The Spiritual Tapeworm of Self-Centeredness – Step Study – Part 1 of 4 – Scott R.

Good morning, everybody. My name is Scott Redman. I'm an alcoholic. Everybody hear me? My friend Cliff was at a meeting once and a speaker meeting and a guy in the back yelled out, I can't hear you to the speaker. And a guy up front said, I can hear him. Let's switch seats. so I don't know if it's good or bad that you can hear me but you'll be the judge of that later on I want to thank this group so much for inviting me down for taking such good care of me and making me feel so welcome I can't tell you how pleased I am to be here all I got is good news today that's all I've got all I have is good new And I've got some dear old friends here, people I've known for a long time who mean just a tremendous amount to me. And I'm got some new friends, Randy, who I took my clothes off in front of. I'm not even going to explain that. And Randy, if I do become gay, I don't even think you're on the list. And just to start off with, I've been asked to share my experience with the Steps. That's what I'm going to endeavor to do. I didn't come here to insult or offend anyone. I got no bone to pick. I'm not here to tell you how to do it. I don't know how you should do it, but I know how I've done it, how I'd like to continue to do it. So if I use the phrase you at all, I apologize in advance. On page 29, it says each individual and the personal stories describes in his own language and from his own point of view the way he established his relationship with God. These give a fair cross-section of our membership and a clear-cut idea of what has actually happened in their lives. We hope No one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste. Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women desperately in need will see these pages and believe, and we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that they will be persuaded to say, quote, yes, I am one of them too, I must have this thing. That's the only reason that I'm here, to make a demonstration, bear witness, and tell you how this has been operating in my life. Last, on April 22nd, I turned 22 years sober, continuous sobriety and I'm absolutely astounded by that and if you're new here I am not as close to my next drink as you are I only have until 12 o'clock tonight don't get me wrong I'm not cured but your drinking muscle is a lot stronger than mine you've been working out my not drinking muscle is a little bit stronger it's a lot longer than yours because I've been in the spiritual gym for 22 years and I am now putting you down when I was new that was good news I wanted to know that you with some time with some continuous time building up and developing these not-drinking muscles and this spiritual development and this feeling of being connected. You know, I had this insane idea that I could have a successful life being separated from you. And then I've had the incredibly painful experience of being separated in AA. I have actually done AA better than you on several occasions. I've been over sober. And it's very painful. It's very painfully to be the best member of AA, the head drunk. It's like being voted most attractive man on your cell block kind of. It's an honor, but you don't want to pick me a ward up. but I'm going to talk, you know, for 97 hours today. And I don't mean to bore you, but God knows if you're not bored at least part of the time, then you're probably on drugs. So I want to start by telling my favorite story about being bored in AA. This old friend named Jeff D. in my old home group, And he was a couple weeks sober, and he was at our home group. And he would shift around in his seat, and his sponsor said, what's the matter? And Jeff said, I'm bored. And his sponsor says, well, you know why you're bored. He said, no, why? And his sponsors said, you're boring because you're boring. That's why you are bored. And it blew his mind. It was like an acid moment for him. Wow! It just freaked him out. And he thought, what a great thing to say to a newcomer. and he could hardly wait until the newcomer told him that they were bored. And 13 years later, a newcomer has told him that they're bored, and he's at an AA meeting with a young lady who was new and she looks really uncomfortable, and He says to her, what's the matter? And she said, I'm bored. And he said, well, you know why you're bored? She said, yeah, because I'm with you. That's why I'm here. So if you're bored, it's probably because you're with you. Or I'm really boring. That's possible also. I don't want to count that out. I have a physical allergy to alcohol. It makes it impossible for me to control and enjoy or moderate. And if that was my big problem, I'd be in pretty good shape because there are great physical treatments, fabulous doctors, terrific medications that you can take for allergies and I'd be in pretty good shape. But my problem is much worse than that. I have a bizarre mental twist that makes it impossible for me to control and enjoy or moderate and I start thinking myself into taking a drink that I can't stop taking. And if that was my problem, I mean, if my mental state was my problems, again, my life would be a lot simpler. There's a lot of psychotropic drugs I can take to treat that stuff. There's therapies. They work for millions of people, but my problem is far, far worse than that. Because I have this allergy where I can't stop and because I have this thinking that it means I can'T stop starting, I developed this cancer of the soul, this spiritual tapeworm, And how it presents is it presents as a self-centeredness that eclipses everything good in my life. On page 62 in the Big Book of AA, I believe it sums up the uncivilized mindset of the dying alcoholic better than anything I've ever read. And it says near the top of the page, selfishness, self-centeredness, that we think is the root of our troubles. Driven. Driven isn't nudged or influenced. driven is under the lash of in slavery too. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us seemingly without provocation but we invariably, invariably means without variation, without a loophole every time, invariability find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt. Let me qualify that right away. Okay? I'm resentful at Nazis for slaughtering Jews during World War II. Have I made a decision based on self, which later placed me in a position to be hurt? Well, no. Do I have a part in that? Well, No. Is it my fault? Absolutely not. I said to my sponsor, and he said to me, you don't understand the question that you've been asked. They're not asking you if the event was your fault. They're asking you if the resentment is your fault. Was the event your fault? Absolutely not. I'm resentful at my aunt for abusing me when I was three. Is the event my fault? You know, a lot of people could look at that and try to come up with a way, well, you were a bratty kid or that and that. I don't buy it. I Don't buy. It's okay to do that to a three-year-old kid. I don' t think it's excusable. That's why they call you a grownup. Was the event my fault? Absolutely not. Is the resentment my fault every time without variation and no loophole? Because there's a huge difference between having a resentment and objecting. There's a big difference between excusing and forgiving. There are a lot of activities or actions that are not excusable, but if they're not forgivable, I'm a dead man. I'll die. I'll die all alone in this horrible, painful little paper cut of a spiritually sick brain of mine. So I've got to be rid of this selfishness. So our troubles are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, again on page 62, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self will run riot, though he usually doesn't think so. Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid this selfishness, we must or it kills us. This is the first of five direct death threats that are made in the big book. It gets worse as you progress through chapter 5. They keep threatening your life in very subtle loving ways but this is the 1st really big one. It must or kills us, no big deal, you just get to die. God makes that possible and there often seems no way of entirely getting rid of self without his aid. Many of us have moral and philosophical convictions galore but we could not live up to them even though we would have liked to, neither could we reduce our self-centeredness much by wishing or trying on our own willpower we had to have God's help and boy is that so true and particularly true when it comes to prayer because many times in my sobriety I've tried to pray things away without taking certain specific actions that I need to take and making certain demonstrations and sometimes prayer is a wish and it becomes sort of chasing my own tail spiritually. And it's been interesting to see how that plays out for me. There's a book. By the way, I'm going to be talking about different spiritual teachers today and unapproved AA literature. And again, I don't mean to offend anybody. And I'm not telling you what to do. I've been asked to share my experience with the steps, so I'm gonna be sharing them. Step 11 says go and talk to people and talk to ministers and rabbis and see what they've got out there. And when I talk about 11 today, I'm going to be talking about some of the spiritual teachers that I've gone to. I've never done anything, I can honestly say, instead of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm a member of other 12-step programs. I use a lot of different spiritual teachers. I can obviously say to you everything I've done is because of AA, not instead of AA. One of the things that's happened... Can I see the hands of people in their first year? Wow, that's fantastic. One to five? Five to 20? Wow, over 20? Wow, That's fantastic! One of the things that I have found with people later on in sobriety is there are times when when people go over and over the same material in AA and it starts to fall apart in their hands and it start to come flat and gray and wooden and they start trying to figure out why isn't this feel the same. So one of the things I've done is I've been very attracted to teachers who have come up with really exciting ways to reinvigorate their experience of the steps later on in sobriety, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40 years. My sponsor, before he passed away, he had about 33 years of sobriety. He was calling me on the phone all the time going, I got this book, I've got this thing, let's try this thing. Let's go here. He was like a nutty 8-year-old. You know, he was over 80 years old. That's what I want. That's really what I Want. Anytime anybody puts their finger in my chest and says that's the way it is and if you question it, you're in danger, I go, thanks for sharing, and I get the heck away from them. I've stayed away from those guys for 22 years. I've also stayed away from, there were some old timers in my area when I was getting sober who were the shut up, you're a moron if your lips are moving you're lying and I've stay away from that for 22 years. I've had no use for that at all. And there was this idea in that group at that time that those guys were very wise their grumpiness was born of sort of this weathered extended experience they had and until I stayed sober long enough just to find out that they were just really pissed off and really mean, I attached this other value, which was all in my head. I never heard it from them. They never taught me anything about inventory. They never told me anything about self-examination and admission and compliance and demonstration. You know, they just showed up and played pinochle. And, you know, thank God I'm so spiritually developed I judge no man. And so, you know, there's a difference between an evaluation and a judgment. And sometimes the line can get wavy. And an evaluation for me is, you know, to evaluate the truth and see what's going on. And a judgment is injurious to me because it means I attach a value to it. and I try to be an evaluator rather than a judger there's a book of mental disorders and this book of Mental Disorders if your mental disorder is in this book you can actually use your mental disorder as a defense in court it's a really good book and there is a kind of a new one. It's just been on the books for a couple of years, and it's called Narcissistic Personality Disorder. And I want to read to you the nine of the symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder that people are using as defenses in court. It is not working by the way very well. But just see if this resonates for you at all. And this is in the book. This is technically in the Book of stuff you can use in court to defend yourself. One, an exaggerated sense of self-importance. Two, preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love. Three, believes that he or she is special and can only be understood by or should associate with other special or high status people. Four, requires excessive admiration. Everybody, anybody got this so far? Six, selfishly takes advantage of others to achieve his or hers ends. Seven, lacks empathy. Eight, is often envious of others or believes that others are envious or him or her. And nine, shows arrogant, haughty, patronizing, or contemptuous behavior or attitudes. Not guilty. Narcissistic personality disorder. One other document I want to read to you, and it's one of my favorites. And many people in early childhood development use this. It's called the Toddler Property Laws, and it's an attempt to aid people instead of seeing toddlers as bad or stupid or crazy. And it's the seven ways that toddlers will view, tend to view the world around them before they become more civilized. One, if I like it, it's mine. Two, if it's in my hand, it' s mine. Three, if can take it from you, it is mine. Isn't this just so great? Four, if I had it a little while ago, it's mine. Welcome to the world of relationships. Five, if it's mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way. Six, if I'm doing or building something, all the pieces are mine. And seven, my favorite, if it looks just like mine, it's mine. So I must be rid of this selfishness or it kills me I'm powerless over alcohol, my life has become unmanageable, it's such a simple statement and such a simply idea and if it really was that simple there wouldn't be an empty seat here actually there would be, the entire room would be empty because we had no need for Alcoholics Anonymous in the packet that you were given this morning, if I can find it I've just got too much paper that I'm probably never going to look at during the day. Thank you so much. In the third page, I want to read this prayer and then I want to talk about it a bit. If I want the change, I must wake up. I have been asleep. I am seeing the problem in a cloud. I am letting it go below the horizon so that it does not present itself as a real problem. When I see it clearly, it will not be precious to me. I cannot live this way, knowing that this is wrong and continuing to do it. I must tell the truth about what I am doing. I have being willing to complain about it and to go on doing it. I must take it from a complaint to a piece of real business, make it a real problem. I must stand in front of it naked, make a surrender, take an inventory, make some kind of demonstration. This is not a small deal. I do not want to live like this. I'm a grown person. I have been unconscious. I have Been slipping into this behavior. I Have been acting without explanation. I Must ask God to help keep this thing on a conscious level. I MUST elevate it in my consciousness and see it as a problem. Prayer is the measure of whether or not I'm in the game dear god direct my will to what you want me to do this friend of mine was working with a new guy a couple some months ago and um noticed the guy was a couple of weeks sober he noticed this bruise on the guy's chest he said what happened and the guy said oh i hit my he opened his shirt had these huge purple bruises all over his torso my buddy you know wanted to know what it happened. And the guy said, well, a couple of weeks ago when I got sober, I was going to kill myself. So I drank a bottle of vodka and I stole a vial of nitroglycerin pills from a heart patient. By the way, that's the last time the heart patient comes up in a story. He's collateral damage. He is off like flopping around like a boated face somewhere. But he stole this vial with nitroglysine pills. He swallowed the whole vial and then started slamming his body into the wall trying to blow himself up. Now, if you're new, you're going to hear some wacky stuff about alcoholism. And some of it makes sense to me and some of that doesn't. And the stuff that doesn' t make sense to me I've never found in the big book of AA. I've heard that alcoholics don't like change, just don't want change of any kind. And I don't like change, I don�t like. But I love change. I've never heard anyone get to a podium and say, �Oh man, I hit the lottery. I'm having sex with identical twins. It's killing me. This change is just ripping me up.� I�ve never heard that. But my personal favorite is that alcoholics are above average intelligence. I have only heard this at Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I have never heard it. Just ask Nitro how brilliant we are. If his nickname isn't like Boom Boom or something like that, then his home group sucks, you know? So I've got a physical allergy coupled with a mental obsession and I've developed this spiritual sickness, what does that have to do with alcoholism? It actually is alcoholism. It's my reverse experience of step one. My life's completely unmanageable. I'm powerless over alcohol. I don't even know what's going on. I couldn't even give you a diagnosis. I have no idea what alcoholism is. What does that has to do avecalholism? It actually IS alcoholism! The spiritual sickness is the fifth wheel. It's the mystery element that has plucked me beyond the opportunity to be helped by well-meaning clergy, a family that adored me, a very successful career, wonderful members of the clergy, well- meaning psychological and medical doctors. So this step one, this first step which in me was born of complete deflation, defeat, Confusion, more than anything, you told me it was necessary to move forward. So I said, yeah, yeah ,yeah, yeah good, I'm powerless, I am powerless over alcohol, but I don't even get how bad my problem is because no matter what happens eventually my alcoholism goes below the horizon, it stops presenting itself as a real piece of business and I act without reason, without explanation. I drink and I don't know why, and it can happen like that. I'm a rabbit in the middle of a field of short grass all the time and I don't get it. And there are periods of time where it will remain above the horizon as a real piece of business because something wonderful or something horrible happens. It'll stay up there but it's up there on my own juice so eventually it's going to go below the horizon, it's gonna stop presenting as a a real piece of business, it presents as a complaint. And then I act without reason and without explanation. And it happens over and over again. So my experience of step one is I had to admit that in order to move forward. And if you're new or if you've been around for a while and this experience is starting to not be very vigorous and it's starting to flatten out and it's starting to go below the horizon, I've got to do something. I've gotta do something and you know for me at the end of the day, the interior, the landscape of this spiritual sickness which is the mystery element, the fifth wheel, the thing that can't be touched by all these other conventional methodologies, the architecture of it is resentment, and sexual misconduct. This is not a wacky idea I came up with. It's pretty well laid out in the book. So if I'm treating my resentment, my fear, and my sexual mis conduct, and I want to tell you without step 10, there's no step 12 for me. I'm not going to be able to stay a happy, involved, invigorated member of Alcoholics Anonymous if I don't continue to take a look at my resentments because I get pissed off at people in AA. No, no, really, really. I have gotten pissed off people in AA and at AA groups. And particularly when I've been over sober, that has really, really happened to me. And I'll tell you, man, to be at this point in my life, when, and this is something that when I was new, you couldn't have explained to me because I had no relative experience. To live relatively free of resentment, I wouldn't have even known how to take that into my brain. I had become so ill and had been so ill for so long. I'm resentful at them. I resentful of me for resenting them. I'm resentment with them for watching me resent them. Right. And I've had sex with all of them. And if I borrow money from you, I got to kill you. You got to die because you don't really need the money. you know I don't really like it much anyway and you multiply that by thousands the thousands of people that had to die when I came in here it's a wonderful design for living so my experience of step one was very rudimentary and very primitive when I first came in her and it was enough to give me a day so that I could be opportunistic and I could start making this transition from the cycle of spree and remorse into the cycleof surrender and commitment. And that cycle of surrender andcommitment, when it's nourished by this spiritual health, is something that can't be beat. It brings about a personality change that helps people accomplish one day at a time permanent sobriety. And when that cycle is not nourished, it goes below the horizon, it stops presenting itself as a real piece of business, and I act without reason. Now, it's been my personal experience that the things that I have continued to suffer from as a member of AA are the things that remain complaints and don't become real pieces of business. In my first home group, there were a couple of really bad ideas. One of the really bad ideas was that you can do anything in sobriety as long as you're willing to pay the price. First of all, the insane idea there is that you're able to pay the price. How do you know you're going to be able to play the price? Just because you're willing to. I was willing to pay a lot of prices I never paid. You know, if that was the price of admission, you know, sure, sure. But the crazy idea, since the big book basically says, you You know, that, God, it says a lot of stuff, doesn't it? But it basically says that if you don't do this, it is going to go below the horizon. That step three is a really nice idea, but if it's not followed by a strenuous effort to face and be rid of the things that have really, you know, these resentments, fears, and sexual misconduct, that there's no way that I'm going to be able to keep this on a conscious level. Even more than that, if I participate in the fellowship of AA, not the friendship, I'm really done with friendship. I'm not interested in it anymore. I'm wirklich not. There are people here today that I don't see very often. I don' t see Beverly and George very often at all. We move in and out of our connection effortlessly, absolutely effortlessly. We have a spiritual connection. I don''t have a friendship with either one of them. And again, I'm no interested in that. I have found my friendships to be rife with attachment, expectation, disappointment. A lot of mind reading, a lot of mine reading. Mind reading has been the most troublesome defect for me in and out of sobriety because I think I know what people are thinking. My wife said to me once, you're not a mind reader, you are barely a mind user. i think i had finished like her last 15 sentences for her and she said you know what i'm gonna take a crack at a complete sentence by myself and if i run into trouble i'll let you know and you can just dive in and by the way in my mind reading which is always connected or usually connected to people pleasing because I want you to like me and then they're very friendly. Mind reading and people pleasing. You never think anything good about me. I mean when I'm mind reading, you're very rarely thinking, wow, you were a hell of a guy. You're always thinking, you know, you are a waste of time. We're recalling your protoplasm. My alcoholism has not gone below the horizon in 22 years. It has stayed above the horizon as a real piece of business for 22 years, and the reason why is I've become connected to you through the rest of the work and the traditions, so connected to your that my alcoholism has been buoyed on the heads and shoulders of 3 million plus members of Alcoholics Anonymous. And here's the miracle. It stays above the horizon even when I'm not focusing on it. Even when I am not looking at it. It happens in the middle of the night, in between breaths, in-between the lines. It happens while I'm moving through this landscape of this life I've been gifted with. That's extraordinary. That is really extraordinary. So my experience of step one to be rid of this self, to admit that I am powerless over alcohol, that my life is unmanageable. Again, I took on a very primitive level at first and my experience of step one is that if it's nourished by the rest of the work, it's going to become a big, robust part of my life. And if it is not nourished by the work eventually I will drink. I can't stay sober on my own bottom. I can't. I stay sober on your bottom. That's a terrible sounding sentence. I, I, uh, um, I, no, boy, I stay sober because I'm, I've been listened to and I've tried to pass that that gift on, and I listen to an incredible amount of misery. And if I don't stay spiritually fit, I will not listen to that misery. I will give you tough love, which to me more often than not just means impatience. I mean, I need the scalpel of truth, but I personally need it with the anesthetic of love. I need to trust where it's coming from. And I know after a while that if I stop being spiritually healthy, if I stopped enjoying the gift of your misery, then eventually I'm just going to want to say, shut up and do this. Just shut up, and do it. That being said, I work with some guys that if died on the phone with them, they would talk to the coroner when they showed up to pick me up. I mean, I sponsor some guys that if they say, how are you? And I said, well, my wife's on fire and running around the room screaming. They go, oh, okay, well I've got a transmission problem and my girlfriend's got a transition problem. And that's okay. And eventually, because when guys ask me to sponsor them And if I say yes, I just tell them that my deal is I'd be more than happy to walk towards God with you and do the work. And if you don't do the Work, eventually I'm not going to be a particularly interesting person to be around. It's pretty much what I do. That's all I got. I mean, I could talk to you about politics and art, but I have other people in my life I discuss that with. My friend Brent's here from Oklahoma. He's my sponsor, the guy, and he's also a dear friend of mine. We're very fortunate. it. That's not required. I'm not, I sponsor guys I don't like. So what? You know, it's not necessary. It's quite often a lovely, lovely byproduct. I've come to believe that a power greater than myself can restore me to sanity. By the way, one thing I want to ask you, a little help. When we take a break, I'm going to be, and we might want to put this basket in the back if people want some anonymity, but if I've talked about something you'd like me to expand on or some stuff you'd like me to make sure I talk about, just write a note and drop it in there. And I promise to not make fun of you. I've been at Q&A meetings sometimes where it's kind of, you know, sometimes the questioner will kind of get ragged for the question. I promise I won't do that because the reason being is that in the little break I'm desperately trying to come up with something to talk about when we come back so I have to Brent's laughing because he knows it's true. So please leave me alone because I've got to come up with something. I'll talk to you after the deal, but if there's something you want me to expand on or clarify, please let me know. I've come to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. Could, not would, not should. Now, my goal here is to be connected to you. My goal is to become be part of the connective tissue of Alcoholics Anonymous that buoys on the heads and shoulders of three million members of AA my alcoholism, your alcoholism. It becomes a shared experience. When I do AA better than you, it's an interesting thing. I don't know if you've seen this. There's a group in Washington that's getting a lot of press right now. There are anti-AA websites. favorite is the one that's Bill Wilson with satanic flames around him. I don't know if you've ever seen that one, that's a goodie. I like to see what's in that guy's sock drawer. At any rate, whether or not it's true is a whole other thing, a whole another thing and if anybody wants to talk about them more than happen to, I've had some experience with that group over a period of time. The The thing, and you know, AA has gotten that kind of press. It's the first time I've seen a group get that kind of press, it's really interesting. The thing I do know is that once I start to separate myself in any way, bad things happen. Once I start doing it with my sons, once I started to do it in my home life, bad things happened. And usually it's born of me making my suffering precious By the way, this prayer came from me taking it. It's not originated by me. I just took notes. This came out of a talk my sponsor had with me over the phone, and I just take the notes now. And it's been a huge help to me. This stuff, I've weighed over 300 pounds in sobriety. I've got a life-threatening illness. I've gotten a couple of them. My sons have had lots of adventures. I've had a lot of money. I've had no money. These are all life circumstances. They all change, you know? I am fine. A lot of good and bad things happen to me, but I am fine. The big I, the I that you guys see when I come to a meeting and you don't worry about what jewelry I'm wearing or what the hell is going on, the big I. The big spiritual democracy of Alcoholics Anonymous that has unlimited oxygen. And the minute I start separating, I start sucking the air out of the room. And the moment I start putting quantities and hoops you've got to jump through and raising the bar and things that you've got to do if you really want the real deal here, then it starts getting very small and it starts really resembling the life that I had before that I made the big surrender. here. And what does that have to do with sobriety, this other stuff that I suffered from? Absolutely nothing unless you're going through it. Absolutely nothing. One of the other really bad ideas that was at my whole home group was, well, you cheat on your wife, you weigh 600 pounds, you gamble, but it's okay, we're sober. Well, if I'm filled with self-loathing and I'm filled with remorse, and my view of the world is colored by these defects that have gone below the horizon and are a complaint. They're not a real piece of business, because when it's a real peace of business I act on it. When it's real peace business part of my frustration as a father has been when I don't think my sons are treating something like a real piece of business. In the handout I gave you, there's a wonderful piece. I'd like to read it now. It's in the page after that prayer. And it was written by Dr. Paul, the guy who wrote Dr. Alcoholic Addict. It was one of the last things that he wrote before he took his light into another room. Be an interested observer. Have you ever watched the continuing deterioration of someone that you really want to help, perhaps a close friend or relative, maybe one or more of your own children, and they do not respond to anything you say or do. This can be an extremely frustrating and discouraging for people in recovery. You want so badly to help but you can't. They just don't hear you. They do not response to unsolicited advice or counsel. This happens to me when I try too hard in sponsoring, when I'm working harder on their recovery than they are. It happens to people who have heard about the highly directive dictatorial type of sponsor and want to be like that, but discover that the sponsee simply ignores them. In a situation like this, I assume the role of interested observer. Rather than becoming annoyed at them and at sponsorship in general, I become an interested but inactive observer. I listen. I'm interested in what they're doing and how it is going to turn out, and I answer an occasional question, but mainly I observe. I see myself as sitting quietly in the audience rather than projected into action on the screen Since I have no investment in the outcome. I'm not emotionally involved in making it come out my way as a result I'm comfortable and entertained Rather than frustrated and resentful. I Indeed, I am practicing the a a principle love intolerance of others is our code and one more time I realize that if I want to change my feelings, I must first change my actions and my thinking mine not theirs I can't let their behavior be more important to me than my emotional sobriety my serenity no matter how much I love them No matter how I care about them. No matter. How important their welfare is to me. I must watch my priorities I must value my serene ahead of their behavior our oldest under son Micah when he graduated high school school. Instead of going to college, he went to Chiapas, Mexico to work with the Zapatista revolutionaries for a while. It was just really one of the most terrifying things I've ever experienced. Like his politics or not, you might like his politics, you might not, but he put his money where his mouth was. In the 60s, I talked a lot of long crap and never got out of the kitchen, you know. But I had a lot of moral and philosophical convictions galore although I could not act on them. And he was a member of something called the Peace Camps. It was an installation of Westerners who lived in indigenous villages to make sure the Mexican military stopped killing Indians. So the Mexican military would drive by a couple times a day and stare at him and drive away. The Mexican military is depicted as such a caring, loving group of people. My sponsor said, when you do the third step in the morning, why don't you give God the Mexican military? So I started saying this prayer. I said, Pop, take the Mexican Military. It's not going to be able to handle that big an organization this morning. And I was sponsored by Paul at that time. And one morning, it just didn't work. You know, I just, the waves of fear, and I had this like bad Oliver Stone film in my head about what could possibly happen to him. And it wasn't something I trumped up. And my sponsor, you know, the book says don't argue with a drunk. And he didn't argue avec me. He didn't say, he could have said a lot of really stupid things to me, like he's not really in danger, you now. And what he did was, he said something so gorgeous to me. He said, what if this is the greatest thing he ever does? Now I would have denied him that. And I don't know if it's the greatest things he'll ever do, but it sure was quite something. And he came back from that fully cut cloth, a grown citizen. And right after he came black, he started examining the opportunity to go to undergraduate school, which as you can imagine his mother and I were very, very excited about. And he wasn't apparently not filling out the papers fast enough and would possibly miss some deadlines. So his mother was getting a little nervous and we're starting to kind of lean on him to get this stuff done. And as Nancy was sort of badgering about it, he looked at her. He was 18 at this time. He looked up at her and said, and I quote, do you actually believe that your anxiety benefits me in any way? and i thought uh we were kind of hoping it would uh to tell you the truth and the interesting one um but if you know my son it's an easy thing to believe i'll just tell you one other quickie about him when he was a little boy i was sober two years he was 10 years uh eight years old and I was making the boys lunch and I said to Michael what do you want in your hot dog and he said I want mustard, onions and lettuce and he was eight and I asked him what he wanted and he walked away from me and he came back about an hour later and looked at me directly in the eye and I'm not altering one syllable he said to me I will never again allow your opinion of what I want affect what I ask for so I asked them to sponsor me what the hell is that but what Micah said in that moment about those about filling out that stuff do you actually think that your anxiety benefits me in any way is a big, big lesson for me when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous in a sense you said to me and my sponsor wanted to know what my dreams were But basically said to me, what do you want? What do you wanna do? And I had stuff I wanted to do. I wanted a write well. I wanted an interesting romantic life. I wanted bunch of stuff. And then you basically said me you can work towards that. Wouldn't be surprised if you achieve that. But let me ask you a question. Do you have to be miserable until you get it? To which my reply would've been, oh yeah. If I'm not miserable about it, who the hell is gonna be miserable about? it and if I'm not miserable about it, how is it going to get done? Now the crazy idea there is that somehow I think that my suffering is going to purchase the thing I crave. What a great design for living. Get miserable enough about something and odds are it's going to happen but you've got to stay miserable because if you don't stay on duty, the whole thing going to go down the crapper. It's a complete refutation of our whole idea, which is this is going to happen even when I'm not focusing on it. If I trust you, if I take these seemingly disconnected, unrelated actions. Now, an important piece of that for me is I believe that faith without works is dead. And I also believe that works without faith are dead. I believe that if I have faith and it's not supported by action, that the faith will eventually wither without demonstration and without communication with you because the demonstration leads me into communication with You. I also believe that if it's all about action and it is not tethered to some spiritual experience that eventually it is going to become a lot of running around, a lot or activity, not action. And if it is not tethered to a spiritual pursuit, now it can't be every day. Some days I am just showing up and doing my job, just putting fenders on Chevys, you know, just showing up and getting it done. But at the end of the day, if in the middle of the night, and it says it's the last paragraph of Chapter 3 as we move into our discussion of Step 3, that the time and place will come where it'll be 3 o'clock in the morning, my mouth will flood with saliva, the room will spin, and I'll be drunk, and i won't drink. I won't drank. who would have thunk it who would have even thunk that that would even be possible because nothing stops me from drinking not my baby boys not a woman who loved me not nothing if you get in between me and the drink you vanish you become something less than human or you disappear you become paper mache or you don't exist and it happens over and over again without explanation without reason it stops presenting itself as a real piece of business And you can start seeing it later in sobriety. If action isn't taken to keep this thing robust, you can Start seeing it flatten out. You know, it starts falling apart in my hands. That a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. Not would and not should, but that it's possible. There are two wonderful lists in our book. and uh you know it's a funny thing on on page 17 on the bottom paragraph it talks about the spiritual democracy of alcoholics anonymous the tremendous fact for every one of us is that we have discovered a common solution we have a way out on which we can absolutely agree and upon which we conjoin imbrugly in a harmonious action this is the great news this book carries to those who suffer from alcoholism where in there does it say if you're part of this group you're getting the real deal. You're hearing stuff at this group you don't hear at other groups you know mainstream AA well if you want to take a chance out there go ahead but if I were you I would just attend meetings that we have because we're just a little we got a take we know works I don't know about that other stuff I believe in the spirit of the law rather than the letter of thelaw and it says that each group is autonomous except when it comes to you know, unless their actions affect other groups or AA as a whole. I believe the spirit of that is if I say I'm doing AA better than you, then I am affecting AA as well. I think that's part of what happened to that group that got written up in Newsweek. Does that mean I can't love my group? Does that means I can get excited about it and take pleasure in the methodology or the uniqueness of my group and of course not. That's the fun, you know. I just had a – I do this workshop in my home. It's not an AA meeting. There's no democracy, no rotation. There's nothing. I just do some stuff that me and the guys I sponsor get interested in. We'll do some non-approved AA literature. We went through the Sermon on the Mount together. We went though Not God, which is my favorite history of AA by far. And it's non-conference approved literature. It's written by a guy named Ernest Kurtz, and it's fantastic. One of the things he does is he explains a few things that aren't explained in our literature. You know the guy in Tradition 3, there's a guy who shows up at an AA group and was suffering from some real bad stuff, and they didn't know what to do about the guy? I always wondered, what the hell was wrong with that guy? Well, Kurtz talks about it, and what he was was, and this is like in the late 30s, early 40s, a guy shows up in one of the few AA clubhouses in the world, it was in New York. It was a gay, African-American, heroin-addicted ex-con. They must have been looking for this guy's spaceship. I mean, this is so outside of their personal experience, and they didn't want to let him in, and they called Bill down, and Bill said, what are you talking about? How do you get to do that? How do You get to kill him? Just shoot him. Just kill him now. At any rate, step two. There are two wonderful lists in our book. One is a list of things people say about us. It's on page 20, the third paragraph. How many times people have said to us, I can take it or leave it alone, why can't he? Why don't you drink like a gentleman or quit? That fellow can't handle his liquor. Why don'T you try beer and wine, lay off the hard stuff? His willpower must be weak. He could stop if he wanted to. She's such a sweet girl, I should think he'd stop for her sake. The doctor told him if he ever drank again it would kill him, but there he is all lit up again. Now these commonplace observations on drinkers, which we hear all the time, And back in them is a world of ignorance and misunderstanding. We see that these expressions refer to people whose reactions are very different than ours. It's a terrible thing in our culture. Because of our problem mainly rests in our mind, alcoholism still gets trivialized in a way that's just absolutely crazy. Sufferers, hundreds of thousands of people dying on a daily basis. Of course, very few times does it say alcoholism on the death certificate. It says, stabbed to death with rusty scissors in the middle of the night. You know, it says a lot of stuff, but very rarely does it say alcoholism. And then there's the list of stuff that we say about ourselves on page 24, the third paragraph. The alcoholic may say to himself in the most casual way, it won't burn me this time, so here's how, or perhaps he doesn't think at all. How often have some of us begun to drink in this nonchalant way and after the third or fourth drink pounded on the bar and said to ourselves, for God's sake, how did I ever get started again? Or only to have that thought supplanted by, well, I'll stop with the sixth drink. And my personal favorite, what's the use anyhow? And if you pause and take a look at the friends and family of alcoholics and people who have been deeply affected and ravaged by alcoholism, who don't have the allergy but are members of friends and families, I think you can see that how this list, it becomes hardwired into their thinking. What's the use anyhow? And when you're trying to be pretty enough or smart enough or good enough so the sleeper will awake and trying to impact, you know, I'll stop after the sixth compliment or whatever, however that manifests. But it's very clear to see how this kind of thinking, this kind of insanity becomes hardwired into the thoughts and feelings and actions of friends and family of alcoholics. When this sort of thinking is fully established in an individual with alcoholic tendencies, he's probably placed himself beyond human aid and unless locked up may die or go permanently insane. So it says if you have the physical allergy, of you, someone with alcoholic tendencies, and this kind of thinking becomes well established in you, you're dead. Pretty much. You're probably dead. By the way, they're very nice to us in the book. They're very kind to us. They are not so nice in the chapters that are not written to us, the chapter to the family afterward, chapter to employer, chapter the wives. They They're not quite as polite, you know. My favorite line, there's two of my favorite lines in the big book is on page 63 and 64. It's the last sentence on 63 and the first on 64. It says that we start out on a personal house cleaning which many of us had never attempted. I think they're just so calm. I've never shown a guy how to do an inventory, and I had him say, wow, I've been doing that for years. I can't believe you guys do that. That's absolutely extraordinary. But I'll just share with you what used to be my favorite line in the big book of AA. And if you're new here, it could be your favorite line too if you want it to be. It starts on the bottom of 65 and continues on 66, and they're assuming that you've written a list of how you have been screwed. You've written a list of people and people, institutions, and principles that are just against you. They're just against me. And it says if you're looking at this, it says the first thing apparent was that this world and its people were often quite wrong. Well, that's enough for today. We really don't need to go any further than that. I think it's time to go to sleep. I just used to read that sentence and just get tickled all over because don't read the next page. Because what the next page says is, you're right and you're dead. Because we're not saying don't argue with a drunk. We're not seeing that you haven't been screwed. You've got the list. You've apparently been screwed, okay? You experience this in a way that is so injurious that it eclipses every good thing that happens in your life. You experience the fancied or real wrongdoing of others in a way that is so intrusive that it actually eclipses every possible chance you have for success, connection, connectivity, feeling part of, feeling connected to you, this crazy idea that I can live separated from you or separated from some of you. I was brought up in a Jewish home. I am not Christian. I use the teachings of Jesus a ton, and a lot of the Jesus Christ message. Look, you can use any sentence from the Bible, the big book, the Koran, or the Torah to prove any point you want. We all know that. You can use spiritual tools or spiritual weapons very, very easily. And the nightmare, the big nightmare, the nightmare that we see around us that unfortunately people are being gobbled up with and we can see in Alcoholics Anonymous is this idea of separation. This idea that I have the way, the application. And what the mystics say, what the Christ message is, as far as I understand it, is that the thorns and the flowers both get water. And if I start deciding when one doesn't and one does, I'm going to die I'm not going to kill the thorns or the flowers they're going to find a way to get through somehow I am going to die it's a wonderful quote none of them by me on the first page of this handout and I love it so much it's the second from the bottom and it says God does not die on the day that we cease to believe in a personal deity But we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance renewed daily of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason. Strangely enough, that's a quote from Dag Hammarskjöld, who used to be the Secretary General of the UN many, many years ago. I'm 55. I know that my life is ostensibly over, but I am 55. It's a silly age for such a young boy. I'm going to read it again. God does not die on the day that we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on a day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, the steady radius renewed daily of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason. And when I start deciding who gets the water and who doesn't, I'm a dead man. Our book says that I cannot be helpful to all people, but I must at least take a kindly and tolerant view of each and every one. Sometimes the opposite of resentment is not always peace, freedom, and love. It can be the absence of murder. There's plenty of people I don't like. I don'T have to like them, but I MUST at least TAKE A KINDLY AND TOLERANT VIEW OF EACH AND EVERY ONE. THERE'S STUFF THAT'S NOT EXCUSABLE, BUT IT ALL HAS TO BE FORGIVABLE. I'M GOING TO TALK ABOUT FORGiveness MORE. I want to end our first session with the last sentence on that first page of the handout. It is, to me, one of the most beautiful expressions of step two that I've ever heard. It's a definition of faith. Now, this definition of faithfulness is a definition that I think is very important. Faith was made by a spiritual teacher. He says that he used to confuse faith and belief, and for him they're different. And I don't want to get into semantics. It's kind of interesting. It's like, when does faith become belief? You know, in my home group they used to say something that, you know, a lot of people say, which is, you Know, make your higher power anything you want. They used to tell a story about this woman who made her higher power the tree outside of her house. And she prayed to the tree every morning and she stayed sober. And one morning a city truck was feeding the last branch of the tree into a chipping machine. That was great. Oh, I love you. That was great. And she went running down the street after the truck screaming, oh God, save my tree. So she stepped to the shore. She had to make a transition because her tree had been sent through a John Deere mulching blade and she had to make it. He talks about his beliefs are different from faith because he likes his beliefs because he believes in them. And the stuff that he believes in really feels good. Faith is the willingness to expose myself to the truth despite the consequences. I never heard a better expression of step two. A step into thin air. Do you believe that a power greater than yourself can restore your sanity? Not that it would, not that it should. It says in chapter four that if you are even willing to believe in the possible existence of a power greater than itself, we emphatically assure you that you're on your way. So I want to end our first session on that note, on step two. We'll charge into step three after about five minutes. I leave it to the drunk wranglers to get everybody back in here in about five months. Great is your ability to accept the things I cannot change or exchange the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. at that last little thing I read faith, the willingness to expose myself to the truth despite the consequences to me is one of the great expressions of my experience of step two my initial experience of step two which was a step off into thin air an act of blind faith and one of the reasons is I just I was out of plans I was just out of plans. I love newcomer plans One of my favorites this guy this buddy of mine in the Midwest was sponsoring this guy for a while and he stopped doing his work and drank sober about seven years and got three DUIs in rapid succession. And I don't know how he stayed out of jail. I mean, with three DUAs in rapid succession. And he came up with a plan. This was his plan. He made five Molotov cocktails. This is a little town in the Midwest. And his plan was to blow up the courthouse, thereby they would lose his paperwork. Does anyone even have paperwork? I don't even think there is paperwork anymore. So he made the Molotov cocktails. He put one in each corner of the building and took the fifth one and laid down in his car and fell asleep. Now, I've never read the instructions on a Molotов cocktail, but I believe throwing is involved at some point. I think at some points you've got to throw the thing. Now, you know, these days if you try to bomb a government installation, they don't give you a court card. You don't go to the 30 AA meetings. You wind up in Guantanamo Bay with a black bag over your head for a period of time. So he's – and I was out of plans, and I Was Willing, when my sponsor said, are you an alcoholic, I said yes, in whatever way I understood that. He said, is your life unmanageable around alcohol? Now, I'm a guy who one time when I had a toothache, I thought, okay, Okay, I'll take a big darning needle and with a pair of pliers and I'll heat it up over the stove and push it into my gum. You already, you're off, okay? And that will relieve some of the pressure. These are the ideas I'm having, you know. Plus, I'm bad with objects. I'm disoriented. I'm disconnected from my surroundings. I still am. Anytime I deal with objects, my sons kind of just go, watch, watch out. I was trying to fix their phone, and I had their phone in my hand and my phone in my hand, and I called my phone with their phone and my phone rang and I said, who the hell is calling me? And I wasn't kidding around, you know, and they just go. So we were skiing, and it snowed about a foot while we were in the lodge that night. And in the morning, Jesse starts sweeping off the top of the car. And I said, son, you don't need to do that. I have a sunroof. And they start going, what? And I thought somewhere in my Looney Tunes brain that if I retracted the sunroef, it would just bring the snow with it. So I retract the sunroof, and the car fills with snow. We're like 10 cubic feet of snow. And it's getting worse. I'll tell you why. I've admitted this to Brent already, but recently, in the last six months, sometimes I go to work at about 5 a.m., and I need to load the car up with stuff. And, you know, you get into a rhythm to get out. I get all the stuff in the car. I get in the car to drive away, and I think, man, everything seems so far away. I had gotten into the back seat of the car, and I had closed the door, and the first thing I thought was, no one must ever know of this. I really have some severe problems. I have some sever emotional, mental, and spiritual problems. And at any rate, I have come to believe. When my sponsor said, is your life unmanageable? I said, yes, although I didn't know the gravity of the problem at all, believe me. And then he said, have you come to belief that a power greater than yourself can restore your sanity? And I said no. Then he said do you believe that it's possible? It says in the third page of our fourth chapter that none of us can fully comprehend or define that power which is God. And then on the page right after, it says that if you are willing to admit that it's possible, even the possibility. Talk about a huge hoop to jump through. And I said, yeah, it's impossible. It's possible. Now, I want to tell you, some years before that, I would not have said it was possible. I was a staunch atheist. I would have laughed at it. By the way, he doesn't bother me. He might bother some other people, but he doesn'T bug me at all. It's the sound of families that shouldn't be together as far as I'm concerned. I can't wear pants like that. I just look silly. There are none in my draw either, I swear to God. Have you come to believe that a power grabber than yourself could restore your sanity? Yes, I did. And he said, good, let's go. Let's move. He didn't ask me to qualify it. He didn' t ask how much do you believe it. He didn''t ask any of that because my experience of one, two and three how could I really comprehend how unmanageable my life was really comprehend it without an inventory without seeing it how could i really appreciate the responsibility that this gave me without eight and nine if i would do the rest of the work it will nourish and make my experience of the first three steps deeper and wider and broader and the more i disconnect that as i move deeper into sobriety My experience of the first three steps will become attenuated. They will become starved. They will becomes anorexic. They will stop eating, and I will drink. My alcoholism will go below the horizon. It will stop presenting as a real piece of business because what is going to enliven my appreciation that this is a real peace of business, the more that I appreciate that my life's unmanageable. Not that I'm an incompetent idiot, although that comes up, you know, when you get into the backseat of your car to drive away. It occurs to you. But what I appreciate is that I'm not going to be the captain of this, that the secret to my success is to become more involved with you, more connected to you, not as a people pleaser, not to ingratiate you, not with a lot of noise. Sometimes it's being able to sit absolutely quiet with you with a hand on your shoulder and be part of the big laughing love that is Alcoholics Anonymous. And anybody who tries to present this to me as dutiful misery, I have no use for you. I don't. This idea, that's an old idea for me, that life is falling from the womb and crawling across hostile territory to the grave. It's an idea that I had. You know, God is either everything or nothing. So these admissions take me to step three and they take me to the fifth chapter. Beautiful, beautiful step three. God, I offer myself to thee to build with me and to do with me as thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do thy will. Take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help with thy power, thy love, and thy way of life. May I do thy will always. The engine, the mechanism of course is to immediately start turning my eyes out. I'm asking for the removal of my difficulties so I can bear witness to a fellow sufferer. As far as I know, Alcoholics Anonymous has nothing to do with cured people administering to the troubled. As faras I understand AlcoholicsAnonymous, It's about fellow sufferers. One of the things that was so hard for me when I was new is sometimes I'd hear people come in and say, you know, I had a baby, and that baby will never have to see me drunk. And, man, it just used to kill me because my kids had seen me drunk, and I had injured them terribly. Their backs were broken by alcoholism by the time I got in here. And I didn't get it. I didn'T understand that we were just going to have two different kinds of demonstrations. Number one, I also didn't know at that time that just because you're sober doesn't mean you're going to be a good parent. I've seen some of the worst parenting I've ever seen in my life in Alcoholics Anonymous or in the world with non-alcoholics. Just because you don't drink doesn't means you're gonna be a great parent, you know? I've already read the toddler property laws. what I didn't know is that when I asked God to remove my difficulties in the third step when I drew close to him and he revealed himself to me that I was going to be able to talk about how troubled my children were and how I got sober and the family recovery that we had, that when my kids came in and they couldn't stop grinding their teeth and they had tics and they were cut out from the society of other children, that as I got were involved with you as I became connected with you and so I started to blow on the embers of the connective tissue of Alcoholics Anonymous now sometimes the kids get well and sometimes they don't the thing that I do know is they're going to have a sober parent that's going to try to be more helpful with their illness that I know that's the only thing I can commit to you that I'll try to do it happens that in our house the the children really recovered um and neither one of them um has the allergy they've had a lot of adventures but at the end of the day folks you either have the allergy or you don't i mean it's really as simple as that you could be as nutty as you want you know you can have as many other you know there are a lotof problems that have nothing to do with alcoholism. I've divested myself of this notion that the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous can take care of everything. It can't cure tuberculosis, it can't cure certain mental disease. There's some guys in my home group I just like to carry a bag or sock full of Valium around and whack them in the back of the head with it. It's Let's just put a Zoloft lick out on their table at a meeting. But there's real mental disease that has, you know, nothing to do. I mean, granted, when I straighten out spiritually, I will straighten out mentally and physically. That certainly has happened for me, and I've seen it happen to me personally. I've see it happen in thousands of people. So, on the bottom of 62, and we've read most of 62 in conjunction with the first two steps. This is the how and the why of it. First of all, we had to quit playing God. First of All, I Had to Quit Playing God. How do I quit playing god and boss you around and tell you who to date and what to do and what to eat and where to go? How does that exist? That's sort of like Clark Kent and Superman. You don't quite ever see them in the same place at the same time. How do I make all the decisions for you in your life and boss you around and exclude you from my love if you don't do it my way and not play God? How does that happen? How do you do an end run around that? I've heard two great descriptions of alcoholic thinking. Unfortunately, one of them was about the Nazi mind, which is really a drag, and one was about a mass murderer. and I'll share them both with you. I've heard the Nazi mind described as the most perfectly tuned clock that keeps the most precise time in the universe for one minute and then skips a century. That when it works, it's rhapsodic, it's perfect and when it doesn't, it leaves gaps large enough to move an entire culture through. I have experienced this in Alcoholics Anonymous that there are just these gaps that's kind of a logic no-fly zone that I'm not going to play God, but I'm going to make some rules here. Rather than being an interested, loving observer, I'm gonna be a psychotic participant. And then the second unfortunate description of alcoholism was about Ted Bundy. But it was a great quote. Bundy was a law student. If you're not familiar with him, he did a lot of bad stuff and killed a lot of people. And he used to represent himself in court. And apparently he was brilliant. And a group of the shrinks and cops that knew what this guy did, they intimately knew what This Guy Did and had been trying to get him for a long time, they're sitting around and they're talking about it at one of his trials. And one of them said, It's making me sick, but I'm starting to root for him. With all the information that this guy had, He was starting to empathize with the guy and root for him. One of the shrinks said something that blew me out of my chair. He said, don't you understand that when he is in that court, the only thing that is palpable to him is his own agony? I said, what an incredible description of alcoholism. How was I able to do a lot of this stuff? My self-centeredness and selfishness was so powerful that actually the only thing that was real to me was not its impact on you, not your suffering.