Today's Sober Friends podcast is brought to you by Bill, who bought us five coffees. And Bill left this message for us. He said, Hi, I'm Bill. I'm an alcoholic. I really enjoy your podcast and the guests that you have. I've been alcohol free since March of 2019, but I had a slip with some pot cookies in 2022. And with the help of my therapist and AA, my sobriety is better than ever and I'm learning how to live one day at
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Steve. How many times have I done that intro talking about somebody doing a donation and I hit the button and nothing happens. I hit that button. I hit the post. I feel like a friggin professional tonight.
Yeah. He
Might did as it. well just close
Right.
the mikes.
Yeah.
Shut it off Drop the mic. and be on our way. Now, you actually did hit all that pretty good. It actually worked out well Yeah, after it only took like 157 times right.
After
funding
the.
57 episodes to do that. Right Bell and after the first try that you didn't get right. It worked out fine. now, we'll cut that out. So it's funny that we're talking that somebody bought us five coffees and this is the primary way that we pay our bills is that you are nice enough to say this has value. We talked about it on our Monday, by the way, somebody reached out as well on Facebook. And I never check Facebook. And it just so happened and the guy's like, yeah, I live in I live in
Connecticut. I work in the town that you live in. And I'm like, Oh shit, you should stop by Monday's like, I was thinking of stopping by Monday I was looking for good meetings. Like, you can stop Monday, you can stop Friday and you will find some good people. So it was like total out of the blue.
Yeah.
I never go to that Facebook page and I did. And I hope the guy I talked to that we see. Yeah. So Be nice. yeah, if you're in Connecticut, you are welcome to stop by one of our meetings. They're good meetings. Absolutely. But I want to I want to talk a little bit about some of the issues that AA is facing and where it comes with money. We talked in our business was in the business meeting or was it before It or. was both. But it started before. Yeah,
Yeah.
so GSO, which is the general service organization headquarters of AA, is it's something like what, a $1 million deficit
Mm hmm.
which for that may not seem like a lot but hey is not big and there's not a lot of money so that's a huge deficit in AA makes a lot of its money through written literature like books. That's where a lot of the money comes from. It's less of the donations. And I thought this is a really good time to talk about the AA seven tradition where spirituality and money do mix and the purpose and the importance of donating to something like this. And what do you You
get from it? And are there some things that AA that needs to change in the revenue generating structure? change. I hate change. Yeah,
Yeah.
these, these freegan people, these, these you hit the button and nothing happens. So these friggin people here. Yeah. These guys do not like change. You don't want to change the business model, old timer. You know, man, it is one of the things that we talk about it. You and I talk about it a lot. So we talk about it on the podcast and off of the podcast
about AA. And, you know, one of the questions that we can sort of kick around tonight is, does a business model that was created, you know, 90 years ago basically, right. More or less and then revised a little bit probably, I don't know, 70 years ago in the fifties when they wrote all the traditions and stuff. Like, does that business model still work in today's What world? company has a business model from the fifties. Right. So so that's the question. That's what AA is trying to hold
on to. And man, it is try It is hard to make changes and I'm not I'm not advocating for for a lot of changes to it because I'm not sure what the right answer is. All I know is, as we talked a little bit beforehand, you're right. I mean, they're the deficit of AA is directly due to the lack of sales of printed literature, books, Right. books mostly, but also pamphlets. Right. When groups buy pamphlets, they make a little bit of money
on that. So and we've been talking about that is like, you know, do pamphlets, do the pamphlets so that we if anybody if you go to a meeting, you may your group may have pamphlets out like there's a, there's a rack with all kinds of pamphlets. They were really big 20 years ago. They were big. I mean, you needed them because that's how people found out. Right. People took them. You brought them home with you. Maybe you
had a friend. You brought them home, and you handed a friend one of these pamphlets for you to flip through. Still works today. Some Okay. of that could still work today. I'm not saying there's no place for them. I just don't think that places as big with the Yeah, with with all of the rehab centers that we have and all of the places out there now, there's just so many other ways to get that information out
there. And plus, So you know, plus through the digital world digital tools there are right? I look at the people who have all of these communities that are not part of
Yeah.
AA. I'm just going to look at Jill teaches organization because she comes to mind. She has a community that where she has people who go to AA and are part of her community. This is completely digital. There is a bunch of things. I'm just looking to see what she charges. It's 39 bucks a month and when you think 39 bucks a month is a lot. If you go to an AA meeting a couple of times a week and you dropped $2 in the basket, you're going to get to $39 pretty quickly.
Yeah,
So I look at something like that and that's that's a that's reasonable. That's a good price. Maybe she should raise her prices.
yeah,
And when I look, if you go to A's website, if you go to like YouTube and you find the AA page, it is brutal, brutally bad. These are people who have no idea what they're doing digitally. And I think if you want to raise money long term, there has to be a digital model. You've got to be like the New York Times and there's a place for physical paper. But The New York Times is making its money on digital products, podcasts
yeah,
and subscribing to their cooking channel and subscribing to the Atlantic. And I wish I had the answer what that would look like. And I don't know. I don't know either. And I'm sure I'm sure they're talking about it. I'm sure they're looking at it. But the thing about it is the way Who. the organization is set up, it's a bottom up organization, right? So. Writes. So there's not a lot you can do. It's not like all these people in GSO in New York or wherever
they might be. Can can just say, hey, we're going to make these changes. Now, again, I'm not speaking that I know all the rules. I don't I'm not going to talk like I know everything. So if you're out there and you you know, this stuff and you've served on a lot of the stuff, you know, reach out to us and correct us on stuff. But any big change has to go through. The membership Mm has got hmm. to whittle down to the groups and there has to be some votes and there has to be some stuff, some I,
input. I mean, so it's a very slow moving big, big ship, if you will, and try to make it try to make a change, to try to make it turn really, really is hard. And we still do have a lot of those old cranky people that you love to push the button and right those but those those people are still out there. You know listen if you've the plenty guy we know plenty of guys who have 30 or 40 years, you know pushing 40 years of sobriety. You know, that's you know,
that's mid-eighties stuff. And mid eighties is a world away from what's out there today. I went
So,
to a GSR meeting a couple of years ago when I was still the treasurer and somebody got up and said, God damn it, You have to understand that people just don't have computers.
yeah,
I'm like, What are you talking about? And there are of course, there are people, especially Of course alcoholics, there I mean. are people,
Right.
but it is more few and far between. Absolutely. And and almost everybody, not everybody, but almost everybody has a smartphone, which means they have Yes, a computer nowadays. Right. And I mean, that's the difference, right? If you have a smartphone and I be it'd be interesting, though, what that percentage of people is in the United States, not worldwide especially. But I guess it's a worldwide program. But, you know, a lot of people have that ability. And even in even in developing nations, I
worked in that business. And, you know, my my boss is Pakistani and he talks about how, you know, some of those guys have you know, they keep two different phones, right, Like over there. And again, it's, you know, phones, phones are cheap. I mean, the phones we use in America aren't that aren't cheap. We use the good phones. But across the world, there's a lot of cheap phones that they use out there and. that's why Android is popular.
Right. And Apple Android doesn't want Google, the whole world right. using the iPhone because they want it to be a luxury product. Yeah. And they want to keep the price high. Yeah. Yep. But anyway, so yeah, there's a lot of issues with this we were talking about before. Right. For those who don't know, AA takes no outside contributions. So corporate America cannot you know, get make a donation like Right. so many, you know, Warren Buffett cannot come in and say, I'm going to leave you $100
million. Like they can't, you know, And again, these are traditions that were set down in the fifties. This is so this is a good time to reset. One of the most famous donations that AA had to say no to.
Yeah,
And. And it really broke people's hearts. Wow. I was going to say Robert Irsay. And I don't think it's his son Jim, or say
right.
Sir Jim Irsay went and bought the original manuscript to the big book and he decided, I'm going to donate this to AA and they declined it because I can't we can't take this as an outside contribution and this may cause controversy. So
Yeah.
we can't do it. It had So too much now value, this right?
Yeah,
because of the value he was paid some million dollars
right.
or something like that,
Yeah.
which was chump change for him. But for AA, he can't do it as a donation. It's too much. It's an outside contribution. And so Jim Irsay still has the the manuscript. Yeah. And I'm sure he thought, okay, I'll buy this and pass it on to the group. Right. It would be a nice thing to do Mm hmm. and he didn't understand it. And you know, unless you're an alcoholic and you're in here, you're a part of it, then you
won't understand that. The other thing that we talked about and we we looked it up and that this we knows, right, is the maximum contribution that they can accept from an individual is $5,000. Now, again, you might say, oh, that's a lot of money. It Not is really. it. Well, I mean, if you get enough of them. But yeah, I mean, like how many people are donating that much money to AA? So, you know, most of the money is made through the groups, through, you know, like you said.
And it's interesting, you just talked about Jill's community and when you threw out that number, $39 or whatever it was, I was like, oh, that's a lot of money for a month. But you're absolutely right. Well, if you go to a bunch of meetings like I drop $40 a month in in my meetings, easily more than that, actually, if I go to more meetings cause I dropped $40 a month just for my two home groups. So then last night, my wife went out for dinner with a
friend. So I shut up to a meeting at a club around here. Right. I went to the men's meeting Important. at 530. I'm like, Oh, I'm going to sit up there. I dropped $2 in that basket, right? Yeah. So, you know, so you're right, it adds up and ah, buddy, that's and I, we're talking about how some people only throw a buck or two into it. And I said, if you go to a lot of meetings, it's hard to throw more than a buck
or two into a basket. You know, I know guys who go to two or three meetings a day, sometimes they may go to ten meetings a week, you know, So like so it's really hard to throw too much money in the basket if you're going to that many meetings. So you got to pick and choose a little bit. That's why I pick and choose to support my my home groups well and make sure that we have enough money to do what we need to do. Yes. And then what if I go to another meeting that a typically I don't
go to? I definitely, you know, I always throw something in the basket and I am I can afford to do that, but not everybody can. And the other issue is there are meetings that are more flush than others.
Yeah.
I think there have been some times that because we had some people with a little bit of money in our Monday night meeting that we were able to sustain it when we had like four or five people.
Mm.
We were lucky that way. And then the meeting built up that there's a there's a nice little hall
Right.
I have gone. I went to a big meeting one time that I was waiting for it to come back so I could break a toe or something. And I couldn't break the toe, even though there were a lot of people there.
Yeah.
And I think there's a meeting on a Tuesday night Pathfinders that they very rarely donate up because there's so people that so few people that go
Right,
and it's done that way you don't want to make the meetings that are very popular more powerful because they generate money because there is a quality. But part of the money is so this is a good time to break down the seventh tradition. Why we why we donate. There are some expenses that a group has. The biggest one is rent. There has to be rents and a church. It's typically at a church because a church, they have places that you can do it. You can go in the basement and they don't really
charge a lot. And there have been some instances where churches will go, Well, it's okay. You don't have to pay us, just have the meeting. We want you to be sober. And the tradition says, no,
right,
can't do that, that there has to be some money passing. Hence we can't take that for free.
right. So we have to give in that case you give a donation. Right. Yes. And that's like the, the old Friday night meeting the guys, they're like that. They've, we've that group never had rent but they'd give a donation and so every, you know, every quarter or whatever they give a donation and then you know, typically around the the holiday time they give it a donation. The meeting I went to last night, interesting that we talked about this. Right. It wasn't a huge meeting, but maybe it's bigger.
And again, it a lot of older guys there so guys who have some money but but they had over like they had almost $800 in their kitty.
Oh, That's my a lot God. of money. But you can't have that. That's a lot of money. Well, they were donating it to they do a big Christmas party for kids up there up at this club. And so they were donating. They were doing a big chunk, big donation to that Christmas party, I guess, which is one of their traditions, which is why I think that they were saving it. But that's a lot
of money for a group, right? And in our things I've been treasurer of your Treasurer, now of our Monday night group, I've been Treasurer before and I've always pushed and all the guys, I've always pushed that like every quarter we give away all the money we don't need. We, Yes. we, we pay up, we don't give it away, we pay up. Right. We, so we give it to district which is local, we give it to, you know, area which is bigger and then we give it to GSO, which is
worldwide. So we split it all up because there is no reason to have all that money. Well, right. You, you keep you keep a prudent reserve and then you give the rest away. You give the rest away so that you don't have a lot of money laying around. Because one of the reasons is, is that money money can be a problem, Yes. right. Can Like you said. And and you're right especially it groups you know, like it can give some groups more power than other
groups. Right. Especially when you know, we have a we have a recovery club in the area. So if you have very flush groups, then they could think, oh, we have more power than this group that, you know, can't even make a donation. Well, that's not the way we work. Every group is you know, every group is on equal footing. I live in South Windsor? South Windsor is a
Mm
comfortable community
hmm.
there. I would not I'm not the richest person in South Windsor, but I have a lot more money than some people do. And there's a lot of wealthy people. And you could have some of these suburban, very white towns that can generate a lot of revenue and you run the risk that that group is more powerful than the group that's in downtown Hartford that meets at seven in the morning and may be filled by a couple of homeless people who are looking for a warm place
Mm hmm.
or might be near sober houses In a poor end of of East Hartford that has a hard time generating anything.
Right.
And regardless of where you're from or what your means are or nationality or whatever there is inequality of the person who is coming in, who is homeless and has a desire to stop drinking is as important as somebody who makes six figures of year because alcoholism doesn't differentiate. So we shouldn't differentiate. And this is one of the things around the tradition and Steve was talking a little bit about the
pie. If you're not part of AA, there is this pie that you give to of a percentage that suggested a certain suggestion to these groups within the structure of AA to support getting the message out because as you go up the inverted triangle or go down the inverted triangle, there are those things like Alka thons or gatherings or Cissy PAs or there there are things that are done on behalf of a district All or an area that requires money to fund it, right. and that Well, comes from the groups.
or making sure that there are other language than English meetings, Yes, right? Spanish language meetings. Maybe if you have a bigger community, if you live in a bigger city that has a Korean population, maybe have a meeting that does that or or, you know, New Britain and the town in Connecticut has a big Polish. You know, So maybe you have some of these meetings around there that allow and because not only do you need the meeting that maybe their talk, you may need literature in that language.
Right. So, Yes, you know, so GSO prints that stuff and that costs money. Right. And sometimes, again, those are groups a lot of time that can't afford it. Right? They they can't afford to do it. There might be new and they can't afford to do all that stuff. So there has to be some support. So it's really a complex, you know, like like we said, I don't have all the answers. It's complex. I have some concerns about a I have some concerns yes.
that not My day that to it's going away, not that that's going away at all. It's not, you know, the group the groups are always be there. it's the second time we got hit hard during the pandemic. And like I said, you know, we just got this We just got this message that they're they you know, they got this deficit going now and they have some reserve funds like they'll be okay. And they put the word out and they'll they'll get some extra donations, so they'll be
fine. I just would just wonder going forward, like, well, what is that going to look like? And and what's it going to look like 20 years from now? Right. I mean, that's that's the future. Like, is somebody really looking at that probably not. I think there's a lot of people who are the tried and true AA ers who are got sober a certain way and
are resistant to change. And I hate to say you've got to think about some income streams just to keep things going that I think there is the risk that the meetings end up as a confederation, that there is the reason you have a district and an area and a GSO is it's a communication conduit between the meetings right? and you run the risk that there are meetings, but they're not connected by anything. They're
Mm
just fully independent
hmm.
and they don't communicate with each other. And there are risks there. I don't think you end up getting rid of meetings. You might get rid of some other structure. You may not have
Right,
the money to do an Alka thon or something. Who knows? I think there is an opportunity to figure out what needs to happen digitally because you have a Jill's. Jill's a great case. I use Jill because I talk to her all about this stuff all the time. $39 a month, which is one of the cheaper ones. There are something like $5,500, $1,000 more than that for 1 to 1. And that's all done via Zoom or
Right.
via an app recovery Recovery elevator has something that's very similar to that. And the AA digital tools suck. I never got a schedule book. When I went to my first meeting, I found it online because that's that's where I would think of going. And there's there's not very good apps. There's not a very good YouTube channel. I think there's something digitally to spread the message that we're missing out on because people under a certain age do not pick up paper, and every day that goes by that's
less and less. We are at the place where the maximum amount of people who are going to pick up a physical copy of media in AA
Yeah,
today is the peak. It
right.
will never be greater than
Yeah,
today.
you're right.
Tomorrow will be the second biggest Yeah. No, you're absolutely where it goes right. down. It's it's interesting because our local paper, All right? I'm old enough that I still do enjoy some print media, and I get a local paper. Although I've talked about getting rid of it, our local paper was sold to a larger corporation, a national corporation, and it's changed a lot. But. And people are talking about It's
it. And a hedge fund, and it's I said and I posted this came across Facebook and one of the local groups I'm in and I said, you know, listen, there was there was nobody lined up to buy this newspaper. Right. It wasn't like they had a bunch of bidders on it and they could pick the best. Better like this was probably the only person offering to buy it. And a I bill said, SAV. It's not coming out of that grave Right. to buy it. And I said, listen there.
Between my wife and I, we have four adult children, all professionals, right? All make decent money. And not one of them subscribes to a single print media. Not one of them. Right. They're your age. They're in that group. Right. So so I'm a little bit younger and not one of them. And I don't ever see them, you know, subscribing to a print media whether they subscribe to something online, I don't even
know that. But if they if they do, that's where they'll go for, you know, because it's just not where people are going. Is. And let's face it, that's like you said, this is the biggest number it'll ever be. So, you know, so you got to wonder about that. Like, so how does that tie how how do you feel that it that ties into spirituality, money and spirituality like you you put those two together? I don't feel like we've touched on the spirituality part of.
It,
It generally doesn't mix
but
and it can corrupt things. This is why we have a prudent reserve that you get. You have three month's rent and that's what you really should keep. And then above that you donate to other parts of AA. It can corrupt and it can it can end up becoming we we have this meeting for the sake of generating revenue. And that's a problem. That's why only AA members can donate. My wife can't go in and drop a dollar. She wants to. She's not sick and suffering,
right,
so she can't. We. We should not accept a dollar from her.
right. Well, yeah. And
It's she that corrupting could influence. she could go into a meeting because she went to an open meeting. She could actually go into a meeting and drop a dollar and. Now, that's true. Right. And it wouldn't be true. But that meeting would come from a group and it would be a dollar, Mm right. hmm. If she'd dropped in a check for 5000 or $10,000, then that wouldn't be accepted. Right? That's Nope.
the same thing. Like if she walked in there and she dropped in a check that was written out to either a group, but that would not be accepted. But she can certainly go in there and drop that off. But I agree, like, listen, money, money corrupts, just like power corrupts. Mm hmm. I was part of a group years ago, years ago. And and it's interesting because the other reason why it's not good to have a lot of money is because we turn over our finances to drunks, to alcoholics, on occasion, the
alcoholics will. There's not a healthy person and Right. will and will take that money and use it. And I was part of a group that that was happening with. this was somebody with a long term sobriety lease. They claimed to have long term sobriety and and other members who had been part of this group could tell like they were like, we should have more money and we don't. And they finally took that the Treasury away from this
person. And it was true. And then shortly after that, it's like six months after that, we had all this money in there, right? And it was like, Oh, you could actually see what was happening. And that happens. And I don't you know, you can always try to pick the right person, but we're for the most part, we're still sick and suffering. And a lot of times you want to give a lot of these jobs, not so
much. The Treasurer position, but you do want to give it to sort of newer people too, so that they can Yep. do this work and they can do some you know, they can you know, I've heard people like they've never balanced a checkbook and until they maybe did some work on an AA meeting finance, so stuff like that. So it's always a it's a fine line to walk to be very careful on it. And you have to expect some bumps along the road, like you said, because money and spirituality don't mix that well.
I don't remember where I read it. I think I read somewhere that a AA meeting should be living in poverty, that the term poverty comes up in. There should be. They basically should be very, very bare. You should live in poverty. If you're an AA meeting. It shouldn't be about generating a certain amount of revenue. Should be pretty lean, And I agree with that.
All
minimal.
right.
You need to keep
But
as
it
little as possible to carry the message and operate things
right,
and above that get rid of it,
right. And and I remember when I first came out, I didn't understand that. And then as I as I settled into the program, I realized that. But I agree now because, number one, you want that money to go to work, right? So
frame if you're if you're sitting on, you know, six or $700 or whatever it might be, it's not helping anybody, Right? It's not working for the next sick and suffering alcoholic. right. So when you start, you know, distributing it out to the other, you know, to other areas and stuff, then it could get to work, whether it's whether it's paying to print some books or whether it's paying to to upgrade some
digital media. So, yeah, so it's sitting on money and now I'm all for that like and that's why we do we typically do it quarterly, right? Because you don't want, you know, you don't want to overburden a treasurer or something like that quarterly. You should wipe it all out, keep your prudent reserve so you can so that you can keep having your meeting. That gives you time to adjust. If you need to adjust something. And then yeah, just the the rest give it away.
So I hope this has been a good primer for you of why money and spirituality don't mix, why it's important to put a dollar in the basket, maybe two, maybe three. There is inflation there to help things go. Why AA has to pay rent Because we'd be breaking the traditions and why we have to live in poverty. I will tell you this. It's good for you to donate to us so we can pay for our website, our hosting fees, and get the message out because there is
expenses for this. And you have been a very generous audience and we are in very good shape for the three. We're coming up on. One of the bigger ones, which is the website is up, the email service is up, and basically the money that you donate, I put into a PayPal account which is interest bearing Yeah. and I leave it there. And
Yeah.
then when it comes time to re-up the website, it just drafts out. When we do the recording software that we're on, it will just draft out. And I just put it aside and I think in terms of might not get another drop of money, not another dime might So come in, I want to make sure that we have it to minimize some of these expenses. Some of this stuff is expensive, some of it is not. But you helping us out are doing an amazing thing,
even if it's like $5. So everybody who has bought us a coffee, it's you are amazing. You are helping people. And when I feel as though nobody's listening, I get a message from somebody like Bill who said I had a slip. But you're part of what keeps me sober, or the guy on Facebook who said, Hey, I'm sober and sober a while, but I'm kind of struggling and I want to I want to go to a meeting. And it allows things like that. sounds great Awesome. All right, Steve, thanks for another awesome show.
about have a great night. Yeah. Thanks for thanks for putting this on for all the work you do. Um, you do all the work. I just show up and talk. Yeah, I was I was listening to and I was listening. I got another new podcast that I'm listening to. This is my resentment. I'm listening to Agent of Betrayal, The Double Life of Robert Hanssen, Oh man. and
Okay.
it's done by Major Garrett. I
Oh, yeah.
am I am bingeing this thing. It is the greatest ever. Oh, yeah. It's going You to be know, great. it pisses me off. I was I was with my son Owen, at the very end when he's going, you know, this is narrated by me married Major Garrett, our executive producers. This person, our producer is this person. Writers
Yeah.
are this, this, this and this our engineer. Is this sound designed?
Okay.
I'm like you, Motherfer.
All
I'm
right,
doing this. It's like you and me, Steve, putting in the content and then I'm cutting it up. There's there's no one here doing this. It's
Now,
a one man, one man to man shop these people. Yeah, those. This podcast sound great. You know why? Because there's like 20 people behind him.
so.
So support the little guys like us. That's All right. right, everybody, we I'm will see at. you next week by everybody.