Secular AA Global Speaker Tour - Rule 62 AA Group- July 5, 2026

July 2026: Secular AA's monthly world-tour of speaker meetings is hosted by the Rule 62 AA Group. Our speakers this month are:

• Tony S
• MJ
• and Steve T

..with Steve T 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 "Secular Book Study Group" on Sunday, August 2nd 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_13 0:00

Welcome to Secular AA's global tour of monthly speaker meetings featuring secular AA groups across the globe. I am Margarita, that's alcohol free, celebrating 1841 days of waking up, glad I didn't have a drink the day before. I have a few announcements before we welcome our guests from Rule 62. And I want to thank everyone supporting this monthly meeting with spreading the word, hosting the security by recording, editing, and posting. Especially the key members Tony, Claudia, and Veronica and Fabio. Regarding simultaneous translation, thanks to Fabio and Veronica G. We can provide simultaneous translation from English to Spanish and Spanish to English. To choose to listen in English only or Spanish only, find the Globe icon labeled interpretation on your toolbar and select your preferred language. On a mobile device, you will have to select the three dots for more. Okay, today's speakers from Rule 62 will be presenting in English, followed by an open discussion from participants who can share in English or Spanish because you will be translated into the other language simultaneously. So tonight, uh today, today, or wherever you are tonight, today, 90-minute meeting is brought to you by Secular AA. Our format is secular. The people who are here all have different beliefs. We hope that everyone can feel free to express themselves without fear of dissuasion or persuasion. We do not use prayer from any religions in this meeting. And I have a couple of secular AA specific announcements, starting with registration and hotel booking are open for the next in-person international conference of secular aid taking place in Arizona, IX Phoenix 2026. The dates and location are set for November 13th through 15th this November at the Hilton Phoenix Resort, The Peak. In the chat, you'll find a link to register for 150, the link to both book hotels at a in it's all suites too, good size rooms to with separations where you can share comfortably four people. So if you're thinking about registering, it's very helpful to the committee who's doing all the planning to for people to go ahead and register so that we have good concrete numbers for committees like the food and the room selection and so on. So thank you for that. We will also add information in the chat about two issues related to secular AA's general membership meeting this December. By the way, anyone is a member of Secular AAA who so declared. So first is in the spirit of rotation, there will be several vacancies to fill on the board of Secular AA. And folks interested in nominating themselves or others will find links to information on getting names before the general membership. And the second announcement is we need a location for the next in-person international conference of secular AA after the 2026 conference in Phoenix. So we need it for the 2028. Groups interested in nominating their city can find links to instruction and instructions in the chat as well. And I think my last announcement is about next month. Our next stop will be the secular big book tool. We'll put that information in the chat as well with simultaneous English-Spanish translation and same time, same Zoom details as today. And now for the main event. They will share for about 15 minutes each, followed by opportunities for all participants to share for about three minutes each. The meeting usually lasts about 90 minutes, but we're happy to keep going for all who to share who wish. Welcome everyone here. Welcome, Rule 62, and their MC, Steve T. Please unmute to begin.

SPEAKER_08 5:13

Hey everybody, good morning. My name is Steve. I'm an alcoholic. And I'm really grateful to be sober today and glad to be at this meeting. And I am broadcasting from sunny Los Angeles. I'm in the West Hills area of LA. And uh I'm very grateful to be uh invited anywhere, but especially to this. This is this I think of as another gift of the pandemic. Um that we all get to do this because I never would have figured out a lot of things if it weren't for the pandemic, and it weren't for Zoom meetings, and it weren't for secular AA. And I'll tell you more about my journey uh there a little bit later, but I want to uh introduce the first speaker. This guy's definitely one of the gifts of the pandemic. Never would have met him if it weren't for uh everything shutting down. And uh he's brought a lot of uh he comes to visit us often in Los Angeles because he really understands that Los Angeles is the cradle of recovery. Uh but uh and I hope you all feel that way about your area that you're sober in. Uh Scott Redman used to say if you don't think you got the best home group in the world, you better change meetings. So anyway, I'm really grateful to see all of you here, especially you smiling faces. Um and uh now, without further BS for me, please welcome with a warm round of applause, Tony S from New York City.

SPEAKER_05 6:41

Thanks, everyone. Thanks, Steve. I'm Tony. I'm an alcoholic. Um dad, uh, I am a substance abuse counselor these days. Um, and I'm here in New York. And so uh yeah, thank you, Steve, for asking me to join you guys and Margarita for running this thing with everybody. Um, I recognize some faces here from some of the meetings I attend. Um, one of them I see Nathan here. Nathan introduced me to uh Rule 62. He introduced me to his recent recovery meeting um when Zoom uh meetings started popping up during the pandemic. Um, and I was uh starting my own home group here in New York, which is uh called We Humanists. There's another meeting called the Happy Hour, and one called The Only Requirement. So we meet three times a week uh on the Upper East Side for New York City. Um my sponsor Glenn started those humanist meetings uh in the city. Um and he was the one who introduced me to secular AA for the first time. Um I started attending meetings in 1996 in New York. Uh December 7th was my original or my first sobriety date. Um, and I went to a place called 79th Street Workshop in Manhattan. Um the details of my drinking and and other stuff uh are not important. Um the point is at 29 years old, I sort of reached the uh end of that first line and went into AA and I I know I attended a couple of meetings and was like, this is really not for me. I mean, it might have it must it for me, it appeared to be like a group of druids with you know hooded outfits, folding hands, chanting, and I was like, this is too weird. I don't want any part of this. And so I struggled along for quite a while. Um, and quite a while, it was just a few more months um before hitting my first bottom and and going to a place called 79th Street Workshop, a 10 p.m. meeting there when I was encouraged to go to 90 meetings in 90 days. And that group was different than those first meetings I went to in that it was a a nightly meeting, you know, there was a clubhouse and they met nightly. And um I did, you know, I did the traditional AA thing. I got, you know, I got a sponsor who took me through the steps in the in the traditional sense in the big book and getting on my knees and doing a third step prayer and all of it. It I went through the motions. Um and as a result, you know, uh listen, it worked well enough to keep me sober for five years. Um what happened after five years? Uh you know, I stopped going to meetings all the time, but I also uh started a new job with somebody, uh, gave up my own company, and fear really sort of took over again. Um and I thought, you know, like many, that I could just smoke a little weed or something. And it wasn't long before everything sort of burned itself down again. Um my life sort of fell apart and I made it back in. And I and I went in and out of the rooms for quite a while before um before finding secular AA. And uh in 2017, I went to a detoxin treatment for the first time in my life. Um, I was I was asked, well, my son sort of begged for me to go. Uh he he told my wife that I needed to go to rehab, and I fought it for a little bit longer, maybe about a month, month and a half before I I really didn't have much of a choice. And I and I did detox, I did rehab. I went to, of all places, here we are at a secular worldwide meeting. I went to a long-term residential treatment center called St. Christopher's Inn, run by the Franciscan Friars of the Atonement. And um I gotta say, it was an amazing uh experience, a great place. They did not push religion, thankfully, because I would have left. I would have left ACA. Um and I stayed there for four months and I lived in a sober house for 11 months. This is married with a kid and and a place to live, um of all places in Hempstead, Long Island, which is not the cradle of recovery. Um but what happened was I my life uh shifted into aspirations and goals and and a general belief in myself that started to happen. And uh I took the leap and and started working as a peer in outpatient recovery, which paid like $15 an hour. And um I was really happy in that. And and the pandemic hit in 2020, and as I was working as a as a peer in recovery, um I was introduced, you know, as I said, I started my home group on a Zoom meeting. Nathan, who's here, joined that meeting. He told me about Rule 62, a daily men's meeting, and uh his reason in recovery meeting. And all of a sudden, I was really immersed in online secular recovery. Um and I was also going to a daily check-in meeting, which I hadn't done since that first time I got into AA and did 90 meetings in 90 days, going to that same in-person meeting every night. Um and I took a number of service positions. Um what I really found was um that I was starting to create a life that I could be proud of, and that um and that brought me some real sense of purpose. Uh and I developed really close relationships with a lot of guys in that meeting. Um, as Steve said, I would travel out to LA after the first year or so in that meeting. I started going out to their uh Los Angeles uh San Fernando Valley AA convention, and I still do that once a year. Um and uh I developed a lot of close friendships. Um and I learned how to, you know, what it was to start meetings again, um, and to sort of craft my recovery to be something that worked for me rather than me working for it. I guess that's the best way to put it. Um I found like that there were no rules anymore that I had to that to that I had to follow. Um if I didn't feel like I felt like I could question a lot of things, and I think that's sort of what I like best about secular recovery, is we look at things in more of a logical sense. Uh, we're not afraid of science. Uh I'm not afraid of science. Um, I think addiction recovery is in a place that is so much different than it was when 12-step meetings were part of every sort of rehab experience because every rehab experience was informed by traditional 12-step AA. When I would go back up to St. Christopher's Inn as a member of the alumni to bring an in-person meeting, I was really proud and happy to be able to go in there as somebody from secular recovery and explain to the guys in that men's facility that this exists, that you don't have to believe in God as a higher power. Um, you don't have to turn your life over to some thing that you don't even believe exists. Um and one of the things I think the traditional AA for me uh that I found really challenging and difficult to navigate was this third step of turning your life over. Um even when it meant turning your life over to AA, because in that there was like a circular reasoning, like AA helped me stay sober, therefore AA is my higher power. And the AA says I need a higher power, and then AA confirms itself, and then so I felt like, oh my God, I don't want to get stuck in anything. I want it to be an option for me to go to a meeting if I feel like going to a meeting, or to pick up the phone and talk to somebody who I find to be helpful and supportive of my of what I'm trying to do and and who can help me when I encounter challenges in life. Um so I don't necessarily believe in sort of the universes. I don't I don't really know what I believe in or that I'm really happy that I don't have to believe in anything. I believe that in my life I'm capable of doing things now that I didn't think I was capable of doing before. And so, like I said, I work as a substance abuse counselor, I'm in school full-time, going for a bachelor's, finishing up my bachelor's, and then going for a master's in social work. I have a wonderful relationship with my son today, which is really important. And my wife actually tolerates me. Um I've been married 30 years. So with all of the in and out of AA stuff that that went on, um raising a son uh sober for the first five years of his life, and then also trying to do it when I was using, which is really difficult. I wasn't doing a very good job of it, obviously, uh, to the point I am now. Um what I look forward to most now, and I'm looking forward to trying to go to this um convention in in Phoenix. Uh, I have a coworker who wants to go. Uh, a couple of members of our groups obviously intend to go. Um, I just think secular AA for me has opened up a lot of doors and a lot of options and how I look and look at recovery and how I choose to, for lack of a better term, work my program. I I don't necessarily think I need a program so much as um possibilities and an acceptance of that my way doesn't have to be somebody else's way. Um I do think more than anything, I want to be able to encourage people who struggle and who want to get sober and and and they want to figure out another way to do it. Um I think the steps are valuable. I think AA is an amazing place. But I think that if you open yourself up to something like smart recovery, secular AA, um therapy. I'm in therapy. I go, I see a therapist once a week. Um that it's almost like the old diet pills. You'd buy a Dexatrim, and on the back of the box it would say, you know, this pill combined with a healthy diet um and exercise, like combinations of of things achieve better results than any one way. Um and I and most of all, I think I'm just sort of open to what the possibilities may be a year from now, two years from now. One of the meetings um that I recently started is I don't even know, I I don't think we even define ourselves as an AA meeting, but it's just a it's a group that gets together and and has a conversation. And that was based um on something I found really valuable, which was group therapy. Um, it's also based on a home group meeting I uh my sponsor started um called the Happy Hour, which is sort of based in early AA. So it's it's kind of calling back to what started as, and Nathan's familiar with the power of two one alcoholic talking to another. Um, this is just a group of people who choose to get together who are sober and who come from AA but want to talk about real life issues, whether it's trauma, fear, neuroplasticity, an article we read about something that's emerging in recovery. Whatever we feel like talking about, we have a conversation about. And I think dialogue achieves a lot more than any sort of um speech or directive that somebody gives. One of the things I never liked in AA was sort of a you have to do this if you want this mentality. I don't respond well to that because, as you know, uh alcoholics do not like being told what to do. The funny thing about addiction to me is that we or me, I allowed drugs and alcohol to tell me what to do all the time. You know, that child mentality of don't tell me what to do, I don't want to do what you tell me to do. Yet drugs and alcohol told me every moment of the day what I was gonna do next. You're gonna go here, you're gonna do that, you're gonna lie to this person, you're gonna make up this story. This is what you're gonna do. Because I attached a value to that life. And what I find today is that I've attach a value to living a sober life. I attach value to my relationships with my friends and my family. Um, and so we, as people, I think generally protect what we value. And I protect my sobriety because I value it. I protect it because I if I wasn't sober, I wouldn't be doing the things that bring me so much um sense, such a sense of purpose and so much sort of uh joy and an ability to tolerate pain and difficulty um and navigate it because there's plenty of it. Last night sucked. By the way, I'll just say this, and yeah, I'll I'll the famous last words, I'll end with this. Last night was 4th of July, and my dog was sitting here while mortar fire, you know, like explosions were happening outside, and the dog was shaking, and my wife and I were at each other's throats about how we were gonna deal with the dog. I went up sleeping on the floor of the bathroom at one point with my dog with my back to the door, and and the really cool thing is that this morning none of that happened, really. I mean, it there was no lingering, you need to make up for this, because. I try to make up for my shortcomings and and my failures by not repeating them as best as possible. Admitting to it. I admit it, I was an asshole last night. And I don't need to point the finger and go, it's so and so's fault. Um I'm pretty capable today of thinking about how I want to change and how I want to be better. Dumb. I find that I've been given tools and and ways to do that. Um a lot of it comes from AA. Uh some of it comes from therapy. Most of it, if not all of it, comes from a desire to be a decent person. Somebody that I can be proud of, and somebody that my son can be proud of. Um and I'm gonna make mistakes, you know, I'm gonna be judgmental, and I'm gonna do a lot of things because accepting imperfection is so much easier than trying to be perfect. I am not gonna be, I'm far from perfect, and I'm going to be far from perfect. Uh, and as long as I try, I'm pretty happy. Um, so thank you guys for this. Um and you know, I I'm gonna put my phone number in the chat uh because I really love talking to people about recovery, about uh what I'm doing now, uh, what they're doing. I like to ask questions. I'm interested in other people. Um I find it fascinating that there's this many squares in this meeting right now. Um that there's 65 people here that have 65 different experiences and ways of going about living their life that work for them, and I want to find out as many of those ways as possible and try different things out uh to see what what else might work for me. So thank you guys so much for allowing me to be here with you today. And I appreciate everybody here. Thanks.

SPEAKER_08 24:00

Thank you, Tony. Uh, if you're kind of newish, beware of any alcoholic that says, and I'll close with this. It never happens. Uh thanks, Tony. Uh so uh this next uh person, I I just latched on to her immediately. She joined our secular meeting just a couple weeks ago. And uh the reason that I was so intrigued by her is because I knew exactly where she was coming from, I knew where she'd been, I knew how she got there. It was just there was such clarity in what she shared. And uh so uh I had I had originally invited one of the women in our meeting that uh just turned three years sober because she's we've watched her grow up, you know, over the last two years that we've been in existence, and it was really fun. But she's a waitress and she is ser uh serving uh hash today. So but uh so MJ was my second choice, but I was very excited to sorry, babe, that's the truth, gotta tell the truth, but uh she actually was my first choice, but I was trying to get somebody newer in here, but anyway, I'm really grateful she's here and she got server in Los Angeles, and she can tell you all the rest. Please welcome MJ.

SPEAKER_11 25:17

Thank you, Steve, for that. I knew I was a second choice, so is somebody keeping a timer or should I? No? Okay, no one's answering. All right, MJ Addict Alcoholic. Uh hi everyone, thanks for coming. Uh, I haven't shared in a long time. So um let me just say I started out in upstate New York and I ping-ponged across the country because I suffered greatly from RID, restless, irritable, discontented. And I ended up in Los Angeles, the cradle of recovery, which uh it really was the best place to sober up. Um my I was living with my brother who was in uh Santa Monica, and I stayed on the couch all day and smoked and drank and hallucinated and just did all kinds of hallucinogenics. I was less than 100 pounds. I was mal I had I was malnutritioned, I was unhealthy, I was dying. Uh I didn't think so. I didn't think it was anything I was putting or not putting in my body because I don't think I ate. Uh, I don't think I breathed because I was constantly having something in my mouth to change the way my brain worked. Um, I did a lot of hallucinogenics. Uh, I didn't want to be here. Absolutely did not want to be in my body. Uh that that is the result of being the fifth of seven in an Irish Catholic family where there was absolutely no affection whatsoever. Uh a lot of abuse, no affection, including religious. Um so there I was, 27 years old. Uh he kicked me out, as he should have. Um, and through a series of other people and coincidences, some would are of our more God-conscious people would say it was a divine intervention. I was sitting at a table. I had gone to an evaluation, somebody had given me a phone number. Uh, I called the phone number. It was a woman who told me about how she had, you know, cleaned up her act, was back in school, had quit smoking cigarettes, and because she had gone into treatment. And the thing that stuck out to me was that she had quit smoking cigarettes. I was most impressed with that because my denial was incredibly thick. Um, so I called the number, and it was a treatment program in one of the worst neighborhoods in Los Angeles, Pico Union. And uh, you know, I went in for an evaluation. They asked me uh what I wanted them to do for me, and like an idiot, I said, make me into a social drinker. So I'm sitting at a table with a friend who drove out from New York trying to convince me to go live on the beach in Santa Cruz, and the phone rang and they had a bed available, and I chose the bed and not Santa Cruz. Uh so the treatment program was Alcoholism Center for Women, and it's a it was a 12-week program with 12 weeks of aftercare. Now, I'm in the program, I'm exhausted. I am full of shame, fear, terror. Um, I was lonely. I remember the loneliness, terribly lonely, because I had cut myself off from everybody and everything, had no sense of self whatsoever. And still, I'm in a treatment program and I still didn't believe it was the drugs and alcohol. It was everything. It was, I blamed it on Ronald Reagan, the president at the time, because I came into the program March 29th, 1983. And uh I blamed it on everything outside of myself except the poisoning I was doing. Uh, yes, I was suicidal. I almost choked on my own puke. I mean, it was disgusting now that I think about it. It started out fun, but it didn't end that way. So I'm in this 12-week program. I still don't believe it's the drugs and alcohol, so I made a deal with myself. If in a year my life is better, I will commit to this program. Well, here I am, decades later. My my recovery is very slow, plotting, incremental steps. I hated AA. I did not have a pink cloud. I hated the god shit. I hated the powerlessness, especially as a woman in a patriarchy coming in. I hated everything. I did not want to be part of a cult, but I had nowhere else to go. And fortunately, in Los Angeles, at the time, there was a lot of young people that came in. I was 27 years old. A lot of young people. So we sat in the back of meetings and we made fun of everyone and judged everyone. I did everything they told me not to do, except I did not drink or use one day at a time. Eventually, I started understanding a little bit about what this program was about. And yes, it was traditional. My first 37 years has been in traditional AA. Um, you know, I didn't know what a principal was, but the beauty of the program in Los Angeles at that time was that we approached a lot of young people, a lot of intelligent people came into the program and we approached it like it was a college course. So there wasn't a push at that time to believe in God. And there wasn't a, it wasn't religious. It was very much of a, hey, what do they mean by humility, which none of us knew? What do they mean by principle? I never knew what gratitude felt like. I even asked in a meeting, what does gratitude feel like? I did not change overnight. I was stealing from the seventh tradition because they said, take what you like and leave the rest behind. And I found out some other people were stealing from the seventh tradition. Because at that time, in traditional meetings, it was like the basket being passed like a church, and you put your money in. We got elected to service positions. Um, there was no value. Yeah. I was told who my sponsor was because I was so unconscious. I didn't understand the concept of having a sponsor, so they assigned me one. Um I was terribly, I was 13 years old emotionally, because that's about when I started drinking and using. And uh I have been, I've learned through the tools, the simple kit of tools to grow up. Because one, I was not a human being, I was an alien being, because the hallucinogenics allowed me to travel in other dimensions, and I never wanted to wake up from my dreams because my dreams were so incredible, astro projecting all over the place. So it took me about five years to get back into my body, to land here, to root. Once I landed here, and I never wanted to be here, I thought this place sucked. I hated it. My mental I I probably would have been evaluated with drug-induced psychosis if anybody ever did an evaluation, which they didn't. Um but it's amazing that by just not drinking or using, and then eventually I quit smoking cigarettes. I had two years uh in recovery. It was encouraged in California because I became a social pariah for and they went up to a dollar a pack. And I know that's that's amazing. And uh so one by one, I started reparenting myself, which is what this program for me was about, and learning how to become a human being. Um, I think it talks about practicing, and it's practicing, practicing the steps, practicing the principles, uh, learning uh, you know, the pr the promises, self-seeking will disappear. And it's because I've formed a wonderful sense of self. Uh it was it was really pushed about character development when I was in early recovery, that my perception was off, that it's an inside job, it's a selfish program. All of that I started applying, even though I was doing all kinds of stupid things, because I did not uh get it. You know, it it took me, it it and thank goodness there were we agnostic meetings in Los Angeles because they read the spiritual experience in the back of the big book. And in that uh it talks about a spiritual experience being of the educational variety, which is a slow awakening over a long period of time. I was the one that came in and tried to white out every reference to God, he and him in the big book, and my arm fell off after about 10 pages. Um, I had to let that go. I even had a 13th step because I was a witch, don't you get? You know, I mean, I just tried everything to acclimate. Um the thing that I got was unsuspecting inner resource. So every time I heard the word God or he, him, I would translate that to unsuspecting inner resource. And I and I I hit the mother load. I mean, there's a lot, I had to go through a lot of shit to find the horse in traditional AA, but there is a horse, and I'm riding it right now because it's about the joy of living. It's about being alive, it's about being, it's about, you know, just thoroughly enjoying the character that I continue to develop because I'm not perfect and I still make mistakes, and I still have to do a spot check inventory, and I still have to apologize, but less and less and less as time goes by. And I am totally awestruck at because when I first came in, I wish I had a video of me when I first came in. I am nothing like I am now. Um, I'm much healthier. My mind, I have, I can control what I think. Uh I captured the narrative of my reality, which is what perception is. Whenever I start saying, you know, really dumb things or unhealthy things to myself, I can shift. I can shift it. Self-pity, no. You know, I sometimes I'll I'll start feeling that self-pity, and I can shift my perception. There's so much to be grateful for today. Uh, I have I have all the icing on the cake. I have my own home. I have a wonderful community. I I am having the time of my life right now. I am I am healthy for my age. Um and I feel joy, which I didn't feel when I first came in here. When they say it's a design for living, I I know now the road does get narrower because I know now how I'm supposed to be. And when I stray off that path, I do, I do suffer the consequences because I have standards today. I did, I didn't have standards, I didn't have a code of ethics, I didn't have any of that. It was just, I was just a blob of primordial ooze that just could not figure out how to be a human being. And this program, I'm I've reparented myself, and sometimes I have to. I had so many voices in my head that weren't mine, and now I'm down to a few. Um, but those voices were mean and and cruel and abusive, much like my upbringing. And I've I've replaced them over time, it doesn't happen overnight. And I think around 10 years, I had the paradigm shift. Uh, it's kind of like the Wizard of Oz, where when I'm in Kansas, when I was drinking and using, it was black and white. But eventually, when I discovered the unsuspecting inner resource, which is very colorful, very uh lively, awesome, joyful. Um I walked into the munchkin land, I walked into the color. Uh, my life is very colorful. I I my character sticks out like a sore thumb because I really like being, I love being here now, and and I didn't. And I cannot believe just practicing principles, not drinking or using one day at a time, being of service to others, which is not only an AA, but it's for my community. I I am uh of service in my community. I'm sponsoring now um in 2020. Uh I'm gonna say this. It was a godsend, the COVID epidemic. I was about to walk away from AA because I could not stand the religiosity. And I was yelling at people in meetings because of the direction it was going in. I won't stop going to meetings because of the lesson I learned in early recovery from a woman who had 20 years who relapsed, and I will never forget her voice in a meeting. She said she could not stop drinking. She was dead two weeks later. And the thing she said was she stopped going to meetings. So 2020, silver lining, I have been reinvigorated by secular AA, and I am so grateful that I found secular AA. And yes, I've only recently started going to Rule 62, and I've been enjoying going to various and sundry different secular meetings because I'm doing meeting hopping now, which I've thoroughly enjoyed. And just stick around if you're new, one day at a time, don't drink and use, and it's amazing that the all the promises do come true. I intuitively know how to handle situations with juice to baffle me. I have a book that that is called The Book of Life, and I am practicing it and I'm living it. And I I absolutely cannot say, and I and I will not bash traditional AA, although sometimes I will. Traditional AA saved my life. And uh I learned a lot. Like I said, I had to go through a lot of shit to find the horse, but it makes the horse that much more beautiful. Anyways, thank you, Steve, for asking, and thank you for listening.

SPEAKER_06 40:57

Thank you, MJ. Awesome. Love it.

SPEAKER_08 41:03

Alrighty. So uh once again, I'm Steve. I'm an alcoholic. Very grateful to be sober today. Glad to be here. I also uh identify as an addict and an adult impersonator. Uh and AAs help with those two things too. I will also say uh thank God for secular AA. I mean, I too had a rebirth, uh, and I'll tell you I want to get into that, but I want to also let you know that I come from a I want to thank the committee that puts this together and really clear and and uh deliberate communications from the folks that invited us to do this and made it very easy for us to participate. So and I love this particular holiday. Um I love this weekend. Uh same similar issues that Tony shared about with uh our our animal lovers. We we keep rescuing animals, or maybe they rescue us. I'm not sure which way that works, but so we have to we deal with that. But uh I love the the spirit of the holiday because uh who better understands the meaning of independence? I mean, when we get sober and we really understand how this works, we truly become independent. And if you're new and that doesn't ring true for you yet, please keep coming back because um all these there's a lot of cliches that I could do without, but one of them is more will be revealed. And um if you keep an open mind. So uh I come from a long line of alcoholics, drug addicts, bipolar, anxiety, overwhelmed with anxiety, uh obviously a group of overachievers. Uh unfortunately, none of them um they all were exposed to alcoholics anonymous and narcotics anonymous, and uh nobody lived uh to be the age that I am. Everybody died from the disease in their mid-40s or early 50s. The long timer in my family was my grandfather who was a periodic, and he passed away at 59. He he held the record. Uh I turned 70 in March, and uh fortunately, because of Alcoholics Anonymous, I still feel 30 or 33, I should say, which is how old I was when I got sober. So uh I'll always be uh like MJ mentioned, I'll always be grateful for traditional AA, which is which I grabbed onto with both hands, and I my feet were well planted uh when I finally surrendered in September, uh September 20th, 1989. And one of the things I did to illustrate my surrender was I I checked into a treatment program that my wife had investigated and uh secured a bet for me, and I went in there very willingly. Um about a week later, we were walking back. From getting cigarettes and candy. And I look at the sign for the place, and it says, Pine Grove Hospital and Mental Health Facility. I thought, holy shit, it's come to that. It's worse than I thought. So that gave me another moment to really commit to whatever it took. And uh so I really grabbed on. And uh early on, right after I got out of treatment, somebody suggested that I go to a 7 a.m. meeting. And I didn't hear the reasons why, because I went into my own inner dialogue in that moment. Wow, 7 a.m. There's a meeting at 7 a.m. That just was astounding to me. And I thought, you know, they told me in treatment that there was only one thing I needed to change, and that's everything. And I used to try to get home by 7 a.m. because I figured if I got in just before that, my wife would not know I'd been out all night. So I said, I need to go to that meeting. And I, and that guy was right, I did need to go to that meeting, and it was great. And that's where I learned how to be an AA member. Also, MJ mentioned loneliness. I was very lonely in the last 18 months of my disease. Just and and the reason was I had pushed everybody away, and uh I'm a musician by trade. Even the musicians I worked with and got loaded with were stopped, they weren't hanging out with me. Even though I always had drugs and alcohol to share, they were worried I was gonna die on them, and they didn't want to have to like dispose of the body or drop me off at you know, ER or whatever. They just wanted nothing to do with me. So even the fellow drug addicts and alcoholics had they wanted nothing to do with me. My cocaine dealer said he thought I had to cut back a little bit. So that'll give you an idea of the how committed I am. So uh anyway, that's uh you know, that date of September 20th is important to me, and there's another date that uh that's important to me, and that is Monday, September 16th, 2020. I had a minor surgery that day, um which is also the day that everything shut down. Movie theaters, concert halls, nightclubs, churches. So now there was no place to even go to a meeting. And on the third day of recovery from the surgery, I felt like I needed a meeting. And I called a few of my A buddies and asked them if they'd be willing to show up if I started a meeting on this thing called Zoom. I had had some business meetings on Zoom, and they were like, What's Zoom? So I gave them the info for that, and then I suggested a 9 a.m. meeting. I really wanted a 7 a.m. meeting, but I knew that most of those guys would not get up for a 7 a.m. meeting. Anyway, they all responded positively to 9 a.m. And the next day, Friday, March 20th, we started the Rule 62 men's daily check-in meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous via Zoom. And uh basically uh the you know the format is uh check in, let us know how you're doing today. Check in, let us know what you might be having to deal with today that you might be challenged by, let us help you with it. Tell us how you got through something yesterday. Uh just get real and tell us what's really going on. I you know, we wanted to avoid a meeting that was a bunch of shares that sounded like AA bumper stickers pasted together. We wanted it to be real, and um, so anyway, you know, I expected that meeting to be attended by 10 or 12 guys and probably be around for four to six weeks, and uh then you know everything get back to normal and we'll be back to our regular meetings. Clearly, I am no fortune teller. Uh that same week, one of the guys that I that I was close with, who actually was not only my my Eskimo at my first meeting, uh, but he became a sponsee because he had kind of disengaged from the whole deal. And I ran into him at a meeting that I normally wouldn't have been at. And we reconnected and he asked me to sponsor him, even though he had a little more time than me, uh, because he saw how engaged I was with AA. Because once I got in here, I did all the stuff everybody talks about. I I started going on panels when I had six months, I got my own panel when I had a year. I started answering phones at the central office when I got a year. I had that commitment for 25 years. Um, I've been on the convention planning committee meeting on and off for 35 years. I've just I just keep getting my hands dirty. I do all that stuff. And um this guy was like that also. We were doing all that stuff together. And anyway, he said he was starting a secular meeting and that the first meeting was going to be on Sunday. And would I attend? And I said, Well, of course. I had no idea what a secular meeting was, but I wasn't gonna tell him that. So uh I showed up at the meeting and I I you know to support him and his new venture. And uh anyway, it turned out to be uh this meeting called Reason to Recovery. And unbeknownst to me, he decided to add our Rule 62 meeting to the secular meeting directory. It wasn't listed as a secular meeting, but it was listed as secular friendly. So we wound up meeting a whole lot of people we never would have known. Another gift of the pandemic that started coming to that meeting, and uh to my surprise, people started showing up from all over the United States, Canada, England, Europe, Africa, Asia. It became this international melting pot uh meeting. And also a lot of the participants that that we met in that meeting uh join us for one or two of our local AA conventions in Los Angeles. One's this the Valley, the San Fernando Valley one, and the other is the South Bay Roundup, which is which has been around 46 years, and ours, we're about to do our 51st year of it. And it's enhanced by these guys coming in for it. And uh anyway. What happened to me in the secular meetings that I was going to was I was hearing, meeting and hearing men and women with 30 and 40 years of sobriety who were either identified as agnostic or atheist, and and they were happy, joyous, and free. And it was so against all this stuff I heard in traditional AA about having to find a God and somebody better be your Lord and Savior, and all this stuff that if you don't get a God, you're gonna die drunk. Um, you know, that experienced me, that experience made me understand that I had kind of got along with the God idea for my first 30 years of sobriety. I mean, I did have 12 years of Catholic school under my belt. So it's not as though the God idea was was new to me. Uh, but even through 12 years of Catholic school and being the altar boy, I never made any kind of connection to God, even though I had a desire to do that. But I had been, you know, they say uh fake it till you make it, I'd been faking it, and I utilized many of the cliches that meeting shared with me about a higher power. You know the ones. Uh this is this is this one always got me. If God is small enough for you to understand, he wouldn't be big enough to solve your problems. My first question was, well, first of all, how do you know it's a he? And second thing, I've had some little tiny problems that don't get handled by by anybody that I can't figure out. So what happens if I have some really big problems? So I didn't that made no sense to me. And uh actually, the one that actually helped me get through those first 30 years was given to me by a guy that I was in treatment with. I went into treatment, I was 33. This guy was 57, but he looked 75. He had had a rough road, he'd had been in and out of 30 different treatment programs. He went to prison at 14 because he stole his stepdad's car to escape the beatings that he would get from this guy. And back in Iowa in that in the mid-50s, they didn't have you know juvenile detention. He just went to prison. So you can imagine what happened to this 14-year-old boy. Uh, but I and I asked him one night in treatment, I said, you know, why do you why have you been in and out so many times? And why do you keep coming back? And he said that he had a problem with God, and that's when he shared with me his prison experience and all these other horrific environments he'd been forced to live in. But he said he kept coming back because somebody once said to him that they felt the same way, that they didn't really think there was a God, but but that they got past it because somebody suggested to them just believe that we believe. That was the only requirement. And that's that's what he grabbed onto. And this guy came in, he actually left the treatment center against medical advice. He left early because one more time something hit him the wrong way and he left. And a month later I got a phone call from him. He was in detox one more time, and I went to visit him at detox, and you know, I was sober like 60 days when I went to visit him, and I took a guy with me that had 10 months of sobriety because I knew my buddy Peyton with 10 months knew everything about AA. And uh so I go into this hospital and I I lay my best stuff on my buddy Jim, who's in bed, and he looks just awful. And uh, and I turn to Peyton and I go, and Peyton, Peyton lays this beautiful share on him, man. It was just I was like ready to I was ready to take on the world. I was so inspired by what Peyton was sharing, and Jim just laid there listless. And we turn around and we walk out of there, and I'm I'm hanging my head because I'm figuring, you know, what did I miss? How could Jim not just be so caught up with our enthusiasm and paid to put his arm around me? He goes, Congratulations. I go, what are you talking about? I don't think he heard a word we said, and he goes, You just made your first successful 12-step call. I go, what are you talking about? I think the guy fell asleep on you. And he goes, You're still sober. Boom. There it is. That's the deal. So um there are some expressions, I call it the Holy Trinity of acronyms. The G-O-D thing, the my favorites, you know, group of drunks, gift of desperation, good orderly directions. These always felt very patronizing to me. And they were very they were less than adequate examples of practical solutions to the problems that I came in with. So I did all the stuff I'm supposed to do in AA. I was definitely much more engaged with my life and engaged with the people that mattered in my life. And um, but there was still something that wasn't quite fully filled in yet. So with 30 years of sobriety, I'm going out of these secular meetings in addition to traditional AA. And some of the secular meetings I went to, there was a lot of shit talk about traditional AA, which I didn't really care for. And so I filtered those out. Um and I latched on, and and then, like I always do, I just started a new meeting. I started a secular meeting, and um, and there's no shit talking allowed there. And uh, you know, during in that journey, I discovered what an agnostic is, and that I are one. So once I recognized my authentic identity, I embraced it. And though I had been happy in recovery up till then, that moment gave me a new level of freedom. And it felt like the scene in Forrest Gump, you know, Forrest is walking home with his little girlfriend Jenny, and he's wearing these full leg braces, and uh he's being he winds up getting chased by this group of kids, these bullies on bicycles, and he starts running and the braces break apart, and they just fall away. And he outruns everybody. He winds up running around the world. So I think it's I think this all boils down to a very simple idea. Uh, and I'm getting close to closing with this, but I'm not gonna close exactly with this. So some of you may be familiar with Chuck C, who wrote a, who led a weekend retreat, which they turned to into a book called A New Pair of Glasses. And uh one of my sponsors, Al Maureen, uh, got was pretty close with Chuck. And he told me that uh late in Chuck's life, you know, he wasn't really well enough to go out to meetings anymore, and he lived in Laguna Beach. And all of these AA guys that he knew over the decades that he was sober had sponsees that were having a hard time, and they would send him, send these guys to Chuck. And the guys would show up at Chuck's house, and they were they were honored that Chuck would even meet with him, and then they would, you know, lay down what was going on to Chuck. They'd just vomit all over him. And Chuck had one question for every guy that came to him. One question, no matter what the guy said to him, he'd say, Okay, I heard you. Let me ask you a question. Is your house in order? It's that simple. So for me, in my journey, um I've discovered through sponsoring guys that it all boils down to one question. And that one question is how free do you want to be? What are you willing to do? What are you willing to endure? What are you willing to admit to yourself? How free do you want to be? Which for me translates to how can I grow? And I need to grow in a practical way. I need to grow. I've been married for 46 years, not to the same woman, but it's still 46 years. The current one is 30, which is a record for me. How can I be better at that? In a very practical way, not with some spiritual latitude that nobody can recognize. So here's the revelation for me Science can't make you know a normal drink out of an alcoholic. But there's all this research on the National Institutes of Health website, which basically confirms what we have been doing in traditional AA for decades. Good action leads to good thinking. Like they told me you need to develop some new good habits to replace your old bad habits, and that will change your thinking. And in my 36 years of sober experience and my observations, the key to my emotional recovery, my healthy boundaries, my balance of body, mind, and spirit, and ultimately experiencing joy, which always chokes me up when I think about how much joy has come into my life.

SPEAKER_07 59:27

It all starts with one alcoholic talking to another.

SPEAKER_08 59:35

And I've learned way more uh taking men through the steps than I ever discovered on my first time going through the steps. I mean, I picked up a lot, but it's there's other, it's like a diamond that's keeps getting recut. There's so many facets that I pick up along the way. And it's usually when a guy's sitting across the table from me, vomiting all over me, telling me all the truth. So I believe that the path of sobriety, one that's fully dimensional, uh, keeps me enthusiastic about recovery. A sobriety that allows me the privilege of really going anywhere and doing anything. It's my personal responsibility. Like I've gone on tour uh in all these famous rock bands, and I did it, you know, loaded. And by the way, you know, they say sex, drugs, and rock and roll, it's really crazy and amazing. That's not really accurate. It's way beyond that. So that's a tough one to give up. But I've given it up and I've done it sober. And the highlight of the tours that I did in the 90s was going to AA meetings all over the world. And uh so it's my personal responsibility. That's the most important element of recovery. Uh, modern therapists call it self-care. A friend of mine lost his daughter, and uh suddenly she was 10 years old, and uh he gave me a gem. He said, if it is if it is to be, it is up to me. So, uh, how free do I want to be? Free enough to go anywhere and do anything, and uh be able to be able to be okay when things aren't going my way. And I do want to share, I will close with this. This is something that my sponsor sent me. And I think it's a great uh I I totally feel this and believe it. This is what he's this is what he wrote. And he's uh 51 years sober. My personal choice in Alcoholics Anonymous is to follow a secular path. I have no need or desire to make my path the right path for anyone else. It is simply the path that has been right for me. I have been secular or perhaps more accurately agnostic for the past sixty-eight years, and that choice has served me well. During that time I have worked the twelve steps, sponsored many people, and tried to be of service whenever I could. And at the close of meetings, I do join the group in reciting the Lord's Prayer. For me, it's not a statement of doctrine, but it's a moment of fellowship, a shared ritual that brings the meeting to a close and reminds us that we are together. I've never felt the need to persuade others to attend secular meetings or to adopt my beliefs. I respect your path just as I value my own, and I hope that respect is mutual. My grandmother used to say, Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. I didn't understand what she meant for many years. When I finally did it stayed with me. Wisdom can often be found in places that aren't a perfect fit. I've learned not to reject something of value simply because I don't embrace every part of it. I don't see the world in black and white, I live comfortably in the gray area. If life is a bell-shaped curve, I'm content living in its broad, level middle ground, where certainty certainty gives way to curiosity, respect, and acceptance. That's where I found both peace and sobriety. So today I live with a quiet mind, and I hope you do too.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:26

Thanks.

SPEAKER_13 1:03:32

Thank you, Steve. This is Margarita, Alcohol Free, and I have a um uh a commercial break announcement, seventh tradition. And then I want to know, Steve, do you want to moderate um discussion or would you like me to call on people? Well, we'll we'll we'll have people raise their hands for it. Uh which way would you rather uh moderate, or would you like me to? It's up to you. But in the meantime, I'm gonna share on the seventh tradition. Welcome to Secular AA's Global Speaker Tour. As per AA Seventh Tradition, we are self-supporting through our own contributions. Meetings are free to any who need them, but we do have expenses and appreciate your support. And that information will be um added to the chat. And uh I also um uh wanted to thank Steve also for your uh feedback on the instructions that you got from us, and it reminded me that we need to uh we're gonna we have groups for the next two months, but we always are looking for another group to um be recommended to us. So I added to the chat information, um the email to send uh a recommendation of uh um a future and what what dates are open right now um for future groups on on the first Sunday of the month. And um I guess uh Steve, do you want me to to moderate? Because if you do, first I'm gonna share.

SPEAKER_08 1:05:06

Uh sure, go ahead and share. Can't wait to share.

SPEAKER_13 1:05:09

Okay, I am uh I am uh Margarita, alcohol free, and since the last month I separated, I I celebrated another anniversary, five years. Um I'm a uh a spoiled secular Zoom baby. I'm very, very fortunate and have a lot to be grateful for. But um I am blown away again by the fantastic shares today. Um I yeah, and and I I just so many points that were made that are so helpful. Thanks for um uh the the people who shared on um like Tony started off talking about his relapse. I need to hear that. Uh I don't want to give, you know, lose this beautiful life that you know others were talking about and become complacent, and a lot of the time. that i i mean i've heard of people with um eight years four years 14 years 19 21 years even 24 years that went um out and and regretted it and came back and i'm so glateful that they came back and it scares me but um but they came back and um unfortunately you know not everyone does but um i i i love the message from um pretty much all three of you that we are creating a life that we can be proud of that we um uh it can fill with joy and and the idea of crafting our own recovery to fit ourselves that's that's what's working for me too um i and i have found i don't have a history for myself in traditional a but uh family members who were um but uh i keep hearing about how secular a compared to a lot of traditional meetings does allow us to question and um and and um forge our own paths you know in in recovery and finding what works for us that was a first the first time i ever heard someone say uh take what take what you need and being the seventh tradition from the from the bowl but i i enjoyed that's just one of the pieces of humor i enjoyed in today's um um uh talks and and i am so glad that um folks here are sharing the news in traditional meetings about secular a existence for those who um you know need that it's um i'm i'm really glad that you're doing that i still even today i've um i heard someone share in a meeting about they just found out a couple weeks ago about the existence and here they are with decades of of um uh sobriety and now they they you know they they found my tribe i've heard that's uh that saying over and over again i found my tribe um and uh i think it was tony who said you're planning on going to the conference can't wait to meet you there and uh um yeah i liked uh the analogy you made with dexatrim of all things combined with a healthy diet and physical activity you know these these pills will work better just like that you know there's a lot of different things that we can put together for our uh recovery um path including healthy diet good sleep uh and uh and physical activity um uh yeah and the fact uh that you attached the difference you saw between you attached value to um your brain had attached value to to you know staying in active addiction and now you're attaching it to um sobriety and just makes sense yeah i'm gonna fight for what um you know what i value and yeah that's that's very clear um i'm wondering mj if if um yours and my paths ever passed in Santa Monica I was there in the 80s except when I was in Nicaragua protesting um Reagan's policies there I was a volunteer construction worker and building houses anyhow um and I can also relate to what you were talking about not wanting to be here and not wanting to be in my own body and um I uh I could relate to the uh the the the um opposition you felt toward powerlessness and who we are already in the patriarchy and I don't need more of that and um I also started uh drinking at 13 um and um and and yeah and your higher power you're finding the unexpect unsuspecting inner resource and the joy of living and I was so much enjoyed each of these chairs I'm going on too long nobody else you guys can raise your hands too by the way I'll just keep going um uh I uh yeah I um uh oh and I could relate to um to to your the abuse of voices in your head those are are are are dissipating in mind too with now five years of uh sobriety um and um let's see if um uh oh I also didn't know what secular meant either I was a public school teacher and there was so much Christianity in public schools that were supposedly secular so yeah luckily I googled agnostic AA and I drunk googled it five years ago and a little over five years ago and found uh secular meetings and I love the worldwide um secular uh calendar that of meetings that um that website was save my life and um and I and I love the the whole holy trinity of acronyms of G O D too. Okay so um I guess uh Steve did we decide do you want me to moderate or do you want to I belong to Control Enthusiast Anonymous so I'm happy to you know choose folks. Okay you you go ahead and um to finish one saying and now I'm done. But I mean it um how can I grow? And I have been really noticing that now I am living my values I have a life filled with so much joy and gratitude. I can do hard things that I didn't think I could do before and then work in the steps um for me a big part of it has been trying to find my own authentic identity myself and thank you also for closing on your sponsor's message and that I'm signing off now. Thank you.

SPEAKER_09 1:12:09

Thank you Margarita awesome uh I'm uh well let's start with Dale you feel like sharing Dale oh we have um hands up Joe okay uh and with that we'll be able to um uh give them the opportunity to invite them to unmute for right now that's control yeah I just first in the queue go ahead Joe dang I was really looking forward to hearing from Dale but hi everybody and thanks everybody for uh a great meeting um uh I mean so much uh going on I mean continued growth and the necessity for that today I uh um uh you know obviously I was getting close to certainty absolutism just around the corner and now I've given up on that race and I uh crave uh curiosity and positive regard right sometimes I come to me oh this again right that's not a good way to approach my life even you know standing in line at a bank who knows you know like just uh to be uh positive and curious and it's more vulnerable right certainty would be way better right you know but um you know if I'm not growing and changing I'm dying and uh uh there was a lot of that like like with that mindset I heard a lot of what I needed to hear here uh I really Tony talked about you know we're we're part of a larger recovery community and uh I mean you can think of that in terms of secular AA uh autonomous but part of a whole AA you can think of it as you know the millions of people who are in recovery who don't go to AA some of them never have uh I feel a part of that community I I was at a I went to visit um a retired addiction medicine doctor who was talking at a recovery conference in Toronto and I said do you want to go to a meeting while you're here he said sure what kind I go well how about the one that's closest and we went to a life ring meeting together because it was just a five minute walk away and and I I feel like I've earned a seat there just like I've earned my seat here and uh I like that and um uh today yeah today's uh every speaker really brought something and I'm glad it was recorded and uh because you know only 65 people got to hear it today but uh I know hundreds more will uh through the recording which is another part of the great uh communication and outreach tool that um the World Wide Web has a secular AA caught on to Zoom meeting uh very early pre-pandemic and uh the great thing is that you know we were able to reach people in Bible belts or you know uh far away from liberal urban centers that some of us enjoyed. And the other thing uh I will just say about like again keeping an open mind about um uh AA as a whole like some meetings are are very secular ish uh some of them don't read the steps or um you know pray and so they don't invite that kind of theistic um predisposition but I I was uh I've uh moved from a big city to um a small community uh where um part of my life involves um end of life or elder care for my dad and his wife and I was asked to speak at the local meeting and I and I I have a tendency you know um of reading the room right like how authentic can I be like I I want to be true and pure and I don't want to offend anybody and it's a meeting that has a lot of the tired old ritualistic readings but I think that's just a lack of imagination. They just do what they've always done. And I was listening to the people who spoke before I did and nobody talked about a prayer answering sobriety granting higher power in their life and and it's it's an amazing we don't know how many uh secular people there are in AA because we don't always talk about it. But this is a great format and uh I'm as in love with it as I was when we began it in the uh uh pandemic and uh thanks everybody for who's kept it alive and those who are new here uh hope you like us thanks thank you Joe next up Nathan R2 R hey I'm Nathan and I'm an alcoholic um great job you guys I'm so glad that Tony reminded me to show up here today um because I for completely forgot but um really awesome really great messages and um a reminder why I'm still here um when you Steve when you had mentioned that the Rule 62 was was doing the secular thing I was completely confused or I couldn't figure out why the men's group was doing this because I forgot that there was a was a secular version of this because no meetings exist before nine o'clock in the morning to me so um yeah I had no idea so yeah I'm I'm really glad that that's why I didn't invite you I figured it out but um you know one of the common threads is way before you I had a sponsor named Richard and uh and he told me to build my life around Alcoholics Anonymous not the other way around and all of my related disorders would disappear um not all of AA's related disorders would disappear but all of my related disorders would disappear and um and that has turned out to be the case you know that that I've done what what most people who have long-term sobriety have done they've centered their life they've centered alcoholics anonymous around their life and not tried to not tried to fit it in as a as as a hobby.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:17

And I just celebrated 40 years of recovery and uh and I consider that to be uh that I'm an Alcoholics anonymous survivor. But the thing about listening to all you guys and Tony was great and MJ it's really good to hear from you MJ always makes me laugh but you know when you mentioned Ronald Reagan Ronald Reagan was the number one resentment on my first inventory because that's how in touch I was with what was going on with me. He was my problem I was a raging alcoholic addict and Ronald Reagan was my biggest problem. So you know we don't walk in here with a full deck usually but I'll end with this you know one of my favorite films is It's a wonderful life and the men and the and the you know the message in that is that we never know whose lives we touch just by showing up. And uh and I got a reminder of that today. So um you got to show up if you want to touch somebody else's life.

SPEAKER_15 1:20:22

Thanks for letting me share thank you Nathan next up Adam from Sacramento Hey everybody I'm Adam I'm an alcoholic and uh yeah I just want to thank Margarita thank uh Steve and thank MJ and Tony um and secular AA as a whole you know I um had been in and out of the rooms for 30 years um and traditional and a lot of times I'd blame my relapses on on traditional um or something that somebody rubbed me the wrong way I'm sure I'm not the first alcoholic to do those sorts of things but coming back in you know 10 and a half months ago and and finding secular AA has been life changing. And so I just want to I I really do admire the longtime sobriety um and then the perseverance to um like Tony was talking about you know coming back and and not giving up I think the common thread I hear, you know, a lot of that is the you know we're doing this thing one day at a time. And um and Steve thanks you touched on a little bit the you know the independence but just the freedom to um and you all really touched on it but the freedom to live our own life and and carve our own path however that works for us. And I I really appreciate that about um secular AA and going to continue to practice this program uh a day at a time and just not drink or use a day at a time. So thank you very much you guys much appreciated.

SPEAKER_08 1:21:53

Thank you Adam next up in the queue well before I get to that I'm gonna do my will far how about the ladies let's get some of the ladies to volunteer here.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:02

Go ahead Dale you're up yeah Dale I'm an alcoholic um I rarely feel called to anything but this one seemed obvious um Steve must have felt I was uh another example for him uh so here's my stats uh forty five years sober uh I found my first secular A meeting forty years ago uh and yes I'm happy joyous but I'm not free I've had an hourly wait forever okay cool next up one good afternoon everyone I'm calling you from Mexico I'm going to be very brief I just wanted to greet you and thanks for everything you've said so far I do appreciate traditional groups because they saved my life but now by listening to you guys let's say the English speaking people you are very direct you're very concrete and you're very clear and I'm from Mexico and Latin Americans would uh be kind of dramatic we easily cry sorry I'm not hearing anything no one is he was that was he was saying it we were very direct there he is coming back now I realize that there is something else and that the secular meetings would give me the chance of uh be deciding if I am an agnostic or an atheist and thanks for everything thanks guys thank you Juan beautiful um I don't see any hands but how about Walter and Lori that way we get to hear a share and then a rebuttal I'm an alcoholic addict and I just wanted to say thank you to all three of the speakers they were really wonderful um I related to a lot of what you all said I I came into secular AA after being in traditional AA and I kept relapsing into traditional and finally when I found secular I'm able to stay sober much longer than six months or whatever.

SPEAKER_12 1:25:06

So um I I I really appreciate this secular um speaker tour and that's about all I have.

SPEAKER_01 1:25:18

Walter Yeah Walter I'm an alcoholic and yeah um I really uh enjoy the speakers um it gave me a per uh their perspective uh kind of matched my own in some ways because uh my uh my history with a and and staying sober so it was really kind of refreshing to hear hear those stories so uh I I have a spot of gratitude thank you thank you Walter thank you Lori next up Danny A okay good afternoon I am Danny Alarcon I am speaking you from Medellin City Colombia I am a founder member of the Atheist Agnostics and Free Thinkers Beyond Belief más allá de la creencia and I'm gonna tell you very briefly uh what my group is all about because this is a very different proposal of what the secularity offers around the world Beyond the belief would be a project to tackle addiction in the 21st century. Today we are living in a postfamiliar system that uh we have a global phenomena where 2.49 people would be in a household in Colombia we have more in Mexico would be three people and in the US 2.5% and we are still fluctuating these are uni well these are individual households in Spain and the US Colombia and Mexico together for 2040 this would be oscillating around 30% people in individual households this would be implying in the 21st century that the production systems have been transformed in qualitative and quantitative deep ways these working relationships with capital and technology has reconfigured logistics impacting individuals and potential individuals in terms of consuming and addictions. This is correlated with this family way of having individual households with new challenges in regards to the access to alcohol consumption and drugs. For instance in In Mexico, we had uh substances where the individual could then go out of their households to get alcohol. But for the 21st century, now there's been a different event. Now it is about environment. Now alcohol is in the households in the 20th century with biology, with chemistry, with behavior, in compulsion. Now we have addiction which would have functional characteristics in the system. You get what you are going to consume, you get it at home. And that is a very sensitive factor. In the 20th century, the individual could stay home in order to isolate from this addiction. But today, the young individual is now bombarded with immediate satisfaction and substances in their own households as of this situation and with many other situations that I would not have enough time to discuss the group. My meeting beyond the belief we are manifesting before the anonymous alcoholic with the freedom of dogmas. And as it was then said, God disappeared, but we still have his shadow. There are orthodox groups that have buried God, but they are still practicing religion. Contemporary, addicted, would be seen as an unassembled machine and defective machine. But now the end of the steps would be without a God, without evil, and many times we are not going to be broken machines. We are looking for sense. In our meeting, we need to structure alcoholic groups. We are structuring the pillars of active denial because we've got constraints for practicality. Life is not a mechanical staircase to step in the same way. We have human, chaotic, and personal experiences. We don't need sacred books. We don't need perfect liturgy or orthodox practices. Truth is in the now and in every discussion. We have the group conscious, but uh of course they are using attractive names, but they're still not achieving impartiality. We, in the secular mode, we are moderating the chaos in our thinking and narratives. We are not to give doctrine to anyway. We are using the open questions to get new existential possibilities always anchored in the collective goal of not consuming. We are a peer's horizontal scheme. The strength is not coming from a superpower, but from the community where two or more addicts decide to live reality altogether. As you can hear, our project is for addictions and all those addicts in the 21st century. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_08 1:32:07

Thank you, uh Danny. He's gonna end with that for sure. Thank you. Uh John Clavin.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:14

You're up.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:16

Hi, John Alcoholic. So um, Steve, we might have crossed paths at the North Hollywood uh musicians meeting back in the 80s. Um a fabulous thing to combine the two things together. Uh but anyway, uh I'm really I have to mention that I really appreciate MJ bringing up Appendix 2. Um I mean, I've been preaching Appendix 2 for years, but it just doesn't seem to catch on with believers or non-believers or anybody. I don't I don't know what the deal was there. Bill W. wrote that uh a year after the big book was published, and to me it completely changed AA. I mean, it completely redefined AA, even with the you know, the footnotes that he put in the earlier one in the 64. But uh not too many people buy into that. But uh, but anyway, uh for myself, uh it's always been, you know, I got sober in traditional AA uh and then discovered atheist AA. And and and when I went into uh you know, like we agnostic atheist AA, all I really heard was uh we don't we don't believe in a higher power, uh we don't do the steps, and um religion is nonsense. And I just I couldn't identify with that. So I was sort of like a man without a country because I really disagreed with you know the religiosity of traditional AA, and at the same time, I felt, well, of course there's a higher power. I mean, how did I get born into the world? And um, and how did how did anything in my life ever happen without without powers greater than myself? I mean, I just had my my prostate removed by a great big huge machine. It was a power greater than myself, and I'd be dead today if it wasn't for that. And um, but yet but yet religion is clearly you know a fairy tale trying to explain you know nature and and human nature. And uh so anyway, um I'm I still feel like a man without a country. Anyway, thanks.

SPEAKER_06 1:34:27

Thank you, John.

SPEAKER_08 1:34:28

Yeah, I don't know why that that part of MJ, I always mention when I'm the speaker, but it may MJ had mentioned it already. Many of our members have tapped into an inner resource that they previously did not know existed, which they presently identify as a power greater than themselves. It's all inside, and everybody ignores that. Err. Next up, Ray. I know he's got a lot to say.

SPEAKER_10 1:34:56

Well, hello, my name is Ray, and I'm an alcoholic. Yeah, there was a guy in a meeting I used to go to. He would lead with saying, I don't have much to say, and then he would share for a real long time. You know, uh, I I come from the Rule 62 meeting, uh, and it was the first meeting that I found. And uh as Steve likes to say, thank God I found Secretary AA. Uh and in the beginning of our meeting, we talk about um that we are getting sober through our shared human experience, and I like that very much. I like uh looking at it that way. Uh but I got a lot of benefits from traditional AA. Uh, but when I found secular AA, I just felt like people are speaking my language. Um and uh this is working a lot better for me. Um uh part of why I left traditional is I would have bad experiences with fellow members. And uh uh when I got to secular, things seemed to be going uh a lot better, and then I had my first experience. Uh it happened at a parking lot that didn't go well, and I thought to myself, the honeymoon is over. Nothing's perfect. Uh, you know, we all uh you know have our uh uh individual personalities and so forth. Um so uh I'm I'm glad to be here and glad to share this with you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_06 1:36:40

Thank you, Ray. Margarita, uh I think we've been here for a while.

SPEAKER_13 1:36:50

Yeah, I'm happy to keep listening. No more hands are up. I have I just want to make an announcement. I had a request from someone for Danny Alarcón to put information about his meeting into the chat. Some Spanish speaking uh participants are are excited to hear about that and how to how to contact and get into meetings. So if you can send that information to me, I can uh post it to the to everybody. And um do you guys have a special way to close a meeting? Uh otherwise we'll just uh sing our little song.

SPEAKER_08 1:37:28

Uh we always end uh with music um for uh obvious and not so obvious reasons. Um but uh we have a specific song we end our meeting with. If I can share, can I share my audio?

SPEAKER_13 1:37:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:37:50

And I I just want to just mention uh Ray mentioned I want to clarify, and we got this from Tony. Our recovery is grounded in our shared human experiences rather than anything else. So that's what first hooked me into AA.

SPEAKER_05 1:38:51

Yeah, I just want to celebrate another day of my humanist groups in New York City. We end with live and let live.

SPEAKER_11 1:39:02

You know, I must say that sobering up in Los Angeles, it it was a it had celebration. It was just a celebratory. They had a cake at every meeting and they celebrated everyone's birthday on the day, and that really really affected me because it really is a celebration.

SPEAKER_13 1:39:25

That's wonderful. Thank you. Uh, this is Margarita again. Thank you to the presenters for your fantastic, powerful uh shares, and to everyone who has um shared and just for being here so excited. We do keep the room open uh for a little while longer for uh informal discussion. So you're welcome to stick around. We won't have simultaneous translation for all that, I'm afraid, but um uh but thank you everyone for for coming and uh uh enjoy the music. Sober, not somber. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_05 1:40:00

Thank you, Margarita, so much.