Secular AA Global Speaker Tour - Beyond Belief Toronto - April 5, 2026

April 2026: Secular AA's monthly world-tour of speaker meetings is hosted by the Beyond Belief Toronto. Our speakers this month are:

• Joe C.
• Patrick
• Sher

..with Kenji as emcee.

Following these talks is sharing from around our agnostic/atheist/freethinkers AA world. This is an open and welcoming meeting inviting others to share their thoughts about the speakers' shares and should be interesting for anyone, newcomer and long-timer alike (or just curious).

Next month's Secular AA Global Speaker Tour will be featuring the "El Grupo Virtual Jim Burwell (The Jim Burwell Virtual Group)" on Sunday, May 3rd with simultaneous translation to Español at:

• 2 pm EST
• 1 pm CST
• 12 pm AZ
• 11 am PST
• 7 pm UK
• 6 am AEDT (Monday)

Everyone is welcome to join our monthly open/public secular AA meeting.

ZOOM ID 864 4074 0033
Passcode 121212
(CON TRADUCCIÓN SIMULTÁNEA INGLÉS<>ESPAÑOL)

For more info on secular AA including Zoom meetings, in-person meetings, and virtual gatherings, check out:
- https://aasecular.org
- secularAA@gmail.com

Secular AA is AA sobriety that is neither religious nor irreligious, focusing on the practical, humanist tools of Alcoholics Anonymous and borrowed from the wider recovery community. Secular AA is a growing subculture within AA, offering 100 agnostic/atheist/freethinkers AA meetings every day + regional events and the International Conference of Secular AA (ICSAA). More @ https://aasecular.org 

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Welcome everyone to Secular AAA's global tour of monthly speaker meetings featuring secular AA groups across the globe. I am Margarita, an alcohol-free Margarita, with a few announcements before we welcome our guests from Beyond Belief Toronto in Canada. I want to thank the many people supporting this monthly meeting with spreading the word and hosting and security by recording and editing and posting the recordings afterwards. Thanks to Veronica M and Veronica G, we can also provide simultaneous translation from English to Spanish and Spanish to English. So tonight's today's or tonight for some of you, 90-minute event is brought to you by Secular AA. Our format is secular. The people who are here all have different beliefs, and we hope that everyone can feel free to express themselves without fear of dissuasion or persuasion. And we do not use prayer from any religions in the meeting. And so now for our main event, I'm going to hand the mic to Kenji. I'm very, very happy to hand it over to Kenji, who will be introducing the Beyond Belief Toronto and himself as well as today's speakers, Patrick and Josie is going to take the place of one of the speakers. And so we'll share. And it's not in that order, is it? They'll share each for about 15 minutes, followed by opportunities for all participants to share about three minutes each. And the meeting usually lasts about 90, but we're happy to keep going for all to share who wish. So welcome everyone here and welcome Beyond the Leaf Toronto and their enemy, MC. Kenji, please unmute it again.

SPEAKER_10 1:55

Hi, everybody. Thank you, Margarita. My name's Kenji. I'm an addict alcoholic, human in recovery here in San Francisco in this new Zoomiverse where geographic boundaries don't exist. The Toronto Beyond Belief Group is definitely a home group of mine. I've never I've never kind of had a single home group, which is the one group where I feel is my schedule. I've always had a variety of home groups, different home group on different days of the week. And in Zoom, there's that's no exception. I first got sober in in late 1982 in Los Angeles. I'm not quite sure when, but within a couple of years, I discovered the Wii Agnostics group, which was a Friday night meeting in Hollywood that was very much of an atheist agnostic free thinker group. The one reading we did every week was Appendix 2 from the big book on spiritual experience, which contains, to me, the most important line in the entire book, which is, with few exceptions, our members find accept an unsuspected inner resource that they presently identify with their own conception of a power greater than themselves. And that really works for me. The founder of that group, which started in 1980, was a person named Charlie P. And he would like to say that he came at AA an atheist, and after 20 years of sobriety, he was a better atheist. But then he go on to say there was no step he couldn't work as an atheist. And that was maybe the most important thing I ever heard in AA, uh, besides you can do it too, which people said to me, which I was not sure was true. And that's what I've done. I've worked all 12 steps, I've worked them fairly much out of the big book. I've gotten a lot out of inventory, the inventory process, but I've definitely put my own spin on the steps that that are kind of religious sounding and found my own kind of free thinker spin on them, and it's worked really well for me. But I have a lot of relapse in my story. So just doing thorough inventories, doing amends, doing all those things did not in and of themselves necessarily keep me sober. When the pandemic hit in March of 2020, I was uh I was I was gone. I was I was in a relapse cycle I couldn't break out of. I was a um hardcore crackhead at that point. It was just awful. And when the lockdown happened, my connects weren't willing to pick up the phone at first. And that was just enough of a break from that that I thought, oh man, what am I doing? I've got to get sober. But all meetings had closed down. So what was I gonna do? My plan was I was going to sleep as much as I could and watch TV the rest of the time. That was my plan, but I knew that wouldn't work because it never worked before for more than maybe three to five days. Before it turned out I was just resting up to go back at it. I talked to a friend and he told me that um that our home group, which was a once-a-week men's meeting, had gone on Zoom, which I'd never heard of, and was seven days a week on Zoom. Even though as a newcomer, I became the host of that meeting because I was free, I had nothing better to do. That was my lifeline. And after, I don't know, several months of that, it dawned on me that, hey, my old home group, we agnostic at Hollywood, maybe they're on Zoom too. And I found them, and that was great. I somehow imagined the same people would be there that I remembered from 30 something years earlier. Guess what they weren't? One or two maybe. Um, and maybe one or two of those people are gonna be on here. Yes, I see John Claben here today. That's where I met Joe C and I found out from Joe C about Toronto Beyond Belief. And that became and this group became the mainstay of my recovery because pretty early on I found it very annoying that people would like forget to mute their mics after they finished speaking, so be honest and being noise. So I asked to become a co-host specifically so I could mute people's mics for them when they forgot. But little did I know that I was gonna be thrown into the deep end of the bomber wars, and you know, it was quite the amazing experience because Joe was kind of sidekick who was his co-host when I became co-host for his opportunity to bail from that commitment, and it was me and Joe at first. I've stayed sober consist continuously since November 23rd of 2020, so I'm in my sixth year of recovery now. I found my tribe. This thing has worked brilliantly for me. I must say I haven't formally worked the steps in this five and a half years. I just believe I am living the steps, and um, I do a lot of service on Zoom, and um, I just found myself in the middle of the boat here, and I'm grateful to all of you for this amazing, loving, brilliant feel we have here. We can do what I can't, I've learned, and that's to me the second step and the the first and second steps, and the third step is making the decision on a daily basis to feel myself in. I thank you all for it. And now I'd like to turn the meeting over to the founder of this group for a decade plus before we went on Zoom, and that's Joe C.

SPEAKER_01 7:58

One person does not a meeting make. Uh I I own that. I was very involved in the beginning of this group, but like I said, you know, one hand clapping isn't clapping. Um, and uh there are many others. Uh uh few are here, and um many have come and gone, and um uh I'm very grateful to them. But I am uh uh I uh the Beyond Belief group started in the University of Toronto on the second floor of the OISE building, Ontario Institute of Studies and Education. So it was a teacher's college, part of uh and right next door to the social work uh college and uh and several coffee shops. And um so uh across from the stadium that uh John Lennon and Yoko Ownaban, anyway, that's not important now. But um I um uh that was the first meeting was uh the 24th of September 2009. And me and the other people who were like on the first day, 12 people signed up to be members of that group on the very first day. So I'm not the founder, but but uh w one of a a collective. But um we quite intentionally didn't want to be in a church basement. We uh wanted to be in a library or a community center or a hospital or an educational place, somewhere um where the environment really lent itself to our um uh sort of ethos. And uh so uh uh one of my favorite meetings before was uh called the Midtown Group in Toronto, and it was uh it met in a classroom and I I really liked that environment for for learning. Uh it helped me arrive with curiosity and positive regard. And um that's way better than arriving with a chip on my shoulder and uh, you know uh, you know, thinking that I can find fault and get a reward for it, like it's a game show. So uh so I know what it's like to come to uh a meeting with a bad attitude, and um and uh and I found the sort of educational environment way better for me. And how did that group start? Well, there was a time where uh when I was new, I was one foot in, one foot out of AA. I wasn't planning on staying. I said all the right things and memorized what you had to do to look like a regular because I didn't want to draw any undue attention on me by saying, Don't you think it's a little childish praying to God? Like, you know. You know, so like I I didn't do anything that was, you know, sort of um, you know, could be offensive or uh show my um apprehension or ambivalence about the idea of being sober, right? Because uh I didn't want to get teamed up on uh by uh a bunch of zealots. And and they weren't zealots. But that was that was my feeling and that was my intention, you know. I knew about um special composition groups because I got sober as a teenager. And um while I was always made to feel welcome in mainstream AA, it wasn't really until I found young people's meetings and young people's conferences that I really heard AA talked about in a language I could recognize. And uh I I I go, okay, that's it. And so when it came time to, here I was in Toronto, feeling one foot in, one foot out, because a lot of the meetings then and there had gotten very book-based. Uh, and it was uh, I always uh describe Toronto as a thank God it's Monday town. People love their job, that's how they identify with themselves. In AA, they love Robert's rules of order, and they're uh, you know, uh they will share that with you with great passion. And uh I always said AA and Toronto had enough rules to make uh a small country, you know, and um i i it was working for them. What could I say, right? Uh I didn't feel like they had to change to accommodate me, but I wondered if I still belonged here, right? And so I was thinking about that, and I was part of a Yahoo group, and it was just uh, you know, it was before MySpace. It was, do you want my ICQ number? I'll put it in the chat. But it was uh it was way back when, and this was just a message board meeting where it was called the International AA Free Thinkers Meeting, and someone would post a topic on Monday, and other people would chime in and um sometimes crosstalk and have a conversation, and then the next that conversation that post would be closed on Sunday, and then Monday somebody else would start with another topic. And in that process, getting to know those people from all around the world, uh, someone made mention or posted the uh list of atheist agnostic meetings all around the world, all 30 of them. And uh yeah, and that sounded like a lot to me. Atheist agnostic meetings. That's that's what I need. That that would be great. And I could see some of them were in New York, and I always found a reason to have to go to New York. And um I decided I was gonna go to a couple of those meetings when I went there, and I did, and I just loved it. I went to meetings in Manhattan and a couple of the other boroughs, and I thought Toronto's gonna love this, and I was half right about that. Uh, but that uh we might get into it, but it might be a topic for another day. But uh I came back and gathered some of the other sort of uh, you know, uh free thinkers in AA and said, what do you think about this? What do you what do you think about doing this in Toronto? And this was it it uh it took us two years to get around to it, but we we finally found a space, picked a date, started a meeting. And it um uh Marcia will remember those face-to-face meetings. There could be some others here who were there, and um it was uh I I I I I found love for AA again. It's not like I w felt hate for AAA, I just felt bored. Uh like it was just a repetitive strain disorder going to the meetings I was going to, and this really made me feel sort of young again, curious and uh excited about it. And um, it was amazing. Some of the people who came through the woodwork, I didn't know they were atheists. You know, they seemed to do what I did, just you know, not draw any undue attention to yourself, just you know, be coy, you know, and just share wh where you could and and keep your mouth shut when you couldn't. And uh and there were some uh absolute die in the wool. Everyone knew they were atheist AA members, and they were there too. And there was a lot of other people who had a higher power, believed in it, but had worked with enough new people that they knew this was a really important thing to get going in Toronto and it would help a lot of people, and they came to support us for the good of AA. Imagine that. And uh so they hung out for uh quite a long time and would come, you know, periodically for people's uh celebrations or uh, you know, our anniversary, or uh or they would bring uh newcomers there, and and it was great. We eventually had to start a second meeting, so we were Thursday and Saturday, later the Monday meeting, which has been duplicated online, the uh um STEP, the secular step study group that started, and uh We Agnostics started at another place in a Unitarian Universalist congregation, and and some other meetings started in one that I'm involved with on Zoom because it never went back to its regular place, but it was at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health on Queen Street in sort of the west end of downtown Toronto, and what a good place to have an AA meeting. And it was an open meeting, so you didn't have to be an alcoholic to come. So we got newcomers who weren't quite sure. We got people from academia and from the medical side of uh Cam H. They would come and just check us out too. And it was uh that was a great meeting. That's Queen Street Secular, three o'clock Eastern on Tuesdays. Still a good Zoom meeting, but we were welcome back to Cam H to where we were meeting, but there wasn't anyone still a member of the meeting who lived in the West End of Toronto anymore. So so we just didn't have anybody to go there and put the chairs in a circle and pull out we still have a literature box in their kitchen there, you know, so it's ready for anyone looking for some service work to do. And uh, I think that's great. I think that's a a good place for an AA meeting. And we thought we were the first atheist agnostic meeting in Canada. We weren't even the first atheist agnostic meeting in Toronto, and I got a call from our uh archivist Eddie G uh from Toronto Intergroup, and and he said, Joe, Joe, uh call me back. I found something in here. Uh he's super enthusiastic about uh recovery and about life. And uh I I called him and he said, I've got this 1996 meeting list, and look at this. There's a We Agnostics meeting at Girard and Main Street at the community center there. And and to this date, uh, like I'm putting this out there, we haven't found who started that group or who was a member of it. I'd love to. And why didn't I go in 1996 when it was there? Because I had this. What do I need a new meeting list for there?$1.25. Fuck that, right? Like I've got one from 1976, it'll do. You know, like I already knew the meetings I wanted to go to, the friends I had. Like I wasn't looking for new meetings, and and that bad attitude just you know cost me an opportunity. And and uh maybe I'll learn from that, but um, don't hold me to it, please. And uh so we found that out, and then later, uh Roger, who started AA Agnostica, was a meeting uh regular at our uh home group and is part of the Hamilton Agnostics and Atheist Meetings, we agnostics. Um he uh in in doing AA Agnostica found someone from uh the East Coast from our Atlantic provinces who was a business person, traveled and traveled to Chicago and went to Quad A, Atheist and uh AA for Atheists and Agnostics in Chicago, and tried to start a meeting there. And he and a few other people did, but he eventually got transferred and the meeting petered out, and we just didn't know about it. And that's uh, you know, uh, if you're gonna get into AA history at any time, just avoid ever saying the first or you know, like because you're gonna be found out to be no, not actually true. So that's that. And now uh secular AA um is we went from people ridicule us, oh, AA without God. You know, uh I I could remember my friend saying, Joe, you joined that group just because you're lazy, right? Six of the steps have God in it, you only have six others to work. You you just and and I would say it it doesn't reduce the work, it just reduces the delegating. It's the same hard work, uh, whether you're uh into uh prayer answering sobriety, granting God, or kneel at the altar of reality. You know, it's uh you know, it's the same process, different description. And um and then uh there was uh and I'll just say this briefly because I was asked to do the history, hostility. In fact, uh some groups uh brought a motion to inner group uh to vote us out of the off the island, right? Because we were uh cancer, we were growing, uh, we were gonna kill newcomers. Um, you know, uh and these are people who love AA as much as I do. I know that, right? But they were afraid and they they thought, you can't do that. And I go, show me where it says you can't do that, right? You know. And uh, you know, and they couldn't do that. And um and that that caused deep heartache for me. It was an innocence lost. Like I grew up in AA, I came here a teenager, and everybody put up with my shit, no matter where I went, no matter where my home group was. But now you're saying I'm not AA, right? You know, I've been here longer than you have, and I I I don't you don't you don't need my kind here anymore? That was a heartache, but that was Toronto Intergroup. I was still expected to be at the district table for uh, you know, uh District 10 area 83, and uh because they still needed a public information chair, and they were hoping I was still gonna do that. And so we weren't kicked out of AA, we were uh taken out of the meeting list at a time where meeting lists were becoming quite irrelevant, at least the printed versions of them. And so it it wasn't you know, AA history is happening all the time. It didn't happen way back when, uh, before television. Uh it's constantly happening. And I'm happy to tell you that that is page eight news now. There isn't anyone at Intergroup that even remembers a time where atheist agnostic meetings weren't as everyday as men's meetings or women's meetings or young people's or LGBTQ meetings. It's just part of AA. Uh, and for them it always has been, right? You know, and uh now the the haters are back in the closet and the open-minded uh we're a bigger tent. Whatever people need will accommodate them, is the language of AA in Toronto now. And uh so yeah, it was bad and everybody learned a thing or two, and uh here we are alive and well. And um that that's it. Uh, you know, if uh I love this group because uh if I think, oh, I should have said that, I can put my hand up later. But um thanks uh for letting me share a little bit about the history of AA. I think it's great that we're an international meeting, and I think it's great that we our our in-person meeting is still alive and well. And um uh, you know, I just you know am happy to be part of a bigger tent. Thanks, everybody.

SPEAKER_10 24:25

Oh, thanks so much, Joe. That was amazing. Um and my takeaway from your chair, which I've never heard before, is our way of doing the stuff isn't less work, it's less delegating. And now I'd like to turn it over to Patrick, who I know was Joe's friend for decades before Toronto Beyond Belief was a thing, but who came on board at around the same time I did when meetings shut down and it became Zoom all the time. So, Patrick, please.

SPEAKER_08 25:02

Thank you, my friend. My name is Patrick. I'm a lovable guy and a fellow in Recovery, and what a pleasure it is to be here today with you. Easter, Passover, Sunday, whichever you celebrate, I wish you a happy one. And most importantly, if you're new to this thing called recovery, I hope you get what you need for your life, because it just may be here or in another room. Um you'll seek and you shall find. Oh, there's a good one. But yes, you're you're very important and it brings a smile to each of us in these squares when someone puts up their hand and says, This is my first meeting, or my tenth, or you know. So if you've got a few days or a day, or you're looking for a day, I I I wish that upon you. Okay, um, yeah, this is it's interesting to listen to my bosom buddy lifelong pal there. It makes me think of that history and and uh uh what what has gone on for he and I uh over 35 years of friendship, I guess. Um and I'm I'm simply gonna say to you, you know, in my early 20s, I was already in treatment. My employer sent treatment, uh, the anti abuse thing, the you know, sent to the psychiatrist, the psychologist, all of those stories. I hadn't uh I'd been to jail, but just you know, for overnight, no stretches or anything like that. But uh, you know, even in my early 20s, it already had me. I uh really I became a daily drinker and and drug user by the time I was 15 years old. So there was no dipping my my um toe in the shallow end. It just uh uh it took everything from my life, you know. Education didn't matter, family didn't matter, relationships didn't matter, alcohol and drugs did, you know? And that's a sad place to find yourself. And at the age of 28, my life was wake up, go to the liquor store, get some alcohol, go back, drink till you pass out, repeat, rinse, whatever the story is. That's what life had become. A very uh, you know, not a way to exist, that's for sure. So I had tried AA, but I, you know, it was it was one of those where I just I'm listening to the guy and he's on his fourth impaired driving charge, and he's got nine wives he's had, and uh I don't relate to any of this. I'm a kid, you know. So it takes me away though, because of course I'm comparing my story to his rather than listening to him and and the type of thinking and and uh feeling that he's sharing, you know, it's just not ready, as simple as that. And then at 28, I had a bad car accident, ended up um meeting a man who uh just enriched my life in ways uh I could spend the whole time talking to you about another Joe C. His name was Joe Cushing, as a matter of fact. Um, but he kind of encouraged me, you know, do you ever think about going back and trying another meeting of AA? And I guess, you know, because of where I was at at that point, I had the willingness to go, and uh it was different. I was hearing things that I related to uh right out of the gate. Um I almost immediately felt a sense of connection. Funny, Joe had just sent me a notification that the group that I joined is called the Pine Hills Group in just outside the in the suburbs of Toronto, right? I think actually our Marsha belonged to it long, long after I was gone from there. But they celebrate uh 70 years, which is funny because as soon as I walked in that group and saw that it was, you know, like 1956, which is the year I'm born, I was like, oh wow, this group has been here since then. And and Joe Cushing actually belonged to that group in his sobriety at one point as well. So anyway, that opened a whole you know new world, and I was all in. And whatever was suggested to me, that's what I did. You know, I did the steps as they were written, I uh got on my knees, I looked for this elusive higher power, you know, and did my best to incorporate that um into my sobriety, right? But again, struggled with it. I had been to Catholic school, Catholic high school, and I I'd had enough. Like, no, that wasn't the, you know, wasn't what I was looking for. But again, it seemed that that spiritual element was all about the, you know, was how I was gonna get sober, and and that's the road that I followed, right? And as I went along, I was constantly reframing. I would, I would look at love and and see the, you know, to me that pureness of love, uh, acts of particularly when you're in in recovery and that, you know, one alcoholic sharing with another, it never gets old. There's something quite special about it. There's something special about this moment for me to be with you. Many, I don't know, never seen you on the screen before. Many I do, um, but I feel connected to you automatically. I feel like I can tell you whatever's going on, and you'll nod your heads and and uh and accept it, you know, and that's fucking remarkable thing to me. Um, so anyway, I you know, I saw that not you know like a like uh love is God kind of thing, just love is pure, you know, is kind of where I ended up with that, right? Um and then I remember like I got to a point because I had no schooling, I you know, quit high school just because of alcohol and drugs. Um, and I ended up going to college uh and and that was a new experience. I was in my mid-30s, and then by my mid-40s, I it's funny, when I went to college, I actually studied adult children of alcoholics working with adult children of alcoholics. That's how that that course was a two-year course of that that a psychologist had come up with for people that you know generally were helpers in the in the helping uh profession. I was not, I just was interested in codependency and and and that for me, um I can't get into a long story about it, but looking at where I had come from and the impact of alcoholism as a child and how I came out of that system was paramount to me uh being sober and and coming to understand self. Because long into my recovery, this lovable guy bit, like, no, no, always each day, didn't matter how much success I was having, if I just wouldn't have said that today to somebody, if I just wouldn't have, right? So I had a big stick to beat myself with, um, and that had to go. So to this day, I introduce myself like that because it means everything to me to have found it, to have embraced it. Um, so anyway, so we're going along, um, and I'm, you know, I heard the word bored there out of my bosom buddy. Um, I was getting bored. That's funny enough to share with you. I was I was one of three. It was 1985 when I came in, and three of us out of a hundred, almost a hundred in that group, it was a big group, uh, were under 30 years old at that time. Now, downtown, people like Joe had there was lots of people that were younger down there, but out in the burbs, it seemed to be old guy, old gal world, you know, kind of like Beyond Belief today. Ha ha, you know, we're a little bit older in general, is all I mean by that.

unknown 32:31

I love y'all.

SPEAKER_08 32:32

Um, so uh so along comes this this whippersnapper, this handsome young devil, I'll tell you, from Toronto to speak at the group. And it and uh Joe was 24 years old, had eight years of sobriety. I had maybe eight months of sobriety at that time, and I was like, what have we here? You know, and that was the beginning of our friendship, uh, what we've been through together. Uh again, I could spend a whole talk just talking about that connection and what has brought us. You just don't have friendships like that um all over the place. Like I don't anyway. So mine with his with him is uh remarkable, right? We have both been through some things. So anyway, I I I was starting to get um I didn't care for what was going on around me. I I didn't care that we did the Lord's Prayer at the meeting and and these things, and it was pushing me away, and then people would we'd get it out, and then people come and vote it back into the meeting, and you know, uh I was it it was not sitting well with me, you know. Um, and again, I've by this point I'm in in university and I'm taking things like women's studies and I'm taking indigenous studies and the sociology of world religion. Fascinating, right? So that's challenging me, and I'm opening different uh parts of myself to try to find, you know, who am I, where am I going, and and uh and yet uh I'll tell you right now, you know, uh traditional AA saved my life, period, and I will always be the first to say that, you know. It's okay for me to say I got bored of it too. That that's all right today, you know. They don't have to be mutually exclusive things. Uh I did for a long time think that they did, right? So so Joe gets involved with uh this new secular meeting deal, right? And I uh it's downtown, so I start, you know, a couple of guys I sponsor, I take them down, you know. Look what we got here, right? Isn't this something unique, right? And uh and then I bring a friend of mine named John, who had been a a member of Midtown that Joe referenced there. And, you know, I see what's happening and I love this new discourse on addiction, but yet I have this. Joe and I were just talking a couple of days ago about this today. When I look back on it, I'm like, why was it so difficult for you to separate from that? You were bored, you had stopped going to meetings at one point. I mean, my life was still I still sponsored, I still, you know, all the people in my life were still AA people. Um, and it turned out that I didn't have to be going to meetings to stay sober. Imagine that. It seems like the process actually worked, it didn't require my spiritual maintenance day. Um, anyway, for me it it it it didn't. I I didn't see it as much different. Um, but I certainly missed the community of it all. And um and so then, you know, I know what AAA has meant to my bosom buddy lifelong pal there since the since he's been a lad. And when they fucking delisted that group, my friend John, who had been to the meeting with me, said you need to get the Toronto Star. That's the front page of the Toronto Star from 2011 that happened, right? That says, fight over God splits GTA alcoholics. And I know what that did to him and how devastated he was of giving his life to this thing and having them fucking bounce the group. No, right? Anyway, uh I don't want to I I just want to touch pieces of the story here. It's that we've got other people to hear. Um, but I couldn't make this, I couldn't let the umbilical court go from from this this life-saving process over here, you know? And it took until the the pandemic, where Joe called me one day and said, Oh, we got this Queen Street mental health meeting on a Tuesday, and uh let's come on, why don't you check it out and offer some support? And almost like back when I, you know, rejected traditional AA initially, um, not that I rejected secular, just that I hadn't made the leap, right? And I got to that meeting, and within 20 minutes, I remember Karen and Marilyn were there, it was all new to all of us, and and uh wow, right? And then it went, you know, we we a young fella said, Oh, we're starting an Irish one. So we went there and and then we, you know, Joe and I would go to Australian meeting and then off to Los Angeles for Friday night meeting, and and it just opened a whole new deal. It just revived everything for me and the sharing that you people, and when I say you people, I mean, you know, those of you involved in these meetings, I don't hear the same old shtick that bored me to tears. I hear people, you know, talking about the steps and doing them in a way that works for them without you know a God or higher power at the core of it. Uh, and these things fascinate me, they they energize me, they you know, they they make it anew. And going to Orlando for that conference to finally meet these little paneled faces here, oh my god. Like one of the great, great experiences of my entire recovery was meeting you in real life. And I got to go to Ireland and meet a bunch there, and I'll be back doing that. And I've had people come from Ireland and stay with me. And this is a really cool thing to be a part of, and I still feel like like there's a pioneer element to it, even now, you know, and that and the thousands of us involved. But anyway, that's a bit of my experience with it, and it is my great joy to be a part of things with you and to be a a part of Beyond Belief Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

SPEAKER_10 38:26

Wow, thank you so much, Patrick. That was amazing. And now for our final speaker, uh Dave, the best for last for you, perhaps, is my dear friend Chair A. Um, I'll give tell you a little anecdote about Chair. So Chair and I kind of co-chaired uh the Toronto Beyond Belief Monday step and prediction study for at least a couple of cycles, was it two or three cycles through the steps together? And at that time we were using readings from various secular sort of step guides and putting together what we could read and what patches from it we could do, and formatting text for screen sharing. We kind of head more than once. And I'm thinking, oh man, okay, I've kind of my relationship with with scare is foil, and um it ruined our friendship. And the next day that would be totally cool. I actually asked you how how is it that you know we were so tested last night and now you feel fine. Are you fine? And she would say, oh yes, I worked this step on it overnight and uh processed it and so it's been incredibly inspirational to me and how working with steps and totally I mean it was it was a transformative experience for me to see how she could do this stuff. And and also to talk deep into um into working this program and carrying the message and all the way she does it and how she bridges traditional AA and secular AA. So I'm thrilled that Cher has agreed to come and speak with us today. Cher.

SPEAKER_07 40:18

Hey everybody. Uh thank you, Kenji. You moved me. Uh I'm honored to be here. Uh my name is Cher, and I am a free-thinking alcoholic woman in recovery. Um, and I'm happy to be the only woman on the panel today speaking for the group. Uh I uh would like to say first, uh, I want to do a reading, and it's a declaration of unity. This we owe to AA's future, to place our common welfare first, to keep our fellowship united. And for AA, unity depends our lives and the lives of those to come. And if it wasn't for a woman who reached out and said, Hi honey, how's it going? And I said, It sucks. And she said, Let's get a cup of coffee. I might not still be here. Uh I uh love the the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and uh I sobered up in traditional AA um in Texas. So I did get to hear a lot of God talk, and uh I felt like I was always uh tolerant of other people's views and beliefs, and I didn't have to believe what they believed, but I didn't really find the openness and acceptance acceptance that I found when I made the transition and had my own personal conversion from traditional to secular AA. I did feel like I found my tribe and where I belong because other people felt the same way. And uh I I had endured uh traditional AA and remained sober from the day that I got there for um 23 years. And uh I didn't let them drive me out of the rooms, you know. I had somebody tell tell me that. Don't let anybody drive you out of your seat. Um, and I wanted to be sober, I wanted to be clean because I came from a very dysfunctional family where I drank and drugged. And now I was sober and I liked my life. I liked being clean and sober. I remember how excited I was at the beginning. I'm a person who's pretty excited about sobriety, and it's very annoying to a lot of people because they think, oh God, she's so yay team, you know, like an AA cheerleader. And I am because it turned my whole life around. You know, I was a person who wished I would not wake up the next morning, and now I say thank you that I get to wake up. And I'm also pretty excited today, hyped up because I got to hear this awesome uh presentation about women in recovery, one woman in particular. Uh, Miley T did the presentation and she is amazing. But uh she talked about Florence R, who is the woman responsible for why they changed the wording in the big book to from 100 men to 100 men and women. And uh she talked about how important it is that women are in the chairs to be to welcome other women when they crawl in. We don't really experience as much the shaming uh that comes with being an alcoholic or drinking woman uh like these women in you know 1935 did. But um, you know, it's still it's still the same. Uh there's less women in meetings. I love this the secular meeting. Look how many women are here. And I look around and I see all my friends here. I You guys so much. It's so great to see you. I haven't been able to see you so much since I've had some things going on in my family, but I believe me, everything that I have been learning in AA, I'm getting to practice now and be present in the life of my family during a trying time. So uh I love everything uh that you guys teach me and I'm willing to remain teachable. Uh so one of the things that I want to talk about being the new kid under the Beyond Belief Toronto umbrella is that I found out uh I okay, so during the pandemic, I too found Zoom. I was relieved because I was like, what the am I gonna do? I I go to AA meetings and we we're told to stay home. Well, being an adult child, that was really cool because I felt like, oh, my whole life I've been prepared to stay in place and avoid people. But I knew early on too that that wasn't really good for me. That um especially when I read that they were gonna deliver alcohol to people's homes, I was like, oh crap, I might actually order some. I know from going to meetings every day of my sober life that if I'm thinking about a drink, I'm gonna get a drink, and if I get a drink, I'm gonna drink that drink, and if I drink that drink, I'm gonna get drunk. And so I decided I'm gonna find these meetings. I I had sobered up AOL uh in chat rooms, and so I thought, okay, I'm gonna uh find out where people do meetings online, and I got invited. A couple of people invited me to come and speak that knew me. Some of my sponsees were doing some Zoom. I had a friend uh who taught me how to zoom, and um I went online. I all the meetings that I held in uh uh Burnett, Texas. I had moved from Austin, Texas to Burnett, Texas, and I was all those meetings I moved to Zoom and started holding meetings, and then I got started getting invited to other people's meetings to speak, and then I I was doing a uh history meeting, and my friend uh David in New York told me about this precisely group, and he goes, Oh, and I'm gonna warn you, they they uh crosstalk a lot, and I loved it because they they crosst-talk about the big book, all you know, like it was it was fascinating, but he also told me about a history meeting, and I went to that history meeting and I met uh Bill Sheaberg and he was talking, and I had bought the book, and I was like, Oh, holy this is so great! I'm finding out new information, I love it, and he was speaking at IXA and from about how it was spiritual and not religious. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. That's what I I want to go to that, you know. So I found IXA and then I saw my friend Kinji there at that because I was uh seeing him in the history meetings, and I was like, I know that guy. And and then they were talking about worldwide secular uh meetings online, and there was a a link that they put on there where I could find meetings, and I started doing meetings. I just it was like uh a treasure chest of resources where I could go all over the world, like a field trip, go find AA meetings with people who said things that I identified with and felt so relieved. And and then when I went to Toronto Beyond Belief on a Monday night, uh Kenji wrote me in to service work. That's always how I've remained sober, by the way. People always grab me and say, Are you willing to do this? Can you help us do this? And then I'm there, I'm in it, you know. And so Kenji got me doing some service work by uh assisting him in chairing, I guess, the meetings. And I I just got turned on to all the new resources in in secular AA, new books, Jeffrey Munn's Getting Sober, and the Alternative Steps by uh Martha Cleveland and R Arlis G, and then Waiting by Maria Hornbacher, and and then Beth H. I had heard her and I was like, oh, I I'd identify with her. And she was talking about the we're we're not all egomaniacs, and I ordered that book, and then you know, I I found out that they use that, like there's so many cool books. We use the Josie's uh Beyond Belief book, um, and and there's so many cool readings in there. And I just uh it was like my sobriety got amplified, like just for real. And I had always been for real in traditional AA. I just felt like I had to tolerate other people when they talked about you know the J word in a meeting. I I I I really respect everybody's belief system, but I just don't think it had a place in a meeting. I knew that I didn't have to buy into any kind of religion to be sober because I was sober. I'm clean and sober. And I think all my life I wanted these things for myself, but I didn't know how to get them. And when I read Jeffrey Munn talk about the steps are resources that I needed, I was like, yes, that is the way that I looked at the steps in traditional AA. I just took the G word out, and then I knew I needed the suggestions that were in there, but I treated them kind of like directions on a way to not be uh agitated and doubtful all the time because I was a person, you know, like when they said pause when agitated or doubtful, I was like, crap, I'm agitated and doubtful all the time. Like, am I just supposed to be paused all the time? You know, and I and then I thought, yeah, that's why I was numb, you know. So uh I just tried to go through my life without processing all the things that I was feeling. I'm also a member of adult children of alcoholics, and I even attended Al-Anon meetings. It got that bad for me, you know. Like I would go to an AA meeting and I was in a room full of people like my father, and I would go to an Al-Anon meeting and I was in a room full of people like my mother, and so then I found adult children and I was like, this is awesome. But there was that one thing, the thinking that I wasn't getting yet. And I went to secular AA and it all just opened up, and I had my own personal conversion story, you know, and I think that that's what it takes is to be willing to change how I'm thinking and how I'm acting, and to not use drugs or alcohol to numb myself while I walk through some really hard things in life and remain uh completely sober and practically sane. And uh, that's enough out of me. I'm happy to be the new kid on the block.

SPEAKER_10 51:29

Wow. Thank you so much. This is this has been um this has been great. I did want to give a a nod to I see a number of people here who have done long-term intense service to this group, and um, including Troy, um, Tara and Marilyn. Um, I know I'm gonna forget people here, um Judy Kay, uh Holly. Holly has chaired the Monday meeting, Lori has done service here. And I'm just looking around. There are so many people here that are so meaningful to my sobriety, just looking at the peanut gallery, not even looking at all the people in the um participant list. I'm thrilled to hear from you all. Will, you're dear and near to me in my recovery, and I'm thrilled that you raised your hand first.

SPEAKER_11 52:16

Oh man. Oh, this is unbelievable. Kenji, thank you for seeing. Of course, first I want to thank uh secular A, Margarita, uh, and everybody, uh, Tony and uh Claudia and all our uh translators. You know, uh it takes a village to put this uh meeting together every month, and we're so grateful that uh for the team that does it. Um I'm very I was I was so excited to hear that believe Toronto was gonna be our uh our guest group. Uh because I think I've met every one of these speakers. I think this is the first time I've been at a global speaker meeting, and I've met all the people that shared in person. Um and um I you know have I've been sober 25 years, but I uh I didn't get into recovery until 11 years ago. And I started with a um a meeting in Midtown Toronto called on the Hill, a big huge meeting, big group. And a week or two after I stumbled into Blue Street OISE. I didn't even I wasn't looking for a secular meeting. I just got lucky. I got fucking lucky. I stumbled into this meeting, and the hill was great, but the meeting in Toronto, the Beyond Belief meeting I stumbled into, and Joe was chairing, the vibe was different. And Joe, I've never heard you say that line before that uh repetitive strain disorder is perhaps what how you might feel as an agnostic in a dogmatic meeting. Yes, I was feeling that way, and I didn't feel like that when I was in the Trump Beyond Belief meeting, but it just so happened I'd moved to Cincinnati. So I go to the meeting after the meeting at the Tim Hortons. Thank you, Jeff, for having our Tim Hortons logo up. And I talk to Joe C and I say, Hey, what about this sponsor thing? And you know, I'm thinking Joe, and he goes, Well, you're moving to Cincinnati. Well, why don't you move down there, see how it goes? I'm always here. I said, Okay, and that meant the world to me because I went down to the Midwest and here I am in a city that didn't have any secular meetings, and I'm in a traditional meeting, and I think because Beyond Believe Toronto existed, and because I'd had some time with Joe, I was free to go in there. I found a meeting near my house and I went, I am an atheist agnostic. And I was just ready to tell it like it was, and they took me in. And I mean, I I I became the you know, TSR of that meeting. Uh it became important to me. And Beyond Belief Toronto was, I think, was kind of the that motivator for me to be myself in that meeting. Years later, I moved out to BC and the pandemic hits and I'm in traditional meetings out there, and then I realized, oh shit, everyone's on Zoom. What could I do? I am able to zoom back into my Cincinnati traditional meeting and Beyond Belief Toronto. And not too long after the pandemic, I realized there's still not a secular meeting in Cincinnati. So I decided to start one and I talked to Joe and I said, Do you mind if we call the meeting Beyond Belief Cincinnati? Because Beyond Belief Toronto has meant that much to me, and I'd I'd like that meeting to be called Beyond Belief. And it's five years and going strong every Wednesday night. I picked Wednesday night. Why? Because Toronto didn't meet on that night. And now I have I live in Hamilton, Ontario. I've lived in a few places, and lo and behold, Roger C, who Joe mentioned, uh is the founder of the We Gnostics meeting here in Hamilton, and Margarita and I get to go to that meeting once or twice a week in person. And it just feels like this whole thing was talking about this this circle, this circle of AA is right in front of my fucking face here today. You're all here. And what a beautiful, beautiful thing that is. I'm so grateful to all of you. Um that's all I got. Peace.

SPEAKER_10 56:17

Excellent. Wow, I'm just loving this meeting today. I don't know about you guys. I did want to mention, so Cher dropped a few, a few authors' names. Um I love our our late friend Bob Kaye, who published his daily reader um shortly before he passed, which is yes, Cher's holding it up there, Daily Reflections for Modern 12-step recovery, which I read and love. He he would he was fond of saying that um that there's never been a better time to be a free thinker in recovery in AA. And man, is that true? And another one of the people that I love seeing, John John C, over to you, sir.

SPEAKER_09 57:01

Hi, I'm John, alcoholic, always thinking about something. Uh, but what what Joe C said really got me is a sort of uh at some point in his sobriety, there was like a rekindling, a re-interest in in AA. And I really identified with that. It really happened because I I got sober. I came around AA in the in the 70s and got sober in 1982, and um uh for and hardcore atheists just couldn't read the big book, but I ran into a sponsor who was a very open-minded person that sort of came out of nowhere and said, Okay, you don't have to do any of this belief stuff. Uh, you just do the steps. The steps are the thing. And I did the steps religiously, you know, just as they're listed in the in the big book, and it literally changed me. I was someone who couldn't imagine life without alcohol. All of a sudden I didn't want alcohol anymore. I haven't thought about drinking alcohol since 1982. And um, but I still couldn't connect, you know, I could see how AA worked. It's like the cause and effect of the natural universe. And it it there's a higher power, of course, there's a higher power. There's always a higher power. I mean, I couldn't get myself sober, I had to work the steps of the program to get sober and go to a lot of meetings. So I just was really outside AA. I just couldn't connect. And I kept reading page 47. You know, that when when we speak to you of God, we mean your own conception of God. And so, well, how can I make this work? And I I felt that, well, if they're gonna say, um, if they're gonna say God as you understand him, you can't say that at the same time as saying God as you understand God, because you know, it's just simply the laws of nature and how we interface with the laws of nature. And um, and it just took and and and then I retired from my job and I went out to live in in retirement in Palm Desert, and uh we started a wee agnostic meeting in the Coachella Valley, and there were four of us that showed up every week. The same four. And um, so I just felt, you know, and we had a clubhouse out there and a lot of AA activity, and and um I just figured, you know, I'm just done with AA, I just can't do this anymore. And then COVAT and happened and and all these online meetings, it just kind of rekindled everything, and and I went back and and and really looked at God as you understand God, and realized that, okay, I'm gonna take that to heart at this point. In fact, other things happened, like my my daughters all of a sudden are in the program, and they're not they don't have a problem with religion. They just go with it, you know. They just say, well, Dad, it's just all metaphors. So with that in mind, I was able, I today am able to go back and actually, just like Charlie Powch said many years ago, uh, any step in the program can be worked without any religious concepts or language or anything. And that's how I had always felt. But by fully accepting the idea that it's my understanding of a power greater than myself, the cause and effect nature of the natural universe, um, I can work the program as it is in the I can go back and study the big book and actually communicate with religious people. And it all we are all together as one. I just recently wrote this little piece called the ABCs of windmills. Atheists and believers all seem to like it. You know, like we could just an understanding, a universal understanding of how a power greater than itself works, how we interface with the last the natural laws of nature. So I'm full on back into AA again. Okay, thanks.

SPEAKER_10 1:00:57

Thanks, John. That was great. Uh, you know, I when I saw Bridget raise her hand, I went, oh yeah, Bridget, I was name-checking people who do service at this group. There's Bridget, and then I looked around and realized there's a whole bunch of people I see here that I forgot to mention. There's Jenny, there's Kate, there's Penny, there's Donna. And I'm sure I'm still missing other people. You know, I we tend to think, why is it the same people who do the do all the service to run these meetings? And nobody else steps up, and I'm looking around and saying, no, a lot of people have done service to this meeting. And looking around, I see people that are doing service at all these other meetings that I attend. I just love the secular thing. And with that, Tara, come on in.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:40

Uh, my name's Tara. I'm sober NAA. And oh, I'm just thrilled with all of you guys talking today. Um every time I hear you talk about the history of, you know, AA in Canada, um, Joe, I just I get more and more into the feeling of what what it would be like if we didn't have you and you and people around you who are you know keeping it alive. And um I was very fortunate I had a woman um that I sponsor um and it introduced me to COVID at the end of uh 2018. And uh and it was like, oh my goodness. Now that but it's not, it wasn't quite like our meetings that we have now on on um television, um, because they didn't talk about everything, you know. And and when I when I first got to these meetings, you know, and and um in Toronto, I mean, I I have been excited about being sober since I got sober. But, you know, I still had that you know God consciousness of that it was just driving me crazy. And my first meeting, I went to, you know, it's a traditional meeting, and I just told them I couldn't read what they wanted me to read, you know, and they said, Oh, don't worry about it, you know, it's not a religious problem, you know, just take what you need and leave the rest. And I took them at their word. The only problem was I put the God thing on the on a back burner. And when I did that, I I couldn't work on it. And every time somebody said God, I would react in my head, you know, and um and I was so fortunate that I was able to uh get into you know a secular, you know, and be able to realize I could talk about that and and how I was feeling and make the transition into not worrying about it, not caring about it, not you know, people can be people, whatever. And and the first thing that I got when I got into secular was um I'm responsible for my behavior. For 29 years I tried to work the traditional program, and because I, you know, I was born and raised a Catholic, you know, and and uh so oh man, once I could make this transition into this, it's like I've just blossomed, I know that. And um I have joy, you know, and it's so wonderful seeing all you people, you know, and and getting to know you a little, you know, and uh it's just exciting. And um Cher, I just understand you completely. And um and uh Patrick, um I I I call you my son to people sometimes. Um man. Um I heard I heard this guy in Toronto saying, My name's Patrick and I'm a lovable guy. And I said, Oh my gosh, how come how did a guy say that? You know, and uh in in traditional, I finally realized I still had my dogma for for my Catholic uh bring upbringing. And I realized I had it because I refused to work on it. And you know, and so if I if I didn't want to work on it, it was just gonna keep you know bouncing. So I managed to finally work on that and um found out I'm a lovable woman and I'm enough. And um I have enough. So thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_16 1:05:46

Hi everyone, everyone here, alcoholic, and uh so glad to see you all. And I especially want to thank um Margarita. You you always show up. You always show up and you start and you kick this off, and you really talk about it at every meeting I've been with you. you know you talk you talk about this you know uh continuing to try to grow this organization to grow to grow you know this kind of secular aa and and thank you very very much and I think what I and I want to thank I certainly want to thank the speakers um and um Kenji and Patrick and Joe and Cher and but I think what I'd like to say is something addressing more to to the newcomer to the newcomer who may have found themselves in this meeting and to those who are coming back you know coming back after you know a struggle after a drink after a lapse relapse and and and and those are just feeling kind of off today you know I think um you know these these are the kinds of meetings that um you know that I just I just welcome everyone who's really struggling because not not I have I've gone to meetings where I have just been super down you know and everything around me looks like it should be a great life and going on and it's not you know but then my my my sobriety's been a lot like that you know you know it was up it had its ups and downs you know and nobody ever said it was going to be straight up you know but they always promised that it would be better you know and they said it's gonna be your life's gonna get better you know my life got different you know and it's still different today and um I think that when I I got sober in traditional AA I'm forever grateful for those um very loving people very loving folks I I guess I kept searching around until I found a meeting that um accepted me as I as I was where I was at the time with like three days of sobriety you know angry and just kind of generally out of sorts with life you know and they just kept loving me and they said you know we'll love you till you can we'll love you till you love yourself you know and uh stupid thing to say I thought you know and it just hit me right in the heart. So um I used to go to in I always went to in-person meetings but I also know that I I learned a lesson early on and that was the lesson of I went to I went to a showed up for a meeting a new meeting and there was uh no one there and no one showed up no one showed up to lock unlock the room to start the meeting and what my what my sponsor told me at the time was you stick around. You take your big book with you you take it 12 by 12 whatever you stick around and wait until somebody else shows up you know and I've had meetings sitting in a car outside the meeting that was supposed to happen you know and all I know is that I can show up today and I can support people who are coming into the meeting into the program and those people who've been here for a long time. And so the same applies for me at Zoom. You know when I go to a meeting and there's only like three or four people in the Zoom meeting you know you know I I feel you know I I feel this thing about you know you need to stay Marilyn you need to stay. But I don't have anything in common with them. You need to stay anyway because you never know who's going to pop in. And um so um I I love so many people in this in this meeting it's amazing you know it's amazing that I I I know your faces you know um and your names and so much about you and you know some stuff about me I mean you know um and um I'm looking forward to the conference you know we're going we're gonna show up by God we're gonna be there you know um I wanna I want to I want to plan a I want to plan a walk in the desert that's what I want to do as part of it and um pools are fine for some people I like the desert so um we'll let you know how how that's gonna happen. So my love to all and thank you very much.

SPEAKER_10 1:09:47

Thanks so much.

SPEAKER_13 1:09:48

And more names that I forgot to mention who have been instrumental to service in this group Ginny hi Ginny Janice Marcia and of course Bridget who's up next hi Bridget hi Kenji thank you so much um and thanks to everybody doing service Margarita uh Tony Muchas gracias Veronica Veronica I Claudia Anne um and to our speakers Joe good old Joe Patrick and Cher and to our MC Kenji this is a really cool event the Global Speaker Tour so it's really neat to see it come together every month and um I'm just proud to be part of Secular AA and proud to be part of Toronto Beyond Belief. So I knew I couldn't miss it because it's one of my home groups it kind of secular AA and Freethinkers recovery has transformed my sobriety I I attend a lot of in-person meetings still traditional meetings. There's no local agnostic meeting here in Jersey City I keep thinking I should start one I should start one again I don't have time but I want to start one I will soon but yeah just it's just nice to have like the freer discourse just to be able to not have to do mental gymnastics all the time. I've been just introduced to so many interesting ideas and ways of doing recovery been able to do service I really enjoy service that's kind of been my thing that keeps me kind of plugged in. It's really great because when I don't want to show up but it's like oh I have to make coffee or I have to like open the Zoom room or whatever. I mean it it really works. It keeps me here and um you all have been with me through difficult times. I found you during the pandemic of course um I didn't really know anyone or get really linked into groups or anything until uh 2021 actually when I found a place hosting a Tesnuwa meeting for like seven months. Yeah so that that really transformed everything. So yeah it's just really nice to see everybody it's nice to be a part of this this is a really special moment someone mentioned it being kind of like a pioneering time I do think of this as um the secular secular AA's flying blind period are sort of pioneering time. So it's kind of cool to be a part of that. I also would like to just give a shout out to Xanner. Xanner is one of our great members at Beyond Belief.

SPEAKER_10 1:12:26

Thanks Absolutely Xanner I should not have started naming names because I knew I was going to forget people. Ray D is another one one of the things that I love about Zoom is at least how we do it on Secular is we call on people in the exact order that they raise their hands. We don't pick and choose from the sea of raised hands at in-person meetings which is how it is at the bigger meetings um in the brick and mortar rooms that I've attended and uh I just love Zoom and I love Secular and it's just amazing.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:59

And I'm thrilled to now call on Michelle hi Michelle Hi Kenji thank you hi everybody my name is Michelle Malcolm so nice to be here like people mentioned I haven't seen some of you since Vancouver or SOAR last year. And it's nice to see Will and Margarita all you guys so I'm thrilled to be here especially I when I saw the announcement sent by Margarita that it would be uh the Beyond Belief uh group from Toronto and I knew Joe would be there so I uh I said I had to go. And you know it's thanks to people like Joe and those who are uh doing service uh in secondary that um that I'm sober today because I was falling out of love with a like it was more than boredom I would for me to go to traditional meetings it was becoming an air thing really and um although I'm grateful to traditional labor I I I after a while I just couldn't do it. I had a problem with it. I still did service today because I am grateful for my surviving that's why I'm at Joe. I I know Joe for a long time but Joe would come to the area meetings and talk about secular opening up a to you know make it open the the doors wider. And it's because of Joe the dirty work that had to be done in Toronto because after they got kicked out, you know, they persevered and they gave me the courage to start talking about having a secular meeting in our we now have three meetings in the city. Uh the first group celebrated its 10th year anniversary. And you know I can't tell you how many people have come to our meeting saying thank God for sex law I'll use that expression but it's it thank God there's a secular meeting because I couldn't you know it saved their lives so and they keep coming back every week. And um I'll be eternally grateful to Joe and people like you guys doing the service for my sobriety and it reminds me that you know A is not an echo chamber. I I need to do service not only in secular A but in traditional A because how else are they gonna find out about us? So our group as a group rep we have a GSR and we you know we keep doing the things we need to do because that's part of our 12 step within A. So thank you again so much everybody I encourage you to keep going.

SPEAKER_10 1:15:35

Thank you thank you so much. I'm so happy that Lori has raised her hand. Lori has been so important to me in my sobriety for these what five years or so unlike any sponsor I've ever had I pretty much tell Lori everything about what's going on in my life um multiple times a week sometimes multiple times a day I don't know how she feels about it but I think it's really kept me honest and grounded and um thank you Lori and um over to you well gosh thanks Kenji I'm Lori Grateful Alcoholic and um uh and and I have to say you are doing a fantastic job emceeing today.

SPEAKER_14 1:16:17

So uh this has been a great meeting. I haven't been to the speakers meeting for a little while because I um I actually go to um I have my home group meeting many paths on Sunday morning and then I go to a traditional meditation meeting where I met Cher and uh Kenji got me to go there. So um it's I I really like um this uh this topic that has come through about you know kind of bridging between tech traditional and secular and I think this group has been really forward thinking in that I um I came to Toronto in the pandemic again because of Kenji inviting me he's invited me to a whole bunch of meetings history meetings and stuff that I never would have thought of going to and Toronto became very very important to me I had been uh a member of a secular meeting in Burian Washington um many paths which is now um completely um online but I never gotten really really involved in the pandemic I went to a whole lot of meetings and most of them were secular meetings and uh Toronto was really really important to me because I really saw the whole free thinking spectrum atheist agnostic and free thinking it was uh really opened up my my sobriety I'd been sober for a few decades and I had and it gotten stale and I had felt like I didn't quite belong and so um in traditional AA although it saved my life and you know I really grew up and became a human being in traditional AAA. But secular yeah it's definitely definitely my tribe I think it is important you know Michelle mentioned it uh that it's really important for us secular groups to show up in the in the traditional AA service structure uh and so I am you know the GSR for my group many paths in district 25 which I think is one of the first now I have to be careful about that um online districts in uh the US and um we're part of area 72 Western Washington and uh many paths is one of only two um secular groups in that um district there's about 52 groups that show up and um I'm you know proud to be one of the voices you know traditionally the AA needs to hear about us and people coming in don't have to turn around and go back out the door because they hear the G word. I feel personal about that because my brother Greg rejected AA because of that and maybe he would have been sober now um still if you know we had known about if there'd been more acceptance of the agnostic and atheist perspective. But it's a long road but we're really we are pioneers and I'm proud to be a part of it. Really great to see Joe don't don't get to see him very often so uh hey Joe and uh and I I see Cher all the time and uh you did really great and Patrick I really admire um your leadership of on the Toronto meetings we haven't met personally but um hope to in Phoenix there's just a lot of inspiration I've met so many people and gotten to know people through Toronto and just really opened up the secular world for me. So you're very you're all very precious to me. So thank you so much and thanks for my sobriety.

SPEAKER_10 1:19:56

Thanks that was great.

SPEAKER_15 1:19:58

And Rady hello come on inks hi Rady happy customer of AA and I just have to say thank you good to hear the history shares nice to really really get to know you we connected on Facebook under my pseudonym so it's nice to hear you and uh great story very motivating all of you but a special thank you to Patrick oh my gosh that was so wonderful the way you were so rational this incredible lead and then we get to your anger about what happened with the meetings and I felt it I feel it still and I where I live actually they're not just you know God fearing God loving whatever but um they're homophobic and sexist and racist so it's it's just such a puddle it's so nice to um share that anger that it just happens every day the slights the anyway I had to walk off my job because of it. Sorry I'm going on beyond what I wanted to but um I'm also very grateful for AA and feel very connected to this group and all all of you and I was also ready to walk away from AA and the pandemic and online meetings saved me and then finding you guys that was it okay thanks I passed.

SPEAKER_10 1:21:19

Thanks Rady Patrick sent me a message and said did you mention um Donna who is currently hosting the Thursday speaker meeting and I think I did but Donna would you like to come in and share?

SPEAKER_04 1:21:31

My name's Donna I'm addicted to more and uh I this isn't the topic but I hear it uh during the pandemic I did go online but mostly what I was doing was going to at the parking lot where every Monday Wednesday and Friday I had met with a bunch of drunks here in my town and I was told by I was fired by my sponsor my grandsponsor nobody in this town other than this couple drunks that came were willing to have anything to do with me. They said I was giving AA a bad name. I talked to the police and they said thank God you are there because we got drunks off the street and we don't know what to do with them. They don't have cell phones and computers and any way to go online. So I am that's one of the proudest things I've ever done and it's something that I don't dare even talk about because people still have a very bad judgment of me for doing that. We we didn't you know we all didn't say and if there was more than five one of us left we never had more than five people but anyway uh I just got into the heavy I'm many past uh Lori's my GSR uh very grateful for her because I don't like that kind of stuff. Um and we used to meet in Burian that was an hour and a half one way drive for me and damn betcha I went every Sunday me and my friend Eric would come would drive down there. He had the nerve of moving to Arizona one of those places down where it's warm and hot and stuff and um anyway I I love this meeting I really wish I had been here for uh the earlier speakers but I was at my home group meeting because I knew Lori wouldn't be there so somebody had to go thank you.

SPEAKER_10 1:23:16

Thanks Donna anybody else we're at it we're at about 90 minutes where we can go a little over if somebody would like to um say a few words check in ah Jenny excellent come on in hey I'll just claim my seat as they say it's good to see everybody I did a little work keeping sober there's no higher power and you guys did the rest of it thank you so much for being there for me I love you all see you soon how about that awesome thanks Jenny hi Jen hey everybody great great event today I have to say it's been a while since I've hooked up with you all and I didn't realize how much I missed you and um I recently left um my online home group after over five years involvement and a little bit of a loss but a little bit of a reprieve and this is the first online meeting I've been to since I did that and it's been uh about a about a month and for me that's a really long time.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:35

I could go to in person but yeah that was that was my go-to. And anyways I I just feel like I love all of you and if I could make your times I will but that's the thing that has you haven't been on my um regular list for because the time is just doesn't work well with me but I'm gonna make more of an effort if I can I'm so glad this is recorded. So whoever missed the uh speakers uh you can uh listen and and I suggest that you go back and do the just that because uh the speakers were fantastic um I just want to make one mention about uh uh acceptance in AA for us um two two comments one is um there's the fourth tradition you are an intergroup if you say you are and that's a pretty good uh uh um argument to make with any intergroup because you really have some I was very lucky here in New Mexico and had no idea when I was gonna come up again there was no uh secular meeting here I said well we have to have one because there was one in my hometown for me when I came in every city or major area who had one so I can't have the secular I I can't have to org I said this is my meeting this is what it's called and also put me on the meeting guide and when you put me on the meeting guide please add the filter circular I know other people have had that problem but we have the fourth tradition and it could be four I don't know if you want to take it to the to the courts like um Toronto had to you know that they finally won their case like um suing as a civil uh rights violation something like that I don't know you want to go that far but you certainly have that fourth tradition to to uh to present so thank you for letting me share and thank you for a wonderful tour.

SPEAKER_12 1:26:54

Yeah thank you so much Jen yeah that's really interesting about the meeting filter thing most intergroups use the framework the TSO provides for online meeting lists and most of them do have that um secular filter but not all I guess they're autonomous and that's cool but um yeah that was really interesting to hear and now for friend Jeb come on in Jeb oh thanks Kenji and thanks for your continuing service and friendship my name is Jeb and I'm grateful recovered alcoholic and this has been an amazing meeting from beginning with the speakers and then to the comments and I think it's been a a great history meeting of what it was like what happened and what we have now and for individuals as a group I'm so grateful that we with COVID we we we were forced to zoom and now I can connect with dozens of people every day Who are on this path of recovery around the nation. And it isn't just a meeting of four of us sitting in a room. It's sometimes hundreds of people. And this this monthly speaker tour is one of the best because it draws uh it draws on the experience of different groups and it and and individuals the way we've heard today. And as as many of you know, I I hold on to many things that were told to me when I first came into AEA. One of the most important when they gave me my 24-hour coin, is they said, This is a reminder that we do this one day at a time. And that's still my favorite coin. And it's just one of those little bronze coins, it's very nice, and I keep it in a little coin purse along with another medallion. I I haven't taken a um a medallion in in several years now, and I don't know what would happen if I went to a uh an in-person meeting today, if they'd even have a medallion with uh the number of years. But what's most important is what every day that each one of us has found the power to use that unsuspected inner resource to say, no, I won't pick up a drink, no, I won't go out and buy a bottle, no, I won't pick up another cigarette or whatever it might be. But it's wonderful to be here in it. But we used to say in a group of the winners, and they told me, yes, stick with the winners, and that's one of the reasons I go to meetings, and I still go to at least one meeting a day, and I've been doing that for 40 some years, and it hasn't hurt at all because it's kept me out of the bars, it's kept me out of the streets, it's kept me from driving drunk. Everybody's better off because I'm sober and doing what I do best. Thanks so much. Much love to all of you.

SPEAKER_10 1:30:13

Thanks, Jeb. Anyone else? Okay, in closing, I just wanted to say that I'm totally stoked about going to Phoenix in November and partying with some of you face to face, with many of you face to face. It's gonna be awesome. And thank you for allowing me to be of service today. And this has been a blast. And back to you, Margarita.

SPEAKER_03 1:30:41

Thank you, Kenji, and everyone. Um, where do I begin? I I I just won't, but um just remind everyone, you can come back next month. We're gonna have fantastic translation with the um Spanish speaking group and the Jim uh Burwell Virtual Group. And um we need more groups in the future. I believe um in July we have uh We're not a glum lot or Rule 62. So I forget what the the name of the group is, but we need some in um June and the other first Sundays of the month come upcoming. It's a fantastic opportunity to to feature your your group and um um yes, thank you everyone for being here. And and I we usually finish with that song that comes out of Beyond Believe Toronto. So if y'all want to unmute and sing along and share a smile and a and a song, it's really easy. So uh Patrick have the ability to unmute.

SPEAKER_01 1:31:42

I do.

SPEAKER_03 1:31:44

Thank you. And ready.

SPEAKER_10 1:31:46

If you're gonna go to the bird, what do you have?