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Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. My name's Liliana and I'M OH.

WELL, my name is Laya and I'm an alcoholic. Sue, you affected this mic. I don't know.

It's all those men you've been with. That's something. >> Oh, well, for what it's worth, do I, for one, think you should do anything you'd like to do.

So, God knows I do. It has been sort of a pleasure communicating with you, Marggo. If I'd known you had a cougar, I would have been a lot nicer.

Actually, it was very pleasant people here because Margot has been more than gracious and Shawn called to make sure we're all right and Keith flitted through our life in the last two days and Um, so I did I said flitted. Yeah. Anyway, so before you have a comedian I understand is I hope good for you.

Maybe we'll talk about Alcoholics Anonymous. It's very interesting. I've never uh been at a convention before where I followed an alenolon person.

It's sort of interesting. While you were starting to talk at the beginning, I thought, "What the hell's the difference?" To quote a friend, you might as well just drink. That would have been a lot easier.

Someone else could have taken care of you. Your whole story would have been different. You would have all But then it wouldn't been interesting, would it?

You know, I think we need Allenons and oh hell, forget all that. Okay, forget it. My sister's on Alanon for um oh, I don't know 16 or 17 years and there's a challenge sometimes being around Alanons.

I promised her a few years ago that I wouldn't say anything negative about Alanon people from the podium and I try not to really find them to be quite. In fact, I attend a women's group on a Wednesday evening. There's just a handful of us and uh everybody in there has a reasonable amount of sobriety and um we're all over 20 and we we we've just begun to read a part of our little thing that we do every week, the courage to change book, which is the Alanon book, because we decided that they have a corner on this release thing.

And I don't care how long you're sober. I don't care how long you're sober. I think life is just a series of experiences, one after the other.

And you're going to always have to deal with people, places, and things. And I think you can use anywhere you can get help is good. And um the longer I'm sober, the more I find that if I just make room in my life and ask for help, it comes in the most mysterious and strange ways.

And I found that the courage to heal in the Alanon book and all this conversation about releasing people and how to do that uh has been uh very interesting in the last reasonably short period of time for me. And what has that got to do with my sobriety? Everything.

Everything. I found out years ago, and I've confirmed it for myself over the years. And by the way, I'm 25 years sober today.

>> Thank you, Jane. Oh, it may not be exactly today. I just had to pick this day because, you know, I don't know what you were like when you got here, but the days all ran into each other.

It's just like one big night and then one big day, you know, and in the big day part, I realized I was on aa after that big night, you know, drunkenness and and I just sort of picked that date. For years, I thought it was October 3rd. And then I found a little card from my brother indicating how grateful he was that I had joined Alcoholics Anonymous.

And uh it was dated as October 1st. So I thought well it's good a day as any you know particularly since I came to AA and came to Alcoholics Anonymous for just a short period of time brief temporary couple of weeks maybe month at the latest. I just needed to get myself together.

That's the only reason I came here just for a little short period of time. Long enough to pull it back together get my health back. hoped that my head would begin to move one more time, that alcoholic poisoning would leave and that I could sleep a little more comfortably, get a little more money, get it all together, clean the place up, clean me up, clean out the car.

You know, there's a certain list of things I had to do. And as soon as I got all that stuff together, then I was going to be right out the door of Alcoholics Anonymous. And the only reason that I didn't drink is I was just afraid to drink.

I knew that I would drink. I knew that if I didn't go to those stupid meetings that I absolutely without question would drink. And I didn't drink because I was afraid I I went to AA because I was afraid I would drink.

I had not an intention in the world of stopping forever. And now I believe that if you're a member of Alcoholics Anonymous for less than a day that it's about forever. How you do it, how I do it is a day at a time.

What I do is intend to stay sober for the rest of my life. I'm on the way to doing that. I've learned over the years how to do that.

Been shown how to do it. Been shown how to be unafraid to be around alcohol. God knows you need that in a city like this.

Should have seen Marty and I. She's 24. In fact, she's just behind me.

She'd be 25 years very shortly. And we were mad in this casino in the middle of this afternoon. like in a matter of 3 minutes we were like I don't even want to tell you what happened.

I can only tell you that if we were drinking it would have been worse and you would have already known about it. The only advantage that the length our sobriety gave us is we can keep these things quiet. We move in just a little lowkey manner now.

used to be madly hysterical in the first few years and you get a little quieter and a little quieter and a little quieter, but you do all the same stuff. You do you just do it for a shorter period of time. Turn it over quicker.

You try not to have to make the amends as Sue was talking about as often and you know you understand the steps steps enough to make them become something of comfort for you and and something that you can do with with some sort of ease so that whenever your back is against the wall and it'll and you know if I am lucky I can't believe I'm about to say this but if I am lucky I will always have something that will require me to reach into those steps and to reach into my mind and to reach into my heart and particular to reach into my soul and wonder and ponder about what it's about now. You know, what is this new experience? What is this about?

What is the rest of my life about? I think that that's what it's about. Living, the joy of living, the experience of living.

Uh, you know, I think after you you finally get hold of a god and get get hold of a a lot of your experiences come through an enormous amount of joy. Instead of pain and the need to be rendered and surrendered painfully, you find out you don't have to have that happen. If you just step into life, it'll do it for you without pain.

All sorts of things will happen. That's what's happened to me. All sorts of things.

If I'm really lucky, all sorts of things will continue to happen to me for the rest of my life. The only thing that will not happen to me is that I will not drink. I will not drink no matter what.

I knew that was how it worked from the very very beginning because that's what they told me and for some reason I knew it and I believed it. Now I don't believe almost anything that anybody tells me and I'm Irish and I go out there to prove that whatever you do tell me is wrong but I have not had any doubt. Now, it wasn't right away, of course, but over a gradual period of time in Alcoholics Anonymous, I have come to believe that I cannot drink and I understand fully the first half of the first half of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous that I am an alcoholic and that I'm powerless over alcohol.

I know that. I don't doubt it. I don't wonder about it.

I don't joke about it. We were talking about near beer and all of that horseshit that people tend TO I know there's a piece of paper here with the steps on them somewhere and I'm so tired I might skip one. God forbid all of Reno.

All of Reno could be finished by next year. Oh, well I have to remember. So I understand the first step of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous because when I got here, that's what they told me.

I got sober at the hole in the ground in Huntington Park, California. Sounds it is exactly as it sounds. You go down 12 steps into a hole in the ground and in there were all these old guys, you know, and uh they had been sober before God.

They got sober. They were FOBS, friends of Bill, and they were definitely friends of Bill. They talked like Bill Wilson was their friend, and he was.

They knew him. They were sober a long time. They had very little to say.

Um, and what they said was very meaningful. And when you went there in the condition, there were very few treatment centers and certainly very no places for women. The lesbian thing was like not even discussed.

Uh, and you just went in there and all they cared about was whether or not you stayed sober and that's all you ended up caring about. They did not care about anything else. I mean, I made a point of trying to tell them a lot of things about me.

Lesbian D. That was just a start. And they didn't care.

They did not care. And you know over the years I have really found out that the people in Alcoholics Anonymous who really are oh I don't know in this program rather than all you know that are really into it on in this program they don't care either. I could give a really about almost anybody.

All I care about is are you sober? Do you want to be sober? Because if you do you're going to make it and we'll work all the rest of it out.

Now, maybe I'm tired and maybe if you got me earlier in the evening, you'd have one of those nice fluffy little talks, but I DON'T I don't think that's going to happen, you know? I just don't think it's going to happen. I was like half off already on the nearbeer conversation and few other things that I've heard over the last couple of days and I thought ah Jesus you know and I know that there's a there's a quality of alcoholic synonymous here and and everywhere I go.

I went into a workshop and we realized it was by mistake cuz the name of the workshop was queen of the road attitude or ego. I thought queen of the road. Well attitude or ego let's go to that one.

I mean, forever in your whole life, you always have an I always have an ego and an attitude problem. Always can learn something about ego and attitude. Queen of the road, they're talking about driving and trucks and rolling over things.

I thought, "Oh my god, this incredible. It's just incredible. I'd missed that whole queen of the road thing." And then I realized Margot's got system here.

There's a system. Everything's got a meaning these workshops. And then I read her more carefully and I went into the relapse one because I'm always curious about that.

I'm always interested in not why people relapse, they relapse because they drank. There's why. Why did you drink?

Why? Who gives a why you drank? I'm more interested in what the hell were you thinking about for 6 months before you drank or 18 years before you drank or 24 years or 25 years before you drank?

When did your thinking go haywire? What was a signal that you missed? When did you stop reading that book?

When did you not in even care about the 12 and 12? Did you ever start reading the book is a good question, too. Are you still going to meetings?

Do you go regularly? Have you begun that thinking about, "Oh, I don't need to go tonight. I'd rather watch, I don't know, Roxanne or whatever her name is on TV." Roseanne.

Roseanne. That one. I don't know.

Although, she had a lesbian on that program. I got to tell you that was a very f I think the woman's pretty, you know, I don't know the woman. Okay, I don't know the but when did all that stuff start to happen?

And that's what I'm interested in. I I want to know what happened so that I can over and over and over again selfishly for myself remind myself and see in front of my very own eyes what they told me was true. that if you stop going to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, you are going to forget all about AA and you're going to forget you're an alcoholic and you're going to drink.

And that's the kind of alcoholic you are, Laya. That's what you are. You're that kind of alcoholic.

Somehow I got that. So now, in order to remember it, I watch the people. I want to hear when their thinking goes off cuz mine goes off and I want to catch myself right away.

They told me that the time to go to a meeting was when you don't want to go to a meeting. That's the most important time to go. I have found over all of the years, such a consistency.

You have no idea. I mean, one of the great benefits of being sober any length of time, as I'm sure Gordon and Marty and anyone that's here can tell you, what's her name still in the room? Riley.

Any is that her name? 28 years. Can tell you that it is the same day after day, year after year, moment after moment.

How to be present, how to be here. None of that changes. How we stay is the same.

We go to meetings, we read the big book, we keep our house in order, and we don't go anywhere. We don't bring God. End of story.

I could get down right now. There's no more. What do you do in order to stay sober for the rest of your life?

One day at a time. Do not drink. Most important thing.

Work on that. You probably will make it. Now, if you'd like to really make it with some sense of serenity, perhaps you get your house in order.

Attend meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous and don't go anywhere you can't find this God you're going to have to find. Don't go anywhere you can't bring your God. God's the big deal here.

You traded in a bottle of scotch. I did. For what?

God. Now, if the reality of that had hit me in my first few months, I wouldn't be here. They didn't care at the hole in the ground whether I was here or not.

They just kept saying, "This is how we did it. We stopped drinking and we found God. We stopped drinking and we found God." In between all that, we read the book.

We did the 12 and 12 steps and we went to meetings. Period. They didn't care if they scared you away by talking about God.

In fact, now I understand what they did. They told you right away that you had to find a God. Because if you did not make it, if you had to go back out there, you might as well go back out there and know why the hell you're coming back in.

Cuz if you're lucky, you're going to get back, you know, they'll refund your misery and all that kind of stuff. Don't find a god someday, sometime in your sobriety with or without a god. You're going to hit a black wall.

You're going to hit a wall. I guarantee it. I don't care whether it's in your first year, your fifth year, your 10th year, your 20th year.

But you will need to redefine and rediscover that God. And you're going to need to have a big God. And even then, in that dark place when you don't believe that God is there, you'll have enough hope and enough faith in Alcoholics Anonymous to stay sober and hang in and do nothing till it comes back until you come back and you'll reach a new plateau.

And if you're like me, it'll catapult you into the fourth dimension that they talk about in the book. A place of no time, no space, no limitations. A place where finally, for the first time in my life, what is outside of me does not count.

Do not misunderstand. I like my money. I like my comfort.

I like playing that slot machine with Marty today. I like all that stuff. I like that car I drive.

I like it all. It's comfortable. My house is in order.

I have a a lack chaos. I have all those things. I don't intend nor do I feel that in order to be a spiritual person I have to be broke.

>> I also don't believe that in order to be comfortable and a great member of Alcoholics Anonymous and sober all of these years that a golden chariot is going to take me to heaven. I don't think you have to have money, property, and prestige just because you've got time. I don't think any of that counts.

I think you get what you as an individual want, work for, like, don't want, whatever your personal thing is. Just because we're on Alcoholics Anonymous, just because I drank and just because I stopped drinking doesn't mean that the nature of who I am has changed at all. The only ingredient I have added to this package of me is that I gave up drinking.

I had a voluous void in my stomach when I drank. I filled it up with alcohol, stopped working. I ended up an alcoholic anonymous.

Got a huge void in my stomach that over the years got smaller, bigger, smaller, bigger, didn't matter. And I filled it up with a spiritual experience of my own understanding. That's it.

Everything else that happened in my life was about my life. I used to love to hear these success stories in Alcoholics Anonymous until I met people that didn't have. I met people that didn't have.

I met people that were sick and I met people that were dying and they were all sober, too. And they were all sober as long as me. And you know, when we took off all the clothes and took off all the outside things and took off all the stuff that made me feel safe, we were just alike.

And what do we talk about? And what do we talk about? And when when push comes to shove, why are we still all friends even though we bicker with each other?

Because underneath it all, we're looking for that God and we're walking the same path and we want the same kind of peace or we can't stay here. So the similarity that got us here, which was the alcoholism, the alcohol has now changed to people, as my friend has said, Carl Young, to quote him, people looking for God. That's what we're doing here.

I don't care if you're sober five minutes or 50 goddamn years. That's it. I know a whole lot of people, by the way, that don't ever find that God.

They don't think they need it. It's the group. Whatever their higher power is, more power to them.

I don't care as long as they're not drunk in front of me. However, I have found in that book places where it says that is not enough. That is not enough.

It's not enough for me. So, I don't know anybody else's story. I don't know why they're here.

And I don't know whether they use the book and the thing and the this. I do. I use it more now than I have in the last 20 years of my life, my sober life.

Why? It's more important to me now. Because now I know that's all there is.

I've already done the money. I've already done all the rest of it. I've already made the life.

I've already planted all the flowers. I've got the roses. I got the picket fence.

I got the goddamn cars. I got the houses. I got it all.

What happened when I was 19 years sober? Why was there something missing in my life? What happened?

What happened? I did it all within the guise of Alcoholics Anonymous and it worked. And then I realized there has to be more.

And I'm an alcoholic. So I want all there is. I don't want a little bit of happiness.

I want all the happiness there could possibly possibly be. All right. I don't want a little bit of love.

I want it all in every respect. I want it all. I'm an alcoholic.

I had to own that about me. Just because I don't drink alcohol doesn't mean that I don't drink life. Took me years to be comfortable.

Just being here. It took me years to get comfortable not caring what the you thought. about almost anything.

I just swore. >> I love you. I was going to give that up.

Sometimes that's such an effective word. You know, I get sick of hearing it all the time because it sort of like ruins it for me. But, you know, every now and then, you know, when you don't use it for a while, it's sort of like a really neat thing.

You know, says it all. I have to be careful now cuz I'm tired. I could go off in any second, in any direction.

Anything could happen here. Jesus. Between the smoke and the heat and the lack of water, I mean, I don't know what they do here.

I mean, they just get you all exhausted. So you have to tell the truth. That's what happens.

I think Margo understands how to handle animals. Even the alcoholic ones. I know how to get them.

So it's about life. If you want a life, stay sober. If you want to die, drink.

Unfortunately, you all look like a pretty young crowd to me. You won't die right away. How sad.

I think a large part too of why a number of people I know stayed. It's cuz her eyes why I stayed. When I gave it a little bit of thought, I thought, Jesus, it's not going to kill me.

I still am young enough. And after I'd been sober just a little while, I got healthy enough could move my head again, you know, see blue sky, start to take these deep breaths that go all the way down instead of this throat thing I had when I first got here. Half in.

Yeah. And then they say they wonder how did I say, how do they know I was new? How do they know?

No. I used to get dressed up to go to their goddamn hole in the ground meeting so that I wouldn't be like them and they'd all know I was a newcomer. Could it be the shaking and the coffee cups that just, you know, just sit there?

You half the meeting I wouldn't hear a thing because I was just trying to control control the cup. I mean, I complain about the smoking now because I'm a wimp, but I have to tell you, I smoke two or three packs then all at the same time. You know, and they used to say, "It doesn't matter.

Don't worry about the smoking." And they give you this coffee. I had to stop drinking coffee when I was 9 or 10 years sober because my stomach was eroding. I really attribute that to Alcoholics Anonymous.

Jesus. Finally, I had to end up drinking hot water so I could stay. Killing me.

And they would make you eat these candy bars and jelly donuts. You know, I'm suspicious of meetings where they don't have donuts. I think they don't understand newcomers anymore here.

I don't know what your meetings are like in Reno and Sacramento and all these other places you have name tags from, but there are actually meetings in California where we serve carrots and celery sticks and cheese and crackers. Like, what the am I giving them two bucks for every time I go to a meeting for this? That's the truth.

Oh, this tape's going to go back there. Hey, I really do think that people say, "Oh, you're so calm in a meeting." Yeah, I'm thinking about the goddamn cheese and crackers. I said, "Well, where where are the jelly donuts?" Well, don't there if cuz when you were a newcomer, when I got sober and there weren't a lot of treatment centers, you needed a jelly donut.

You needed that sugar really, really bad. You were shaking like a leaf. You were persspiring green stuff from underneath my arm.

It was very dangerous with and then you needed and they gave you Hershey bars and these drinks with sugar and stuff in them. It was unbelievable. It's amazing.

There was a trend of hypoglycemic going through AA. No wonder. No wonder.

It's amazing that we all even like made it physically. You know, I've heard I'm off now, but I've I've heard and I even heard it here. Uh maybe last night, I think people wonder where the people with time are.

I don't I know a ton of them. I know a ton of them. You ask anybody with time in this room, and I'll tell you right now, they'll name five or six people they know and they got sober with.

You know, you get tired when you get older. And you got lives. You build lives here when you get time.

You build lives. You got busy lives. Not busy enough not to go A to A, but you're going to your own little meetings every week.

This one and that one and the other one. Very active in Alcoholics Anonymous. Marty's very active.

We're all very active in Alcoholics Anonymous in a very low-key kind of way. I'm an anonymous cleanup person at at a meeting at Sunday in the middle of the day. Have been for a ton of years.

quiet, doing our quiet little thing. Don't worry about where we are. We're there.

Now, we're the ones that in a meeting will say, "Where the hell are the jelly donuts?" Whenever you want to make any changes in Alcoholics Anonymous, we will say, "Absolutely no." Then we'll listen to what you have to say. And then we'll say, "Is it in the big book?" All the big book is, by the way, for me is just a foundation. You know, you read that and you interpret it your own way because over the years, if you're lucky enough, if you're lucky enough to change that word alcohol to just being present every day, you that book will will provide you with more than you could even imagine.

It'll give you the freedom to do anything you want, you know. And if then that becomes an issue, we were talking about the 12 concepts. It's well worth reading.

There's the 12 steps, the 12 traditions, and the 12 concepts of AA. For years, I used to think concepts. Hm, interesting.

I wonder what they are. Well, there's a book about them. It's about how the business of AA is conducted.

I wish when I was running my company that I had read those concepts, I would have done perhaps a better job. And the traditions, you got trouble in your relationship, look at the traditions. Want to make a a relationship work?

Understand any kind of relationship. I'm not talking about just partners. I'm talking about just relating.

Look at the traditions. You'd be amazed. And you want to make your life work.

Look at the steps. Steps are so individual. So personal.

So for me so that I can live with you. So for me so that I don't hurt you. So for me so that I'm safe person for you to be with.

Because if I'm a safe person for you to be with, I'm a safe person for me. I can only make me safe, then you're safe. But until I'm safe, you're not safe.

I don't care if I'm sober 3,000 years. Until I'm comfortable with me, you are not safe. I will revert back at any given moment to some little thing that I have.

Now, the only difference is I revert back periodically. Now, I catch myself and I think, "Oh, please." You know, oh, please. All because these old guys sat there with more sobriety than I even have today.

And they said, "We don't care who you are, what you are, what you have. We don't care who you sleep with. We don't care if you sleep." And they didn't care if we slept.

We only care that you stay sober. We're going to tell you how to do that. Here's how you do it.

Sit down. Pour this cup of coffee. Have your cigarette.

Try to listen to that guy. Now, as he's talking, try to shut off at least half a dozen of the people in your head. You won't be able to stop all of them, but you know, over a gradual period of time, we promise you that one day you won't have anybody up there but yourself.

And let me tell you, that has become a torturous experience sometimes. Huh. I was much better off with a committee up there handling things.

Try doing it with you. And there isn't that much negotiation there. I can tell you Ted.

Now, and the other thing to do is when you're sitting out there, for God's sake, listen to the similarities. Don't listen and look for the differences. Over the years, what peace I get when I'm kind of tired and irritated myself.

And to this day, I hear myself saying, "Got to listen to the similarities because we're identical. We're identical." And I would do that. Half the meeting shaking, you know, us newcomers.

I don't know. We just sort of gravitated toward one another. It must have been the odor, the scent, I don't know, but just a bunch of us.

And then all these people would come right over and they do something that I worry now. I worry may not be done enough. They come right up and shake your hand, welcome you.

Oh, keep coming back. Keep coming back. God, all you want to do is get out.

They're saying, "Keep coming back." And they go, "Oh, yeah, sure. Keep coming." And you, don't touch me. Don't come near me.

They come right up. They touch you anyway. you know, you know, and going through a big trip in my brain about how could they dare touch me and I'm going to keep my hands hidden and they don't care.

They'll touch your shoulders. They'll touch your head. They'll touch you.

They're going to touch you. That's what's going to happen. They touch you.

They're going to say, "Keep coming back." This really gentle voice. Three or four years later, you've kept coming back and you've been friends and now you're fighting. And they say, "Ah, you I didn't even like you from the beginning.

This is life. This is alcoholics and all of that. Let them touch you because they're going to touch you for the first year and they're going to love you and they're going to say, "Keep coming back and isn't she wonderful and isn't she this?" And about the second year it's like, "You jerk.

How could you continue to do that?" And after the third year, they don't even like you anymore. And then you have to figure out how you're going to stay when nobody likes you. And then about the fifth year, you don't like them.

Then you have to stay not liking them. Then about the 10th year, you figure we're stuck with each other. About the 25th year, ah you work it out.

Just too tired. You know what I mean? You say, "Ah, hell." Why?

Cuz we've come a long way already. We've come a long way together. We don't want to end the journey now.

And not everybody works it out. But you know when push comes to shove, we do because we understood from training and the habit the habit of putting principles before personalities. The habit of knowing that no matter who it is in Alcoholics Anonymous is the biggest jerk in life, that if that person were in jeopardy of drinking, everything in my life would stop to help.

And if I was in jeopardy of drinking, I don't care who it is, they would stop to help me. We put it aside. What is that?

That selfish people such as me, perhaps you, maybe not, puts everything aside, suddenly stop. Maybe it's that we understand dying. Maybe it's we understand dying while you're wide awake alive.

Maybe the reason I really stayed is because I knew I wouldn't die. Maybe the reason I really stayed is because I didn't want to be a woman alcoholic out there on my way to the the balance of the yets. Because as I listen to the similarities in Alcoholics Anonymous and if you want to hear a drunk, there'll be plenty of them at other meetings.

I'm not interested in having that conversation. All you need to know is I couldn't have stayed sober 25 years and hung around Alcoholics Anonymous unless I was an alcoholic. You'd have to be some sort of maniac to deal with all you have to deal with to be sober.

You know, you start hitting the double digits and you are like surviving your sobriety. Never mind your drunkenness. I wish it all for you.

I wish you the sandbox of Alcoholics Anonymous. that you throw sand on each other and on yourself, that you're constantly falling down and you're constantly getting up. That life presents you with all that there is.

That the joy of life, the death of life, people will die, people will live, people will laugh, and people will cry. If you think for one single second that you have it all figured out, then you're luckier than I am. You're luckier than I am because just when I think I got it all figured out.

It's safe now. The world is in order. God and I have done it.

It's not going to change. Forget it. If you're anything like me and you go to bed every night, get down on your knees and you turn your will and your life over to God, probably will if you're working the 11st step in any kind of way.

Then when you go to sleep, I don't know where you go when you sleep, but I found out something really startling. Spiritual universe, the spirit of the universe, whatever it is that definition of God is, doesn't really matter. Not sleeping.

I think I'm sleeping. Spiritual universe isn't sleeping. All those little angels aren't sleeping.

All those people that have gone on beyond and before me are not sleeping. They don't sleep. I sleep.

And then they steal my brain. Why do they come and take my brain, my heart, and my soul? Because I turned it over to them just before I went to sleep.

And when I became to understand the sixth step of the program, Alcoholics Anonymous, I began to realize, my God, I am cooperating. Be careful. You might stay sober long enough to start cooperating with God.

You might stay sober long enough to find out that God's will and your will start to go together. You may find gave even and get sober and stay sober long enough to find out that your will and proper use of that will is perfectly acceptable. It is God's will that I did this.

No, it's not. >> It is your will that you did that. It is God's will that you have the experience and it is God's will that you finish that experience.

Your will is a very powerful and profound thing. As Margot probably knows, we're one of the few species that has this power of choice and will. What a tremendous responsibility it is.

I don't know about you, I need help with it. How do I get that help? How do I negotiate that?

What do I do when I'm asleep? I am more than willing to go to be taught in that spiritual fourth dimension that I now have come to believe encompasses all there is. has got the knowledge and the power and the energy of everybody that has gone before me and everybody that will ever come after me.

All of it that we are all connected. It is such a huge vast I can't even describe something so big. That's where my God and that energy comes from.

It's taken me years to go through my Catholic God and my this God and that God and the other God to find out from me that my Jesus Christ and Buddha and all of them were they not great messengers and channels of information and everybody that shares a meaning of Alcoholics Anonymous in my eyes now is exactly the same as a Jesus Christ because they say things that save my life. Where does it all come from that they're willing to step up in front of a mic, two mics, I don't know what. Smoke filled room in goddamn Reno, Nevada after they drop hundreds of bucks in the afternoon.

Sober as judges, you know, and say, "Okay, I don't know what I'm doing here. Get here quickly. Try to miss the casino down the street, would you, please?

And just get right here because I need to know that I'm okay. I need to know that I'm an alcoholic and that I'm sober tonight and this is how I stay sober and I'm being of service. And there might be one person out there that needs to know couple of things.

One, you never have to drink again for the rest of your life. Two, if you're an alcoholic, you're part of alcohol. You can't drink again for the rest of your life.

If you have a doubt, a reservation, oh maybe if somebody steps on my toe, if I, you know, my mother dies or whatever the hell problems you may think you have, they're nothing to drink over. You can't drink. If you're dying, do you think it will make it better to drink?

I had a conversation with a woman that's 28. You're sober. Just recently, she is dying.

She's dying. Cancer and all sorts of things. And in a moment of great, oh, just between the drugs and the depression and all the things that happen when you're going through that, she said, "Oh, Christ, the solution might be to have a drink." Suddenly, I felt this energy go through my body.

I didn't have any feeling for compassion that she was going to die. All I knew is that she was an alcoholic just like me and she couldn't drink. I said, "Barbara, you can't drink.

It's not going to kill you. If you if I thought for a minute it would kill you, it might be a different conversation, but it isn't going to kill you. It's going to give you a headache.

It's going to make you sick. It's going to make you throw up. It's going to make you alienate the few people you haven't alienated in your 28 years as a riot.

And you're going to need your head about you because a day will come when you're going to need to talk about how to die. And you will have to do something perhaps and you may choose to do something and I will be there to support you but I will never be there to support taking a drink. It is not a solution in my life in the people in my life.

If that were her solution I would not be there for that. I will not support that kind of death. I won't support it.

It's not an alternative. If you don't know that, you have to go back to the book and understand the first step of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. You need to read the doctor's opinion again and chapter 1.

When you read the doctor's opinion in chapter 1, you will need all you'll ever need to know about the first steppers in those two chapters and the and the step one in the 12 and 12 in conjunction. That's how I read it. I read the doctor's opinion, the first chapter and the first step in the 12 and 12.

That's it. There is no more. The rest of us will get up here and talk about all these things, but hey, you know what we're doing?

We're repeating the same stuff over and over and over again. We're just different personalities, and you don't know the difference. It's the same stuff.

We all say the same stuff. If we're sober long enough, we begin to sound like little parrots. We're all saying the same stuff.

We just say it our way. What you're attracted to is that we survived. What you're attracted to is we've managed to pull it off for how many thousands of god knows how many days.

That's what you're attracted to. What you're attracted to is that we walked through life and death and success and failure and hurt feelings and good feelings and bad and excitement. Excitement.

One of the most dangerous experiences in Alcoholics Anonymous is to get excited. Be careful when you're in your first couple of years and you get excited. That's when you think you're okay.

And you might think you can do it by yourself again. And you probably forgot the last half of the first step of the program of alcoholics and arms that your life has become unmanageable. And then when you know when you know you have a God and you have found that God, when you have the hope of the second step and the faith of the third step, the principle of hope and the principle of faith that relates to those steps, you can get as excited as you want to cuz you'll never be hurt again.

You may go through some experiences that you don't understand, but you'll never be hurt to the point where you'll have to drink. won't happen to you after you're sober enough times and you have retrospect and you have enough selfhonesty to know that you are an alcoholic who cannot drink again for the rest of your life that no matter what happens you cannot entertain the thought that it's a possibility that you can it can't be it can't be then you'll get on with looking at your life and the first few years you'll see that it's unmanageable and you get yourself your house cleaned up and your apartment cleaned up and your car cleaned up you get new shoes you'll get a job you know all this new stuff and then over the next few years you'll deal on your emotional level if you're anything like me and you start to deal with your emotions. Ah, you'll go to therapy.

It's not worth it if you haven't gone to therapy. You'll have the latest lingo and the latest conversation and you'll do that too. And then the next few years you'll start to work on your heart and then you'll get to your soul and it'll happen.

It'll happen just because you stayed and continued to listen and continue to read the book and had enough honesty to know I'm an alcoholic. My life is unmanageable. When my life is unmanageable now, it's not usually things at all that go wrong.

It's me that goes wrong. I just get a little out of sync. I can feel it coming.

I know when it's happening. I'm dealing with some unmanageable situations right now. Have not a clue how to manage them.

go to bed every night and ask, "What do I do?" Go to those little angels. We negotiate. I don't know what the hell we negotiate.

I wake up in the morning. I forget what we negotiate. I'm supposed to just wait and intuitively I'll remember.

They promise you that in the book. It's one of the great big promises that you intuitively will begin. And you know what?

That's true. Stuff happens in the night and intuitively something will start. You'll know what to do and what not to do.

Most important spiritual lesson I've ever had in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous is to do nothing. Do nothing. When you don't know what to do, do nothing.

I don't know what you're like. I have never until just recently experienced doing nothing. I want to fix it now.

I want to control it. I want to be in charge. That's how I know I'm unmanageable now.

I need to fix it. I need to manage your life. The minute I need to manage anything, I'm unmanageable.

Second step of the program, alcoholics anonymous. Thank God for that. Came to believe.

Came to believe. How do you come to believe? How do you come to get the principle of hope?

Well, you're getting it tonight. Every time I attend a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, every time I shake the hand of another AA member, every time I talk to that woman that was in the bathroom, her name was Tina. She's telling me that she only drinks beer and she's got some drink in her hand.

isn't the beer. Jane and Marty and I were out there 12 stepping the woman in the lobby hoping that we can drag her in here. Coming to believe that's how you activate it.

To do what? To restore you to sanity. I love the word restore.

It means we were okay one time. We were all right. Like the story about the little girl and the baby.

Her parents had a a little baby and they brought the baby home and she was uh you know three, four or something and she kept asking her mother and father if she could possibly talk to this baby and they thought she was going to kill it or something and they said no no no. So finally she convinced them and they said well we're going to have to let her talk to the baby. So they let her in to talk to this baby and and she wanted to close the door and they were all ready, you know, because of course they're going to think negative thoughts.

They're going to think the kid's going to kill the baby. were going to. So, they put little baby monitors by the pillow and they were like really ready for when the kids smothered her little brother and they waited outside the door and she went up to the crib and she whispered in his ear, "Help me.

Help me. I'm beginning to forget God. Restored to what?

Restore to that? Restored to where we came from? Restore to coming in in the same way that we got here.

Going back to where we got here, restored to before all of life happened to us. And we alcoholics handled it in the only way we knew how. We drank.

We escaped. We ran. We joined Alcoholics Anonymous.

We didn't drink, but we ran. And we escaped. And we're doing it sober.

And then gradually that didn't work. And the day comes when to be present and in reality is far less painful than to escape. But why?

Because you get restored to what? To sanity. You have to know what insanity is.

At for the beginning it insanity for me at the beginning was thinking that this time it was going to be different. This time when I went out to drink it was going to be different this time. And then over the years of being sober this time when I change it it's going to be different.

It's going to be different. It's going to be different. It's not going to be different.

Now I know what insanity feels like. Insanity feels like a disconnection from my conscious contact with my God. It's a horrible, horrible feeling.

But I come to believe and I get that hope back every time I listen to a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I also know that I can make a sane decision. We this thing about willpower and turning it over and we have no will.

We have the will to make a decision in the third step. It's a very big decision. The decision to be sane.

The decision to live in balance. The decision to turn our will in our life over to the care of God. What is our will in our life?

My thinking is my will. Tremendous. So from the honesty of knowing an alcohol I'm an alcoholic and the hope of the second step and the faith of the third step.

I have the courage to take the fourth step and really look at who I am and I continue to do that on a yearly basis and I have the integrity of the fifth step so I can go and talk to another alcoholic and my God and then I choose after that to tell anybody what I want. Integrity such an incredible thing because if I can't talk to you and trust you how in the world are you ever going to talk to me? And the sixth step, what extraordinary step of willingness to have willingness to take contrary action.

Isn't that what it says? We're entirely ready. How do you get entirely ready?

Stop. Change your behavior. Stop what you're doing.

For what? So that you can sense and feel humility. Do you know what humility is?

Humbly ask. How many years of my sobriety have I made it hard when all I had to do was humbly ask? There's a true story about a woman that was a member of AA for a long time.

She had a fear of flying and she went up. She decided she was going to overcome it. She'd done so many things.

She'd been to classes and seminars and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah because the sober people were very industrious and were very energetic and blah blah. So she did. And she decided, I know how to overcome it.

I'm going to take skydiving. And she went skydiving. and she jumped out of the thing and the chute didn't open.

She smashed into the ground. True story. Hit the ground.

She didn't die. Just broke every single solitary bone in her body. And her ex-husband, they were very good friends and he too was on the program, came in and he said, "What?

Why did you do that?" She said, "I had to overcome my fear. I'd done everything else and somebody suggested that if I just did skydiving, I would finally overcome my fear." He said, "But my god, why don't you just humbly ask? I found it humbly asking that I had to forgive myself, that I had to accept myself, and that I had to love myself.

And that as soon as I could accept myself, no matter who I am, what I am, what I say, and how I be today, that I will end up being loved by God. And the most humbling experience I have had in my entire life is that God loves me. And when you have the opportunity to know that you are sober, that you are here, and that God loves you, it will bring you to your knees.

And when it does, you will have the opportunity then to make your list and to work with people and to try to make yourself right with your fellow man because you have found the honesty to be right with yourself, the hope and the faith to things are going to be okay. The courage to look at yourself and the integrity to talk about it, the willingness to stop your and get on with asking God to help you. And when you've done all that, it is no mistake that eight and nine follow those steps because it is only then that you can go out and look at somebody else and say, "Honestly, how have I interfered with your life?

And what do I need to do to have better relationships with the fellow man?" And then when you think you've done all that and you grow wings, you find out right away that it's just another day. And you get up that day and you have to dig and and you know it says in this 12 and 12, new mistakes. new mistakes.

That's all we do now is we make new mistakes and we can correct them within a day because we know what the old ones are. They're gone. Don't be afraid to go to bars and to drink.

If you are safe with your God, if you're not, you'll know. You won't be able to go there. New mistakes.

And the 10th step of perseverance. Isn't that what we do every day? Hardest thing I've ever had to do in 25 years of sobriety is stay in one lousy little day.

Stay present for one day. say not in yesterday and not in tomorrow. Just here today.

Hardest thing I've ever had to do. But thank God I have the 11th step to help me with that. That I can pray, which is to ask, and I can meditate, which is to make myself available for that answer.

I can make room. I spend all the time making room. Making room so that I know what happened while I was asleep.

What did we discuss? It's where Alanon comes in. Cuz when I go to bed and practice that 11th step at night and get down on my knees, and it took me years before I got down on my knees, I wasn't going to humble myself before any god till I found out that God was all there is and part of me and part of you and part of everything.

No sex, no man, no woman, just what it is, all there is. And I got down on my hands and knees and I turn my will and my life over. And when I wake up in the morning, I release myself as the Alanons would do to the day.

I release myself to whatever it is we decided. I don't know what the hell it is, but I'm willing to go at risk because the life I have in Alcoholics Anonymous and the life I have in this program as a result of working this program is so much better than anything I could have planned for myself. Even in my greatest drinking fantasies, I did not plan the experiences and the depth of feeling that I have today.

I wouldn't have known how to do it. If so, why would I plan the rest of my life? I'm having a hard enough time just staying in the day.

My life is full. I am terrified with how full it is. I don't even know what to do with it.

I don't understand. But I will wait. I will wait and it will be revealed.

I have found on the program of Alcoholics Anonymous that if you stay sober one day at a time, you will be given the gift of retrospect. You will be able to look back from day to day, from year to year, and from moment to moment. And you will know that you can stand still because you have a God right beside you.

You may have that in form of angels. I don't know what it is that you will survive it all. You will do it all and you will do it sober.

And if you are smart enough and willing enough and use your willpower in the proper sense of God's will and God's way, you will stay here and do it with the people in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. You will continue to have the advantage of attending these kind of conventions and these kind of things where you will take all of your nonsense and leave it outside the door and you will join together and you will laugh and you will cry and you will be happy and you will go home full up. full up and you will wait for the next one.

And maybe you'll be smart enough and happy enough to say, "I don't know what she means about that God, but there's something there. How do I find that God?" And you find that God in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous and the 12 and 12. And you find that God in the steps.

And you find that you're living a life of principle because you will have the honesty of the first step and the hope of the second, the faith of the third, enough courage to look at yourself in the fourth. Enough integrity to discuss it with another human being. Enough willingness to stop whatever it is that is continuing to hurt you as a sober person.

Enough humility to say, "Oh my God, why do I judge myself so when you have never judged me at all?" Enough compassion to work it out with somebody else. enough compassion and enough justice to want balance and to want equality in your life. Enough perseverance to do it one more day no matter what is in your life.

Enough spirituality to know that when you go to bed in the morning and when you get up at night, something miraculous has happened in the night. And then you'll get to the 12th step and you will have had that spiritual awakening. The spiritual awakening that will require you to bring it out.

Spiritual awakening that will tell you, I don't care what they think, Laya, talk about God. I don't care what somebody says. It's about God.

It's about carrying the message. What message? I've been sober 25 years for God's sake.

It's about God. It's about God. You want to fight about it?

Fight about it in an alcoholics anonymous meeting. You want to see these old-times are full of They're all the same. Talk about it in an alcoholics anonymous meeting.

You want to say, "What does she know about the book? I know more than you. What about the about the 12 and 12?" I'll tell you something.

I know a lot about the 12 and 12 because I read it in conjunction with that big book. I understand it. I don't think it's a mistake that the second step to sec second step requires three whole chapters in that book.

So if you want to understand step one, do doctor's opinion in the first chapter. Two chapters for the first step. But two, three and four to explain the second step.

Something is important about this hope we have here. Something about this hope that after you're sober for just a day, you no longer have the hope of just stopping drinking. You're going to be able to do that.

We all have. We've all done it under tremendous circumstances and physical disabilities and all sorts of things. You're going to want the hope to have a life.

You're going to want to hope to have the joy of living. You're going to want You're going to want to have the hope of loving. You're going to want to have the hope of feeling safe in this world.

And you're going to want to have the hope of never being alone again. And you will have that in Alcoholics Anonymous. Thank you.

Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message. Until next time, have a great day.