Mike C Speaking to the Barcelona "Easy Does It, But Do It" meeting on October 18, 2023
The Daily Reprieve
Barcelona Meeting - Mike C
[Music] Hello and welcome to the Daily Reprieve, where we provide essays, speaker meetings, workshops, and conferences and podcast format. We are an ad-free podcast. If you enjoy listening, please help us be self-supporting by going to Donate.thewreprieve.com and drop a dollar or two into the virtual basket. Please consider donating monthly by clicking the Donate monthly button. However, one-time donations are always welcome. Just click the Donate Now button. Now, without further ado, this episode of The Daily Reprieve. [Music] Today, the 18th of October, 2023, we're very happy to have with us Mike C from Chicago in the U.S. in recovery since the 3rd of June, 1984. He will be sharing on the topic of building a culture of sobriety. Mike, you have 25 minutes to share and Daniel J has offered to be the timer. Would you like a warning or how would you like to be timed? Yeah, maybe with five minutes left, if Daniel, if you can give me a shout, then I'll be able to hopefully wind down. Okay, wonderful. So, the floor is yours, Mike. Great. I'm Mike and I am recovering sexaholic. Glad to be here so over the day through God's grace and new people. And first of all, thanks for having me. I appreciate it. It looks like a nice big group from literally everywhere and a few familiar faces. Nice to see you all. I started talking about this about 20 years ago, and it came out of the experience of our Wednesday night group. We sometimes still call it the St. Teresa meeting, but we actually moved to another church basement, totally innocent, about 10 years ago. So, you might hear it called the Holy Innocence meeting or the St. Teresa's meeting. But basically, we went through an experience, I want to say somewhere around 20 years ago, where we had a lot of people with long-term sobriety. And then in one year, we had maybe five or six people who had five or more years sobriety relapse in the same year. And we started thinking, of course, each person's responsible ultimately for their own sobriety. I don't think a group can make somebody get sober. But on the other hand, maybe there were things going on in our group that needed looking at it. And so, we had an open forum on a Saturday morning in our meeting space and just no agenda. We just said, let's just talk about what happened. And what came out of it was that we were taking for granted the people who had long-term sobriety that they wouldn't relapse, of course, because they had five years or seven years or eight years. And so, if I was sponsoring somebody with, let's say, a newcomer or somebody with three months, six months, if they called me and said, I had a little lust a day, I kind of laugh and say, I didn't know there was such a thing as a little lust for a sexaholic. And then I'd ask, what do you mean you had a little lust? And they'd say something like, well, I was on the internet for a few minutes. Nobody ever wants to give you a number when they're struggling. And I would say, how many minutes? And he said, well, maybe like 126. I'd say, well, by my count, that's two hours and six minutes. So we got a little problem here. And then I'd say, well, okay, when you say around the internet, what do you mean exactly? Well, I was looking at stuff. And I'd say, what kind of stuff? And I won't get into the details here because we don't want to be graphic in the meeting. But I would try to find out what in God's name was this guy actually doing and for how long. And then go beyond that and ask, what's been going on in your life that may be led you to start crossing boundaries, et cetera, et cetera. I'd hang up the phone. Some guy had been sponsoring for 10 years would call up. We've got 10 years of sobriety, a solid citizen. He does service. He's worked his steps. And he'd say, yeah, I had a little lust today. And I'd say, okay, did you surrender? Yeah. And I surrender it again now. Okay. And I wouldn't be asking the same question that I was asking of that newcomer. And as we went around the room that day, it appeared to be a fairly common experience that we had stopped asking the penetrating questions that needed to be asked of people who've been around a long time. It wasn't intentional. It was just, I don't know if you call it complacency or just maybe an abundance of trust in their program and forgetting how cunning, baffling, powerful, and especially for old-timers, I would say patient. Our disease is. And so we just made a commitment to, you know, when someone called to check in, treat everybody the same way. It was just a little tweak we made in our meeting. And it's not to say, no, we ever relapsed again, but we certainly never had five people with long-term sobriety relapse in the same year again. And we started thinking about, you know, what, what makes for a good group or a strong group? Another way I like to put it is, how do you change, how do you change your gathering from a meeting into a real group? And I started studying two traditions that I think at least speak to that. And I'm gonna, I'm getting my 12 and 12 out here. The first is tradition one, which reads our common welfare should come first. Personal recovery depends upon essay unity. And by the way, when I read a tradition, I always read it twice because the first time everybody's going, oh, no, traditions. So get that out of your system. Then this time I'll read it again, and maybe you can hear it. It says our common welfare should come first. Personal recovery depends upon essay unity. But more interestingly, to me, is the long form in the back of the 12 and 12. So let me get that here. Because it tells you why. The first one just gives you the facts. It doesn't give you the background. This says, each member of Cinexaholics Anonymous is about a small part of a great whole. Essay must continue to live, or most of us will surely die. Hence, or because of that, our common welfare comes first. But individual welfare follows close afterward. I'm gonna shoot that at you one more time. Each member of Cinexaholics Anonymous is but a small part of a great whole. Essay must continue to live, or most of us will surely die. Hence, our common welfare comes first, but individual welfare follows close afterward. Now, when I read that, I realized why newcomers don't like tradition meetings. Imagine if I had been in my first meeting and someone had told me that I, the newest member of that particular Cinexaholics Anonymous group, was but a small part of a great whole. I'd have been thinking, I'm outta here, man. I'm not a small part of anything. I'm Mike C. I am the most wonderful person in the world and the most horrible person in the world. But one thing I'm not is a small part of a great whole. But after a round for a while, and we read this, hopefully we can begin to understand it because it says, you know, why do we have this tradition? Because Essay must continue to live, or most of us will surely die. And I've had some people say, well, you don't really die from this like you do from alcoholism. And I say, oh, really? Have you never heard of STDs? Have you never heard of suicide? Have you never heard of, you know, et cetera, et cetera? Many of us will die. And those of us who don't will be spiritually dead, or many of us, probably all of us. But I guess I shouldn't speak for others. I know that I was. And so it basically says the group's more important than the individual. And to me, that's the first movement that our group didn't know we were doing when we had that open forum. We were we were trying to begin to put the group ahead of the individual. I always laugh when I read the last sentence, but individual welfare follows close afterward. I don't know this to be the case at all, but I could imagine a bunch of them saying to Bill Wilson as they were writing this, you got it, you got to say the individual's still important or nobody will come back. But it's the other sentences that are fascinating to me. I'm about a small part of a great whole. S.A. must continue to live or most of us will die. Hence, our common welfare comes first. The group's more important than the individual. And then the second tradition that I think speaks to this is tradition five. It says, each group has it's doesn't say meeting. It says each group has book one primary purpose to carry the message. I'm sorry, to carry its message to the sexaholic who still suffers. Each group has book one primary purpose to carry its message to the sexaholic who still suffers. Long form is almost exactly the same with this little twist. Each sexaholic's anonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity having book one primary purpose that of carrying its message to the sexaholic who still suffers. One more time, each sexaholic's anonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity having a primary having book one primary purpose that of carrying its message to the sexaholic who still suffers. Now, after giving talks on this for 20 years, I still don't really know what a spiritual entity is exactly. But when I think of an entity, I think of something that has some substance, something that you have to bump into. And when you do, it sort of wakes you up. And so we're supposed to be an entity. We're supposed to have I would say a word I might use is an identity that has one primary purpose. And I love both forms say they don't say the they say that of carrying its message to the sexaholic who still suffers. And in one sense, every group's message is the same. It's sexual sobriety. But in another sense, you know, not every group does it exactly the same way. And I'm not here to tell you to do it exactly the way our group has done it. I'm just here to pass along what our experience, strength and hope around this has been. So one of the questions I think when I when I I used to go around giving talks a lot now, I mostly do it like this from from my office room. But same same idea is is to ask, you know, does your does is your group an entity? Does it have a message? And and will someone who comes into your group understand fairly shortly that the group is the most important thing? Because in fact, it is an entity with a message. And a lot of meetings that I go to are groups that, you know, call me either to come in person or on zoom. It's harder to tell on zoom honestly. So I'll try to talk a little bit about that if I get time how it's changed with zoom. But certainly if I'm there for a weekend conference or something, I can usually tell within the first few hours, whether this is a group that needs some tweaking or whether this is a meeting that has a no idea what it means to be a group. So let me tell you some of the stuff that happened with us. One of one of the early things was at the end of the meeting, the chairperson asked someone to say the Lord's prayer at the end of the meeting. That's what we do. And for many years, the person who was asked was invariably the person with the, I would say, saddest relapse story of the week. Whoever we felt the most sorry for, you know, this guy, you know, he's married. He's got three kids, but he's also got three girlfriends and his wife caught him with two of them. And I mean, I'm not making this up, but you know, the extreme case. And, you know, someone would say, say the guy's name was Joe, geez, what a story Joe had today, Joe, why don't you lead us in the Lord's prayer? And one day someone from out of town was there and he came up to me afterward and he said, isn't that kind of stupid to ask drunk people to lead the Lord's prayer? If you're focused on sobriety. And after being briefly offended at him having dared tell me the absolute total and complete truth. I said, yeah, it really is absolutely, absolutely stupid, you know, and then after business meeting and whatnot, you know, we now ask someone maybe with a sobriety anniversary, for example, to lead the Lord's prayer. So I'm just going to go over some of the other things that we do. One thing that we don't do is, and some meetings do this and some don't, is if there's newcomers, we never take them out of the room with a few people to explain the program. We want them to see this meeting in action, this group, this spiritual entity in action. We want them to get a sense of the primary purpose. But what we do do is we announce at the beginning of the meeting, any newcomer or anyone else who doesn't have a sponsor can get one by the end by the time they leave tonight by going to see the chairperson and we have a list of sponsors, temporary sponsors, etc. And generally speaking, again, that we had to tweak this because of Zoom, but when we were all in person, the chair would never wait for those people to come up to him. He would just or her, he would just go up and say, you're new, would you like a sponsor? And 95% of the time, the people say yes. But if somebody doesn't ask him, I don't think 95% of them ever came up and asked for a sponsor. So what we found on Zoom, we had to have another business meeting because a guy who'd been on Zoom for three months, when we read that one week, raised his hand at the, you know, as there any business and said, you know, no one ever did that for me. And we realized that it had sort of started slipping through the cracks, not all the time, but a fair amount of the time. We weren't doing that on Zoom. And so now we put a new thing in that, you know, if you're a newcomer or a temporary sponsors, please stay on Zoom for five minutes after the meeting so we can match people up. So another thing a lot of groups do this week, we have members with 30 days or more sobriety, share first in the meeting, and then afterward other people. And when that initially came up, it was hugely kind of traversal because people were saying, you're creating a two-tiered system, you're making some people better than others on all of this stuff. And but what the group, you know, decided not unanimously, but you know, 85% plus was, no, what we're saying is, we're here to stay sober and help other people stay sober. So let's have sober people speak first. You know, there's more of these things that we do, which I may get into, but I want to kind of shift gears a little bit. I want to talk more about what it's, what its foundation has become as we've focused on it. And that is two things I would say that have to do with transparency, total group transparency, and sponsorship. What we realized after a time was that, although I might be, say, Jerry's sponsor here, that just means I'm the first point of contact. But really, the whole group is Jerry's sponsor. Jerry may not share every detail with everybody that he might share with me, but I need to be able to go to anybody in the group or frankly, anybody within essay and also nobody outside of essay to help Jerry with his problem. And we learned this because we had a guy with beautiful sexaholic logic who explained to us that he had contracted a STD that he was going to go home that night and have sex with his wife, even though he had done so. Because if he didn't, they had a date or something. If he didn't, she would suspect that he might have a sexually transmitted disease. This was perfect sexaholic logic. And he initially only told his sponsor this and said, by the way, our relationship's confidential, right? And the sponsor said, yes. And then he told the sponsors and the sponsor, you know, was like, this guy could like get his wife sick, potentially kill his wife. And, you know, he felt like he couldn't tell any of the rest of us because he had this confidential relationship with his sponsor. Eventually, thank God, he did tell us. And we met with the guy and had what we call a check meeting, which I'll get into in a couple minutes. And the guy disappeared. You know, he wanted nothing to do with it. But we realized that, yeah, we don't talk to people outside of the program, but within the program, if I'm sponsoring Jerry, and Jerry has a problem, and I can't deal with it. I don't have the solution. I need help. In other words, I need to be able to ask for it from anybody else in my group, or even beyond my group in sexaholics and honors. I mean, there's several times a year that I'll call Harvey or, or Art or Judson or somebody in the program to say, Hey, I got one for you. We got a situation. I don't know how to deal with it. And that's transformed our group because we really know one another. And out of that knowledge, we really love one another. And, and, and guys and gals in our meeting now expect to be challenged in that way that no, you know, if someone says to me who I'm sponsoring, I got something to tell you and you can't tell anybody else, I say, I don't want to know. If you're going to tell me, I have to have the right to talk to others about this in the group. And that's, that was even more than the things I started to read you about different, you know, little tweaks in the meeting. And those are important too. But I realized I was getting the card before the horse in the sense that the real thing that changed was we realized this group, every time a newcomer walks in, this group is on to sponsor that person into sexual sobriety and, and to stay with them and, and to help him or her in any way possible. And that really, that really strengthened our focus on that first tradition that, hey, our common welfare comes first. The group is more important than the individual because without the group, most of us are going to die either physically, spiritually or both. And then the, that, that fifth tradition that we did have a message, you know, and I met, you know, there's sort of an expectation in our group that people are going to stay sober. It doesn't mean nobody ever relapses. It doesn't mean we have any control over anybody. But it does mean we've developed culture that says, we're here for sobriety. And a lot of times when I go around to talk to groups, they're really still just meetings. It's basically a collection of 40 individuals who are there to help if they can, but primarily to get help for themselves. And we've tried to turn that on its head and say, no, primarily to give help because that's ultimately as Bill Wilson and Bob Smith figure out the best way to get help for yourself is to give it. So that's kind of the concept behind it. What would be some examples? And I won't say where any of these places are because it's not important, but I went out on one of these weekend things one time. And the guy who invited me was all excited to have me and everything. And as the, as course of the weekend was going on five, thank you, Daniel, as the course of the meeting was going on, almost everything I said, he was arguing with, which was his right. It was fine. But then somebody came up and said, by the way, this guy who's kind of the guru of our group, he's only been sober about 26 days. I said, oh, how long has he been around 20 years? How long has he been sort of the leader of your group? Almost 20 years. So not only was he arguing with me, he was pretty hostile, you know, and at the final closing thing, he got up and kind of dissed everything I'd said. And I didn't take it too personally. I only had to, I had to talk to my sponsor to work through it for about three months after that. No, I'm exaggerating, but a while. But then someone asked me, you know, in the final Q and A kind of thing, if there was one thing you'd have to say is impeding our group from, you know, buying into the kind of stuff you're talking about, what would it be? And I thought, well, I'm supposed to be honest, but I don't want to be brutal. So I just kind of shook my head and I said, you have a leadership problem. Well, what do you mean? And I said, well, you have a guy who's basically been relapsing for 20 years, who's kind of running this operation. That's not going to work. You know, another group they had, and this is pretty common. That one wasn't that common. That one threw me even for a loop. But another thing that is pretty common is guys relapse and they keep sponsoring people as if nothing's happened. It's a disaster for two reasons. Number one, and oftentimes, the comparison to Alcoholics Anonymous helps imagine somebody being literally drunk on alcohol sponsoring you through the steps. You just, you know, but in SA, you know, we got what? 40 some people here and 42, according to this, we got 42 people here. And you know, 15 of us could be drunk and none of us would know it, you know. And so it's, you know, we had a thing that when we had that open forum, we had to tell those five guys, you know, you need to stop sponsoring. You're not sober. And the people who were most most upset weren't the five guys. It was the sponsorsees who didn't care. He's helped me so much. I'm sure he has, but he's not sober and he's not going to be very helpful to you right now. And if we're a group with a primary purpose of sobriety, and if the group's more important than the individual, then you have to realize sponsee not intentionally, but you're being kind of selfish. These guys need some help. You know, they are, they are, they have a disease, a deadly disease, that disease is now in relapse, and they're in, they're in no shape to sponsor you, even if they think they are, even if you think they are, they're not. And so those are the kind of things, you know, that, that we had to focus on. And sometimes that mean, well, let me, let me close with this. And I'll try not to go over. And if I do, it won't be long. Love involves two things, support and challenge. And most essay groups are really good at the first one. And they have varying degrees of being good at the second one. And the example I use, which is hypothetical, thank God it never happened. But my, my son is 16. He wants the car. It's his first time going out with his girlfriend with the car. And I lay down some ground rules, no drinking, no drugs. Please don't be having sex in my car and be home by midnight. And last and most importantly, please fill the gas tank. Okay, those are my five things. Two o'clock in the morning, I hear something hitting my garage. I go out. And there's my son. He's drunk. There's, let's just say garments in the car. There's marijuana smoke everywhere. I'm trying to keep my cool. I'm trying not to completely lose it. And then I see I have an empty gas tank. All right. I don't say to my son if I'm, if I'm a good parent, I don't say that's okay, son. Keep coming back. But a lot of times in our meetings, somebody comes with this terrible relapse story and we feel sorry for them. And we want to kind of make them feel better. So like we were doing, we asked them to say the Lord's prayer or something ridiculous like that. When really there's another message, yes, keep coming back. But it's not okay. And our group relapse is not okay. We understand it's part of the disease, but it's not mandatory. And so we try to do what we can to prevent it from happening and to truly love people when it does happen, which means yes, keep coming back. But there's some challenges we need to work through here. And so in some ways, we say this sort of half-kittingly, but in a way not, we say our job isn't to make you feel better if you come in having relapse. It's to make you feel worse so that you can take a look at the deadly disease you are once again now suffering from. So there's a lot more to this, but that's kind of the basics. And with that, I'll pass. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Mike. Thank you, Mike. You're welcome. Thank you. Thanks, Mike. Thank you, Mike. Okay. Wow. Thanks, Mike. That was pretty awesome. A lot of great practical advice. And I was listening carefully because in Barcelona, we're starting up a face-to-face meeting in English. There are a number of meetings in Spanish, but this one is in English. And we get anywhere from one to five people, maybe six. If somebody, I'll bring my laptop and they'll zoom in. So we'll do sort of a little hybrid thing there. And there are only two of us with any significant amount of sobriety over five years. And the rest are newbies or, you know, relapses or whatever. And I'm wondering if you do anything special, if you have a newcomer, a first time to essay in the meeting. What we have done in the past is switch to a newcomer meeting and read some stuff to the newcomer from the beginning of the white book. And then at least those with sobriety will kind of share in a brief synopsis of their story, their experience, strength and hope. I don't know if you do anything different. And then the second part of the question is, since we're doing a hybrid, what about zoom meetings, you were going to comment on that? So thanks. Great questions. What we do, if there's a newcomer, is we either read step zero or step one, we alternate. And then everybody around in their share tries to focus their comment on that newcomer. And then as I mentioned, after the meeting, the chairperson goes up to that person. Or if it's on zoom, we have a group of temporary sponsors who stay on and the chairperson, you know, if you were the newcomer and buddy had been around, I'd say, buddy, can you take on Daniel? Yes. And make so make sure that guy doesn't leave guy or gal without a sponsor, you know, unless they decline, but that's that's pretty rare. So yeah, the other thing is that when you're starting out, you know, a lot of meetings, you know, there just isn't that much sobriety. And so a lot of one question I get that was sort of implied there, but you didn't really ask, but is, you know, okay, this all sounds great. How do you get it going if you've got 10 people and only two of them, you know, say you got a guy with five years, three years and one year, and then you got seven people who either are new or chronic relapsing or whatever. And I always say, well, if you got three, the answer is get four. And what I mean by that is don't try to make business meetings, don't try to make all these changes to the meeting right away. Try to work with, you know, let's say you're in a meeting with 10 people, they're three with sobriety, but you get a sense that these two people, whoever they might be, seem pretty serious, take them out for coffee, explain like this is how we want to do things here. It might be a little bit different, but here's why, you know, sponsor them and slowly, you slowly try to build, if you will, a critical mass of sobriety. And once you get to 50 plus one, you know, like you've got 10 and now you've got five or six people who have six, eight months of sobriety, then you can start to make some of the structural changes. But I think the more important thing is to be getting to know one another and working with guys and women and trying to get the situation where you're slowly kind of changing that. The zoom thing has been difficult. You know, a lot of the stuff we do is sort of what's the word I'm looking for? Organic comes to mind. It's just something that happens. So like when we had 60 people in a room every Wednesday, you know, no way would a newcomer be overlooked. But then on zoom, all of a sudden, we didn't realize we were doing it. And we had to make changes. You know, when we asked for volunteers, whether it be for chairperson, secretary, treasurer, you know, intergroup tells us they need a rep and all those kinds of things, it used to be real simple. I'd look around the room, other people with sobriety would look around the room. We sort of think, oh, yeah, that guy Woody, he's been here six months now and he hasn't done any service. And we'd all kind of look at Woody and we'd smile and then somebody who raised their hand, we nominate Woody. And it's just a little harder to do on zoom, you know, or, or, or, you know, we'd come up before the meeting and someone would say, you know, we need a treasurer. I was like, oh, how about Joe over there? We'd walk over before the meeting. You're about to get nominated, you know, and some of that stuff, it's harder to do on zoom and we haven't figured it all out yet. But we have realized that we have to be more. So word I'm looking for intentional things that happen naturally for a lot of years, slowly some of them stop happening or they were still happening, but more sporadically. And so what we had to do was become more intentional. So now when we're asking for volunteers, you know, we're specifically say, you know, chairman will laugh and say Zoom people are allowed to volunteer to, you know, or sometimes after the meeting, if nobody, we don't get a volunteer, I have to get on the phone with three or four members, long-term members and say, okay, we can't let this go for four weeks, which was starting to happen. We wouldn't be getting volunteers for weeks at a time because right now we have about 15 people in the room and 45 on zoom, and you can't ask the 15 to do everything. So those are just things that, you know, we didn't anticipate and we're working on. So anyway, I hope I've addressed some of those things, Daniel. Yeah, thanks, Mike. Appreciate it. Thank you, Daniel and Mike. Katrine. Thanks, Margot. Hi, my name is Katrine Las Attic. Thank you very much, Mike, for your share that was really enlightening for me. I lead a telephone meeting and I recently felt very guilty when I read the passage of the meeting format in the white book that says, first we let the people with more than 30 days of sobriety share and then the others, we had discussion about this in the business meeting and it was just a reassurance that it's okay to do that because as you said, the primary purpose is to carry our message and the message is sobriety. So I got that now. And the other thing is, since I joined SA in 2016, I have been regular participant in telephone meetings. I love them and there is one participant whom I've known for the whole time that I've been in these meetings. He doesn't get a sponsor. He's discussing about the, you know, the list went to share because he's always under 30 days. He never mentions his exact sobriety date, always just under 30 days. And it puzzles me because he doesn't get worse because I think, you know, if I don't work on my sobriety, I will surely die, at least for me. And as you said, if it's not, you know, physically it is definitely spiritually that I will die. But I see like he's always the same from what he shares. And I don't know what to make of this. Maybe if you have any idea, thank you. Yeah. Yeah, you know, there's always members who, for whatever reason, seem to chronically relapse. We do have a couple, although a lot of those people in our group eventually leave, I think, because the message is sobriety so strong that if they're not ready to get it, that they're not going to get, they're not going to get sort of unintentional enabling of their disease. You know, one of the things about going from a meeting to a group is finding out what ways are we enabling this disease. We don't mean to be, but we are like, like the one I gave. Let's ask the chronic relapse or to lead the Lord's prayer, you know, like, yeah, great. So, you know, some, you know, there are people who, there's even people who stay physically sober, but they're the equivalent of an AA dry drunk. And I don't understand it either. I mean, my image that I like to use is, you know, if relapse is falling off a cliff, then the further away I stay from the cliff, the better my chances are. And how do I stay away from the cliff? Well, first of all, I try not to lust, and if I start to, I call my sponsor, I work the steps, I sponsor people I do service, the basics, right? But there are people who, you know, after guys I've known for 10, 15 years, and they're actually technically sober, but they spend most of their time standing on the edge of the cliff, trying to figure out whether they're going to fall off or not, because they don't do a lot of those other things. And yeah, I don't have an answer for it. I do know that it's not the job of my group to sort of coddle that or give comfort to that. You know, it's not like I'm in the business of kicking people out or trying to control them or anything like that, but I can try to make life uncomfortable both for them. And the best way to do that is to simply have a strong group with a lot of sobriety where you feel like, oh, I'm in the minority here. This isn't particularly like my drama that I'm spewing out every week is not getting a lot of play here. That's healthy. That's a good thing. You know, we had a situation recently where a member who hadn't been there in years came. And during COVID for a period of that, we had a mask policy that eventually be let go of. But, you know, the guy came in and immediately put on the business meeting that he wanted to change the mask policy. Well, he had a right to do that, but nobody'd seen him in years. And all of a sudden he was there trying to do that. And so between the meeting, members call each other and just, you know, manage to line up votes, frankly. And then at the business meeting, he was the only one who voted to change it. And it was 24 to one. And that was just a way to say, you can do whatever you want. But this group right now, we always say this was long before COVID. We always said that we have two main goals in our group, sobriety and safety. It needs to be a safe place. And that was particularly because very early on, we had some people who were treating women incorrectly in the meeting. So much so that one guy who's still with us, about five of us males sat him down after a meeting one day and said, if you sit next to this particular person again, we are going to throw your butt out of this meeting, not necessarily permanently. But for more than a week, like you have sat next to the same woman coincidentally now for six straight weeks and we should have been on it sooner. But you know, whatever we weren't, but we got on it. So, you know, anyway, this guy after the this vote where he lost, he was clearly upset. And he went out, I assumed to go either to storm out of the meeting, but I didn't hear the door close, but he didn't come back for like 15 minutes. So I walk into the next room, he had plugged in his computer and he was working on his computer in the middle of the meeting. And very politely, sort of, I said to him, so and so, this is a sexaholics anonymous meeting. You can't be on that computer. You need to turn it off. And I went back, I said, no, took him a good three or four minutes, but eventually he came out and he left the meeting. And then he called me a week later to tell me how hurt he was about how badly I had treated him. And I just said, well, I'm sorry to feel that way. But honestly, you know, you could have been recording people in the meeting. You can't have your computer on in an essay meeting. So things happen. I don't know if I'm helping you, Katrina, but things happen. Some things you can control, some things you can't. But just the fact that you're switching to the 30 day thing is going to help with that, because that person's going to either want to get 30 days, like most of us would like, I'd rather be with the 30 day crowd than the relapse guy, or he is. And if not, you know, his influence is going to wane become less because that's one little step you've taken to say, yeah, we don't really like this. So I hope that helps. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, Katrina and Mike. So we have, I have at least one question in the chat. And do you have another one, Daniel? Yes, I do have one in the chat. Hey, so let's do plasma and then Avi, and then we'll do chat questions. And Thomas also, we'll do the three of you. But Mike, if you could be a little briefer. Yes, I'm sorry. I tend to go on. Okay. It's wonderful to hear you, but we do have a limited time. I got you. Okay, so plasma. Okay, thank you. I'm last month's alcoholic. Thank you for the speaker. And I just need to ask for for about the willingness. How do you continue? Keep keeping on going with the willingness every day by day? How do you keep this stable? Because this is the main cause, main cause that I guess this is the main one that led me to to many relapses. I didn't want even recovery. So how do you keep your willingness? Thank you. Yeah, good question. I don't think I have the answer to that question. I do think what I like, my favorite sentence in all of 12 step literature is in the AA 12 and 12. And it's the first sentence under step one. And it says, who cares to admit complete defeat? That's my favorite sentence. And then it goes on to say practically no one except the dying, which is a shorter version, but practically no one except the dying. And so I get a question like this all the time. And sometimes I feel like people are looking for a magic bullet like, oh, this guy's got almost 40 years. He knows the answer. I don't know the answer. Some people reach that point where they're ready to say, you know, we shorten it from who cares to make complete defeat in our group. We just say, are you done? And you know, an honest answer a lot of times is I don't know. Well, are you willing to find out? Try this. Try not lusting today. And if you start to lust, every time it starts, make a phone call to a sober member. Try that. Try joining a regular group and staying sober between meeting, so to speak. If the meeting meets Monday, Wednesday and Friday, you got to also stay sober, Tuesday and Thursday. How do I do that? How do I keep the willingness? I make the phone call, whether I feel like it or not. I love one of Roy's best quotes in the white book is, take the action and the feeling will follow. If I wait for the feeling, it'll never happen. So many of us, and I love feelings. I love my feelings. They're all over the place, you know. But they used to just control me. And today it's like, whether I feel like it or not, it's a good thing for me. I was trained as a good Catholic. You know, we're supposed to go to Mass on Sunday, whether we feel like it or not. And that's helped me because I'm supposed to go to my meeting, whether I feel like it or not. It doesn't matter what I feel like. I feel like relapsing right now. Thankfully, I don't feel that way very often. But sometimes I do. Every once in a while, for no particular reason, I'll be walking down the street and say, what if I just threw it all away? Okay. Well, I can ponder that. Believe me, I could think about that for hours. The only thing is, at the end of it, I might throw it all away because I'm just nutty enough. But if I pick up the phone and call my sponsors, they had this weird thought, what if I just throw it all away and talk to them? It goes away. I've never understood that. Not every time. Almost every time I call my sponsor, I know what he's going to say. So, why do I have to call him? Why can't I just say, well, he's going to tell me this. I have to call him and hear it because hearing me telling myself isn't going to work. But him telling me is. So anyway, I wish you luck. Keep coming. Thank you, Basma and Mike. So we have about 10 minutes left. And I know that I saw Avi and Thomas before I got the chat questions. So we'll do them. And Mike, I think you can stay for 10 minutes after the meeting. If I remember correctly. So maybe people can ask questions then. So anyway, Avi. Hello there. Thank you, Mike, for joining us. My question is, if you could give us a picture, I'm having a hard time imagining what it looks like at your group. When someone comes in, let's say, who's had some sobriety and now he's relapsed, what that looks like. And if and when, like, how do you get from there when you end up doing a chat meeting? Thank you. Yeah, really good. So the first question, if someone comes in and relapses, I mean, the response that's going to depend on whether they're a newcomer, you know, if somebody's come in and they're there 30 days and they relapse, you know, we have a very different kind of response than someone who's been there 10 years. And this is kind of a pattern. I mean, in the meeting itself, nothing much changes. I mean, they check in, they share, we go on with the meeting. But after the meeting, you know, if it's someone who's fairly new, there's going to be a fair amount of what I would call obvious compassion for this person. And just to check in, do you have a sponsor? Are you, you know, are you doing what you need to do? Keep coming back and all that kind of stuff. If it's someone who's been around a long time, and this is kind of a pattern, it's a different kind of compassion. I think it is compassion, but it's more of what's that term they use sometimes? Tough love. You know, it's like, okay, Joe, we've been here before. What's going to be different going forward? One of the things that we say, you know, because a lot of sponsors, you know, that a lot of sponsors are a little bit lonely and overwhelmed because they think they have to do it themselves, which is ironic since the whole program is based on not doing it, but that doesn't always get translated for sponsors. But anytime a person relapses, we say, you fired your sponsor, what are you going to do different in case, you know, you want to look to him and try to rehire him? Because sponsors are always like, Colin, should I fire my sponsor? He's relapsed six times this year. I said, well, you don't have to worry about whether you're firing him or not. He's fired you. Is there any reason you can see at this point that, you know, you'd be willing to have him rehire you? Because something should be different. And some guys will, guys and gals, we'll get that message and others won't. So yeah, that was there was there a second part of that question? You can skip it if you want so others can. Okay. All right, question. But how you get to a check meeting from there? Oh, no, let me let me address it. A check meeting is called in our group only by a sponsor, not a sponsor. On the theory that 99% of problems between sponsor and sponsors are the sponsor problem, not the sponsor. And there and we don't do them for relapses. Our check meetings are for sponsor sponsors who are staying sober, but there's some block. There's something. There's something not going right. And best example I can give you and I'll try to be brief. We had a guy, he kept getting in fights with his wife. They wouldn't actually hit each other. Well, maybe sometimes, but they'd throw stuff in. He'd leave, he'd go to his apartment, go get a hotel, then he'd come back. He was sober, but his marriage sucked. Excuse my language. And he he he wanted to leave the marriage. And nobody in the group thought he should leave the marriage. And I was sponsored. So I called to check me and he asked if he could have someone come to the check meeting who he thought was going to support his position. Normally, we'd say no, but I just knew this guy said, sure, fine. We went and basically a check meeting. Someone leads it not not the sponsor of the sponsor says the serenity prayer. Ask the sponsor what's going on. Ask the sponsor. Would you like to add tells the sponsor they need to be brief, not the sponsor. And then you go around the room and you make comments. Here's what I heard. Here's what here's some thoughts that I have. At the end, you go back to the sponsor, any final comments back to the sponsor, any final comment, brief, say the Lord's Prayer. That's a check meeting. And somehow what happens is log jams get broken or they don't. And then either way, the sponsor and that's who the meeting's for gets help because you'll either see this, the broken and contrite spirit, the spirit of the first step that Roy talks about. All you'll see the hands folded and nothing's getting through. And then you know, you could be, you know, a combination of Jesus, Christ, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, whoever your spiritual hero is. And this guy is not ready. So that that's that's the quickest answer that I can give on a check name. Thank you, Avi and Mike Thomas. Thanks to the share, Mike. It's feels like my high powers working for me here because we have a group conscious meeting tomorrow. For my Spanish speaking home group here in Valencia. And it's very different from the meetings I'm used to in SA UK. And I'm just wondering, unfortunately, I missed the middle of your share. But what what small changes should I think about suggesting bearing in mind, I'm relatively new to the group. I'm not great Spanish speaking. So I don't want to come in and, you know, my white horse and try and save and change everything. But I also recognize that everything you've said here is really important. I can think of several people in the group who are relapsing. And I don't know anything about what's what's happening with them. So I mean, that for me is a clear sign that something's not working. There's people in the group who are relapsing. And we don't know the context around that because they're sponsored by someone who's not in the meeting. So I'm just that's my main concern right now. So just any guidance, but practical advice be really appreciated. Yeah, you probably won't like this answer, but I'm going to say urgency is the enemy of recovery. You know, if my house is on fire, that's a real emergency. And I need to have a sense of urgency. If I don't like what the comment the guy to to seats down made, and I think it's going to mess up my meaning, and I feel this great sense that I have to do something right now, that's usually a sign that I don't need to do anything right now. So if you're new to your your instincts are good, your your motivation is good. I would just say take your time. If you're new to the meeting, don't let the fact that there's a business meeting tomorrow, put any pressure on you, you know, get to know the group, find out who the sober people are, have a private, I mean, outside the meeting conversation with them at the coffee shop or wherever you guys hang out and and listen to what their take on it is. Maybe they have the same feelings or maybe they don't, you know, if you if you moved, if you try to make your meeting switch from a meeting to a group, it will be controversial. You will get resistance. And most of that resistance, frankly, is lust based. It's it's people who want to be free from physically acting out, but not necessarily free from lust. That that's where most not all of it, but some of it's just, you know, we're human and we resist change. But so I would say, you're on the right track, but slow it down, take your time. I should have done this anyway, but my phone number is 773-267-4066. That it's a landline that is only used for program calls, so you can leave any content on there. And if I can help anybody, I'm happy to. Okay. Thanks so much, Mike. Thank you to Thomas. Can I get that number again, Mike? Yeah, 773-267-4066. I have no idea how to get into the States whenever I call overseas, I mess it up. But I'm sure you guys are smart enough to figure it out, even though I'm late. That's a Chicago line. That's a Chicago landline, Mike. Yes, it is. Thank you. I would like to thank you for listening to this episode of the Daily Reprieve, the best source for experience, strength, and hope for SA members. 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