doctor's opinion in a nutshell. that one paragraph. If you were to like pick like a singleness of purpose that he had and he you only could pick out one paragraph, it would be this.

This was the doctor's opinion. Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that while they admit it is injurous, they cannot after a time differentiate the truth from the false.

To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable, and discontent until they can again experience a sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks. Drinks which they see others taking with impunity after they have succumbed to the desire again as so many do and the phenomenon of craving develops.

They pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over. And unless this person can experience an entire psychic change, there is very little hope of his recovery.

I really think that's kind of the doctor's opinion in a nutshell. All of the rest of what he's doing is brought to a place where he can can uh format that one paragraph. And this paragraph, the first time I read that and I'm reading it tonight in case there's anybody that maybe hasn't completely diagnose themselves to realize that that that if I was doing this work with you, it' be over a process of several weeks that we would do this.

But uh you know that is it in a nutshell. You know if that describes you and it described me perfectly what was going on with me that when I was sober I was restless, irritable and discontent that eventually sober I would succumb to the desire for a drink. And for me sometimes you know it would take weeks or months I there there's there's I've had the experience a lot of people in AA that that this process took years before they got to that succumb to the desire for a drink.

Once I take a drink then I break out in this phenomenon of craving which is what I talked about in my talk that that uh you know this compulsion for more becomes paramount to anything else that I'm not drinking to have a good time anymore. I'm drinking to overcome a compulsion for more. That's the phenomenon of craving.

If when you put some in you break out in a craving for more you're you know you might be an alcoholic. That's what the book says. Uh, and it says that we emerge from this deal remorseful.

Like that first time that I had a drink and over and over and over and over again, I emerged remorseful. And then it said the scary part. It said that we emerged from that with this firm resolution never to drink again.

And it said this is repeated over and over. And I know when I read that and I was in that workshop, you know, I knew I was going to drink again. And this kind of told me that.

It was like it was there was something about this that that out of that hopelessness was born hope because I knew it and then here it was in the book and that I I knew that maybe AA wasn't I thought AA was kind of for people who could stop drinking. It was kind of a a club where people who didn't drink could get together and I just didn't ever fit in because my problem was I couldn't stop drinking. I you know I couldn't stop no matter what I would drink.

And this told me the deal that that uh you know I realized that I was one more time with all that help from Al and all the help from the people down at the club that one more time I was in a firm resolution not to drink again. And the scary thing about being in a firm resolution that I'll never take another drink is that this is repeated over and over is the next sentence. And unless the person experiences an entire psychic change, that's what the 12 steps bring about.

Psychic is the mind. Uh uh you know this is a psychiatrist that was writing this so I'm quite sure of the the particular definition that he meant by that. Psychic is the mind.

You know unless I have a completely change in the way of my thinking I will return to drinking. I think that's what he's saying here. And uh and so I got I kind of got that I kind of got that hopelessness.

And that's the same thing that Dr. Bob got. Dr.

Bob understood for the first time that that firm resolution never to drink again didn't mean anything when it come to a real alcoholic. That you know he had those firm resolutions all the time and that it was just repeated over and over again. And then I'm going to point out just a couple things in uh in Bill's story starting on page five.

There's a deal in Bill's story and it says and and I I looked at Bill and I think you guys uh you know there's kind of a a common thing that we do in in the big book in in our circle and that's that when I have somebody look at Bill's story those first eight pages of Bill's story uh um which is you know Bill's story is 16 pages there's eight pages of his drinking and eight pages of him sober and I don't know if that was coincidence or not but I think it's kind of uh uh you know it's just a really neat way to to realize that half of his story is about recovery and and I mentioned that in my talk I think tonight you know how grateful I am that I actually have this part of the my story now about what happened and what it's like now that I had an experience with these steps and that this is what my life is like now. That's the what happened and and uh uh and Bill was the same way. But those first eight pages are his drinking.

So, I usually have people go through and underline everything of how uh how I felt, thought, drank, and used compared to Bill's story. And when I did that, I kind of came up with Kenny's story. I mean, I had all this stuff underlined and things just started coming to life.

And, you know, Bill was a was a stock broker in New York City. He was a married guy. Uh he still had a house.

Um although I think he was getting ready to lose everything, but you know, he still had a house. and uh um you know he still had a maybe there wasn't much game left but you know he went when he's talking about going to wars he was talking about World War I and uh um you know I just didn't think I'd ever really relate to this guy and I started really looking at his story from that place of the hopelessness in the doctor's opinion and I just fell in love with Bill and I'm still that way today you know I'm in love with the first eight pages of Bill's story because of the hopelessness that that man felt and that that and a miracle that this was the guy who founded AA, you know, and and you don't have to wait for this deal. You don't have to wait to be sober long time to get this deal.

Uh um you know, you just that that little coming from that place of hopelessness to this place of recovery is is a pretty quick deal. You know, that the uh you know, Clint talks about one day I was drinking and the next day I was sober. And he says, "Man, that's I would that's moving right along if you ask me." And uh uh you know, but uh the here's this this deal on page five.

It said, "I woke up. This had to be stopped. I saw I could not take so much as one drink.

I was through forever. Before then, I had written lots of sweet promises, but my wife happily observed at this time I meant business. And so I did." So, here's this guy who was an alcoholic who can't stop drinking.

He's been in and out of the hospital several times. You know, his his wife's heard it, you know. I mean, how many times did Lois probably hear that I'll never drink again?

>> I mean, how many times? Yeah. Uhhuh.

You know, I think we could we could we could say it was dozens, maybe more. Maybe it was hundreds. I don't know.

But it was probably at least dozens. But something happened this time to Bill. It was different this time.

Happily, my wife observed that this time I meant business. You know, this is a guy that said that he firm resolution. I'm not ever going to drink again.

And I mean it this time. And as Lois says, oh my god, finally he means it. He's really going to quit drinking this time.

What a great thing. You know, I can see it in Bill that he means this deal. And he goes on to to uh uh um to and I'll tell you one more thing.

I I actually had an opportunity a couple years ago to back go back to Akran Ohio and in the inner group in Akran Ohio in the intergroup office they have an unbelievable archives there in the inroup in Akran if you ever get the opportunity. I've seen the archives in New York at central office and and and I'm not making a judgment which one's better or anything, but they're both amazing. But that that Akran office really had the the bigger impact on me.

They have a copy of Bill's Wilson's family bible at the acronenter group and and in his Bible there was a a deal in uh I'm I'm losing the word for a second but what was the prohibition the you know in prohibition there was kind of a popular movement of what they called taking the pledge. You know the Washingtonians would would take the pledge and they had 100,000 sober at one time and you know it was kind of a but even after the still was kind of a popular way to do it. You would say, "I'm not ever going to drink again so long as I live." And you would write in the Bible and you would sign it in your family Bible.

That was, you know, and if you did that, well, of course, you'd never drink again. And uh and so, you know, I saw that in the Akran intergroup, this copy of Bill Wilson's family bible, I promise I will never take another drink so long as I live. Bill Wilson.

And then it hit me. I knew what this meant. I had written lots of sweet promises.

He had written lots of sweet promises in his Bible. And the thing about that Bible, it's at the Akran intergroup is Bill wrote that more than once in his Bible. And you know, I related to that desperate place that he must have been.

But this was different than those sweet promise. It was different than when he signed the Bible and took the pledge. Something was different this time.

He really meant it. He really meant it. And then what's the next line in the book?

Shortly afterward, I came home drunk. And you know, uh, I loved Bill Wilson from the moment I read that because that's where I was at. And I didn't I didn't really know that that that's what AA was about.

I really didn't. I didn't know that AA was for these this hopeless type alcoholic, this person that can't quit. And this is Bill Wilson trying willpower.

He had plenty of willpower. You know, I know what that's like to make the decision to stop and really want to and and go through all those withdrawals and go through all that torture and all that stuff and and and and you know, get the family all and then to to not make it and and to just think like what is wrong with me? You know, I really wanted to I can't believe I'm back here.

That deal with pounding on the bar. So, here's that deal with the uh um that was selfwill. And there's a couple other things that don't work didn't work for me and they didn't work for Bill either.

The second one is on page seven. This is Bill going into treatment, learning all about alcoholism and and you know, he's he had this brother-in-law that was a physician, Lois's brother, and and he was able to kind of pull some strings. That's how Bill got into Town's Hospital so many times was his brother uh his brother-in-law would kind of pull a few strings and get Bill in over there and pay for it.

Uh Town's Hospital was not a a free deal for it was, you know, far from a a free deal. It was for people you had to pay to go there and they detox you, bring you off the booze and and uh it says, you know, here's Bill coming out of treatment. And it said, "It relieved me somewhat to learn that in alcoholics, the will is amazingly weakened when it comes to liquor.

Combating when it comes to combating liquor, though it often remained strong in other respects. My incredible behavior in the face of a desperate desire to stop was explained." He knew how come self-nowledge wasn't going to work. He he knew that now.

He said, "Understanding myself now, I fared forth in high hope. For three or four months, the goose hung high." And I have no idea what that means. Uh, I means I mean I know it means that you know if for three or four months everything went great and he was getting money and stuff, but I don't know what that means to hang the goose high.

So somebody can tell me sometime if they uh what that expression means. I went to town regularly and even made a little money. Surely this was the answer.

Self-nowledge this time. I know. I've got the knowledge of why the self-nowledge won't fail.

I've learned all about alcoholism and I've been through this this treatment. So, and again the next sentence in the book, but it was not for the frightful day came when I drank once more. And you know, that was just that that deal.

Then I said, well, self-nowledge isn't going to work. And I was a guy that knew a lot about alcoholism. I'd been to treatment centers.

Uh there's a book called Under the Influence by Dr. Milm. There's a huge treatment center out on the West Coast called Milm Treatment Center.

And and uh uh and it's a fantastic book. And I went into a treatment center where that was the main deal was reading Dr. Milm's under the influence.

And I I learned all about the synopsis and the brains. And I probably you get some of this stuff mixed up. It's been years ago and I didn't stay sober.

So I probably wasn't I'm probably not a good person to be quoting this, but it had all the little deals about the receptors and how after a while they get kind of separated and they don't shoot the spark quite right and how those things got to mend and all this stuff. And it was that same deal that self-nowledge. I mean, I was loaded with knowledge about alcoholism and and that was a treatment center and I had the same deal.

I actually uh got drunk the day I got out of that treatment center. The day I got out, I got drunk. But it wasn't for the frightful day came.

So, the self-nowledge didn't work for me. And I had had that same experience. Self-nowledge had failed me.

Self-will had failed me. And Bill tries one more thing over on page eight. Trembling, I stepped from the hospital, a broken man.

Fear sobered me for a bit. Then came the insidious insanity of that first drink. Fear sobered me for a bit.

And uh like I could tell you when I was when I was at my mother's house there, which was months before I quit found that AA meeting and and was given the gift of sobriety, uh I could tell you a story being there where I had hepatitis for one thing. So, I was really sick and uh so I was kind of yellow colored and I couldn't eat. I had no energy at all.

I was back and forth, back and forth to the hospitals. Uh, and during that time I'd got a little money at some point and I went to a bar and I got in a fight in this bar and a guy uh totally beat the crap out of me and I he broke my eye socket bone, my cheekbone, my jaw was broke and I had to have surgery on my left eye and so then I was yellow but then my face was all puffed out and I was, you know, my eye had surgery so I had, you know, was all full of blood And uh and I'm living, you know, 28 years old, living at my mom's house in that condition. And uh um and I still couldn't stop.

I still was was uh drinking and drugging in that condition every time I possibly could. And I think about the that and I I think about, well, maybe if I could just remember how bad that was that I won't ever have to go back to it. Maybe if I just remember how bad it was, I won't ever have to go back to that.

But I've had that experience that, you know, fear won't work for a real alcoholic because a real alcoholic is I have this mind of the alcoholic. That's described in uh a little more and more about alcoholism. And there is a solution.

I have this mind of the alcoholic. And the way that mind works is that if that thought was to even cross my mind, it would be vague. It' be almost like it happened to somebody else.

Maybe not today, but the time and date would come when that will fail me remembering how bad it was. It will be, you know, I uh got to a place where remember I talked about drinking that bottle of wine real fast. Well, later on in my drinking many years later, I kind of came back to that.

I would buy really cheap wine because it was cheap and affordable. And I had this deal where I could drink a bottle of wine really fast. I'd take big big big pulls off this bottle of wine and it would just just relax.

It would just calmness and it would I wouldn't even have to wait till that alcohol hit my brain. I would just be at a place where I would just be just the warmness going down my throat and that and the warmness in my belly of that cheap wine. the way that would feel and I can I can even remember what it felt like when I exhaled and all that alcohol would be evaporating out and just that feeling and just I would just be like you know and it was like that that ease and comfort that comes at once by taking a few drinks you know I had that that ease and comfort and the problem is that you know when suffering from the mind of the alcoholic because I got this horrible situation that I remember at my mother's And uh um and and then I've got this other thing, this ease and comfort that comes at once by taking a few drinks.

And I know as an alcoholic without a real answer, without a complete psychic change, uh the time and day will come when I am only going to remember that ease and comfort. And if I remember this other deal at all, it's just going to be this vague hazy deal like maybe somehow it won't hurt me this time. So, um we're going to go just a few more minutes here.

Uh but, uh we do have a mic up here we can turn on and uh um so is there any questions to answer? We'll kind of talk a little bit more about the first step maybe here. We'll talk a little bit about the second step and kind of set the the format for tomorrow.

And then we're just going to break off and have some fun for the night. It's 9:30. I think probably most people work today and have had long days and and uh we won't keep people here.

But um is there any questions and answers or comments? Okay, we do have a mic here. The reason that we have the mic is for the is for the benefit of the people who might listen to these these uh CDs that he's making.

It's really hard to do the question and answer format without that. So uh so but don't let that make you nervous. I'm going to continue to ask that question.

If you have questions or comments about the material that we've that we've covered, I would really encourage you to to uh to ask about it. So the you know once we've established in the first step that we are hopeless aside from a spiritual experience there's a deal in in more about alcoholism uh and I'll get to page number here in just a second and actually it's the I think it's 45 I think it's the first page of we agnostics 44 the first the first paragraph they we go through all through uh um there is a solution. Then we go to more about alcoholism.

And in more about alcoholism, they really tell us these stories of these guys. And actually, one of these stories is in is in is in there as a solution. But uh they tell us the story of these guys.

They tell us the story of uh Fred. They tell us the story of Jim. They tell us the story of the certain American businessmen.

They tell us the story of a man of about 30 or so. And there's one more story in there and it's an analogy about a jaywalker that they try to tell us that isn't all the rest of these stories the same as a guy who just gets a throw out of skipping in front of fastoving vehicles. These people all have something in common.

They all have something in common. And what they have in common is this. They all had had exposure to the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous, the early members.

They had all made a start but had failed to enlarge on their spiritual life. They'd all been given this message that that Dr. Bob had that you know we've got this opinion this doctor's opinion and this phenomenon of of craving and that you know it takes a spiritual experience to recover and these are guys that made a start or made a beginning or something in aa uh and then they uh ended up drinking again after having self-nowledge, self-will and fear fail them.

They're people that came to AA and and uh uh and did some of the work that's necessary to have a spiritual experience. They all had that same thing in common. The the the jaywalker finally gets runs in front of a firetruck and gets his back broken.

But the analogy is the same. This analogy is that uh that we do these things sober that in our sober life, we get restless, irritable, and discontent. I just had a phone call the day before I came here from a guy who's 30 years sober and has relapsed, 30 years sober.

And he called me and he you know what he told me? He told me he's been in the program uh saying he was sober and he hasn't been sober for seven years. Yeah.

Can you imagine what that would be like? And you know what I told him? I told him, you know what, brother?

this could be me and this phone call could be the other way around. And man, I'm so glad that you called. You know, I might need you to be there for me someday.

He got restless, irritable, and discontent, sober. He didn't enlarge on his spiritual life. And it took a little longer than it took for these four people, but he had the same thing.

And the the the the book is perfect. There's a uh there's a speaker that that says this and I don't know if it's his deal but I I will attribute it to to to him just in that you know it's not for me that uh and you know he says about the perfectness of the big book and I really believe this book is just absolutely perfect for the alcoholic you know it just doesn't need to be changed and it's just uh perfect what he says about this is he says that this is the first time in the history of the planet that we've had this concise, precise way written out on how an alcoholic gets from that place of that hopelessness that will Bill was in to this place of a useful and happy recovered life. It's just right there written there and it's just absolutely perfect.

And uh there's another speaker that says that, you know, Bill was three and a half years sober when he wrote this stuff. He was four years sober when when he uh when the book was published, but you know, he wrote our 12 steps, three and a half years sober, sat down at his kitchen table and wrote the 12 steps and said he did it in 30 minutes. And uh uh the the the reason that I believe that it was really a divinely inspired deal and I love the analogy that Bill only held the pen.

You know, he was a vehicle and I feel that same way that that years later they realized that and that's uh part and parcel where our 12th tradition comes from. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all of these traditions. And what that means is that uh you know when I'm sitting working with a newcomer if my head is in the right place I'm completely anonymous in that process.

I think that's the way Bill was. Bill held the pen and uh and the reason I I believe that is in this this speaker says the same thing. He says that that uh I've been three and a half years sober and you don't know these things when you're three and a half years sober.

That's how he knows that Bill didn't write this himself. And I like that he didn't know these things. And uh uh you know, he he wrote something that was far beyond his actual experience.

And uh um I love this paragraph and we acknowledge after they give us all this stuff and they really hammer us on the first step over and over and over again. And and Bill has this way of writing and someday somebody will coin a term for this and and maybe it's already been, but he has this this way of writing where he tells you what he's going to tell you, then he tells you what he's going to tell you, and then he tells you what he just told you. And you know, and that's the reason he put Fred and Jim and and you know that he even has a tricky part in there.

If you'll read this, he says, "Our first example is a friend we'll call Jim." Well, didn't we just look at the man of 30 or so just right before that? And didn't we just look at Bill's story before that? And in the sec forward to the second edition, you got some stuff about doctor.

I mean, there's a whole bunch of them. But then he comes back. Well, our first example is just and he just hammers us with this stuff.

And then and we agnostics, uh, he ends up coming back to this idea of the first step for the last time in the book. And it's not the last time in the book. Actually, the last time in the book, he wraps it up.

He brings us right back to that hopelessness of alcoholism uh um in a vision for you in a beautiful way in the first couple paragraphs of the vision for you. He brings it back to us, but he leaves it aside for a good part of the rest of the book. Now, but he brings us all back to these same things again.

And that's this first paragraph on page 44. In the preceding chapters, we you have learned something of alcoholism. We hope we have made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic.

And this is why I say this is perfect. If when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely. He's not telling you one thing.

He's just saying if that's the way it is. He's just sticking to his own experience. And I've really learned that that's what we need to do around here.

Just stick to our own experience. I'm here to tell you what my experience is. I got no idea if anybody else in this room is an alcoholic or not, or anybody that I sponsor is or not.

my job is to help them find that out by reading this book to them and sharing what my experience was. But he uses those words if when you honestly want to. And I did.

I said, "Well, yeah, when I honestly want to, I couldn't quit entirely because I had that same experience of, you know, this time they they knew I was I meant business." Uh, and it says, "Or if when drinking you have little control over the amount you take. Once I take a drink, do I break out of this phenomenon craving or not? If when drinking you have little control over the amount you take, he says you are probably alcoholic.

It's a self diagnosis deal. You know, some people say that this alcoholism is the only disease where the patient has to diagnose themselves. You know, there's nobody that can tell you you're alcoholic or not.

Something you got to come to on your own. And it's a good thing to revisit in these retreats is to is to revisit this idea of am I an alcoholic? Let me look at my experience.

Yeah. Well, when I honestly wanted to, could I quit? If when drinking, did I have little control over the amount?

Says you're probably alcoholic. Okay. Well, probably I'm an alcoholic.

Then it says, if that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer. You may be suffering from that. Only a spiritual experience will conquer.

Well, how do I know? Well, I knew because everything else in my life had failed. And I kind I kind of still come from a school of of thought.

I think that, and this is coming from a guy again that's been wrong about most everything, but I still come from a school of thought where where I really think if you got other options available to him, you probably ought to go try them first because you're probably not going to if there's anything else available to you, you're probably my experience was that I wasn't willing to do what is required for recovery from alcoholism, required to bring about this spiritual experience that needs to, you know, I says may be suffering. So, it's like these these questions. Am I suffering now?

Was my friend that I got the phone call from the night before I came here suffering from a condition that only a spiritual experience will conquer? Have I come to this retreat this weekend suffering from a spiritual condition that only a spiritual experience will conquer? We don't know.

It says probably, maybe, if when though that's that's like that is so perfect, you know, because alcoholics will not be told what to do. You can't do it. You can't force this deal.

Uh, somebody told me in early sobriety, and I don't I don't know how long this has been around, AA, but one of the great truths in Alcoholics Anonymous is this. They're not ready until they're ready. And if somebody's ready, I can't say the wrong thing.

And if somebody's not ready, I can't say the right thing. I've sat and taken people through this book and given them every thing, making sure I didn't leave anything out, every little piece that was given to me all the way along. And they didn't have have an experience.

And they didn't, you know, they they didn't finish the steps. They didn't finish the amends. They didn't uh go ever go out and work with others.

They just didn't have the same experience I had. They weren't ready. So, you're ready, you know, and only I think that the only way that we know when we're ready is when this is an attractive thing to us.

You know, when it said that only an illness or a spiritual experience will conquer. Uh, for me, you know, I wanted that. I could see that these these guys that I went through this workshop with were really on they were on fire with the program and there was something about this camaraderie that they had and this happiness they had and they were guys that joked a lot and laughed a lot and they were there was just something about them and they said you know that they what had happened to them is that they'd had this experience of working the steps that had brought this about in their life and I'd listened to him enough to kind of come to terms that uh that you know when I first came to a you all looked so cleancut and and and nice and I just saw and that's why you know I think I ended up at the kind of hall I did there was people there that looked more like I did at that hall uh but the you know I just thought man these people can't possibly have been where where I've been you know I just I just couldn't really believe it but after listening to those guys story in that workshop listening to them for a few weeks I was convinced pretty early on that these were guys that knew all about the drinking game.

I was I was convinced of it. They didn't look like it from the outside, but when I listened to what they had to say, I thought, "Wow, man, these guys really were where where I was." So, um I think we'll ask I think that's kind of a good place to end for the night. Uh tomorrow morning what we'll do, we're going to come back and we're going to look at the second step.

We'll do we'll start with another little meditation. and we'll do a a little prayer. We'll do the second step.

We're going to kind of go through we agnostics for a little bit. We will actually do a third-step prayer together for those of you that want to. And I'll do about a 15minute meditation before we do that tomorrow with instructions and everything.

So, uh hopefully you can all make it back tomorrow. I know that not everybody's staying here at the retreat, but um before we end, is there any more questions or or comments from anybody before we before we close? Yeah, please.

>> I think you just turned that on and you should be gone. >> Could Tom, an alcoholic. >> Hey Tom, >> could you comment on uh the idea of an acute alcoholic?

um versus a chronic alcoholic, if that means anything to you, uh you know, I mean, I I look at what the the the big book has to say when it comes to alcoholism and they they they do describe I mean, you know, this program was set out for a for a particular type of alcoholic. Dr. Sort does call them the chronic type.

He calls them the type with whom all other methods have failed. Um he calls them the hopeless type. And this is the the type of alcoholic that this program is really made for is is I mean people who are not and I the reason I guess I'm struggling with that that question is I don't concern myself with that too much uh with who is in AA and who isn't in AA.

Uh I know it's a little bit of a controversial thing. I am fully aware that there's people in AA who are not alcoholics. I'm even more fully aware that there's people in AA that are not the type of alcoholic that I am, this hopeless type.

I mean, I diagnosed myself and I I was it was just my experience abundantly confirmed that I was this hopeless type alcoholic. Um, so I I am fond of saying this, and I don't know if this is getting to the the core of your question, but I am really fond of saying this, and this is that the terms are different for different people that come into AA, and I don't like to carry it much further than that, but the terms are different. And what I mean by that is that there are people that come into Alcoholics Anonymous.

It's been my experience. And again, I'm not pointing fingers or saying right or wrong or anything else. It's just my experience.

There's people that come into Alcoholics Anonymous and they seem to be able to stay sober and have relatively happy lives. I've actually seen it. Uh I would like to believe it wasn't so.

I'd like to just believe anybody that doesn't work the steps is miserable. But the there's people that come into Alcoholics Anonymous, they have relatively happy lives, and they maintain long-term sobriety without doing the things that I do. uh um you know and and I've even looked at it even further than that that that uh um that you know I'm I'm the type whom half measures availed me nothing you know I'm that type of alcoholic uh there's a a place in how it works that says that you know there's these type of people who who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.

And that's me. I'm a guy whose chances are less than average. You know, I do not have the same chance of staying sober as the average guy that comes into a and I believe that to my core.

So, with that, I don't worry about all the rest of that stuff. I know what I need to do to stay sober. I carry that message to people.

The message that I carry is only attractive to a certain type of alcoholic. The guys that tend to come to me for sponsorship are hopeless. I don't get too many guys that come to me and and and and are not, you know, the people that are tend tend to be attracted to my message are the last gaspers.

You know, the the guys that have been in and out in and out of AA and they just can't seem to stay sober and they and they come and do this work. I don't know if that but I you know if you've got more to add to that I would I'd be welcoming your comments but I don't know if that but the terms are not different for every the terms are not the same for everybody that comes to AA the the one spectrum is the guy that that just goes to meetings he uh uh hangs out in the fellowship and he stays sober and has relatively good life might even have a pretty good story might be a guy that gets up and tells a great story and everybody laughs and it's a great time but he's not doing stats he's not doing what I'm doing to stay sober That's one end of the spectrum. Guys that just come in and they're easily able to just set aside alcohol and they like life in AA and they stay sober.

Don't do anything more than that. Not not really making an effort at living the spiritual life. There's that extreme.

The other end of that spectrum is the guy that comes into AA and he gets a home group and he gets a service position and he gets a sponsor and he starts in the big book and he's solid in the circle and triangle and he writes his does all this. He gets down on his knees and he does a third step and he writes the inventory. He does a fifth step and he has a huge experience in five and he comes out of that and he starts making amends and he quits making amends for a week and he's drunk.

And I've seen that kind of hopelessness. I've seen it over and over again. And I tend for some reason to think that I'm kind of on that side of the deal.

And so I don't question really this deal about alcoholics or non-alcoholics or who's an AA or who's not. I I know I am not very uniquely qualified to decide who gets to stay and who gets to go here. And so uh I'm better off as a guy that kind of worries about himself.

So I do my deal, you know, I I pray, I meditate, I work with others. Uh I told Tom this the other day. I a guy that I sponsor is just brand new.

He's about a brand new in sponsoring people. He's a year sober. He's been through the steps.

He's just on to sponsor people. And he asked me, he said, "Well, what do you do when you're not sponsoring somebody? When you're not really working with somebody, do you kind of go heavy on the other parts of the program?

Do you kind of do more service work or something?" And and I thought about it. I told him, "I don't know. I don't know what you do because I mean, I'm clear what the terms are for me.

I was a guy that I was told, you got to give this away to keep it." And and and I'm not saying anything uh from a place of ego. It just is what it is. I'm very grateful for it.

But, you know, I've been doing this for 17 years. I've never during that entire period of time, I've never not been working with a new guy. Never.

I've always had somebody coming over. I've always been meeting with people. I've never once in a while, I think I've got down to one a couple times and I kind of panicked a little bit like, God, if he gets drunk, I'm in big trouble.

So, I've kind of gone to people and I I really like looking at looking at it that way. It's been I' I've come from the other extreme where I was really kind of concerned that there's not there's people in A that aren't alcoholics don't have to do this and there's non-alcoholics in the rooms and I was really concerned about that at one time and I' I think I've become less concerned about trying to diagnose uh the differences and stuff. I'd kind of share my experience with people and it's attractive to a certain type of alcoholic and it's not attractive to others.

I mean I get a lot of people that won't sit in a workshop like this and listen to this kind of stuff. they're they kind of think it's a little bit too much, you know. I mean, that's all right for you, but uh thank you very much for the information kind of stuff.

So, yeah. Anybody else before we close? That was a long answer, wasn't it?

Got me thinking about a couple things, though. Okay. Well, I'm going to turn my mic off and uh thank you guys for the night.

Thank you. >> Okay, good morning everybody. We're back.

Uh we're back uh running again. >> Good morning. >> Once again, my name is Kenny.

I'm an alcoholic >> and uh and welcome to our 12step weekend spiritual retreat and I'm very grateful to be here and I think we've probably added a few people from from last night and and uh and I think it'll kind of build through the day here. So, as people come in, we'll just help to just kind of direct them into to taking a seat. We're going to start this morning with uh a couple of minutes of meditation.

I we'll take care of a couple of quick things. For one, we were looking at Bill's story last night and I had this mention about uh goose hung high and Audrey was kind enough to come up with a description for or a definition for us and it says to have a goose to hang high in preparation for eating during this depression era was a sign of having good fortune or wealth. So, uh so there you are.

You hang the goose high to show that you're going to have plenty of food to eat. that means things are going good in a and uh so it's a depression era saying which is kind of about I think what we imagine but uh we will start this morning with a couple of minutes of just silent meditation and we're going to kind of build on the meditations this week and we'll probably try to do uh one or two minutes of silent meditation before each session. So is there anybody here that's never done meditation before ever?

So, well, that's good. So, you're all kind of meditating people and that's a good thing. You know, in in Alcoholics Anonymous, it's actually a part and parcel of our 12 steps is this idea of prayer and meditation.

And we'll do a lot more work around that when we get to the 11th step. But my experience in sponsorship is that as soon as people as soon as I have an indication, they actually talk about that in step 12. They they talk about at the very first meeting, you know, we're to get an idea of or even before the first meeting if we can if we are fortunate enough to have somebody who is close to the alcoholic that we can talk to to get an idea of these kinds of things.

One of the things they say we get an idea of is a person's religious leanings and it's very important and as soon as I have an idea if a person has some kind of a of a belief uh the steps are in order for a reason you know it's it's you know I think that we will not have the power to write inventory until we've done a third step and you really aren't adequately going to make a decision to turn your will in your life over to this power greater than yourself if you haven't uh had this experience of coming to believe in something in step two and and uh uh so the steps kind of go that way. It's really difficult to do a fifth step until you've really sat and done the the the pencil on paperwork in step four. So the steps go like that.

But one step that I have personal experience of starting to work very early in sobriety is this idea of seeking through prayer and meditation this uh conscious contact with God. And so I will take people to 86 and 87 early on in the steps. If people are coming to my house and we're going through the book and I see they're having a really difficult time, I will take people to that place.

And uh uh we're going to kind of leave the first step behind here this morning. We're going to look at steps two and three this morning. Uh and and uh you know that idea of starting to introduce people to prayer and meditation early on I said was my own experience.

There was a guy that was around the the hall when I was in really early sobriety and I was going absolutely nuts. I mean, you know, I had I was like my my guts were just like in a you know, just twisted in a and I couldn't get a deep breath and I was staying awake all night long. I mean, not sleeping at all.

Uh sober and just, you know, I was just going out of my mind and I just thought, well, and I just had all this tension in my face, you know. I mean, I just was uh uh you know, I mean, I I was I I was ready for a drink. And I I knew this one guy that every time they called on him in the meetings, he always talked about spirituality and and uh um most people kind of thought he was a little nuts.

And I think maybe I did it too at the time, but I have have come to realize that there's a lot of stuff going on in the spiritual life that uh uh that I hadn't accounted for before. And this is it. Anyways, this guy, he would talk about all kinds of stuff and he had these teachers in India that he had traveled and seen and now he said he didn't even need to travel to see him because he communicated with these these cats telepathically and and uh he would go into meditation for 10 days at a time and he said when he went into meditation for a long enough period of time that he could walk through walls and and uh uh and so but this was so this was the guy my the first guy that I ever sought out for spiritual advice in the program.

I thought, well, God, if he's walking through walls and stuff, he must be able to help me, you know, calm down for a little bit. And and so I went to him and I asked him and he gave me some really, really simple instructions for meditation. I think everybody here's uh we didn't have anybody raise their hands has not ever done meditation, but you'd be surprised.

I do a lot of workshops. Uh, I do these workshops in in Seattle where we take groups of people through the steps at a time and and like I think I talked about those a little yesterday, the last six or eight months and we'll get through, you know, all the way through the whole book in that time meeting once a week. Uh, and the we'll go through all 12 steps as a group and and during those times it's it's not unusual that I have a pretty good contingency of people that have never done meditation.

So, I offer them the same advice that this guy offered me in early sobriety. And I just went up and I said, "Listen, I'm going out of my mind here and I'm wondering about maybe this meditation would help calm me down a little bit and I don't really know how to do meditation." And and he gave me some good practical advice. You know, he gave me this idea of just getting quiet and concentrating on your breath.

Just try to breathe in and breathe out. And that was really uh a great meditation for me in early sobriety. And he said, 'Every time my mind starts to wander, don't worry about it.

Just recognize it for what it is. Just like if a car was to pass down a street, I could say, 'Okay, well that's this kind of car. That's so and so.

And I recognize it and then I see it go away, but I don't think about it for any longer than that. And I and when I recognize that anything is distracting me from my meditation, I just bring it back to the breath. I don't get disturbed about it.

We remember that this is a practice. And and so as we're doing some meditations this weekend, if you find that you're getting distracted or you uh you don't feel like you're really solidly doing the meditation, the important thing to remember is that uh is that we're just practicing here and it takes a long long time to get to a place where you can be quiet for 20 minutes or get quiet for an hour. Uh it takes you takes years of practice for most people just to get to that place.

And I was that way in early sobriety. I would go back and I would try to do this thing that he showed me and I would get quiet and I would and and I then next thing I knew I I didn't even realize there was a I'd be up making a bologoney sandwich or something, you know, and I'm thinking, "Oh geez, I was supposed to be meditating or I'd be over on the I'd be over making a phone call or I'd be thinking about work or, you know, I mean, it was it was impossible. It was absolutely impossible for me to get quiet for 30 it was absolutely impossible for me when I was in early sobriety to get quiet for 30 seconds.

So, I certainly don't expect that more than that out of the people that I sponsor, but I do suggest early on that they try some of these techniques. Another thing that, and this guy's name was Ken as well, another thing that that Ken told me was that uh he said it helps to have a mantra. And uh and you know, as you're concentrating on the breathing, if you kind of lose track of that, just go to your mantra.

And he said, "Thy will be done is a mantra that's used in all religions in one form or another. not my will, thy will be done. And he said, you can shorten that to thy will be done.

And he then he said, you can even shorten that just to thy will. And then anytime you're distracted, just bring it back to your mantra. Another thing that he taught me about was he taught me about a focal point, which means that when you close your eyes, in your mind's eye, which is what you see when you're closing your eyes and concentrating on your breath, that it's helpful for some people to bring into their mind their their guru, their savior, their uh spiritual teacher.

And uh and I didn't really know what any of these cats looked like that that Ken was talking about. So, there was one particular person that I did know what that person looked like. I thought I'd seen some paintings and stuff in childhood of this guy.

And I tried that and it didn't really come to me much. But what did come to me when I was doing that was just kind of the bright light. I could just kind of focus on a small bright light and I could just focus on that getting brighter and brighter as I was doing my meditations.

And that was silent meditation. Another good piece of advice that came to me a lot later on is is I was taught to sit a certain way in meditation where I was sitting straight up and keeping my spine straight and and that this was very important to bring these centers together. And I had difficulty with that in some respects because I was really out of shape.

That's probably the biggest reason. But the uh uh I just you know and a guy gave me some advice years later and he said no really the idea is just to find your seat. that for westerners that are used to using the backs on their chairs, sometimes these positions aren't very comfortable and and so just he just said find your seat and that was great advice for me as well.

Just find your seat in meditation. Just find a position that's comfortable for you. Find a chair that's comfortable for you and then use that in your meditation with these things.

So with that uh we won't go back to that again. We'll do a little silent meditation maybe uh before each session. One or two minutes I'll bring us out of that with a prayer.

I brought this chime like that I that I said I would yesterday and uh you can see that some some props have been added up here and uh and I really appreciate that and and and I will say about all of these somebody smudged this room this morning. I don't know if anybody can smell the sage but somebody came and smudged the room this morning. I don't know who was that.

Maybe it was Huh. Oh, Janice, thank you so much for smudging the room and and and uh and I burn sage at my house and uh um uh it does kind of have a smell that can be people sometimes smell that burning sage and think that uh it's mariju marijuana. And one time I was burning sage and my little daughter came up and she said, "It's that smells like Sonia's house." She said and I was like, "Oh jeez, I mean maybe I don't want you going to Sonia's house anymore, you know.

So, so that's what that smell is. That's that smell is is uh is sage and it's meant to purify. We've got somebody's uh been kind enough to bring a candle up here and light a candle for me and and I uh uh and I really really appreciate that.

I do the same thing. We burn a lot of candles in my house. We burn sage and I have uh essential oils I burn and and I do a lot of these things.

So, I have pictures on my wall of of uh I've got a picture of Bill Wilson on my wall. I've got a picture of Mother Teresa on my wall. I've got a picture of Gandhi on my wall.

I've got a picture of Bill and Ebie together on my wall. And I've got a picture of the man in the bed on my wall uh in my office where I work with new guys. And and none of those things bring about the presence of God.

But they remind me of the presence of God and they remind me about this. Uh the reason I have those particular people is because AA is really truly is and we'll get there to the 12th step on Sunday. But it really truly is uh recovery through self-sacrifice and service to others and it's not a new idea.

Um but uh it seems to work very well for alcoholics to get outside of themselves. So uh I use these prompts like this and I like them. The chime is the same thing.

I'll get back on our topic here. the the the chime uh is this is this was a gift from my wife. Uh this chime is something that's meant to get our attention.

You ring the chime. You'll notice if you get quiet that you can hear the chime ringing for a long time into your meditation. They actually have chimes like this, much bigger ones.

You know, they'll have all the way up to the big gongs and stuff that you'll see in temples sometimes. And they've got these chimes that that will ring for 20 or 30 minutes. So these people know when the sound of the chime is done that they're done with their morning meditation for instance.

So this will ring I I think you'll be able to hear this for a minute or so, but it just kind of gives us a it's a good practice and then I'll ring it again when we're coming out of meditation and we'll do we'll do two minutes this morning just to kind of get us started and uh and I'll bring us out of that with the prayer and then we'll get started on our our our step two here. Heavenly Father, mother and child, Lord of the happy, joyous, and free, we thank you for your presence here with us this weekend. And as we go forward here in this practice of the 12 steps, we'd ask that you would be our guide.

We'd ask that you would guide our thoughts and our actions and especially our words. We'd ask that this retreat, this weekend be allowed to fill us with your love and that that love would overflow from us into the lives of of uh many people. Amen.

Okay. Um we are on step two. We'll give you a little bit of a a vision of where we're headed here today.

Um there'll be a little bit of group conscience involved here. We're going to do two two sessions. We'll do one session here this morning and uh we'll cover step two.

We'll try to get up to step three here before we take a break. We'll cover that probably pretty quickly. Um I do want to clarify once again that you know we are not working the steps here.

You know what we are doing is trying to encourage the people that come to this workshop to to work the steps and encourage people to that are coming to this retreat to search diligently within themselves and to think honestly. Uh, and so, um, so we'll move rather quickly. And I'd like to clarify that if I was working one-on-one with somebody or if I was doing one of these workshops, you know, we would be looking at every single paragraph and everything, doing the entire book, and you just can't do that in these in these weekend retreats.

So, we're doing the next best thing. And uh um we kind of we we ended up last night kind of covering the the first step. Then now we're at this place in We Agnostics.

We left off on page 44 and we agnostics. And if you have your book, you can follow along. And if you don't, that's okay, too.

We won't we're not going to try to do too much direct uh reading quoting out of the book. Um we're going to do these two sessions this morning up to steps two and three. We will come back uh um we'll do a when we come back for this next session, we'll actually try to do a third step as a group.

And I'm not sure how it'll work in this configuration, but we'll figure that out at the break. Uh but we'll do a third step for those who wish to participate. We'll do a little music.

We'll do a little longer meditation. We'll uh get down on our knees. We'll do a third step prayer for those of you that want to have that experience with us this weekend.

We'll uh um we'll come out of that experience. We'll talk about four and five a little bit. And when we come back after lunch, I think we'll come back around 1:30 or something.

And we'll announce the times all the way along in case I don't get this quite right, but we'll come back. We'll do a couple sessions. We'll do a session 1:30, two or three sessions before dinner at 5:30 will end.

And that's where the group conscience part comes in. We could have another session be after dinner if the group at that time wants it. But a lot of times there's so much information at these retreats.

It it's or these uh you know, we need time to process everything too. It's just be it can become absolutely overwhelming sometimes the amount of stuff that you get here. So, um, with that, uh, I did kind of hit us with a letter last night, uh, from my mother right off, and I thought I'd do something a little funner this morning before we really get into this serious stuff.

And you know this step two is is such a great thing that uh uh the idea here is that sober we can take a look at this you know and I think we kind of had a show of hands last night but we have a lot of people here that are either they they are currently working the steps or they have worked the steps and are currently working with others and that constitutes almost everybody that was here at least at last night's meeting. So uh you know we could come from this point of looking at this from as from a newcomer's perspective in this come to believe idea or we can look at this from a experience of for those of us that have been in the program for a while in this we agnostics I can still go back and find areas of my life that I am agnostically inclined and they they talk about that in here those of us that are agnostically inclined and I need to continuously go back and Look at that that I may say I believe in God. I may say that I have this power greater than myself in my life, but if you hang out with me, you might see you might say, "Well, Kenny, you know, it looks like you're pretty fully in control of the financial situation here and you don't have it doesn't seem to me like you're operating a lot of faith in that area or you might not be operating a lot of faith where it comes to uh these talks that you have with your daughter, for instance." you know, I mean, uh the the uh it's interesting that that and this is this thought just came to me just recently that uh that where and and Shann and I have talked about this where our daughters concerned uh I have a 15-year-old daughter and she's kind of coming out of this phase, thank goodness, but she was like all dressing in all black, dying her hair black, you know, uh she wanted to get a mohawk.

I mean, this was, you know, I was just kind of like, "Oh, wow. Here it comes." And and but she's really she's a she's a great great great kid. And uh, you know, I just I try to convince her that, you know, you've got to live life this certain way.

You know, you're going to have to do this. You're going to have to get good grades. You're going to have to go to college and, you know, you need college to get the good, you know, job.

I've got all this stuff. And I'm doing that out of love. But at the same time, uh, my experience is the only God that I know, and I know no other god, is a God that will let you royally screw up your life, and it's still okay.

But I don't want my daughter knowing about that God. So that's that's uh that's that's agnosticism. That's agnosticism.

So, uh, in my life, you know, I am afraid to share with her the God that I know, the God that really loves you no matter what you do, that it doesn't matter if you screw up, that that you know, things will still work out so long as you do some things because there is that fear. Of course, we all seen the other end of that, too. So, uh, I said I'd start out with something real, uh, uh, funny and and today this is kind of related to the 12 step.

So, I'm bouncing around a little bit, but it just came to me. I wanted to to get this in and and not forget to to look at this, but when I'm sponsoring somebody, we're going through the the work. Uh, and we talked about this yesterday.

You know, it does this this whole deal is really about 12. It doesn't ever, you know, no matter how many times you work the steps, it doesn't ever end up anywhere but reaching your hand out to a still suffering alcoholic. That's the whole deal.

the all the rest of this is is to enable us to be in fit spiritual condition when people come to us and and and my life depends on people showing up. So I don't I don't take it personally with with people that I sponsor. I try not to.

But when I sponsor people, we set some ground rules. And I'm really uh probably kind of a little conservative on that end of the sobriety spectrum when it comes to sponsoring people. you know, I will tell you that if you don't show up, you know, I'm not going to sponsor you.

And if you don't show up a few times to my house, I find somebody else to fill that spot. And it's not a personal thing. And I I And what I mean by that is I bring people to my home and and uh and I live in a in a really Niles has been to my house and and and uh you know, I live in a really beautiful home today and and I've got a beautiful wife and we've got two great kids and and you know, I've got this.

So, I like to bring people to my house because and then I let them know that this isn't a personal thing. These these rules that I set down that if you don't show up, my life depends on working with alcoholics. I have to be shouldertoshoulder with people in this work.

So, I got to get people through the steps that are going to work on this with me that are going to go out and sponsor other people. And if you're not showing up, you know, it's and and I just tell them that, you know, if I drink, I will lose everything. You know, I'll lose this house, I'll lose my wife, I'll lose I'll lose my job, I'll lose everything here.

So, you got to show up. And if you don't, I'm sorry, but I'm going to bring somebody in that that will. You know, my life depends on having people that are showing up at my house on a regular basis.

So, in that respect, I had a sponsy uh it was a roommate of Niles at one time actually. Uh uh and I had a sponsy that that couldn't show up and he was really worried. He's like, "Oh my god, I haven't showed up a couple weeks in a row and Kenny's gonna fire me and he was in the middle of his inventory and and uh and I was kind of considering that, hey, this guy showed up, he better show up.

So, he shows up this week and he has an excuse letter. He said, "Hey, I know I I know I didn't show up, but he says I brought a letter with me." And so I was like, "Well, okay, Joe, I got to see this." So Joe Joe sent gives me this letter dated August 5th of 2004 says, "Dear Ken, please excuse Joe Kaiser, your second favorite sponsy, from his sponsor required fourthstep progress. Normal progress has been hindered by a combination of circumstances and events beyond his human aid.

As you know, Joe has been in recent financial hardships. Unfortunately, his sponsor, who is financially secure, is not familiar with the end of page 96. So, if you look at page 96, it says, "He may be broke and homeless.

If he is, you might try to help him about getting a job or give him a little financial assistance." 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.