C: Hi everybody, my name is Charlie P -----, and I'm a
very grateful recovering alcoholic.
Group: Hi Charlie.
C: Because I'm a member of the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and
by the grace of the Power that I found in the Twelve Step program of
"Alcoholics Anonymous", I haven't found it necessary to take a
drink for 6,309 days today, one day at a time, and for this I'm very
grateful. Sure is good to be in Arizona, doing a Big Book study. We talked
about this seems like two or three years ago--and I thought it was going
to be a long time and all of a sudden here it is. We're sitting in the
middle of Arizona and get to talk about the thing we love to talk about
the most.
The only thing I can really say at the present time, from the looks of
the visitors that stood up, there must be some damn heavy drinkers down
there in Tucson. (laughter) Hell of a bunch of them up here.
J: Bill and A1 back there.
C: Yeah, we just saw two good friends come in from Los Angeles. How
about that. Hi Bill and A1. Good to see you all.
We always like to say at the beginning of one of these things that we
do not consider ourselves to be the gurus of the Big Book. We are most
certainly not experts on anything period. We do not speak for A. A. as a
whole. Nobody can do that. And you are most certainly free to agree or
disagree with anything that we say this weekend as you see fit.
In fact we would recommend you pay no attention to anything that we're
going to say, if you can't reconcile it with what's in the Big Book or
other A. A. Conference approved material. We're just a couple of drunks
who happened to meet years ago, and found a mutual interest in the Big
Book, and began to study it together, and hopefully we've learned a couple
of things about it.
We love to share what little bit we know with other people. We like to
laugh and we like to cut up and we love to have fun. We believe we should
be Joyous, happy, and free. We love to tell jokes and from time to time
we'll do that. I think we'll find there's a lot of humor in the Big
Book--a lot of things we can laugh at and have a good time with.
We try to keep one of these things just as informal as we possibly can.
We know the mind can only absorb about what the rear end can stand. Some
of these sessions will become quite long. You may feel the need to get up
and walk around a little bit. If you do, please feel free to do that. That
won't bother us at all. You may feel the need to get up and go get
yourself a cup of coffee.
As I understand it., coffee will always be there. So if you need a cup
of coffee, please feel free to go get that at any time. You may feel it
necessary to get up and go get rid of a cup of coffee and if you do,
(laughter) please feel free to do that also.
What we really want to do is have a good time this weekend: all of us
enjoy it, all of us kind of make it a learning session. Maybe we can learn
something about our Big Book, and about the twelve steps contained
therein, the program of recovery. Hopefully, we'll all leave here Sunday,
being able to look back over a weekend that we've really had a good time
and we've learned a few things also. Joe.
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