Jim A. AA Male

**Jim** (0:02)
Stick that in your recording. I'm an alcoholic, and my name is Jim. Thank you for having this meeting, and congratulations to every one of you on your day count. I make it a habit to say that, because I learned from hard experience that I need you, and I need AA more than AA needs me. And I do some things that I think are rather superficial and artificial. I carry a 24-hour coin to remind me that today is potentially the most important day of my day count. And of course, I give them away.
I stand here before you. I'm an alcoholic, and yet, I'm a sober alcoholic. I didn't know what, I didn't, I really wasn't sure what that all meant. I'm going to read two quick passages that inspire me again and again. In We Agnostics, it says, do not let any prejudices you may have against any spiritual terms.
Deter you from honestly asking yourself, what do they mean to you? What do they mean to you today? I keep coming back, and I keep hearing different people turn phrases that I accepted and say them in a new way. I heard somebody in the last year talk about current state of mygnosticism. Because, see, I thought that was all done. I thought this was a, well, I did that.
This year in Daily Reflections, I don't know if you've got the book or the app, came across a writing that Bill had done before the book AA Comes of Age. And it says, it may be possible to find explanations of spiritual experiences such as ours.
But I have often tried to explain, I don't know why I'm, well, because I'm kind of wrecked, I've often tried to explain my own and have succeeded only in giving the story of it. I know the feeling it gave me and the results it has brought. But I realize I may never fully understand the deeper why and how. I suspect that there's something more going on here than I really know. And I can remember early in sobriety, finding that release of admitting, I don't know, and being able to say that out loud.
For longer than I've been sober, I thought I had an open mind, and then I came in here, started doing inventory, and realizing I don't.
Some people will refer to their qualifications. I believe I'm qualified for the membership of Alcoholics Anonymous. Because when I honestly wanted to, I could not control how much I drank. Nor could I leave it alone.
There, I'm a horrible quota of this book that I've been reading for a long time. That's not a character defect, but when I try to hedge around that to impress you, that's my character defects coming out. I could not postpone or evade. And God bless you all.
So I qualify for the membership. Traditions say I do. I believe that I've worked the program of recovery. And in fact, I am working with a sponsor this year, and I'm on step eight, going through some stuff that I haven't, at a deeper level than I've actually ever gone through. I believe I qualify for the program of recovery. Now I'm going to break it a little bit. He didn't give me permission, but I'm going to call Drew out a little bit. He did ask me to come to speak to you. I see Drew at Fairmount on Wednesday nights at Kemper Road Big Book at the Camel Club. Earlier this year, it was a speaker meeting, and there was a lady who came in, and like many of us, she wasn't from that group and wasn't really maybe comfortable, and so she was hedging and hawing like I am now, and she was going to give her qualifications. And then she said something. There's this beautiful moment where the speaker actually just shrugs and relaxes, and whatever they planned to say or hoped that they were going to say, looking good, and it just came out. And she said, I guess God qualifies us.
That is not in the book, and I can't let it go.
I think we're all qualified. But I keep getting confused about who's qualifying who.
We're willing, honest, and open. And that's huge. That's huge.
I am going to talk about stuff I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm going to talk about alcoholism. I don't believe, and I do state my opinions, I don't believe that our big book says why I'm an alcohol. Like it just says if. If? Yeah, okay, I got, I'm it, I'm in. I don't know why, but I got whatever it is, I got it. I can't, I got that mental obsession. Well, I had, I had, I didn't even know I had it. I also believe I have a spiritual melody, and I didn't know I had that either. I have parents, they're gone, but they're still here. I'm seventh of eight kids. My parents were not alcoholics. I'll take their inventory. They were not alcoholics.