The Job, the Girl, and the Car Are an Illusion – AA Speaker – Myers R.
AA speaker Myers R. explains why chasing external circumstances—the job, the relationship, the car—won’t bring lasting recovery. The real solution is spiritual work and carrying the message.
Myers R. from Dallas, Texas spent seven years in AA meetings without working the steps, thinking that staying sober and keeping a job and maintaining his marriage would eventually fix everything. In this AA speaker tape, he describes how that middle-of-the-road approach left him suicidal and spiritually bankrupt—and how he discovered that the job, the girl, and the car are an illusion that will never deliver the peace he was looking for.
Myers R., an AA speaker from Dallas, explains how he spent seven years in discussion meetings without working the steps, believing that sobriety and external success would bring peace—only to discover he was dying of untreated alcoholism. He details how finding a sponsor who taught him the Big Book and carrying the message through 12-step work changed his perceptions and life. Myers argues that the spiritual malady, not lack of material circumstances, is the real problem, and that carrying the message is essential to recovery, not optional.
Episode Summary
Myers R. walks into this talk with a clear message: the things we think will fix us—a good job, a romantic partner, a nice car—are illusions. And if your recovery plan depends on getting them all lined up before you feel okay, you’re in trouble.
For his first seven years sober, Myers did exactly that. He attended meetings faithfully at his home group in Dallas, loved the fellowship, and stayed away from alcohol. But nobody was holding him accountable to work the steps. The group ran twenty-one meetings a week, twenty of them discussion meetings where people dumped their problems, processed their day at work, complained about their relationships. Myers fit right in. He had a sponsor who was a friend. They never worked any steps. And for two or three years, it was the coolest experience he’d ever had.
Then things started to unwind.
By year five, Myers was a mess. Suicidal. Constantly fearful. Unable to keep his hands off other women. Writing bad checks. His life was coming apart, but he kept showing up to meetings because he was loyal to his home group. He didn’t realize that staying sober without the spiritual experience that comes from step work means the spiritual malady—the obsession, the fear, the twisted thinking—stays active. He was dry, but not recovered.
The turning point came when Myers almost drank. Terrified, he called his friend, who connected him with a sponsor named Cliff who actually knew the Big Book. In forty-five minutes, sitting in Cliff’s living room, Myers saw the book for the first time in seven years of AA. It was a complete revelation. He’d had no idea what a spiritual experience was supposed to be. He’d had no idea what his primary purpose was. He’d just been going to meetings and talking about his problems.
From there, Myers worked the steps, got a spiritual experience, and began to understand what the book actually says. He also realized something hard: his home group had gotten toxic. People were suffering year after year in those meetings—like a woman named Barbara who’d spent years sharing the same work complaint, never getting better—and nobody was suggesting they actually work the steps. He eventually left that group and joined one focused on the Big Book.
The meat of this talk is Myers’s challenge to what he calls the “middle-of-the-road solution.” He doesn’t attack discussion meetings outright, but he’s blunt: if your group is full of people who are sober but miserable, whose lives are falling apart spiritually even though they have jobs and relationships, then something is broken. The book says sobriety depends on a spiritual experience that comes from doing the work, not from managing external circumstances well.
Myers spends time on the mental obsession—that insane part of us that, stone cold sober, picks up a drink after all the wreckage it caused. That’s the part that separates us from normal drinkers. And that’s what the Big Book is designed to address. But if meetings are only about dumping feelings and processing, the obsession never gets touched.
He also pushes back hard on the idea that you need years of sobriety before you can sponsor someone or do 12-step work. He sponsors guys with six months sober who are carrying the message effectively because they’re full of the book and full of God’s power. The starting gun in AA, he says, isn’t how long you’ve been dry. It’s willingness.
The heart of the talk is a story about Terry, a man who came to meetings looking completely destroyed—teeth knocked out, face smashed, living in a pickup truck. Myers worked with him, and within months Terry had his license back, got a trucking job, and started AA meetings in small towns across America—Tennessee, Maine—wherever his route took him. He understood that the message wasn’t his; it was the book’s. And it had power.
Meanwhile, Myers says, he’s sponsoring forty men who won’t go do 12-step work. They’ll say they’ll do it once they get the job, the girl, the car all lined up. But that day never comes. By the time you fix one thing, something else breaks.
The spiritual malady, Myers argues, is the real problem. Fix that through the steps, carry the message, and your perceptions shift. He describes sitting in his garden, hating his wife, hating his kids, hating his job. A year of working the steps and carrying the message later, sitting in the same garden, same wife, same kids, same job—but now he can’t wait to see them. Nothing external changed. Everything internal changed.
Myers is direct, funny, angry at complacency in AA, and deeply convinced that the book works when followed. He’s not trying to be mean to discussion meetings or people who do them, but he’s certain that without the steps, without the spiritual experience, without 12-step work, you’re not recovered—you’re just not drinking.
Notable Quotes
I’m proof positive, I’m the poster boy of middle road solution.
The most painful time that I had in my entire existence on God’s green earth was the last two years that I was in Alcoholics Anonymous, removed from booze.
I’m convinced that as long as I don’t drink, I’m a winner. The funny part about it is, if you look at the quality of their lives—they’re not working any program, they’re just not drinking—look at the quality of their lives.
The job, the girl, the car, the AA Trinity, it’s an illusion. You’ll never get it all lined up. By the time you get one thing straightened out, she goes away. By the time you get her back, the job goes away.
Once you realize your purpose, once you see it for what it is, everything in your life will change. That perceptual shift will be there.
The mental obsession is the part that separates us from the heavy drinker. This inability to manage the decision to not pick up that drink. If we could just do that, we’d be great.
Sponsorship
Big Book Study
The Promises
Carrying the Message
Spiritual Malady
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Step Work
- Sponsorship
- Big Book Study
- The Promises
- Carrying the Message
- Spiritual Malady
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength, and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-rise.com.
Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. >> It now gives me great pleasure to introduce Myers Myers R >> little slip there.
Um he's going to share his experience strength and hope. Thank you. give you one little job to do.
That's it. That's just one. And amazing to me.
Um I got to get this thing to sit someplace. There it is. My name is Myers Ramer.
I'm an alcoholic. >> My home group is the Primary Purpose group in big time Dallas, Texas. the um I wish uh I wish I could say that every group in Dallas and Texas and the United States was like our home group, but it's it's not.
I we sort of steeped in the um the bowels of middle of the road solution in a lot of places, and it's fairly bizarre sometimes, and we'll talk about a little of that tonight. Um there's a couple of things I want to do. first.
Well, I um I especially want to thank uh uh Vic and David and his buddies that took all the time and effort to put all this stuff together, having done my own set of conferences before and and whatnot. It's an amazing amount of work and it's a thankless job and um we owe these guys a great deal of gratitude. I want to thank the sickest addict I've ever seen, Chris Cross, for coming to spend some time with us yesterday.
And it was a it was a fun day. Fun fun stuff. Barbara, thanks for your shares.
Is it It's funny. She some of the stuff that she's talking about on this stuff, this this thing of saying I don't know. The two most freeing things I ever learned in Alcoholics Anonymous, especially as a sponsor, is I don't know, and I'll have to get back to you.
Those two things are so freeing it's not even funny. Don't we always say, "Well, I got to have an answer every time somebody's got a question." Uh, that's it's not true anymore, man. It's not true.
Thanks again for that stuff. Um, I feel like I owe it to everybody that's going to listen to this thing on a CD that if you've not experienced this room, you need to. Um, for those not here, this room is sort of like um, it's kind of like a melting of Liberace and Boy George.
It's just kind of it's an extraordinary it's an extraordinary room. And if you come to London and you don't see this room, I think you're missing something. And it's just like every time I've been at this podium, I've looked up and expected to see GI servicemen walking up here like this.
It's like 1940s. And I It's just the weirdest feeling in here. Um I've talked in some strange places, those guys.
And um this is good. I love this. Um I want you guys to understand something real quick.
And I I'm I'm I'm believe me when I tell you this that I I didn't wake up this morning with God whispering something in my ear to the tune of I need you to go out there and straighten those bastards out tonight, Myers. I just need to He God didn't say that. And believe me, it is not my intent or my job to come over here and straighten you out.
Um, I have been blessed time and time again, and I've had a hundred conversations with men and women here who I could learn immeasurable amounts from. Um, I'm no guru, and I'm no uh um I'm no man with all the answers. I'm just a busted up drunk that's been around long enough that I've seen good and bad in AA.
And we want to talk a little bit about that stuff. If your experience in AA was that you came to a bunch of discussion meetings and you dug them and you stayed and you love them and you're still happy today, God bless you and keep coming back. I'm glad you're here.
It's not my my my place to judge you. Um, if you came and sat in those same meetings and loved everything and then day by day got sicker and sicker and sicker because the solution was not there. Hopefully, we can talk about some of that stuff.
And I and I am here specifically to talk about some of that. And I want you to understand, most importantly, I want you to understand that I realize on a on a gut level how badly I need to be here carrying this message. how badly my recovery needs you.
Um, uh, I am I'm simply a lost drunk without you. And I I'm I'm so grateful that you guys took the time to travel. I'm always caught off guard on these internationally kind of conventions where when we're over here, how many people travel such huge distances to be here and sometimes at great cost financially and and and and other ways.
Um, and we're blessed that you're here and thank you for that. Um, for you guys that I've met and talked to, you understand most of you guys I've a lot of you guys I've already met before. I'm a third generation drunk and uh you guys have met my the illustrious illustrious bad seed um Chris.
Um who who is the evil twin? Um there's sometimes there seems to be some debate about the who that is, but I can assure you Chris is the evil twin. Chris was Chris was my guy who I always every one of you have a guy just like this.
He's the guy I looked at and said if I get as bad as that so I'll quit. You see and here he was man I'll tell you Chris saved my life twice in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. He saved he 12step me and and brought me to my first meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and then seven years sober when I'm suicidal and unraveling in our meetings.
He scooped me up again and got me plugged in with a bunch of big book thumpers. And um that's two saves in one lifetime. It's a pretty good deal.
And if I haven't told him lately how much I love him and appreciate what he did for me in this deal, because I would not be here, nor would my wife and nor would my three precious daughters. Thank you. Um, somebody asked me one time why I mentioned my old group if it was such a tragic deal.
And I'm not going to spend a bunch of time with this thing, but um, there's also been this perception in AA for a long time that as long as there was a circling triangle on a door that God was there and everything was fine. And I truly believe and this is an opinion not out of the book. I truly believe from a personal standpoint that at one time that was probably true.
Um unfortunately what has happened in a lot of cases is that our meetings have gotten so toxic in some places. Again not here. I'm talking to a lot of guys here that are from some wonderful groups.
But over the years we've talked to some phenomenally volatile situations and that just kind of blow you away. And we'll talk a little bit about that stuff. Um uh but it is possible indeed um likely that you can come to some of our rooms and day by day get sicker and sicker until it becomes so painful that you have no choice to do except to go and do what you've done all of these years.
You see it's it's it's crazy and it shouldn't be that way. And some people take huge offense when we talk about that stuff and please don't. This is my personal experience based on my personal experience on this thing.
And I and I I want to make sure that that you understand that if this is not your experience, then tomorrow you can blow me off and just, you know, tell the guys in your wonderful, warm, fuzzy discussion meeting how what a vile man I am. And and it's okay. It won't bother me in the least.
Scouts on it. Um, but I might say as a postcript, a year from now when you're so painful in that meeting where you can't stand who you are and who they are anymore, you may want to look some of us up that are doing this work out of the book and see if you can't gravitate to what the solution is that was guaranteed. It'll be a it'll be a good deal.
Um, it's a funny thing. I'm I'm a a bookbinder by trade and uh um I can remember being 19 years old sitting at the Mason Jar restaurant in Houston, Texas with Chris and we're both drunk as a skunk. We both know clearly that we're alcoholics and we just everybody else knows it too.
And and I remember Chris looking at me going, "We got to stop this. We just got to stop." And I'm going, "Yeah, we'll have another beer and we'll talk about it tomorrow, but we'll you know the drill." At 19, we knew. At 34, I finally stopped.
But in the meantime, things would get fairly desperate around the old Rymer household. I don't get into a bunch of drunkalog stuff because it's not really important. Suffice to say, I'm just a badly behaved drunk.
And as I get drunker, I get more fearful. And as I get more fearful, I tend to do things that put me in a position to be hurt, like touch you and say stupid things that make me get whipped up. And I um I just I've been beat up in bars left and right.
I cannot go. Towards the end of this deal, guys, do you ever know what it's like where I can't go anywhere without being drunk and yet I'm so afraid to go someplace because my big mouth gets me in all kinds of trouble. Let me drink six beers and go to a party and and it's moments before I have my hand on your date, which thrills you, gentlemen, doesn't it?
And and it's just you ever know any guys like that? I mean, it's just And why is it that the scrawniest guy in the room, and I'm it. I've been looking at you.
I know. I'm it. The scrawniest guy in the room is also got the biggest mouth around stuff that he has no business talking about.
And so, every time I turn around, somebody's wanting to take a swat at me or take me outside and kick the crap out of me. And this kind of And it's just gets painful. It just gets so Somebody said, "Myers, what made you finally wanted to to sober up?" I I got just tired of getting beat up.
I got tired of getting beat up and I got tired of of of doing crazy things. I got in a I got in a fight one night at a pizza place because it was taking too long. I don't know really what the reason was.
All I remember was is that this 19-year-old kid with a black cowboy hat about that big around standing in front of me and he said something to me I didn't like and the next thing I know they're beating me off of him with a beer pitcher and I'm choking the living you know what out of this guy. I'm trying to kill him right there in the middle of this this this this this stupid pizza place. Oh, I forgot to tell you that the bad part about this is is that my four-year-old daughter is watching the whole thing.
She's there while this goes on. Six weeks later, I try to beat up a liquor store clerk in Lake Dallas because he called my house to have him because I gave him a credit card that wasn't good. And he happened to get my wife and she's looking at me going like, "What's going on?" And so I go back down there to kick his rear.
I mean, this is not good. This is not the way we're supposed to live our life. You see, being the scrawniest man around, I'm also real real sensitive to bullies.
It's a funny thing. The things that we hate the most, oftenimes we become in this deal, don't we? I hated a bully with a passion.
And yet here I was at almost 34 years old pushing my wife around, pushing my daughter around, getting to be a, you know, like a Is there anything more detestable than a guy that's like that? Did I want to be that way? No.
I just simply couldn't figure out where it was all going. Why was I like this? So, fast forward to a point Chris comes in one day.
He has a he has a a blackout. a guy that works for us at the binder 12 steps in carries him to a meeting and his life changes. He'll tell you about this stuff in the morning.
Well, I'll save him. I'll tell you now. No, I won't.
He'll tell you he'll tell you in the morning. But but Chris never spent any time trying to jam me up about being drunks. He never tried to to drag me into AA.
He never said anything. He just lived his life a day at a time living there and working in that boundary. And I watched his life change.
I watched him get up, go to work, do a good day's work. Go to a meeting at 6:30, do the deal, come back, work at night, go home, go to bed, get up the next day. No booze, no fights, no weirdness, just doing what a man is supposed to do.
I watched him do this. And I remember back there one night, I was watching him in the dark like some sleazy punk while he was working. And I'm just watching him like this.
And I'm going, "God, damn." And I go home and I remember staggering into the house and I told my wife, I said, "Buddy, I tell you, if there's anything I can do, if there's any way I can have what that man has, I'm going to do what I have to do." And I called him and I asked him to take me to one of those stupid meetings. And he said he would. And he did.
And I'm one of these guys that came and stayed. And I loved AA from the very first smokefilled breath of that room. I loved Alcoholics Anonymous.
I love drunks. I loved I loved everything about that room. I loved I loved being in a room full of people that understood me.
I I I it was the just go I loved it and I was going to stay. And for two or three years it was the coolest experience that I'd ever had in my whole life. I wasn't really working any step guys and I had a sponsor that was a friend.
We wouldn't, you know. Um but I'm proof positive. I'm the poster boy of Middle Road Solution.
I like the concept and idea of hanging out and being here. I like the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous. The problem I had though was that I failed to find and failed to understand that there was another side to this deal called the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, but nobody told me about the program because we were all too busy doing this stuff.
I don't know if you come up through the same ranks. We got 21 meetings a week in that group. 20 of them are open discussion meetings.
We just discuss. I got a bad day, I discuss it. I got a bad job, I discuss it.
I got a bad girlfriend. I discuss it. I got You know the drill.
Some of you guys have come up through the same ranks. Nowhere in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous did it tell me that my sobriety was going to depend on a meeting. It didn't say that.
It said that my sobriety was going to depend on a spiritual experience as a result of doing the work. But nobody was holding me accountable to do the work. So you you guys that are smart, I can see your eyes going and you already connecting the dots.
You know what's going to happen. Almost like clockwork, I started to unwind. I started to get twisted around my own axle.
And it was not a pretty thing to see. By now, Chris has moved to the Hill Country. He's gotten married, got a great life, he's doing the deal.
He got hooked up with a big book sponsor that was jamming through the work, and they were having a great time with it. It was lots of fun. And I was still going to this deal.
Now, you guys understand this thing about allegiance to a home group, right? I mean, most of us to a fault. Guys, I'm telling you, scouts honor.
If I had found out that my home group was full of child molesters and and and and Satan wannabes, I'd have stayed there still out of the allegiance to that home group. That's where I sobered up. That's where my allegiances were.
And that's where I was going to be. And I'm watching you day by day. And I'm watching your lives.
And I'm watching my life. And I'm watching how things are just just disintegrating at my feet. And I'm getting day by day more fearful.
I'm getting day by day more afraid that this is not going to work. See, I'm not totally stupid. I just look that way.
I I'm not I'm not so completely out of it that I don't realize that Alcoholics Anonymous is indeed the only house on the block for me. It is the last deal for me. I have to have this work.
And all of a sudden, it's not working. Three years drifts into four years. Four years drifts into five years.
In the last year and a half, I was in that group. It was the most painful experience of my entire life. Excuse me.
People say that before you sober up, you'll have the most painful time in your life. Guys, I can tell you from personal experience, the most painful time that I had in my entire existence on God's green earth was the last two years that I was in Alcoholics Anonymous, removed from booze and those other outside issues for five or six years. I was simply a nutcase.
the spiritual malady was kicking my rear. But I had no no idea what a spiritual malady was because we didn't talk about that. I'm being taught that if I managed well, smiled at work, treated my wife with respect, blah blah blah, that everything would just fall into place.
That I would be okay. I'd have the nice car. I'd have the nice job.
I'd have the nice girl. I'd have all You see what I'm saying? Yet the book's not telling me this stuff.
The literature never said this stuff. Things just got hugely painful. We voted God out one night which was a thrill.
It was a a wonderful group conscience meeting. I'm always embarrassed to tell you this story, but I'm telling it because it serves to show how sick things can get and how we as weak individuals in this deal with no book to back us up can simply go with the flow and do whatever group says do. So the group came in.
We had a guys bunch of guys come in from on a group conscience deal and they said they thought we were talking about God too much in the meeting that we probably shouldn't do that we were going to scare off the newcomer and in the group conscience of which I was a voting member we voted God out of that particular meeting and we took a meeting that was hugely sick already and turned it into an absolute cesspool. It was horrible. The inevitable happened.
I finally got sick enough that I almost drank. I got scared. I call Chris.
Chris connects the dots. Puts me in touch with with Crusty Cliff and Cliff. You guys got to meet this guy.
Put me in touch with Cliff. and Cliff, I went over to see him and and uh um if you've heard my talk, I'm not going to get into a bunch of this stuff, but I want you to understand that in 45 minutes sitting in Cliff's room, his front room, he showed me the book for the very first time. Now, people that hear my story will go, Myers, I can't believe that for seven years you sat in meetings and didn't know any more about the big book than that.
Okay, you can believe whatever you want to. I'm telling you the absolute God's truth. I had no idea what a spiritual experience was.
I had no idea what my primary purpose was. I had no idea what my responsibilities to AA were. I had no idea that the steps were what were supposed to get me clear of the work.
I had a vague idea. We talked about it some, but mostly we talked about Jim's bad day at work and Sally's shitty divorce. That's what we talked about incessantly.
You see, you ever wonder why this is that it's always as an observation looking back on these men and women and they loved me to death and I love them too to this day I still love them. But do you ever wonder why it is in those meeting settings like this that you can come in and be so excited about the dumping situation for about a year and then after that those same people that you love you want to choke the living crap of out in the parking lot. I mean it's an amazing deal when you start doing inventory with some of these guys.
The guys that I sponsor, a lot of them have come up through the ranks of that kind of of of meeting. And it's amazing to see on their fourth column inventory stuff how much wreckage is around the meeting. Got it.
Got it. Hate that guy. Got it.
Got it. Jeez, do you realize we have 20 pages of resentments and all of these are people from your home group? Let me make A SUGGESTION, SLICK.
GET OUT OF THAT MEETING. But >> I will. I will.
But I understand it. And you got to love the guy, man. I was there.
I understood exactly. But let me tell you what happened. 45 minutes sitting in this room.
Cliff Bishop starts carrying me through this stuff and he starts telling me all this stuff about the book and I'm going, "SLOW. NO, SLOW DOWN. SLOW DOWN.
YOU'RE GOING too fast." And I'm writing just as fast as I can. And I'm just going and none of it sounds familiar. None of it.
And he takes me to the part about the the the the beds on 52 or 53 or where when he's talking about all this stuff and I'm going, "Yeah, yeah, that's me." And he's going, "It ought to be you. You're dying of untreated alcoholism." And there's the perfect description to it. I'm going, "Oh, no kidding." And I'm thinking, you know, I haven't had a drink for seven years, Cliff.
Doesn't that account for something? He goes, "I don't know. How happy are you?" And I said, "Not too happy." And he goes, "Well, there's your answer.
You see, you see my I'm convinced, like a lot of people, that as long as I don't drink, I'm okay. that I'm a winner if I just don't drink. The funny part about it is is that if you'll look if you'll start asking those personal questions we talked about earlier in the workshop stuff and you start looking at the experience of the guys that you know that are doing just that.
They're not working any program. They're just not so not not not drinking and look at the quality of their lives. And when I did that to my home group and I started looking at them, I'm not coming from a point of judgment here guys.
I'm just saying this is what I did when I had to look at the truth there and the truths were indicating I got a room full of men who cannot keep their hands off other women. I got a room full of men that cannot keep um u jobs on the square and straight and level. They're always fudging around the edges.
They're not paying this. They're not paying that. They're trying to jam somebody up here.
They're trying to cheat somebody here. You see what I'm saying? We're living our lives with this like this big hypocrisy.
I'm a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous and yet my life is in total shambles over on this side. That's desperate stuff, guys. It's horrible.
You see, and I didn't want any part of it. That's the reason I'm so uncomfortable in my own skin. The spiritual malady is kicking my rear end.
Remember on page 64, there's a line there that says, "If we straighten out the spiritual malady, we if we deal with the spirituality, we'll straighten out mentally and physically." They're talking about the mental obsession that Chris is going to talk about in the morning masterfully. Nobody does it better than he does on this stuff. And we're talking about the the physical allergy.
Stop and think about this just a minute. How many All you guys understand the physical allergy, don't you? I'll spend three seconds on this because it's important for the rest of this talk.
Everybody understands once they get started, they can't stop stuff. The physical part is the easiest part for everybody to see. It's easy for you to see and understand.
It's easy for your family to see and understand. God, once he gets started, man, he just can't stop. What I never understood because we're not reading the book was why Bill spent so I do understand it now.
Why did Bill spend so much time from the doctor's opinion straightforward to page 44 or they stop at page 43. The bulk 95% of everything that they talk about is about the mental obsession. Why is it stone cold sober I would pick up a drink knowing what it would do?
the craziest crap in the whole wide world. And every one of us in here has experienced it. Stop and think about the craziest thing you ever did.
Drinking, driving over somebody, falling off something, doing something else, getting arrested, getting raped, getting good. You pick it. Whatever it is, fit it in there.
And then, and I'm telling you right now, the craziest thing you ever did, you may not have even thought of. It was the fact that stone cold sober, you came back and picked up a drink after all the wreckage and and drama that it had caused in your life. And then you want to sit here and argue with me when I tell you that you're an insane fruit cake.
You are. We are. It's an amazing thing to see.
And yet that's what we do. the mental obsession, this inability to manage the decision to not pick up that drink. If we could just do that, we'd be great.
And this is the part, the mental obsession that separates us from the heavy drinker, the problem drinker. This is the stuff that our meetings were full of. I can only speak for Texas and I can only speak for our meetings in the local area there primarily because there's where most of my experience lies.
But to watch these guys, let's look at this thing realistically. When you came to AA, how did you learn about AA? You learned about it for the guys in your meeting, didn't you?
And and and so it's like we're parrots. They say something and we say something and they say something and we say something and pretty soon their doctrine becomes our doctrine. Now, that's all great if they're in the big book and all they're talking about is big book stuff, but history has shown us or reality in AA has shown us because of the success rates or lack thereof that what's happening is is we had a bunch of people that decided to set the big book and its clear-cut message down and pick up a bunch of discussion stuff.
We call it just disco rhetoric, discussion rhetoric, just stuff. All meant well, all coming from loving hearts. And yet, and some of it was good stuff.
I'm not saying it's all evil. Some of it was horrendous. Take a step a year.
Now, there's something that has the power to kill a few alcoholics. Huh? And if you happen to be somebody that's involved in another fellowship, like crack addiction, wait a year to get into the work.
See you, dude. You'll be fried in the end of a year, you know, and you know you will. So, this is the crazy stuff.
And so what we have to do is it's like somebody said said one night said my you make it sound like you're the only right one and everybody else in the fellowship is wrong. And I said well I don't know. It depends on where we are.
In this room 99% of you guys are walking the same path doing exactly what I'm doing. You're already in the book. But let me tell you something.
I've been in rooms with a thousand men and women where there was only maybe 10% of the room that was on the page and everybody else was coming out of these these dark tunnel meetings that they talk about. meetings that have gotten so toxic that nobody can recover. And I know it makes people grindy to hear this stuff, but guys, let me tell you something.
As an absolute God's truth, I can name you at this particular moment two groups north of me in Dallas where they ask you not to bring your big book to a meeting. Now, I'm not talking about, please understand this. I'm not talking about they suggest you leave your book at home because we're going to have the meeting.
we have it something printed or we'll they're saying don't bring your book to the meeting. There's nothing there we want to hear. You think that's fun?
I can name you three groups I know of in the Dallas Fort Worth area right now where they charge you to hear a fifth step. Charge you. How much do they charge you?
Well, it depends on how good a fifth step you want. Please don't tell me we're not off the beam. Don't tell me that AA is not getting sick statistically when worldwide we're doing 8% 5% sometimes less than that and we were doing 75 85 95 depending on where you were percent success rate.
How arrogant of us to stand there and say that we're doing what we're supposed to do that everything is okay. Guys, somewhere this apathy has got to stop. We have to be to a point to where we can take this thing back and and see it for what it is.
And it starts with us individually. It starts with each one of us asking the question, is my own personal program of recovery out of the book? Is it what it's supposed to be?
Is the message that I'm carrying these guys when they ask me to to help them? Is it is the message out of the book or is it my opinion, an idea about how they need to live their life? Oh my god.
Let's talk about arrogance. Mine. It's what I know best.
We're three weeks into a disc into a a a big book environment at this new group I'm going to. We have no discussion meetings. They're all big book studies.
And I keep wanting to share my experience, strength, and hope. I keep wanting to share all of these wisdoms that I've picked up in seven years of discussion stuff. Now, keep your finger on that thought, guys.
There's nothing wrong with me wanting to share this stuff, except for the fact that I am suicidal. I can't keep my hands off other women. I'm writing hot checks all over Denton County.
My life is a freaking mess. And yet, I want to share with you the wisdom of my seven years of recovery. Now, you tell me that's not arrogant crap.
And yet I watch people in our meetings do it incessantly. Incessantly. You see, that's why I am so I hate the discussion meeting format because it breeds all kinds of disaster.
Would it be cool if you could sit in a discussion meeting and talk openly about certain things? Yes. Does the big book talk about talking about your problems on certain things?
Yes. In the Oxford group stuff in the back of the in the p uh 1601, it talks about that stuff. But they were talking about a newcomer bringing his problem to the meeting so that the old guys who had had the experience and knowledge could fix it, could help them see the path that they needed to be on this crap of of dumping stuff.
I got a friend of mine, you you'll love this. I got a friend of mine that sent me an email from Boston and they start she said she said, "You'll think this is funny, Myers. There are two new groups in the Boston area on the intergroup record.
One was called the shake hands with feeling group and I thought that was funny. And the next one was called dump it here group. I don't know about you guys, but that makes me squirm so bad.
I want to just I can hardly stand still. My head wants to explode when I hear of a fellowship of men and women coming up through the ranks who think that their sole purpose is to walk into a meeting and dump how crappy their life is and how how absolutely bizarre things have been. Let me tell you a story.
One little aside and then we'll get I'll get back on track. Scouts on her. I'll try anyway.
the that this group that I left that got so sick. Um, and I'm I'm now three maybe four years into this big book study. I've now had a spiritual experience as a result of doing the work.
I know exactly what my primary purpose is. I know what my responsibilities are. And I had the urge one afternoon to walk into a six o'clock or 6:30 meeting of that old discussion group where I left.
It's real close. It's like it's like 60 yards from where my shop is in in in in Texas. It's really I have to I have to pass 11 AA groups to get to the group that I go to.
It's a hall to get over there, but it's where I go. So, I go into this sick meeting and I'm sitting there like this and there was a girl named Barbara. Barbara's not her name, but I'm just going to use it for just right here in front of me.
You're too sweet. Maybe ought to change that name. Her name said, "So, I'm sitting in this meeting and nobody I recognize is in the room that I knew from when I was there except Barbara." And we start off.
Now, Barbara was always one of these girls that always shared how bad her deal was around her employment. She never had a good job and it was always the boss's fault and she never had a good relationship and she never had she was always just this pathetic mess and it never got any better for seven years. It was always the same deal.
And so we're sitting in the meeting and I'm looking around like this. I'm looking around 20 or 30 people around this circle like this and okay well it's now 15 minutes past the time to start the meeting and nobody started it yet. And finally somebody says well I guess somebody's got a chair and somebody says okay yeah well does anybody have a problem and they started like that and I look around and all of a sudden I went oh shoot there's Barbara and we're getting around the room like this and we get right up to her.
She's the third one in line and she shares. I would I would I would love to tell you that she was a spiritual giant and she saved lives in that meeting that night. But you know what she did?
She said, "You know, I got this situation going on at work and there was an audible. You could just hear the air being sucked out of the meeting." And and I'm sitting there going and the sweat underneath my arms. I just goes bam bam like this.
And I'm I got sweat running off my face. I am so emotionally entwined with this woman. It is not even funny.
For so what is that? 7 8 9 10 11 years now. She has been suffering through this same thing.
Am I mad at Barbara? No. I am so angry at a fellowship of men and women sitting there in that room that would allow her to sit there all those years and nobody would step up and say, "Barbara, shut the up.
Come on. Hush. Let me suggest a novel idea.
Barbara, why don't you work the work so that you could have a spiritual experience so that perhaps God God could move you from this place of being a pathetic victim to a place OF POWER. LACK OF POWER IS your dilemma. THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE WANTING.
BUT YOU WANT IT BY DUMPING STUFF. YOU WANT TO TREAT THIS like it's SOME KIND OF THERAPY SESSION THAT IF YOU JUST PROCESS IT OUT FOR ENOUGH YEARS, you're going to get better. Well, how many years is it going to take, Barbara?
I mean, I'm sorry. I'm a much more gentle and kinder Myers now. Thank you.
Uh I Forgive me. Forgive me. It's simply um as I get older, I get more sensitive and I tend to get more sensitive to people's pain.
And when I see somebody suffering, sitting here watching somebody walk in earlier and they were kind of uncomfortable when they walked in, they're looking around like they didn't know. And I'm thinking, I got to go get this guy. I cannot stand the pain of somebody feeling uncomfortable in a room.
And before I took two steps, three of you were on them. I mean, it it worked fine. You guys are great.
That But you understand what I'm saying? Did I scoop Barbara up after the meeting? You bet your sweet.
You know what I did? Me and Barbara got nose to nose and I said, "Sweet pee, please come study with me. please come do this work.
Please get you a good, strong sponsor that can carry you through this stuff and show you what you need to do in order to recover. Did she? No, she didn't.
She's in that meeting tonight sharing the same crap that she was sharing. And it is my fervent prayer that one of these days the pain will become so immense that she'll say, "Hey, I remember what Meyer said." and she'll scoop up my number and call me and I'll go get that gal in a heartbeat and I'll have her butt in a meeting and so fast it's it'll make your head swim. And there is indeed hope there.
You see, that's why our deal here is to slowly change the perceptions of what we're doing in our meeting and pay attention to what we're doing and to know that the things we say can indeed hurt and harm and that we need to be real careful. That's why the big book is my constant companion in a meeting. I would never walk into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous without a big book because I want to make sure that when it comes my time to share something, it's coming out of the book.
And if people groan, so be it. You know what? There's a world of people in Alcoholics Anonymous that hate my guts and do not want to be in the same room with me with a big book.
However, comma, there are a lot of young guys getting their butts kicked out there that gravitate to me like like I'm I'm I'm made out of gold when I share a message out of the big book because the new guy, I don't care how new he is, understands a message of depth and weight. In the same way that I instinctively knew that Cliff was telling me the truth sitting in his living room, the new guy instinctively knows. And that's the reason why the young lady that was talking about starting a new meeting and stuff.
Um um trust me on this. The guys that I know in this room, there's four or five of you that have are in the process of starting new big book studies all over Great Britain. And I'm telling you right now, guys, in the beginning, it always starts out the same.
Rough. You're getting your heads handed here. Let me read you this.
You're going to get a kick out of this. This was sent as a carbon copy to me from Cliff from Cliff from one of you. And I don't remember who it was and I don't have a name on it but the comment it was a friend sent this to Cliff from the UK.
He they had started a big book study and this is a message that he got on his cell phone. My group in accordance with intergroup discussions will not be promoting your extreme cause. A few of my members have already had bad experiences with your method and relapsed.
Leave us alone and do not and do your recovered program elsewhere. I wish they had sent me that message. I I would love to have faced those men in that situation.
They make this sound like these precious men and women that were going to start this group. They make it sound like these guys were evil. Like they were starting some kind of Satan crap back there.
Like they were going to cut some cat's tails off and do some kind of weird satanic crap. That's crap. These were these were absolute wonderful children of God who were sitting there wanting to do something to carry some hope back into a fellowship that is getting the crap kicked out of it.
And they had the guts to stand there and take it and then some some coward who wants to write it on an email or write it on a cell phone deal sends this kind of a message. Unfortunately, I have three letters just like this from different parts of Great Britain exactly like this. all from different people, all attacking people because they wanted to start something as absolutely innocent as a simple attempt to get a man and a woman back into a clear-cut set of directions that was guaranteed to change their life forever.
Sometimes I think that people think I'm trying to stir people up and get them to go into meetings with big sticks and kick the out of people. I have to tell you, I have to tell you in it is one of my favorite fantasies. Um, but I don't but I don't want you to do that.
And it would serve no purpose if you did and all of a sudden people would think that they were right and we were wrong again. And don't do that. I don't want anybody getting brutalized or bloodied because of the work.
It's not necessary. What we're going to do is we're going to do what what we found a long time ago. We won't try to make sweeping changes of anything.
Change in Alcoholics Anonymous is going to come when one strong sponsor talks with another individual and that individual becomes a strong sponsor and he comes out and he sponsors somebody and that girl turns out to be a strong sponsor and she goes out and sponsors somebody. You catch my drift? We've been doing this long enough now to see the legacies spread out before us.
I was in a meeting the other night and there were five generations in that meeting of people starting with Cliff Bishop that sponsored me and then I sponsored this cat and he sponsored a couple of guys and they sponsored a couple of guys and then they sponsored a couple of guys. Now I got to tell you the funny part about this is is that the guys that were below me on this deal, none of them had been have been sober longer than two years. One of the guys that's sponsoring three guys has only been sober six months.
And I know some of you guys are going, "No, that can't happen." I'm telling you right now, if I had a daughter and I have three and they needed a and I may have one and when she calls and says, "Daddy, I need help." I'm not calling some crusty old son of a I'm calling that kid with six months sobriety that can relate to her and help her. And this kid is so full of the book and so full of the power of God and the endless ability to help somebody. If you're taking cheap shots at the young guy, stop it.
Don't do it. I don't care if you've been sober a week. You have a responsibility to carry a message of recovery to somebody else.
You have a responsibility to step up to the guy after a meeting and say, "You know what? You can indeed get up in the morning and not drink. I know I did it 10 days ago.
I can do this. You see, you got to do this. There's no starting point in AA.
There's no starting gun, guys. There's nothing. Some of us sit back and wait.
Right now, I sponsor um I sponsor probably 10 or 15 guys that are older. Um, some of them are hugely educated, lots of PhDs. Uh, and it's amazing to see how many of these guys that have been sober for a long time are not doing any work in the work and have not sponsored anybody.
I got a guy I'm sponsored right now that's 20 years sober and hadn't sponsored a guy in 11 years. Why? What piece of misinformation did he pick up someplace?
What piece of of selfishness did he glom on to that dictates who he will help and who he won't help? My book said that the moment I draw a sober breath, I'm ready to go out and try to help somebody else do this deal. Could you sponsor somebody at 10 days sober?
I don't think so. Could you sponsor somebody at the end of a month if you worked the work and had a spiritual experience? My book says you can.
You see, would you still need some help from a good, strong sponsor above you to help you? Sure you would. Half the calls I get are from guys that I sponsor that are now sponsoring other men and they're calling me saying, "Hey, I got a piece of inventory.
I don't understand what to do. Can you help me?" Sure. You bet.
I got a men an amends thing that came up here that just caught me completely off guard. I don't know what to do. That's why we stay so plugged in, guys.
That's why it's so important that we never let go of our sponsors. That we always have a good strong sponsor there. If you have a sponsor today and you guys are not working together and he's just a sponsor and name only, guys, tell him you love him.
Tell him you want the best for him. But tell him you got to go find somebody else that you got to get to to to to hold you accountable because accountability is the thing. If I have a sponsor I can walk all over.
If I have a sponsor that I can just dust off as some kind of disposable name, where's the power in that? I need some crusty guy looking at me in a meeting like this. And when I walk in, he goes and I begin to sweat.
And I know that within five minutes we're going to be in the little room off the big room having the talk. You know, I know that. But I but it it's you got to have it.
Things work great at the group. I recovered. Everything worked wonderful.
I'm doing everything but 12step work. Finally, I started getting sick again. Even though there was lots of big book around, guys, I began to get get goofy again.
The spiritual malady had reasserted itself. The mental obsession was setting itself back up, telling me the problem didn't exist. And I'm waiting for a disaster.
Finally, Cliff said, 'You know, we need to talk about this 12step stuff again. And I'm going, I know we talk about it all the time. He said, 'I know, but you but you trivialize it.
You do 12step work when it's convenient for you to do 12step work. Yeah, I do. And he said, but what the what did the book say?
The book said, "We need to be in face to face with these guys every day. We need to be out carrying this thing. You need to have a regular place to go." And so he sent me out to Salvation Army.
I did my deal. You guys have heard these talks and I won't bore you with the details on it, but let me tell you what happened as a direct result of being on the firing line again carrying a message of recovery to these guys at these windup joints. It's windup w i n dup.
It's where we wind up when there's nothing else to do. That's where it came from. I get five emails every time I talk someplace going, "Tell me what a windup place is." It's where we wind up when there's no place else to go.
It's a treatment center or a jail or wherever the deal is. And going to these things will prove to be the coolest and slickest thing you've ever done in your whole life. And the book is clear on it.
It's interesting. Remember chapter seven, working with others. If going to the meeting, which is emphasized so much, was so important, don't you think Bill Wilson, those cats would have read?
Step 12, go to meetings. It wasn't in there. Why?
Because the power was not in the meeting. The power was in the steps we took, which put us in a position to help somebody. There's where the power was.
And then he gave us a whole chapter, chapter 7, that talked about why we do what we do. I recovered. Why?
So my wife would come back in the same bedroom with me. That's part of it. So I could have some friends.
It's part of it. The biggest part of it is is it so I could be a benefit to somebody else. So I could give this thing away.
So you guys that are holding 12step work at some distance, basically what you're doing is is doing what I did for all those years. It's like it's like picture a Picture AA is a big bonfire and we work the work and we get all better, but we're still kind of dancing around the edge of this big old bonfire. Now, we know because it's in the writing that we have to go through the fire to get to the other side.
But in order to go through the fire, it gets real hot and it's real, real uncomfortable. But we got to do it to get over there. So one day the pain and suffering of being a middle- of the road kind of guy in AA becomes so great that we simply say, "Okay, I'm willing to do what I have to do." And somebody's going to carry me to a 12step place.
And they're going to say, "Okay, it's your turn." And I'm going to go, "Okay, I'll get up." And you get up and you do a little 10-minute share. And you sit down and all of a sudden you go, "Damn, damn. That 10-minute share is my fire.
And I got to go through it. But once I go through it, I come out the other side all charred and my hair is all like this. But I am different.
And the cool part about it is charred hair and all is that the gut stuff's not hurting me anymore. I'm not twisted up. The spiritual malady which has begun to rekindle itself and hurt me is no longer there.
Can I stay at that point for a moment? The book says that I have to continually do this stuff. It's clear on it.
My arrogance and my ego SAYS, "NO, I DID IT ONCE. I don't want to do it anymore. And the big book says, "You've been given the power to help others.
Go do it." And so I do it day after day after day. And I get healthier and healthier and the mental health comes back and the squirrelininess goes away. It's a perfect illustration of what I'm talking about.
Right after I got to primary purpose, I had not worked any work yet. I love to garden. if we got any gardeners in here.
You're one of God's own. I love you to death already. And I'm kneeling in this garden and um and I'm thinking in a few minutes I got to go back into that house that I hate and see that beast of a woman that I'm married to.
And I have to be faced with these three daughters that are not bright enough and not smart enough and not I just I hate my car. I hate my job. I hate you.
I hate I'm just a hater again. this thing of of bigotry and and jealousy and I'm just consumed with this stuff and you understand that some of you guys live with this stuff. You see, and these are the things that are kicking my rear end.
These are all manifestations of a spiritual malady that have not yet been dealt with. And so what I do is I go work the work with somebody who had had the experience and I have the experience myself. My own personal here it is spiritual experience.
I'm not living off somebody else's experience. It's mine. Fast forward a year, I'm now talking in some treatment centers on a regular basis.
I got me a whole little gang of guys I'm sponsoring. It's just a my life is just amazing. I'm sitting in the same garden, kneeling in the same place, doing the same picking the damn worms off the tomatoes again.
And I'm thinking, I can't wait to get rid of this last worm so I can go in that house and see that woman that I absolutely adore. I cannot wait to be in the same room with those kids so they can tell me how their day went. I cannot wait to get to that job in the morning.
I cannot wait. Guys, realistically, let me ask you the question. What changed in the picture?
Did my job change? Did that woman change? Did my kids change?
No. My perceptions changed based on the fact that the spiritual malady was no longer kicking my scrawny rear into the gutter. I knew I had a solution and I knew I had a purpose.
My primary purpose as it were that others would look at and say that was pathetic. Those guys that don't know me and don't know anything about me, they'd say, "Well, you do this AA stuff all the time. It's just sort of pathetic, isn't it?" And I'm going, "God, let me tell you something.
Being a busted up drunk and not knowing what you're going to do hour to hour to hour, that's fairly pathetic. Knowing exactly what I'm going to do when I get up in the morning is the coolest thing I've ever experienced in my whole life because there's a host of drunks out there that I haven't even met yet that are waiting for a message that I have to carry and I need to be there for that. Tell you a fast five minute story.
Uh some of you guys have heard this story about Terry, but I want to tell it because it illustrates our 12step stuff so dramatically. Um, if the guys that have heard this story, you can just put your head down on the girl next to you and go to sleep and and we'll wake you up when it's done. But I want you to understand this deal.
Place called Homerbound in in the hood down in down in uh uh South Dallas. It's it's uh be like your Bowery here, I think, maybe. I don't know if I've got that right, but it's it's as it's as rough an area of Dallas as you can get.
And uh Homerbound is is my home away from home. And uh there was a guy sitting in a meeting there one night. You guys ever sit in a meeting that's that's full of men and you're kind of looking around the room and you see a guy that's particularly sick looking, particularly deranged.
And this guy is looking at me and he's giving me the eyeball and I'm going, "Oh God, please please don't let this guy come over here, you know? I mean, I'm supposed to be a healthy healthy um um um saint in AA and and I and I'm praying to God that this man will simply vaporize in front of my eyes and that I won't have to deal with him. But he didn't.
Terry had red hair that was sticking all out like this and he had green eyes and he was just like this. and he'd been living on the street and he he'd been living in a in a in somebody's pickup in the back end of this pickup parked between two buildings and during the night one of the street gangs had come by and they had pulled him out of the pickup by his ankles and he had smashed his face on the ground. The first thing that hit was here from pickup level high and it it he was one screwed up unit.
It me it knocked all of his teeth out and broke his nose and pushed his this big skin place that went all the way down like this. It was a mess. Well, sure enough, Terry walks up to me right after the meeting and said, 'You know, I'm really interested in what you had to say.
Uh, and I said, 'Can say that again?' He was drooling so bad from his busted up teeth and stuff. I finally understood what he was saying and he said, "Would you help me?" Yeah, I will. Then I turned around and went like this.
So, we go through this stuff. We get through this work. Terry's so messed up and his head's not real clear yet.
And so, we start we start working. I'm reading the reading the work to him. It's going fast.
I mean, I met with him a couple of times and we did it. He's taken a bus. He's still living in treatment down here and he's taking a bus all the way to primary purpose group.
It's a hall guys by bus. And he's taking it showing up at our meeting every time we're there. He walks in and he asked me one night, he said, "My he said, "Can I borrow 10 10 bucks?" I said, "Terry, you know I don't loan money to guys that I sponsor." And he said, "I know, but it's real important and I'll pay you back Thursday night." Okay, here.
Gave him the 10 bucks. I believe sometimes when we loan money to people like this, we stand in the way of God. I mean, we we we we we ooch got out of the way.
He may have had another deal to do there, but so I but I loaned Terry the money. Thursday night, Terry comes walking in and he's got a bucket and a squeegee and he walks right up to me like this and somehow he's standing a little taller and he hands me this business card and it has TNS window cleaning on it or something like this. Some little thing he'd had made at an office supply place.
and he had gotten another guy in treatment and they had gone out and they're just knocking on doors and what they're doing is leaving treatment early in the day and they're walking out in the rich areas around where our group our meeting is and they're washing windows and he hands me the 10 bucks and he says blah blah and we're talking about this stuff and I'm just like going guys this guy is still living at the treatment place and he's already got this little job put together scraping together this cash right and he does this week after week after week we're working the work we're doing the stuff it's time to do our inventory I got to tell tell you this because it's amazing how your perceptions of people begin to change. He's he's we're sitting in this park like this and where I did all my inventories in those days from that treatment center because it was right around the corner and it was real quiet and we could sit out there and we're going through this inventory and and I'm just I'm just blown away by the stuff this kid's seeing. He's going, "Oh, oh, well, don't forget the selfishness here.
Don't forget see the part right here like this." I mean, he's two steps ahead of me the whole way. It's like one of those kind of deals where you you siphon the water and it's just flowing and there's nothing I can do to stop it. And in like 40 minutes, we're through 30 pages of his inventory.
It's like nothing, man. And I'm sitting there looking at him. It's kind of overcast day.
And the sun comes up behind me. The sun's coming up over my back, shining right into Terry's face. And his hair is on fire.
It looks like he's got this bright red hair, but it looks like somebody just torched it with a blowtorrch. and he's got these unbelievable green eyes and they're like looking right through me like some kind of space guy and I'm just going like go like this and the hair is standing up on the back of my head and I'm thinking I'm in the presence of greatness and I know that I am in a way and I just it was just a amazing experience and so this this he gets up and he goes and does a deal and I got to tell you he he the point of this whole story is guys is that he he got his driving license back within about a month his his commercial driving license, which in Texas, after you've had it taken away from you, is a mother to get, but he got it back and he got this job driving long haul. And I'm kind of worried.
By now, this guy's been sober four months, five months, I'm guessing, because I really don't remember. Not long. And he's going to go long haul across the country.
And I'm scared. Terry is now one of my favorite guys in the whole deal. And he's he's already sponsoring cats there in our group.
And he's already he's a part of me. And he's doing this deal. and I watched him um just make the decision to go do this driving thing.
And so um he's fine and uh I don't see him for weeks at a time. And I get this call one night and he's in Tennessee someplace at some little poduck place and he said, "My I may have screwed up." I said, "Oh, Terry, what did you do, buddy?" And he goes, "Well, I just I got to this meeting and we were sitting in this cafe and what I usually do when I go through these little towns is I ask if there's any AA meetings and they didn't know of one." And then so there was another guy in the cafe that said, "Hey, but we always wanted one here." And Terry said, "Well, I'll start one." And I go, "Well, Terry, what's your point?" And he said, "Well, isn't it stupid for me only five or six months over to be starting a group?" And I said, "I I'm having a hard time, you know, uh uh uh casting this thing out. It sounds fine to me.
Just do what you're going to do." And he did. They gathered up some big books and they started this little meeting there in this deal. and he was there and then we came back through.
He'd stop there and he'd work his route on this truck thing so he could come back through and check on these guys and they were building this group. And so he he calls me like 6 weeks later and he said, "Hey, I'm in Maine." And I said, "Maine? Really?
That's way up there." And he goes, "Yeah, yeah." And he said, "You remember that deal in Tennessee?" And I said, "Yeah." And he said, "Well, I'm in kind of the same kind of situation here in Maine." And I said, "Jerry, what are you going to do?" and he said, "I'm going to do what I did in Tennessee. I'm going to start a group." And I said, "Okay." So, he goes and gathers up these big books and he gets these guys on track like this and he's like Johnny Apples Seed starting these meetings in the these places that he goes. Now, guys, hold your finger on that thought.
I'm now at the same time sponsoring 40 men that I cannot get to go to a 12step place in town to do 12step work. Dig? And Terry is out there kicking butt and taking names wherever he goes.
He's a fearless carrier of a big book because he knows that it's not Terry's message he's carrying. It's the big book's message that he's carrying. And he understands that it's a message of depth and weight.
And he understands that it's a message that can change the very lives of the men that he touches. This is just and I am surrounded by people in the fellowship that make excuses. We make announcements.
Our group does 32 meetings other places other than our three meetings that we have a week of 12step places. And because the group is so big and we have so many people transition through there, I'm always asking, okay, we got to cover meetings here, here, and here. I need somebody.
Can you go over here to this? Oh, you mean this Friday? Well, no.
I I couldn't this Friday. Perhaps another Friday. And I'm Who's next?
And I'll get somebody in. We fill it always. But I am absolutely caught off guard by how many people reap the benefits of our fellowship, reap the benefits of recovery, reap the benefits of everything that this program has to offer and still holds 12step work at a distance and trivialize it like it's something that I'll do once I get the job the girl in the car back.
Once I get everything lined up. Let me tell you something, guys. The job the girl in the car, the tr the AA Trinity, it's an illusion.
You'll never get it all lined up. It's like hurting cats. By the time you get one thing straightened out, she goes away.
By the time you get her back, the job goes away. It's always something. If your recovery is based on the external circumstances you think you're going to do, you're woefully mistaken, painfully mistaken.
Don't do it. This is an internal deal we're going to deal with. I'm done.
At the end of the day, guys, there's an accountability. There's a moment at the end of the day sitting on the edge of your bunk when you just smoke that last cigarette or drink that last cup of tea or or do whatever you do at the end of the day when we are accountable to ourselves when we have to look at oursel and go did I do today what I'm supposed to do am I a carrier of a common solution or am I a producer of confusion and disharmony did I do something today to help one of God's kids or am I a selfish so these are questions we need to ask ourselves on a daily basis. And guys, as you do this and as you submit to a program and as you submit to the 12step work that we so desperately need you doing and you take a deep breath and know that God is good and know that you have a purpose, you will never once question your purpose again.
Once you realize it, once you see it for what it is, everything in your life will change. That perceptual shift that we talked about will be there. There's nothing sweeter in God's green earth than to know that when I get back I'll have a wife that doesn't duck when I walk into a room.
That I'll have little daughters hugging me and wanting to be in the same room. You see what I'm saying? That I'll have a host of friends calling me asking me how my trip went.
And were those English guys really as crazy as we hear? And I won't lie. I'll tell them yes.
I'll tell them the truth. I'll tell them you're the sweetest bunch of people I've ever been around. and it's been my great pleasure to be here.
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.