I Killed

They Laughed When I Got Up To
the Podium Microphone.

But when They Heard Me Speak! –

“Is he really sober ninety days?” a girl whispered. “Heavens no!” Peter B. exclaimed. “He’s never been happy, joyous or free in his life. “But you watch him . . . . This is going to be good. At least he’ll be getting what he needs.” “Don’t forget Freddy M. comes on at one O’clock to talk about “denial”. He’s a powerhouse of stories. Tells some great jokes too. We are not a glum lot. You’ll love his message.”

Peter had just spoken about ‘Acceptance‘ The room rang with applause. I decided that this would be a dramatic moment in which to make my “AA Roundup” debut. To the amazement of all my friends, I strode confidently over to the podium and said “My name is Danny S. I’m an alcoholic ANDA drug addict and I tapped the microphone. Thuk Thuk “Can ya hear me now?” Already I was getting a smattering of good natured chuckles from the crowd. An old lady in the front row nodded approvingly.

Then I started to speak.
Instantly a tense silence fell on the crowd. The laughter died on their lips as if by magic. I was like a pianist playing through the first few bars of Beethoven’s immortal Moonlight Sonata. I heard gasps of amazement. My friends sat breathless — spellbound!

“There isn’t anything so bad in my life today that a drink will make better.” I said, and I swear that right then I heard someone say, “Uh-huh” from the side of the room. Someone in the back of the room, I am sure said “Amen”. It was like I was a preacher or doing stand-up at the Improve. I KILLED! I was slaying them left and right. Surely I was even saving lives with just the wagging of my golden AA tongue.

I talked and talked and as I did I forgot the people around me. I forgot the hour, the place, the breathless listeners. The little world I lived in seemed to fade — seemed to grow dim — unreal. Only the talk was real. Only the music of my speaking and visions it brought me. Visions as beautiful and as changing as the wind blown clouds and drifting moonlight that long ago inspired the master composers. It seemed as if Bill W. himself were speaking — speaking through the medium of ME — not in drunkolgue lingo like I used to do but in genuine AA slogans, AA snippets from Conference Approved literature and little jokes that made people laugh. I spoke not in sentences but in exquisite melodies! This MUST be the Language of the Heart! I thought.

A Complete Triumph!
As the last words of my talk left my lips I said “You people are the ones that keep me sober. If I stay in the middle of the pack – I can’t get picked off by the lions.“ Then I said something right out the mouth of Dr. Bob himself. “Keep it Simple.” I said. Then the coup- -de-grace, “ALL you have to do is KEEP COMING BACK and take the Program to the best of your abilities.” The room resounded with a sudden roar of applause. I found myself surrounded by excited faces. How my friends carried on! Men shook my hand — wildly congratulated me — pounded me on the back in their enthusiasm! Everybody was exclaiming with delight — plying me with rapid questions… “Freddy! Why didn’t you tell us you could talk like that?”… “Where did you learn?” — “How long have you been coming?” — “Who’s your sponsor?”

“I have never even seen my sponsor,” I replied. “And I haven’t even taken the Steps. A short while ago all I ever spoke about was my boring problems as a drunk.”

“Quit your kidding,” laughed Frank B., himself an accomplished AA speaker. “You’ve been around for years and have been to thousands of meetings. I can tell.”

“I have been sober only a short while,” I insisted. “I decided to keep what I have been retaining in my head a secret so that I could surprise all you folks.”

Then I told them the whole story.

“You’re familiar with the Twelve and Twelve, right?” I asked.

A few of my friends nodded. “Of course. That’s the book with the Steps in it!”

How I Learned to talk “The Steps” Without a Big Book
And then I explained how for as long as I had been coming around I had longed to be an AA Giant – to be able to speak from the podium with presence and to share in open discussion meetings like a someone who knew the ropes – launching pithy “shares” that would make other meeting-goers cringe in awe of my AA tenure. Like an “old-timer”.

“A few weeks ago,” I continued, “I ran into an interesting person named Marty. Marty talks in meetings like he knows something. And he does! He never took the steps, and proudly announces this at every chance, then he goes on to talk like a champ. He’s sober thirty years so it all sounds so credible. Well, Marty has a method of sounding fantastic in meetings and he truly believes that he is carrying the message when he does. It had taken him years to get the patter down just right, just by practicing at open discussion meetings but all of the information came right out of a collection of books that he had. They were written by Emmet Fox, and Bill W himself – Sermon on the Mount and the Twelve and Twelve even the 24 Hour book from Hazelton. He told me how he had mastered the art of speaking in front of drunks in his spare time in small open discussion meeting, reading books — and without a sponsor! Best of all, the wonderful method he used, required no laborious Steps — no heartless Big Book Study groups — no tiresome practicing of the principles in the Big Book – he had not even ever had a spiritual experience as far as he was aware – except that all his studies and hearing himself speak seem to be giving him what he calls “spiritual experiences of the educational variety.”

Oh man. I thought. That is heavy.

“Yep.” Marty said. “Spiritual experiences of the education variety – it’s right there in the Blue Book. I think so anyway.”

Marty has educated himself right into not drinking. Then with a sprinkling of AA slogans and a few mentions of Higher Power – VIOLA! It sounded so convincing that I went home and pulled out all the AA books I could find. Except the Big Book of course. That’s too hard to understand until I’m sober a while. “No sense in rushing.” as Marty says. “It took me seven years of AA meetings and puttin’ the plug in the jug – before I even began the Steps”. And he’s still sober.

Speak and Share like an Old-timer
You too, can now teach yourself to be an accomplished AA speaker – whether you want to speak from podiums or just sitting in a folding chair at your favorite open discussion meeting — and you can do it right at home. You can’t go wrong with this simple method which has already shown 350,000 people how to sound like they have been around AA for years and years and have “a few 24s”. Forget the old-fashioned idea that you need an experienced sponsor who has recovered and need to qualify as a real alcoholic, to accept God as your higher power, do drastic, thorough and potentially embarrassing inventories. No need to make ALL of your amends right away either. Take years to do it if you like. Take your whole lifetime if necessary. You will learn to call them “LIVING AMENDS” and still sound like you are practicing these principles in all your affairs.

No Experience? No Problem!
No need to have a spiritual experience either. Your opinions about an experience you have never had will be enough when supplemented through our method. You will be able to just say “I put the plug in the jug” or “Just don’t drink and go to meetings” and mean it. You can remain “recovering” your entire life without ever having to drink or actually recover. No need to even sponsor others either – taking them through the Twelve Steps. “Work with Others” anyway you want – such as driving them meetings. Taking phone calls. Becoming a “greeter” and think that you are working a Program – all in good conscience. And you will have load of “alcoholic’ friends with which to “hang” all of whom you’ve impressed with your new outspoken aura.

You only have to select from our list of books, decide which one you want to take on and the Danny S. School of Middle-of-the -Road Solutions with do the rest. No matter which book you choose, the cost in each case will be the same — just a few minutes a day. No matter what you are a mere beginner or already a good speaker, you will be interested in learning about this new and wonderful method.

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Say The Secret Woid

Do you know the secret words to say from a podium when speaking that will bring the puking, suffering alcoholic in from the cold – and motivate him so much that he just HAS to pickup the spiritual kit laid in front of him and recover?

Me neither.

It took a long time – too long, years – to see that looking for those “Magic quotes” from the Big Book or that one compelling story out of my drunkolgue and tossing them like some sort of an ertsatz lifesaver to the drowning drunks sitting in front of me – is not going to convince one single real alcoholic who is headed for his next first-drink to not take it – not if that person is beyond human aid. As for the non-alcoholics – who gives a crumb? They have other solutions. They don’t need the one I have found.

Today I don’t speak from the podium or in any meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous about anything with which I have no experience.

I do not say what I think this or that means or how this will be or that will be when I get around to doing it. I am no longer arrogant and pompous enough to presuppose God is talking through me and someone is being helped, no matter what asinine, stupid things happen to pour out of my mouth. I am arrogant – don’t get me wrong - just not THAT arrogant anymore.

I have a living experience with what is in that book, have had spiritual experiences and spiritual awakenings and can tell others about it, so they can have some hope too. And for folks who also have what I have, I don’t need to say anything, except “Get any good newcomers lately”?

Today I am able to look a room of a hundred or so drunks in the eyes and say “My name is Danny, I am an alcoholic and I have recovered” - and tell them what I was like, what happened and what I am like now, without over qualifying, without giving a drunkalogue that will be boring them to tears. SOME drunkologue perhaps – but not a story that begins with, “I was born into an alcoholic family”. . . OH GOD SPARE US!

Peace,

Danny S

Is Your Story Boring?

Have you ever gone to a meeting and heard the speaker say something like, “I am nervous but I guess God gives me what I need”?

MAN! I want to puke when I hear self-centered crap like that!

What THEY need? They are speaking to benefit THEMSELVES? That’s why they are there? How self-centered is that?

No wonder most speakers we experience in meetings sound like shit! . . .

. . . and are boring as all hell.

We are not speaking in meetings for OUR NEEDS; we are speaking in meetings for NEWCOMERS needs. But I guess if someone is still recovering, they have nothing to transmit anyway. All they have is their story and it is useless to real alcoholics. Non-alcoholics like them though – heavy drinkers who CAN stay away from a drink by “Keeping It Green” and being reminded about how bad it was. But a real alcoholic?

We know that for the real McCoy,

“We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink.” (24:1)

There are no stories that will keep us “Scared straight.” Only heavy drinkers have such experiences in AA meetings. It works for them!

How about speaking at a meeting and dying right in front of the group – like a comic who tells a joke that goes over his audiences head? The silence is deafening, right? In AA that may not always be a bad thing.

One thing I do with sponsees is I show them how to speak in meetings without putting real alcoholics to sleep and ignoring the newcomer. I know there aren’t any instructions on that in the Big Book, so I use the ol‘ tried and true formula.

Speaking in meetings is not 12 stepping, of course, (That’s one alcoholic talking to another – not one alcoholic talking to 20) but hell, its such a good formula the ol’

* “What I was like” (allergic and obsessive)

* “What happened” (The spiritual awakening, physic change)

* “What I am like now” (New attitude, new behaviors, the desire to drink removed and character defects in check through a Program).

If we are speaking to a roomful of heavy drinkers, they should NOT be able to identify. They SHOULD be pissed off or confused. They will be hearing a real alcoholic experience with obsession COMBINED with allergy. They don’t have these in their histories.

They won’t be hearing “What they need” to stay sober. They will hear what an alcoholic needs to stay sober – and they will not identify! What THEY need to stay sober is NOT the same thing that a real alcoholic needs to stay sober.

When speaking in a roomful of middle-of-the-roaders, we shouldn’t be “killing” like a stand up comic – we should be reaching the minority – the real alcoholic. Maybe that’s the ONE guy bobbing his head and comes up afterwards and says, “WOW…I drank like that. Thank you. Will you be my sponsor?”

It’s good advertising, if we have the onions to broadcast within our Primary Purpose.

Just think about how cool it would be to go a meeting right now, and hear a recovered alcoholic carrying the message of AAs Program to a room of say, a hundred people, and KNOWING that in that room, somewhere one, two or more newcomers where sitting and hearing THIS for the first time in their lives!!

How COOL would it be to be apart of that? Just to be in the room to witnessing a miracle in progress, a legacy being carried forward.

Maybe if we who have recovered through the steps can continue to talk out of the Big Book Program we can BORE THE middle-of-the-roaders away! — the same way they are boring us right now in the Fellowship.

Whaddya think? Are you with me?

Peace,

Danny S