I said, yeah,

I do.

Yeah, I do.

He says, but you drink that liquor.

That'd make you stupid.

I said, oh, I don't know, man.

I like that liquor.

Nothing left.

So...

In meditation and in step 11 through prayer meditation, I am trying to get my life and keep my life out of the hands of the idiot, out of the hands of this.

I was very, very confused about step 11.

This exercise we did in the beginning, is not an AA-approved exercise.

It's something I've been doing.

I used to do meditation before I even got sober.

And one of the things that seems to be true in my own recovery is that the more I think I know, the less I know.

it.

no.

Oh, no.

All the money.

Oh, my God.

In my head, I started thinking, oh, my God, if I had a good job and I worked for 50 years, I don't think I would make enough money to pay it all back.

Because I lived, I was a criminal.

Stealing was a way of life.

get it.

[laughing]

And it was odd because I'd been through...

I'd been to my first, in about 1981, I guess, I'd been to my first Joe and Charlie, uh, workshop.

And right after going through the workshop, um, I had a guy, a sponsor, who was really, uh, he could not stay sober.

He was plagued with resentments and just, uh, tough, tough case.

And, and I sat down with him, and we went through the book starting on page 64, and we literally did everything that he-- that it says to do, and I showed him how to do it.

And I'll tell you something, I could see more and understand more about how to do a fourth step by trying to help a guy do a fourth step than I could have ever seen trying to study the book to do a fourth step for me to do it.

[laughs]

[laughs] And you see the same thing with women.

Kathy does-- watches women in our, in our group do this.

They, they're really alcoholic, very involved in AA till they get in a relationship, and then they're really not as alcoholic as they used to be.

They're diverted from their primary purpose.

And this thing about endorsement, in the-- check it out, in the long form, it, it says it, it says some things that are very specific.

It says, "Problems of money, property, and authority may easily divert us from our primary spiritual aim." Boy, they're not kidding.

[laughing]

And isn't it funny? That's the first thing I wanna be.