Going to Meetings and Not Drinking Doesn’t Treat Alcoholism – AA Speaker – Paul M.
AA speaker Paul M. explains why meetings and sobriety alone don’t treat alcoholism—working the 12 steps is what changes lives, with specific stories about character defects, amends, and spiritual recovery.
Paul M., sober since August 1947, shares why simply attending meetings and staying dry isn’t enough in recovery. In this AA speaker talk, he makes a direct case that working the 12 steps—especially the fourth, fifth, eighth, and ninth—is what actually treats the disease of alcoholism and transforms lives, whether you’re newly sober or decades into recovery.
Paul M., an AA speaker with 57+ years of sobriety, argues that going to meetings and not drinking do not treat alcoholism; working the 12 steps does. He shares stories of people whose depression, anxiety, sexual obsessions, and behavioral problems disappeared only after completing a thorough fourth and fifth step and making amends. Paul emphasizes that character defects are interconnected—dishonesty feeds resentment, which feeds other compulsions—and that Step 10 daily inventory, Step 11 meditation, and continuous reworking of the steps keeps recovery solid, even in long-term sobriety.
Episode Summary
Paul M. walks into this talk with a sharp sense of humor and a simple, uncompromising message: going to meetings and not drinking do not treat alcoholism. Working the 12 steps does. With nearly 58 years sober since 1947, he’s not offering theory—he’s offering what he’s witnessed over decades in a working step group at a Chicago YMCA, where the same steps are worked and reworked, every week, every year.
His opening story sets the tone: in 1951, early in sobriety, he heard the founder, Bill W., ask a room full of people to imagine what another 10 years of drinking would have meant. The silence was absolute. That question—what if we hadn’t found this?—frames everything Paul says about why the work matters.
Paul spent his drinking years running from himself. Born in rural South Georgia to a Lutheran minister father who was deeply flawed, he discovered early that alcohol solved the problem of being himself. When he drank, everything changed for the better. He flew seaplanes in World War II while drinking through hangovers. He got bitten by a dog, broke his nose in three states, and ended up chasing the wagon around Chicago for months after one slip—the drinking wasn’t fun anymore, but sobriety was unbearable.
By August 1947, at 25 years old, he was broken enough to call AA. A man took him to a meeting. He walked out with something he’d never had: a choice about whether to drink. He never drank again.
But here’s where his talk pivots to its core message. A year sober, Paul went into business and got himself into serious trouble through dishonest dealings. A friend told him bluntly: “My boy, you missed the whole program. You kept such an open mind, the whole program just blew right through.” That’s when Paul realized meetings weren’t enough. He had to work the steps.
What follows is a methodical walk through what the steps actually do. Step 2, coming to believe in a power greater than himself, wasn’t about church theology—it was about understanding that he was insane sober and drunk, and that truth equals sanity. Step 3 wasn’t a one-time prayer; he does it every day. Steps 4 and 5 are where the real medicine is.
Paul describes taking his first fourth step a year into sobriety during business troubles. He wrote an honest inventory of himself as a liar, a cheat, a thief—things he’d never consciously known until he saw them on paper. He met a stranger and read it. That act of exposure changed something. He continued doing fourth and fifth steps. Over the years, he watched people in the program discover that depression, anxiety, and fear weren’t medical problems—they were symptoms of untreated alcoholism, untreated guilt.
He tells the story of a counselor from Wisconsin who came to the group sober 22 years, deeply depressed and suicidal. A trained therapist couldn’t help himself. But working the steps with the group, his symptoms lifted. Another man obsessed with internet pornography for two years found freedom immediately after making two amends. A man with high blood pressure took three fifth steps in a couple of weeks—his blood pressure normalized and never spiked again.
Paul emphasizes the interconnectedness of character defects. A man he knew struggled with sexual fantasies and harmless lying. His sponsor said, “You’re not guilty; you have a guilt complex.” The solution: start living within his means, stop lying about his stories. The fantasies vanished. Everything is connected.
The most powerful section of the talk centers on his own amends work around his father. In 1968, sober 21 years, he was running committees in AA and had created two cliques fighting for control of Chicago AA. He was sober, but his behavior was creating chaos. His sponsor suggested he do an eighth step instead of trying to explain God’s will to everyone. Paul made amends to 10 people. That opened a door to seeing his father as the relationship that needed healing.
For years, he’d called his father wanting to reconcile; his father refused. Paul finally went unannounced to his hometown in South Georgia and made an amend to his father, painful as it was. After that second unannounced visit a few months later, something shifted. A layer of his life peeled away, and he suddenly saw 10 more names that belonged on his amends list—names he could never have seen until that father relationship was addressed. Two weeks later, his father died.
Paul doesn’t preach about this; he just states it clearly: if you have something like that in your life, do it now. Next week the opportunity might be gone forever.
He closes with practical steps he takes daily: step 10 (daily inventory), step 11 (meditation, sometimes hours a day, asking for nothing, saying only “Thy will be done”), step 12 (carrying the message by working with others). He tithes 10% of his income to charity to address his character defect around greed. He works out to stay physically responsible.
The final story: a man sober 15 years came to the step group from Indianapolis, in trouble for personal behavior his wife didn’t approve of. He’d been talking about owing money to five people for years, never paying. His wife suggested they sell their house, pay off all the debt, live in a trailer while rebuilding. They did. That, Paul says, is what the program demands—willingness to go to any lengths.
The message Paul leaves is distilled in the story of a man who sobered up in 1971 after 15 years of bouncing around drunk. He had three boys; the youngest was in a special education class because of learning problems, likely caused by living with his father’s alcoholic behavior. The father worked the steps. Within years, the boy was in regular classes, on the honor roll most periods, a varsity football player. Paul asked him: “What changed?” The father said, “If all I had done is quit drinking and not work the steps, none of this would have happened.”
That’s the message: the program gives us everything we really need spiritually. If we find what we have spiritually, we will have everything we really want.
Notable Quotes
Going to meetings and not drinking do not treat my alcoholism. Working the 12 steps treats my alcoholism.
I can’t live on the food I ate 10 years ago or the water I drank five years ago. I have to continue to eat and drink and breathe to live. And I have to do the same thing with the 12 steps.
Everything is connected to everything else. If I do something bad over here, it fouls up my life over there. If I do something good over there, it helps something over there.
If there’s an important relationship in your life and it’s not healthy, you’re not going to be healthy till it is made better.
If all I had done is quit drinking and not work the steps, none of this would have happened.
The steps are the answer. The steps are the program. Banquets are nice. Conferences are nice, but they are not the answer to the problems that beset us when we’re sober.
Steps 8 & 9 – Making Amends
Step 10 – Daily Inventory
Step 11 – Prayer & Meditation
Step 12 – Carrying the Message
Emotional Sobriety
Character Defects
Sponsorship
Long-Term Sobriety
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Step 4 – Resentments & Inventory
- Steps 8 & 9 – Making Amends
- Step 10 – Daily Inventory
- Step 11 – Prayer & Meditation
- Step 12 – Carrying the Message
- Emotional Sobriety
- Character Defects
- Sponsorship
- Long-Term Sobriety
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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. >> Good evening.
My name is Paul Martin. I'm a young alcoholic in an old container. You probably didn't think I'd be this good-looking.
You're kind of like Elizabeth Taylor's next husband. I know what's expected of me, but I can't figure out how to make it interesting. Judy and I are happy to be here.
It was a great meal. Judy and I met in a travel agency. She was looking for the last resort.
I think that at my age, I was 83 about a week ago. My sobriety date is August 15th, 1947. You probably think I sobered up when I was 2 or three years old.
It's not quite true. For years, I was worried about dying young, and now it's too late. I think like the Rolling Stones, I might be on my final tour.
Don't encourage me. I don't have to be home till Tuesday. I've been sober a long time.
The good news is that if you work the steps, you can stay sober. Bad news is this is how you look. 1951 in the spring, I went to an open meeting at the Madina Temple.
Bill Wilson was speaking and Bill said, "Suppose that all of us had not found a until 10 years after we did." And then he paused and you couldn't hear a sound as all of us thought of what 10 more years of that life would have been. I've been sober longer by far than twice twice as long as I'd lived when I came to AA. I was 25.
But I'm part of AA still because I have an obligation to pass on to you and other people to those folks who didn't show up yet what changed my life. Because when I walked into that first meeting in August of 1947, I had no choice on whether or not I drank. And I walked out and suddenly I had a choice and I have retained that choice.
And I did nothing except experience the grace of God. A bunch of people I'd never seen before in my life said, "How can we help?" And you've helped me every day since. Everything is connected to everything else.
Years ago, I I did a lot of different things to make a living. Eventually, I became a writer and by the time I found out I was no good, I was making a living. So, it was too late to quit.
But some year I've traveled a lot in Latin America and I've been to uh I spent probably a year and a half, two years in South America, Central America, Mexico. Some years ago, I was doing a story about the Galopagus Islands for several magazines. The Gopagus Islands are off the coast of Ecuador.
That's where Darwin got the idea for the theory of evolution with the giant tortoises, which get to be 500 and 600 lb. And I learned that during mating season, the male tortoises get so excited they try to mate with large rocks. It's pretty much like your average AA picnic.
years ago, I came to the realization that everything is connected. You know, if I do something bad over here, it fouls up my life over there. If I do something good over there, it helps something over there.
I was at a meeting a week ago. I go to two meetings a week. Incidentally, we have five groups at the Lraange YMCA.
Monday, Wednesday, Friday night, Tuesday, and Saturday morning. You're all welcome to come. But a week ago, our meeting was on step nine.
And one of the men there said that he had finally, and he's sober about 20 years, and he had written two letters of amends that were very important, which he had kept putting off. And he said he felt better, but something else happened which he did not accept expect. He had been hooked on porn on the internet for about uh two years, and he couldn't get off it.
after he made those two amends, he was free of the porn addiction. And those are the kinds of things that happened. I know another man who's sober about 20 years, and he had a job as principal of a high school.
And as part of his job, he had to lie on reports. He had to lie about the number of students, the credentials of the teachers. They didn't pay their income tax on things.
And he got very depressed and very anxious. So they sent him to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist wanted to give him pills. He said that's just business.
Man quit his job and got a job where he didn't have to lie. No longer depressed or anxious. There are a lot of pills.
I just heard about the Prozac diet. You take two Prozacs for breakfast and the food falls out of your mouth the rest of the day. When I was sober less than a year in the spring of 1948, I heard Paul Stanley speak on the west side of Chicago.
He was the number five AA in Akran and he said over and over and over in his talk, AA is of itself sufficient. And I wasn't quite sure if that was true or not. I think that is true.
I think that if you work and rework the steps and try to live with honesty and integrity, you will get all the help you need in every respect in your life. I think depression, anxiety, fear are caused by unresolved guilt. They're untreated alcoholism.
And if I'm depressed or anxious or fearful, I have something wrong in my life that will respond to honest living and work with the 12 steps. I think that uh going to meetings and not drinking do not treat my alcoholism. Working the 12 steps treats my alcoholism.
And wherever I am in sobriety, I have found that to be true. Even in old age, the other night I stayed in a hotel that had mirrors on the ceiling. I woke up in the morning and looked up.
I thought I was being attacked by a giant prune. I go to a working step group. A working step group, as it sounds, is a group where they continue to work the steps.
I can't live on the food I ate 10 years ago or the water I drank five years ago or the air I breathed breathed six months ago. I have to continue to eat and drink and breathe to to live. And I have to do the same thing with the 12 steps.
I have discovered that if I continue to do this that I get all the help I need in every respect. We had a man come down from we meet as I say five times a week in the Lrange YMCA. It's a working step group.
We have a step each week 1 to 12 and then we go back to one. And the idea is that we continue to work and rework the steps. 17 years ago a man started coming to our group from Jainsville, Wisconsin.
He was sober 22 years. He was a counselor. He was educated in therapy and things like that.
I think that the problem with psychotherapy is not that its practitioners don't know anything. I think the problem is that they know so many things that are not right are not true. This man was deeply depressed and fearful.
As I say, he was a counselor and he was thinking seriously of committing suicide and he thought that might be a bad sign. So he started coming to our meeting and working the 12 steps. was extremely depressed, extremely frightened, anxious, and as he began to work the steps, all of his symptoms of untreated alcoholism left.
And I think I've seen that happen over and over and over in the time I've been in AA. As you know, I've been an AA long time. You can tell I've been someplace a long time.
But what I have seen over and over is that the steps are the answer. The steps are the program. Banquetss are nice.
Conferences are nice, but they are not the answer to the to the problems that beset us when we're sober. When I drank, I could hide my symptoms with booze. When I quit drinking, I had the symptoms, but no longer the result, the recourse to alcoholism.
The program is working and reworking the steps. I've never seen anybody get in trouble from working the 12 steps too soon. seen an awful lot of people get in trouble from working them too late or not at all.
I think that the when when Bill worked his steps as we see in in his story, he worked the steps with EB the help of Ebie in the first few days he was sober and then he had a spiritual experience. Some years ago, maybe 20 years ago, I was writing an article on alcoholism and the high-profit treatment industry and I talked to Dr. Robert Devito who was at that time head of the department of mental health in Illinois and as a psychiatrist he had treated treated about 1,300 alcoholics in private practice and I said do you think it's possible to harm an alcoholic by too much treatment and he said no said that implies that we know what we're doing when we treat him and he said we don't know enough to harm him or help him I said what do you think of intervention or confrontation to raise the bottom He said, "I've seen that tried many times and I've never seen it work." I had the good fortune to be a guest in Bill Wilson's home on several occasions and be with him a couple of other times when uh I was in New York and uh with the first time I was there was the spring of 1951.
As I say, I've done a lot of different things for a living. I spent several years after I sobered up as a professional wrestler. We had the only shows on television at that time that were rehearsed.
I used to wrestle on some of the shows at Rainbow Arena on Tuesday night and uh Lawrence and Clark. The promoter was a guy named Ray Fabiani from Philadelphia originally. He was so crooked when they died they had to screw him into the ground.
But they said that he was a violinist with the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, which might have been true. because a little later on he got in trouble with the IRS for fiddling with his income tax. But Bill, I think we don't appreciate Bill as much as we should when we think that we came in when I came in was 12 years old.
I had the 12 steps. I had the big book. I had all of these things.
I didn't have to look anywhere. And it still has taken me a long long time to figure out a lot in the ELO AA program. I heard Vincent Dole talk one time and he said that the he was a non-alcoholic member of the general service board.
He said, "My concern for the future of AA is that its principle of personal service may be eroded by money and professionalism. The AA message is a message from one amateur to another amateur. I don't think that when we get into the business of treating alcoholics for money, I think we forget what the message is and the fact that we give this without thought of of uh reward or thought of getting paid.
And I think that when money enters into it, it corrupts the relationship and the message. I didn't start out to be an alcoholic. I grew up in a little town in South Georgia.
town was so dull that if you took LSD, you'd have had visions of Lawrence Welk. I discovered very soon that if I drank the right amount, everything changed for the better. Town was too small to have a village idiot.
We all just takes turns. But I found very quickly that alcohol was alcohol was the answer to the problems that I had within me. I know this is hard to believe, but I was once very shy and withdrawn.
And when I drank, I don't know when I became an alcoholic. I know that when I was seven or eight, if there was alcohol, if there was beer or wine around the house and nobody was looking, I would snap up a gulp or two. When I was drunk, when I was 14, I got drunk the first time.
And suddenly, everything was different. I was free in a way that I was never free sober. It patched up the holes within me.
And I drank my way through high school. My favorite subjects were sports. I was a reasonably good athlete and my favorite sport was boxing.
I had a bad handicap because I couldn't whip anybody. I got my nose broken in three places, Georgia, Illinois, and California. But I came back up to Oak Park in 1941.
When I was 19, I started another college. I went to a number of colleges. I would have made five beta kappa if it hadn't been for my grades.
But I uh started another college. World War II would come along. I was boxing for a club on the west side of Chicago.
And I decided to be a naval aviator. I had this act. I never knew who I was.
And if you don't know who you are, you've got to invent somebody. So, I invented the drinker and the lover and the sophisticate. And now I was going to be a pilot.
I flew sea planes in World War II that were catapulted off cruisers and battleships. You went from 0 to 60 m an hour in the space of about 40 feet. It wouldn't cure a hangover, but it really took your mind off of it for a little while.
I used to get up in the morning and take my big gagging exercises and then shuffle down to the flight line. As I've said many times, I destroyed two aircraft in World War II. Unfortunately, they both belonged to the United States Navy.
Friend of mine said if I'd gotten three more, I would have been a Japanese ace. And I drank my way through World War II. The end of it, I was at the Norfick Naval Air Station.
And you know, we hear about alcoholics being sensitive people. You also hear that they're very they're smart people. They're smarter than other people.
I don't know where that came from. It was certainly never invented by anybody in Alanon. But I realized that I was a sensitive fellow because while I was at Norfolk, friend got me blind date with a gal in her honor.
I got blind and as we were taking her home, we had to stop the car so I could get out and throw up. As I was walking to the door, I went behind a bush to throw up. And then I was very hurt because she wouldn't kiss me good night.
And I realized that I was a very sensitive fellow. Well, the war had grown to an end and I came home and in December of 1945, I got separated from the service at Great Lakes. I traveled for three days and three nights and I got to Oak Park where I was living and over New Year's I decided to go down to Cincinnati and I ended up drunk in Milwaukee for three days.
That happened. But the last uh New Year's morning, I drank myself sober. I had kind of a tiresome, frightening experience.
I ended up with a woman who was the worst looking woman in the middle. She looked like a million dollars. And because I say that, I've never seen a million dollars.
And she looked like something I never saw before. I knew she was I knew she was getting old because the hair under her arms was turning gray. So, I decided that I was going to do a little boxing and I tried to get in as good shape as possible and I stayed sober for about 5 months and then a friend of mine and I got drunk and I took him home to St.
Charles in a snowstorm and I got bitten by a dog. I was lost on coming back on 64. I kept asking directions.
I'd go in a bar and ask the bartender how to get to Oak Park. could buy a bottle of beer and get in the car and drive. And by the time the beer was gone, I'd forgotten the directions.
I went in one bar and there was a dog lying on the floor and I said, "Hello." And the dog bit me on the leg. And I went to the doctor in a day or two cuz I'd gotten my nose broken somewhere that night and mentioned that I'd been bitten by this dog. And he said, "You find that dog." Well, I went in the saloons along North Avenue.
I said, "You have a dog that bit me the other night?" And they said, "No." So, I ended up taking rabies shots for two weeks. Just to be on the safe side, I made a list of people to bite in case they didn't work. And I continued making a variety of exper experiments.
I started to read the books that will show you how to quit drinking. I read one by Rabbi Leeman called Peace of Mind. It was very popular at that time.
And then I found out that he committed suicide. And I thought, that's more change than I need. I read a book by a lady named Dorothy Brandy.
She said act as if it's impossible to fail. Did you ever try that with the dry heaves and I read Lincoln? I've read one guy who said that you're an alcoholic because you have too much pressure on your brain.
So I knew there was a lot of pressure on my brain because it was forcing all the hair out of my scalp. And I wrote them to see if there's anybody around Chicago. They said, "You make a spinal tap and you're no longer an alcoholic." So, I wrote him to see if anybody could tap my spine.
He said, "No." So, I bought another book. And uh, you know, I think those books are great. We still have them out, all the self-help books.
I think they're great unless you really need help. And if you really need help, you better go to AA if you're an alcoholic or an alanine because I find that the answers are in in the 12 steps. I'm sure we're all familiar with the promises and the promises do come true when we work the first nine steps and we get everything we want.
I had a lot of trouble understanding that I really frequently don't know what's good for me. But I started trying to stay sober on my own and I ran all over Chicago trying to stay sober because I couldn't stand things when I wasn't drinking and I couldn't stand things when I drank. Tried to use my willpower.
It was kind of like the lady that cussed her husband out because she said, "You don't have any willpower. You're disgusting." She said, "Oh," she said, "Look at Goldberg." Goldberg smoked three packs a day for 25 years. He hasn't smoked for 5 years.
He said, "I quit. That's willpower." She said, "Gensburgg was drunk every day of his life for 30 years. Six years ago, he said, "I quit." And he hasn't had a drink since.
She said, "That's willpower." He said, "I'll show you willpower." He said, "From now on, I'm going to sleep in the guest bedroom forever." 6 months later, he was awakened by his wife shaking the bed. He said, "What do you want?" She said, "Goldberg is smoking." So, I tried various ways of quitting drinking and finally I I came to the realization that I was an alcoholic. My father was an alcoholic, a very badly behaved alcoholic.
My father was a Lutheran minister who became a fundraiser. It was listed in Who's Who. One of my grandfathers was a Lutheran minister who was a doctor of divinity and who's who.
My other grandfather was a medical doctor. I'm the only professional wrestler our family ever produced. But my parents got along like Azie and Harriet on acid.
and eventually they got divorced and uh anybody who's been through that know that that's not really a pleasant experience. But I came to the realization finally that I had to quit drinking. So in January of 19 47 I went on the wagon knowing I'm an alcoholic.
And I thought now that I know this I can't take the first drink. So I just won't take the first drink. And after three months, I went to a party and somebody handed me a drink with a shot in it.
I'd asked for a plane seven up and there was booze in it. I thought, well, I'll get drunk tonight and I'll jump back on the wagon tomorrow. And the next day, the wagon had left and I chased it around Chicago for the next four months.
And the drinking was no fun. And I couldn't stand life sober. I couldn't stand life drunk.
And I didn't know what to do. I don't know where I got the idea to call AA, but in August of 1947, I got a tremendous gift because I could no longer lie about the condition of my life. I've always had a problem being trying to be smarter than I actually am.
I always had answers for everything as my life fell apart and people would try to help me. I was always too smart to listen. Now I was ready to listen.
And I I was sober a week when I called AA. I don't know why I called except that the truth was too overwhelming for me to deny. And I called AA on a Saturday morning.
Called the downtown office. I don't know where I got the idea, but talked to a lady and talked to a man that afternoon who was sober I think about six or eight years. And at that time, nobody was sober more than 12 years.
and he took me to a meeting the next day and I walked out of that meeting and I had the choice on whether or not I would drink which when you think about it for an alcoholic is a tremendous choice because I had run out of all the answers. I was frightened all the time. My glib answers didn't sound good to anybody including me.
I was afraid I was very lucky. I never got in any bad problems. I never got in any bad accidents.
I drove all over Chicago blacked out. It's the grace of God who I didn't believe in at that time. So I went to my first meeting the next day on a Sunday at the Austin YMCA on the west side of Chicago and never took another drink.
That's almost 58 years ago, which is incredible. For an alcoholic, that's to move from one side of the earth to the other. And I started going to meetings and my sponsor didn't tell me what to do and I couldn't figure out what to do.
So with about a year of sobriety, I'd gone into business because I had a lot of greed and not much talent and I got in a lot of trouble because of some very dishonest business activities. It's over a year. My problems are not because I'm an alcoholic.
My problems are that because I can be very dishonest, very greedy, very ridiculous, irresponsible sober. And that's what I proved. I was sober about a year in all kinds of trouble.
And I said to a friend of mine, I wonder if missed something in the program. He said, my boy, you missed the whole program. He said, you kept such an open mind, the whole program just blew right through.
And I said, I see. I catch on very quickly. So they talked to me about God as we understand him.
Well, I'd never heard that concept because the way I was brought up, they said, "If you don't believe this way, you're going to be part of an eternal marshmallow roast and you're liable to be one of the marshmallows." And I would say, "How come?" They'd say, "That's because God loves you." And I gradually concluded that I could live better with less cosmic affection. I tried being an atheist. That didn't work too well either.
I was a kind of a cowardly agnostic. When I had money and I felt good, then I didn't believe in God. But when I got in trouble, I always believed in God.
I cracked up a plane one night flying. And uh I flew single engine sea planes as I mentioned and I landed it about like this night flying. And uh looked at it, they pulled it out the next day.
I looked at the cockpit. It was wrapped over the left rudder pedal. So, I should have gotten trapped in it when it turned over, but some people got me.
But when I was hanging on to the side of that aircraft, hoping somebody would find me. You never heard such fervent prayers in your whole mind. But the idea of God as we understand him, step two, came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Well, I thought I was only crazy when I was drinking. I was crazy all the time. I mean, I really was.
I was crazy when I took the first drink. I am crazy when I live in a way that cuts me off from the grace of God, which you do through dishonest and irresponsible living. I think that truth equals sanity.
I think that sanity being restored to sanity means that I attempt to live by the truth. Don't lie, cheat, or steal. I've done a lot of that sober.
I'm sorry to say. I try not to do it anymore. Step three.
I thought I had taken the third step when I first came in. And it turned out that I continue to do that over and over. I think we're all familiar with the third step prayer on page 63.
I try to do that every day. When I work with somebody, I sponsor somebody in AA. We do the third step together.
We get right into the fourth step, the fifth step, and the amends. We don't wait because if you wait, you can get lost. I think that hurry and overwork are sins.
Gandandy said that knowledge is only useful when we use it to experience a change within ourselves. I think whatever I read or know about the steps is useless unless I use them to change so that I can understand something that's not possible for me to understand otherwise. So I try to do the third step every day.
I think it's important as part of that to try to be honest and open with people, to say what I do, to be open and do what I say. If I make an agreement with somebody, then I deliver on it. I took my first fourth step when I was sober a year and I did it when I was in all kinds of trouble for my business dishonesty and I wrote as honest an inventory as I could and I met a stranger.
I had always considered myself a very honest person. I was a liar, a cheat, a thief, all in kind of a minor league way because I never had the courage to be a big one really good at that stuff. But I never I never knew that till I saw it.
And I continued to do fourth and fifth steps. When I was I I I heard in the group that I grew up in that you did one fourth and fifth step and then you did 10, 11, and 12 the rest of your life. And I came to the realization later on when I was sober.
Everybody know the truth. If you don't hide anything, then whatever anybody knows about you is fine. And I discovered as I continued to do this was that a lot of people in aa sober a long time who were depressed or who couldn't stay sober had never done a good fourth and fifth step or had not continued to do that.
A man that I knew years ago who's now dead was around, bounced around for two and a half years drunk and finally he did a fourth step and three-fifth steps in a couple of weeks and he had high blood pressure and he used to go to the doctor every 3 months to be monitored. He took his three-fifth steps, went to the doctor, and the doctor discovered that his blood pressure was normal, never was high again. another friend of mine who had a lot of trouble with sexual fantasies.
No matter what he did with the steps and meetings, he had was obsessed with these sexual fantasies. And he was very dishonest in that he would what he do what he called harmless BSing. He lied all the time about stories and things that happened to him that never happened to him.
And he was always fiscally irresponsible. He was always buying things on credit that he couldn't pay for. He never paid off a car.
He always refinanced and so forth. And he talked to Hbert Mau, this guy from Illinois. And Mau said, "Those are your problems." But when he talked to him, he said, "I think I have a guilt complex." And Mau said, "No, you sobb.
You don't don't have a guilt complex. You're guilty." So So he told him to uh start living within his income and start the harmless BSing. You know what happened?
The fantasies went away. Who could ever guess that they were connected? But they are connected.
I think that the fifth step is tremendously important and I have done a lot of them and I continue to do a lot of them. We've got a guy coming in from Seattle on Thursday of ne Wednesday of next week who's sober 22 years. He's in lousy shape and he will be there for about four days and in the process he will do a number of fifth steps with people in the group.
When somebody comes to us to do a fifth step, we take our fifth step thoroughly at the same time. We swap them. We don't play therapist or spiritual guide.
We also believe that men should take fifth steps with men and women take fifth steps with women. We find that working on that basis there is less tendency to generate new material that requires additional fourth and fifth steps. The man I've known for many years when he was sober about a year wanted a drink and he didn't want to drink but he was afraid that he was going to and he had not taken a fourth and fifth step.
After much urging he did and he woke up the next day and the desire to drink was gone. Later on, this same man had a problem with a lady down the street who was describing all kinds of wonderful things that she would do for him and he didn't think his wife would like that. But again, he was obsessed with this fantasy with this lady and he had been told for a long time to make an amend to his father who had treated him very badly.
and he finally reluctantly made the amend to his father and that whole problem with the fantasy with the lady next door or down the street went away. It is all connected. I think it's important that the steps I've seen make the biggest changes in people are four and five and eight and nine.
And again and again I think that if we do that we we find that there is just a huge difference in our lives. when I was when I was sober about let me see it would have been 1968. So I was sober 21 years.
I had a lot of problems with people because I spent those some years working on construction up in northern Greenland 1951 2 3 and four. I worked in Tuli Greenland which is 850 miles from the North Pole. I went up there as a laborer.
When I was drinking, a lot of people told me I was a smart young man and if I sobered up, I'd go far. I was 850 miles from the pole, which was a lot farther than I had planned to go. Worked on construction in Iceland in 19 55, Point Barrow, Alaska in 56 and 7.
Most of the time my big book came out of the my PA came out of the big book. We had an AA up in Point Barrow, Alaska named Nick whose father was Jewish and his mother was Eskimo. And he said he was AA's only Jews, which I suspect was true.
But 1968, so over 21 years, I had a lot of problems with a lot of people. I had come back to the area in 1959, gone to work for a trade association doing publicity work and so forth. A background I'd never had.
I don't know why this guy hired me, but while I was gone, they had a lot of things going on that had not been going on when I left. They had conferences and banquetss and delegates to New York. I saw that there was a click that ran this and I got my own click.
I started running everything I could find in Chicago. Problem arose because a lot of people didn't understand God's will when I explained it to them. And I had a lot of difficulty with a lot of people all caused by me sober.
And I was at a meeting one night and I was talking to a guy there and mentioned my problem. And he's sober three or four years. I was his sponsor.
He'd done a lot of work with him with the steps. And u so I said, "What do you think I ought to do?" And he said, "Well, I think you ought to make out a new fourth step, no eighth step, rather than go around and make amends to those people." which I thought was kind of strange advice to give to one of AA's leaders. I did that and I made amends to those 10 people and then something opened up that I've been trying to deal with and that was my father.
I'd been calling him up and suggesting that we get together and he didn't want to do that. He said, and I could make an I think an accurate case that 90% of the harm in that pro in that relationship had been done by him. And I came to understand that if there's an important relationship in your life and it's not healthy, you're not going to be healthy till it is is made better.
So I went to see those people around Chicago and I made amends to them. Not everybody received them with the grace I thought they should. But what happened was after that and everything is connected.
I got a something some business to do down in Miami at a convention and I stopped stopped in this little town in South Georgia on my way back. man was who was the secretary of the group as somebody I'd played baseball with many years before and I went to see my father unannounced because when I used to call him he didn't want to get together and I went to see him unannounced and came to the door and I made an amend to him and then I told him who I was and said I'd like to come in and talk with you and he said come in and we talked for maybe 25 minutes which were very painful minutes I think the past is always there. But I think if we can reach back into it and change it, and I think that unless we do that and make it healthy, it's going to be affecting us adversely ever since.
So I went home and about 3 months later, I got the feeling I should go see him again. I did that unannounced. And again, it was a very painful visit.
And after that second visit, I was home having a quiet time. And it was as if a big layer of my life had peeled away. and I saw another 10 names that went on my amends list that somehow or other I would never have seen until I made that relationship better.
Two weeks after that second visit, my father died. I went to his funeral. There are times when easy does not do it.
If anybody here has anything like that in your life, I would say go do it right now because next week the opportunity might be gone forever. one of the men in our group. A week ago, we had a meeting on step nine and he said that he had made two amends and uh he no longer had this problem with the internet porn as I probably mentioned earlier, but you know it it is connected and everything does work.
All I have to do is continue to do the work. And the easier, softer way is for me to work the steps. I try to do step 10 every day.
And one of the things I try to do is I try to exercise. I work out in the gym three times a week. I work out at home every day.
Another thing I started doing a long time ago is tithe. That's giving 10% of my income to charity. And I find that very helpful because I think that I have I've got a lot of trouble with greed.
Not always greed for money, but I spent a lot of time being a famous AA. And there is nothing more useless than a famous AA. I'll tell you that.
But I on step 11, I try to meditate every day a substantial amount of time. Meister Ekhard said that if I pray for nothing, for something I do not pray. If I pray for nothing, I really pray.
I think that's true. Simply sitting quietly for as much time as possible, an hour, two, three hours a day, I have the time because I don't do much of anything else else except try to remember where I am. But I think that asking for nothing, saying, "Thy will be done over and over, I'm led where I belong every day." Because the promises in the big book are absolutely true.
The steps change our lives and as our lives change, we find that we get everything we need and we really don't need anything else. Step 12, the message. How soon should we do the 12 steps?
Well, I think we should do them right away. I think that when we work with somebody, I think that's what we do. Earl Treat took Dr.
Bob through the equivalent. They only had six steps. He took them through the equivalent of the 12 steps with the first the six steps in 1939 and Earl came here and started AA.
Dr. Bob had the first slip and he ran out and made amends right after he sobered up because he thought that was perhaps why he had gotten drunk. I think that to practice these principles in all my affairs is difficult for me.
But I have to keep trying to do it. I know a man who years ago, he was sober 22 years. He came up from Indianapolis sober.
I think it was 15 years ago. And he was in some trouble for some personal behavior which his wife didn't approve of. And he did a series of fifth steps and went back with a list of amends.
And he had some things in his fifth step. He owed money to about five different people that he kept talking about. Never paid the money.
And we said, "Well, you go back and you start paying the people a money." And after, I'm not sure 6 months or a year, his wife, who's a good Alanon, you probably know the definition of an Alanon slip. It's that fleeting moment of compassion. But she said, you know, not much is happening.
She said, you're trying to pay off this money and nothing's happening. She said, we've got a big equity in our house. This is a pretty good lady.
She said, let's sell the house, pay off all the bills. we'll rent a trailer and we'll live in that till we can afford another house which is what they did and I think that really is what the program demands that we do these things and become willing to go to any lengths to get it. The message in AA that I understand and have come to see through the years is summed up by a man I knew many years ago and he bounced around AA drunk for about 15 years.
Never could stay sober. 1971 he sobered up again and started going to our step group and he started working the 12 steps. He had three boys and the youngest was eight in a class for children because he couldn't learn.
His father was a very badly behaved alcoholic. The father sobered up and he began to work the steps and the boy went from the class for children to a regular class doing average work. continued to get better.
And when the boy graduated from high school, I had lunch with the father. I said, "How'd your boy do in high school?" He said, "He made the honor roll every grade period but one." He said he was a varsity football player. He said, "He wasn't I was retarded." He said, "If all I had done is quit drinking and not work the steps, none of this would have happened." And that's how I understand the AA message today that you and I have available to us.
A program that will give us everything we really need spiritually. Because if we find what we have spiritually, we will have everything we really want. I would not remember that message without the help of all of you here.
Thank you very much for listening. 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.