[Is there a break in the tape or transcription here? - Ed]

How we need to come to a point where we can learn to reverse that process and go back to getting the addicts to do the work for there selves. It accomplishes the goals and teaching them instead of doing those things. How was it done before? What it does is create creativity. That is the basic thing. There are two different types of philosophy we are dealing with, one is business one is creativity. One is personal growth, one is profit, product. The fellowship makes a choice, it is a choice that is made, and I had to learn that as being an RSR for four years and being a World PI Vice‑chair. The choice that was made is that there are regions that do not seek accountability of RSRs and do tell them that they can vote any way they want. Then there are RSRs that go there with specific, so what happens is you’re going to follow your direction and you do a well job at it and then you are in a political system that I feel doesn’t work. Buy why, what is the solution to getting it to work. One thing is I believe is electing trusted servants the minute the conference opens. If you elect them from the start you do not have to worry about when they get to the mic or not. Another thing I believe is in this is seeking a way to seek what the regions want. What do you actually want in the fellowship, that is what they ask when we are writing the book. Every home group got a Grey Book, every home group that was listed. Even dead people got them that were listed (Laughter). Let us get for real the seeker and tried to find whoever was out there to get them a book and get them involved. That is a solution; I am taking to my home group to get these tapes transcribed and that copy sent out to where ever we can get them sent out of what happened. Above board, above board communication and we start that at the home group level though. By protecting ourselves from ourselves, is a major thing we need to seek, I mean I can leave here go with going back to a home group, which this is my home group that is putting this function on. But I can go back to the home group that I belong to with information. What can we do, what can I do as a personal member of Narcotics Anonymous? I do not want a new fellowship; I want a fellowship that is above board open communication. I had a talk with the Board of Director chairperson and he asked me what do you guys want. I said a full accountability, full disclosure of the World Service Office, and we can ask for that. It is our choice to ask for that or not. It is our choice to say that is what we want. We only allow something to run amuck, or we allow to not run amuck. What I have come to believe is the more open communication, the more workshops. Go to your, where ever you are from if you are not from here. Go to where ever you are from and ask your group to schedule a history workshop. You do not need your area to do it, a group can do it a group has that right to be autonomous and that is what a lot of us seem to forget. What can a group do? Narcotics Anonymous was not set up to be centralized.

I cannot blame the newcomer. Whom I can blame is myself, our other older members. I mean I can tell you I have got to the point where I have said I want to leave here; I do not want to come here. What good does that do if I share this in a meeting except dissention? That belongs with my sponsor, not using open Narcotics Anonymous meetings as open forums, but talking to my sponsor about those personal feelings in that area instead. Not making regular meetings battlegrounds, but making them recovery meetings. Talking about other issues like this in forums like this where they are meant to be. Talking about issues in‑group conscience where they are meant to be. Making that there attractive for the newcomer to walk through the door instead, and make service attractive. Do not do service with a sad sack on your face. Do not do it like you are doing time, we are not in prison. Learn about the steps first, there was some talk about where we changed the 12th Step, understand that from “those” to ‘these”, understand that real well. I did not understand that when it happened because I thought words to until I got a dictionary. Those are past and these are present, those are the previous eleven and a half steps. These are the 12 Traditions that bind us, that hold us together. I did not understand that, because I was a person that had to get a dictionary because I was a person that did not understand the English language. I had to admit to that that was a character defect of mine that did not want to admit that I did not have knowledge. See if I did not have knowledge I thought I was stupid, so I had to do an inventory and realize I am not stupid, I need knowledge and I got a dictionary and started studying the English language. So what is the solution? If there is a problem, I am part of the problem. If there is a solution, I need to be part of the solution. What do I emphasize thought, am I going to make it look like doomsday, and all panic and go out and hang ourselves up, or can I say yes this exists over here just like we do in inventory, and that is what we do in inventories of groups. We have not learned how to do inventories in groups yet that I know of. We are just starting to write an inventory up in our area. We had no real inventory. We had some pieces of tradition inventory that we passed around, I think you remember that Bo. Whatever how many questions on the steps and how many questions on the traditions, you know but there is a basic form of an inventory that we utilize, but an actual form of what do we do, how do we take an inventory of a group. We got an inventory guide, how to take one for ourselves but what about a group, that is where it starts. Inventories that have been taken on a group level, how do we intermix together? That is where it starts. Am I willing to do the writing if I want it? Am I willing to do the participation, am I willing to do what it takes. See there are two different types of service, one is a participant service (you heard the word, one is getting involved) or one is let them do it for you and bitch. (Laughter) I mean that is the choice we have to make. Go to the home group and if they want you, if that is what they want. If you are sent here to get information, there is some information to take back.

I can tell you I had a conversation with Stu Tordman, our BOD chair and he said it was all right for our home group to print literature in our group, as long as we are not going in competition with this WSO corporate. I just had that conversation and he said that it was all right as long as you were not going to go and have it printed up for a cent and sell it for three cents when we are selling it for thirteen, to undercut us. He said if you are doing it for your home group, you have that right, autonomously for your home group. We do not have all that information. You have to make decisions sometimes like you are being shown this book. You need all the information if you are going to make that decision. I am not going to tell to make that in a home group decision until they collect all that information and they can make that decision within here first. I am in a home group that made that decision, it was a decision on collected information, it was a unanimous vote, and I will back the home group on whatever we do. As long as we are collecting information and following and seeking information, I mean that is what I do, that is what I have been taught. If you do not want skeletons in the closet then do not put them there, be above board and open. I mean the major problem it seems that we have in our history and our literature is we have skeletons all have the place and nobody wants to get them out. So what are we to get those skeletons out? One thing is try to get changes in where we don’t have a structure that has service that has service where people are stuck there for ten or fifteen years. Get a revolving door, get and work towards a service center, not a service office. Service center implies something totally different from office. We do not realize that the tradition talks about a service center. A place to provide service from for us, stuff that we cannot do alone but combined we can do together. That is what a service center is and that is what we need is a service center for that purpose. Do we need, and I am looking at it real questionable. Do we need a bunch of warehouses or do we need somebody negotiating with printing companies for us and getting us the price and letting the regions and areas purchase directly from those printing companies that are listed for the price instead. That would sure cut down on having to have five or six buildings in Van Nuys or having to look to purchase property. It could decentralize and bring it back down as close to the groups as the Tree was wrote for. Bring it back to the groups as close as possible. That is what I was brought into, that is a solution to seek those goals. That stuff you can carry back, ideas and concepts, I can tell you that the concepts or the principles, what eve they are calling it is what helped bring about this little book right now. The concept of if you do not like what we are doing stop the money. Oh well I am sorry, the only way you can stop the money is to stop buying literature. If you do not buy literature then we do not have literature, so what are you going to do, we have to print. You can stop all the money from going fund flow, the conference is already telling you they are complaining about not getting enough from that. However, the major money the basket money is not going through the fund flow system but is going directly from the group to the WSO in money for literature.

Look at you budgets; my home group just purchased $108.00 dollars worth of literature and gave the area $108.00 dollars this month. Another group though bought a hundred and some worth of literature and gave the area five something. If you look at the budget for our area this month you would see that we bought 60% literature and 40% of our money went into the service structure to provide our services here.

That tells me we have a problem, the problem is that and I am going to talk personally about another fellowship. Alcoholics Anonymous sells a Big Book to OA and OA buys it for $3.50. What is the difference, why do we have to pay $8.00 for a book? These questions need to be asked. I am tired of those things like that. I think that a lower cost book and putting more money into the fund flow and I think it would bring in line because then they would reverse the money going directly through literature to the WSO that profit wise the money would flow through the service structure. Where then the service center would have to become dependent on the conference to have to subsidize it instead. They would reverse that there, the process. It is called to reverse of process, but we need to seek a lower cost piece of literature. We need to seek getting the world fellowship where they have different languages to take them and tell them, take this literature and put it into your languages, you know best. There is, I mean English is basically a well‑known language around the world. Many of your countries have to learn English. So there are some people in those countries that speak their own language plus English that could sit down and translate that book, without having to pay that big cost. I am not worried about dialect we have dialect in English. I mean I cannot understand some people from Mississippi, I cannot understand some people from England or Ireland. I will listen to them and they cannot understand me, so the dialect I do not think is that much of a problem. Let them put it in their language and get those good feelings that are a solution to me. Let them get those feelings of involvements instead. Not seeking for the Grand Gumba to say, hey, we will take care of you, do what we want, that is gangster style, just behave buddy, you know what I mean I will bust your kneecaps. I mean let us get for real.

Reverse our decision making process of our conventions. Our conventions are they are profiteering off Narcotics Anonymous. How much are your conventions making in your regions that some of you have come from. I mean I look at it; we will stamp NA on anything. I mean the most disgusting thing I saw one time was coming out of a city one time with NA nuts and bolts on girls under wears. Little skimpy ones, stamping NA on them, are profiteering. We spend how much energy in making money in them other ways? How much money is being ciphered off in those other ways? I mean you hear the rumors, you know the facts. I can tell you at the seventh east coast I know there was ten thousand dollars walked off with never accounted for. I can tell you that last years east coast walked off with some where around like twenty‑five thousand, thirty or thirty‑five thousand. I can tell you right now that the east coast this year has not paid some of their bills. I know one person that they fourteen grand to and did not pay them and the people are just walking around lobbying their heads acting like they don’t know what is going on. Money, property and prestige divert us from our primary purpose. What is our primary purpose that is a grass root effort we need to carry back? Grass root, that is our history what has built us to the point, was grass root effort, primary purpose and carrying the message.

Doing service not because I want to be somebody but because I wanted the next person that did not have it to have what I was given freely. When I walked in to the second east coast convention of Narcotics Anonymous, strapped down still in leather, hair down to my waist, by then I was 129 pounds at a year and a half clean. I had gained about 10 pounds but what happened there was a miracle I was introduced to what I call Narcotics Anonymous. That is when the man gave me the Grey Book and the fourth step inventory guide and that is when he gave me a spiritual connection and a communication network. Everything is missing today, that is the NA I know and the NA I want. That is the NA you hear being talked in history that is the NA you hear about Jimmy Kinnons phone ringing off the hook. That is the NA History you hear as Bo shared when he ran around the country from literature conference to literature conference when he talks about the history of the Basic Text of going to World convention wanting to know. That NA enthusiasm took those people from Georgia, which were barefoot, and everything at the World Service Conference to make a difference. There are solutions, there are solutions to setting up, you can create, dissolve and recreate and those are things we have to look at. What is going to work best for us? If it is setting up a service structure that is going to work for us then we need to start doing it. I have suggestions and have been going back to the NA Tree and looking at what worked there and start working from there, not this guide to service. I mean I just do not want to go through it, but something that was simple was the NA Tree. Start looking at what did work and look what needs to be expanded for worldwide fellowship today from that and keep it simple. That stuff we can start working on. We can take it to our home group and we can start getting copies of the old Tree somewhere. If anybody got it, get it copy it give it to them and start looking it over, inventorying it and getting a communication network finding groups that are willing to go through it together and supporting each other as a network. If your friend calls you up and says and why we had Anonymi at one time, a worldwide home group for those that was isolated because of their service. I carry a card today yet, I feel that way at times. Because you have a belief, follow the belief. Do not stop before the miracle happens, but follow it, that is a solution. Find the people, I do not believe in the old saying that if someone tells you that you are a horse, that you are a horse. I argue, you do not have to think about it and go to the second person and they say you are a horse you had better start believing and the third person. I do not believe in it, I can find three stupid fools to tell me I am a horse. (Laughter). I tell you I can find enough negative people to tell me it do not work this way, we went through that too many years. What was Narcotics Anonymous founded on? It was founded and went against the grain, and was told that it would not work and I can tell you those eleven years ago when we formed here and left Alcoholics Anonymous where I came from they said it would not work this way either. I was told the same thing that they were told in 1953, or any other time they started anywhere else. I was told make a commitment and I found those people that became my network. People like Bo; people like Greg people like Jimmy became my network, Joe Procter from Tennessee. They became my network of people to call on a regular basis and get support from, to know that NA worked.

They are the people who me I could write. Joe told me so many times, you could write Bill, you can write. I use to look at him and tell him you are nuts, you are crazy I never even got through the ninth grade. I failed spelling, I got straight A’s in English from Kindergarten on, and they just pushed me through. I got a B+ in college English today. I went from 9th grade drop out to freshman in college in the last year, only because you told me it would work. You got me to believe in myself and that is what we need to do is help each other to believe in ourselves and when someone is beating on one of our brothers and telling him it doesn’t work we need to support that brother or sister and help carry that message to them. That has to happen in a worldwide network. You can find too many people who tell us we cannot write literature anymore. They are going to tell us it is going to work best in a service center, or an office, or whatever, the fewer it works. I can tell you that I went on the World PI Committee when e was pen and I can tell you that the World PI Committee produces nothing today, it is in the service office, and World PI does nothing itself. I can tell you I wrote the guidelines for World PI, the PI Committee accepted them and then the chairperson turned around and had someone make a motion not to send them to the fellowship. Then the committee wrote it not to send them out and why, because they could amend them as they went along. They took real strict guidelines and made them into real wax guidelines to do whatever they want when they want. They will tell you that, just let me do what I know how to do best, I am a PI man, you don’t know what it takes to do PI, but I do I am a specialist, just let me go but didn’t you teach me not to listen to my own mind. Didn’t you teach me to call up my sponsor before I think and get caught up in my own thoughts? I mean because my thoughts brought me here. Didn’t you teach me to protect myself from myself and not allow my ego to get out of line? It is not about not trusting me; it is about not trusting my disease and putting some blockades up for my disease. Therefore, my disease does not take off where I cannot see where the shutters are up. That is what it is about and that is why I need protection from myself. The greatest thing the Mid‑Atlantic Region did for me was not allow me to have a vote of confidence on the WSC floor. The greatest thing that we can do is say hey we do not want anything amended, where are we going. Are we trying to get something done in our lifetime? Is anything going to come up that drastic really, or is it that I need my name attached to it. Do I need to boost my name, be some honcho? Take , put the roadblocks up so that the disease does not destroy our trusted servants. When you vote in the GSR, make sure it is the GSR for the job. Make sure it is the person that can do the job for you, not because they are your friend or because they look good or because you want to go to bed with her. You know I saw plenty of trusted servants come onto PI because somebody wanted to go to bed with them, pretty girls. So we need to learn to treat each other with respect, dignity compassion, carina what it meant “care”. We need to learn to do that and how we do that is live the principles. How we do that is to take the message back and ask your groups to do these types of workshops and invite the people in to bring the information in. Start writing, communicating and working and if it is not working in the service structure we created and we cannot change the arena, dissolve it and recreate.

That is the message I have, that is the only that I have today. I am not going back to WSC. People did not understand that when I said when the fellowship does not want me they will send me home and I go home to the home group where I belong. I have a home group. It is not about being a world‑trusted servant. It is about being a member. It is about participating and carrying the message, sponsoring people. They cant take the home group from me, but we can do a lot from there. That is the foundation of everything, that is a solution for me. I am willing to help and set up networks. I know that Bo knows how to do it, and it is time we start talking, getting addresses , phone numbers, communicating and finding out what each other is doing. I don’t know if we have gone that far where it is more important to go out to a dance, or more important to hang out in discos or in the pool hall, or if you have had that spiritual awakening where you understand what we are here for. It has to be the living spirit, that is to become the spirit of NA. That is the solution, be that living spirit, do not falter because someone offers you something. If the gut is telling you it is wrong follow the gut. I do not care how many people are patting you on the back, follow the stomach, because that is usually our best barometer. I know it is mine, I know when I make a bad decision, I cant look at myself in the mirror, and I get this acid build up in my stomach. I mean I almost devoured my stomach when I was two years clean, but it happens when I am doing what I am not suppose to be doing. That is what I have. That is the solutions for me, so thank you for allowing me to come up and share. (Applause)

Tape 7

Allentown History Addathon 1990

Problems / Solutions

Speaker: Robin, Bill, Bo

I am an addict, my name is Robin. Hi Robin. I do not know the only thing that I keep thinking of that keeps coming to mind and Billy said it, is money, property and prestige. You know when I got involved in World Service I can remember getting a postcard from somebody that said I tried to call you and the line was temporarily disconnected, welcome to World Services. That is really what it was about you know World Service when I got involved was hard work and a lot of money out of pocket but the rewards were great. Today it is almost like join World Services see the world. (Laughter).

I really have a problem with that when we take good hard look at what we are doing. I can remember when I got involved it was with the NA Way, you know and a lot of people were jumping out and saying talk about the history of the Way. What we were doing and what we were about at that time was providing some more stuff to read. It was taking more input from the fellowship and letting addicts read what recovery was about in other addict’s lives. That what the magazine and the purpose of the magazine was and I got involved with it in the first year of its run and became of it in the second year, well I became co‑chair.

All that bullshit was so much bullshit and was so tiring but anyway it was a lot of work. It was a fellowship voluntary production. I remember going to the conference after it was all over, after the year that I served was over. I remember being accused of wrongly spending money and it was bizarre. I do not remember how much over budget, I think there was like $1035.00 that we spent of the fellowships money and I was accused. I felt like I was being attacked verbally and we got twelve issues of the magazine out in a reasonable amount of time and that year at the conference the magazine was taken out of the fellowships hands and put into the WSO hands. An editor was hired for about $28,000.00 dollars.

I could not see the logic in that and I still fail to see the logic in that, in that whole process. That is why money, property and prestige, that is why I say that appears to be the root. That appears to be where we seem to falter. Going back to when Billy was talking about reverse the process, let the WSO be dependent on the fellowship for it’s’ survival instead of the opposite way around. The WSO was not meant to be and I do not believe it was ever meant to be the governing quote arm of the fellowship. I do not believe that was it’s purpose.

I took myself out of World Services and went back to the level that would not give me stress and would not give me that type of pain, I guess. I started to get re‑involved in my home group and re‑involved in staying clean and the addicts who still suffer. Like a few other people had said I think that when we get, when money, property and prestige blinds us we forget about our primary purpose. You know I was sitting there and I ask Bo how much money was spent on the writing of the Basic Text. He said somewhere around $50.000.00 he thinks and it took a process of about five years. Okay, so for three years it took a total of around fifty‑thousand close to it, and we had something in hand. I have been watching the service structure for the last seven years spending millions of dollars with nothing in hand with nothing in hand, and I wonder where we are going. I wonder what we have come to, and like everybody else, I believe that we need to go back to a grass root.

When I took a position on world level with a lot of other people in this room, the position was not one of glorification. I, like most people, spent hours and hours and hours alone working. My free time was not free time. My free time was given to the fellowship Narcotics Anonymous. Today I do not believe that taking a WSC - or any other world-level position - is that type of a position. I think mostly it is a glorification and very little of either. It is sad. I watch it and I don’t know, I guess I backed out because I didn’t know what to do and I felt that there was nothing more that I could do. I do not believe in the process as it stands today and I have not believed in it since I have seen it going in this direction for the last six years you know when I got out. That is all I have. (Applause) Thank you.

I am an addict and I am Bill. First of all, I need to make amends to you all and Dave because I shouted out something from the floor when he had it standing up here and for me that is inappropriate. What I have heard tonight isn’t anything to different than I have heard before and have seen for the amount of time I have been around here, and that isn’t really long. I have learned a lot through last night and today. Some additional information that gives me some tools that helps me sees things a little clearer. You know I have thought about this problem and thought about this and I saw it happening even with the three conference agenda reports. Back I saw this what was happening to the fellowship through the service structure, because I am one of those persons that believes that the nature or the type of message in the room is reflected from the kind of service structure that we have. Accountability is worthless without, responsibility is worthless accountability to us the fellowship. So you know I have seen this and I wondered like are we a dieing breed, are we freaks you know. I know everybody that is here understands that you have to be in recovery having to work the steps and live the principles and we also understand that there are spiritual rewards in self‑sacrifice and that is part of what service is about for me. Like what are we going to do and I see a lot of people with time that have you know put some effort forth and had some kind of position in their group or at an area level or something and they have like 4 years or 8 years. And they go off and they are living this life and got all these things in life that are available to us when we do the next right thing. It does not matter what happens in the service structure, it just does not matter. Part of recovery is that it gives us the ability to participate in life, have, and do these things. So what is right and where is the balance, I believe that we do have to stand for something or we will fall for anything. I find myself having been a liberal being out there with my disease and it is sort of ironic now I find myself a conservative in the little interpretations of our Traditions. That is not necessarily today a very popular view you know and I see it in the rooms when people just come to get what they can get and they go out and do what they go out and do what they can in life with what they take from the rooms and they are not too interested in giving. What is the answer, what is the answer for us? What are we suppose to do? Well I can continue to beat my head against the wall, and I can continue to battle that and I do not really want to live that way.

Or I could just like surrender. One way of surrender would be just like give up, okay I am beat, we might be right but I cannot do a damn thing about it. You know that is not what I am made of. I do not like that feeling inside of me when I am in confrontation of those that I care about and are suppose to care about me. However, what I have come to believe is that you know what we believe and we all here have in common besides addiction I believe is the spiritual principles that have been given to us. Through some effort and what is happening in my region at home is to form an Ad Hoc Committee to investigate starting a separate service conference. That is something, see everything I believe that all this that exists in NA in our service structure rather, cannot get them mixed up because a lot of people think that service is Narcotics Anonymous, and it is not. The only thing that is NA for me is a meeting okay and the service structure is an outside issue. A lot of people, now I have lost track.

I believe that I need to be true to my beliefs and that does not mean giving up so damn easy you know. It will always have to do with education because just as I carry what I was given what we give will be carried. So like that is real important to perpetuate that kind of education and that type of morality and values that comes from practicing those principles in our affairs. But that alone will not do it because we are in the minority so what are we going to do you know, we cannot blow these people away. Did God mean for there to be a place for people who cannot let go in the service structure. I do not have that answer but I do believe that there is a place for us. But before I give up before I let go and be one of those like one of those old farts in an AA meeting sitting in the back with a group of old fogies making cracks about somebody who uses some kind of new language. I am going to put my efforts in trying to educate those that will listen about what is suppose to be and what can be and to talk about the motion that is going back to my groups, to our groups and our regions. Nothing is impossible, if it is meant to be if y’all go back to your groups and make some kind of a motion that pertains to a separate service conference or something that will allow us to have a service structure, as we believe it should be and is meant to be it will happen. But if it is meant to be and we do not put forth that effort out of fear not being popular it will never come to be. Not everything for me in life that happens or exists is Gods’ will. The truth does stand on its own for those who choose to recognize it. So I am tired so I am going to stop talking. (Applause) Thank you.

My name is Bo and I’m an addict. Hi Bo. You know the workshop today has stirred some ideas and stuff. There are a couple of sort of obvious choices, like one thing that Grateful cited me on the letters that I read. The thing that stood out on my first brief glance was that like one of them says, we are the office and we hold the copyrights in trust. Then the letter from the lawyers says, “Stop doing this shit right now or we will blow you away” and I really think that is sad for World Services to take two positions on the same issues in the same time frame. First of all because it makes them look ridiculous and then to offer offense to the most wonderful thing that we have to offer which is active involved members through those letters. It is just I guess more than anything a measure of just how insane it has gotten in world to day to even pull something like that and to not see how stupid it is and embarrassing. Because I mean neither letter reflects any spiritual sincerity, like the attitude of the servant. Like if you were some kind of flagrantly rich individual and you had gentle loving English butlers who says ”but sir if I carry out your orders you know that bomb will really go off and we will both be dead” I mean there is just not any service in there. You know with our people we are like gypsies I always figured if you yell at us and treat us like fools and idiots, and then unfortunately we are use to handling that kind of crap. If you treat us real nice with dignity and love and respect hell, you got us by our heartstrings and we will follow you anywhere.