Obsession and the Spiritual Malady – Herb K – Workshop – Part 6 of 25 – Herb

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening. My name is Herb and I'm an alcoholic. Welcome to our Big Book 12 Step Workshop. This call is being recorded. Please join me in prayer. God, please set aside everything that I think I know about myself, my brokenness, the 12 steps in you For an open mind and a new experience of myself, my brokenness, the 12 steps, and especially you. Please join me in the serenity prayer, God grant me the serentity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference. So we're concluding today the first half of the first step looking at powerless. have looked at the body once I take a drink or a bite or engage in the process whether it be a substance or process addiction once I begin I cannot stop that's a problem but clearly if it's the only problem then just stop it well we have a regular pattern of stopping we have a regular pattern of stopping but the problem is we don't stay stopped and that's a cycle that we've experienced not just once or twice but several times or several hundred times over several years or several decades We're not able to connect the dots. We're Not Able To Even Recognize The Pattern Or The Cycle. We Keep Thinking It Will Be Different And Bill Calls That Obsession And Delusion. Today I'd Like To Take A Look At And Have Conversations With You About Your Experience With Obsession and Delusion, The Problem Of The Mind As Reflected In Your Work On The mind worksheet once again uh a worksheet that's offered to be a springboard for your experience there's no right or wrong answer there's just your experience what were you thinking one minute to five minutes before you engaged that's the only everything after you engage is just story it's totally predictable periodic or chronic you will not be able to stop so the real issue is what were you thinking feeling or aware of just before you started after a period of abstinence and we'll do that for a little bit and then we'll take a look at assignment five the beginning of it the spiritual malady unmanageability the book calls the second half of the first step unmanaged ability as I processed it and experienced it at ten years of sobriety, I saw that it really is the spiritual malady that Bill talks about. It is the problem. The problem. Addiction is a problem. Spiritual malady is THE problem. You probably don't even need the term spiritual. As you go through it you will see it's a human condition, it's a human malady. A percentage of people have the addiction first half of the first step, one out of 10 or five out of ten, but not 10 out of10. My experience and my opinion is that unmanageability is 10 out 10 of human beings. It's the human problem. And maybe that's why Bill was able to say in the preface to the first edition in 1939 our way of living may have its advantages for all he had that intuition that the spiritual malady the unmanageability is a human condition problem not just an addict's problem so first we'll take a look at your experience with the mind some of you have already shared that I don't keep records of what you share I just keep records up that you share bouts where I do stay stop short periods oh wait that means you don't stay stopped absolutely absolutely it's kind of like getting really clear if you have cycles of not staying stopped it means you don't say stopped right so in this in the last experience that you can remember what were you thinking or feeling how much abstinence did you have I think I had at this particular incidents that i'm thinking about about eight or nine months and i was on honeymoon yeah my ex is in was in the program at that time so we were both stopped yeah um and what did you what did you um relapse with i had i i had a beer i started drinking beer i went up to the room came down and she had a beer okay so i hadn't had anything yet so my experience was anger i was mad and scared and disappointed and all that stuff but i went right over there and joined her yeah yeah and how much thought or awareness did you have of the period of eight or nine months of sobriety i was like here we go again we're gonna start up um i knew it wasn't going to be a good night it wasn't and uh i just knew that i threw away eight months of sobriety well afterwards but were you actually thinking that as you walked across you saw her have a beer and you ordered a beer what were you thinking when you ordered a beer? What were you feeling and aware of when you order the beer? basically i didn't want to do it i mean no basically you did want to do it so let's get over that okay gotcha because you did it because i did it so i'm just i'm asking you what were you thinking or feeling when you saw her drinking a beer you literally went over there and ordered one for yourself there was a very conscious act of ordering what were you thinking into your sobriety first there was a little fight of why are you doing this type thing and then we just we just threw away we got a you know and i even said it like that we just drew it away saying that i was going to get one i mean okay all right so with very little consciousness or awareness of the implications you just rolled i just rolled with it yeah okay that's exactly what we're talking about yeah now was that a choice or a decision on your part um yeah it was my choice to do that really really and had you ever had abstinence before that i have had abstentions before that how many times had you had abstinnence and relapse before that several and why did you keep trying to quit what was the reason that you tried to quit just i knew there was a problem i things happen blackouts and bites and duis and your life was a mess and expensive and embarrassing and comfortable and suffering and you're telling me that you chose to drink again i did just like you oh no no no i don't accept it at all that you chose no sane person right chooses to put a bullet in the chamber and pull the trigger at their head right no you're right the way if you yes so there was something definitely wrong with your thinking and that at least that's i mean you can maintain the conclusion that you were making a choice it doesn't seem to me that you were in any healthy sense making a choice it sounds to me like you had a compulsion and an obsession and you believed the lie oh here we go again well we'll get it over with or you know you know we'll manage it better this time no the the bullet in the gun is a great analogy yeah that really hits home because that that is that is, that's that was made you know. Yeah it sounds like it yeah okay. You know prior to um coming into AA I stopped um and I never um I didn't know that I was trying to control my drinking. I always thought it was I was making a decision. I always thought i was making a decision um and it wasn't until after i came in the aa that i realized that i was powerless and i really didn't have a choice and i never could stick with it when i would decide that i wasn't going to drink after some you know hangover or some embarrassing incident or something that happened um a couple of days later you know i would find myself drinking again and you know for whatever flimsy reason or excuse i made up and i did not know that i did not have a choice was it was was this your experience after you came in aa did you have relapse in aa i didn't okay when i first came to as 1987 when i came into aa so stepped into the program i was coming to meetings with the person who 12-stepped me in my mind i was visiting i did not connect the fact that he brought me to the a meetings because he thought that i had a problem with alcohol but i was coming to support him there you go after i started coming to the meetings some kind of way in my mind i wanted to prove to myself that i was not an alcoholic so see how long i could go without drinking so probably uh went to meetings for a couple of months and i didn't drink anything but i was not saying that i was an alcoholic because i'm still fooling myself into believing that i wasn't at one and that i was controlling this thing and um i ended up going to a wedding with some of my co-workers and there was a lapse in between the wedding and the reception and we got um a bottle and you know if i had known that was gonna be my last drink i would not have been splitting a fifth with five people you know i mean that was just that would not had been my last dream what happened i drank and aa was already in my head so it already messed up my drinking because i was hearing everything that everyone had been saying and i surrendered after that when i came back to the program you know i knew i knew before then i just didn't want to stop i knew because i could identify with what they were saying else why would i be trying to prove to myself that i wasn't one so after you had that experience have you stayed sober then in aa yes okay so go back to that experience then you had two months of exposure as a visitor you had lots of information right and you were had made a decision not to drink just to show yourself you weren't an alcoholic so here you're at this wedding and you got a fifth and you've got some friends and you're gonna share it what were you thinking when you cracked open the fifth and had a glass in your hand and it got poured and you were drinking what were thinking about the time that you'd spent in AA and or quitting drinking well I always thought before somehow was to be different yeah that you know the same thing wasn't going to happen uh you know it's like i never really gave a whole bunch of thought to it no there that's it right there no that's right that's right exactly because you hadn't made any real commitment and this was just another occasion and then you were going to go back and visit aa to support your friend of course right right right the first two months in aa i went there and i said i'm herb exploring being an alcoholic i would say that i was a visitor and they would all say oh just keep coming back of course yeah unfortunately you did right yes yeah but you can see now that you weren't making a decision that you were blinded by like uh like dave was blinded by the fact that you really are you have no choice that you're in fact there's a compulsion there's there's force in you that doesn't have your best interest at heart yeah yeah i find this um very interesting um you know just going through the works worksheet and really searching my mind to answer the questions and you know really reflecting back and you know um one of the things that um i really liked one of the questions that it asked on there about we had to um uh the thing about making resolutions to stop and and i had listed all of these different substances that i swore on a stack of bible i would never ever use again because i drank but i used drugs too and one of them was dropping tabs of acid it's you know you stay high for 24 hours first of all you know and it was like i promised myself i would never ever ever drop another tab of acid because i hated the high i hated it so the next time i dropped the tab of acid that i promised myself i wouldn't do i just dropped half a tab same effect you know so i just found going through those instances of everything that i promised i would never do again that i did it like i said that i would never drink cheap champagne ever again because i you know cheap champagne gives you a terrible hangover all champagne gives you a hangover but i was just caveating it it was just the cheap champagne that i wasn't going to drink yeah i had you know like a two-day hangover it took me two days to get over that hangover so the next time i drank champagne even though i swore i wasn't gonna drink any cheap champagne i drank expensive champagne and i got a hang over so all of that stuff was just very interesting to me just back through it and just seeing you know this mind thing you know and i kept doing the same stuff over and over again trying all kinds of different combinations right somehow it would be different see and that's the point of the mind worksheet is to take you back into your actual history to have an awareness of connecting the behaviors and the dots like you just did yeah yeah okay so first of all that was my experience with the beginning of the journey of seeing that i had a problem no i think i was committed to a point to a point where as long as you're not going to be uncomfortable but if you're going to be uncomfortable then you're gonna use drugs exactly that's my whole thing it's like it's feeling like if I'm in pain I you know I I deserve to be pain free or something even though I know that being an addict alcoholic is a I used drugs alcoholically and it's a conundrum it doesn't ultimately work no No, it doesn't work at all. That's right. Okay, good. Yeah. It works in the short term, but not in the long term. Well, then it doesn'T work. Exactly. But no, but you see how we rationalize. I mean... I just did it an hour ago. I was thinking I had thoughts. That'S what I started telling you. I'm going on a trip and I'M going to Colorado. I'M having pain today. And my mind just an hour ago was saying well you can use while you're on this trip and then stop when you come home yeah yeah yeah yep yep so you what is your experience then with that cyclical abstinence and relapse why don't you get clear in your head and clean your behavior what's the problem with you i'm just really powerless over my mind over my mine i can't stop deluding myself into thinking this delusion is around pain and thinking that that somehow i deserve it or i deserve to be pain-free but other people are in aa and deal with chronic pain and don't take painkillers yeah yeah all right I told myself, I mean, this is why when I hit a bottom and knew I had to go to OA was I told myself I wasn't gonna, I was going to pick one of the two restaurants and I went to one and then I said, Oh, it's okay, I can go to the other one. And I'm going to buy these foods and I'm gonna lose weight this weekend that I go away right another way my food and my weight and um and so i said i'm not going to eat the food that i bought not going gonna happen and so I'm walking home with my cookies and I'd eaten my cookies and lo and behold i get home and i ate up all the food that i had bought you you'd said you'd made up your mind to manage your food and or i'm not sure whether were you in a program at that time no no no i wasn't but that event that experience was what allowed me to see that this brain, Mrs. Emilek here had no control. There it is, yeah, you were in fact rationalizing and in denial and lost control and all of that. I told myself I wasn't gonna do it and then I turned around and did it and it terrified me and you know what? When they say remember your last binge I don't remember my last binge, but because it was so long ago, and I have a bad memory, but I remember that. And I don' t want to do that. I think it's important to remember experiences, but the remembrance of a last binge or even a bad experience is not going to be a buffer to preventing the relapse. Absolutely not. No, no, no. But they tell you to remember it because after the years pass, it's like no they tell you to remember it because they're ignorant of the dynamic of the problem of the mind because remembering it is not going to help you it won't help me to stay away from it and i get that but it will help me i mean i'm a lot different today than i was back then so it helps me remember you still have this thing girl you you know, this has a, this is still a real thing. It's not, and it reminds me that to, yeah, you have to still keep walking the walk and doing the do. That's what I'm talking about. It's like, oh, this over. I can let go of that. I'm changed. I've changed. I'm not that person anymore. You know, that's what i'm talking about. But I have a question. Let me get out of this light. i have a question and something i'm struggling with is that conceptually and that is you know when i came into a way we heard a lot you just don't eat no matter what you just donate no matter what and so if i hear that in a2 every once in a while you'll still do it's it's just based on ignorance but go ahead however it teaches you i mean one night i felt at nine o'clock at not i was in college and i felt like eating and i called a friend in no way and she said renee you're exhausted go to bed and i woke up and i didn't have that feeling anymore yeah and so i'm just experiencing confusion i mean i get the bodily thing totally and i but this mental thing i just feel that we're not but what you had when you called your person your friend was a thought you didn't have an obsession what you had when you were doing the cookie thing you had an obsession that took possession of you they're very different between a thought and obsession i thought you have control over you can manage it that's why it says when you have a thought of a drink call your sponsor or go to a meeting or pray or help somebody those are the great great observations but it won't help you at all if you're in obsession you won't even know you're in obsession you're just going for the drink so some of the people that you've spoken with and stuff I've wondered if it's where does self-will come into it like oh I feel like because with food we have to eat three times a day and I'm just saying I it I think that there are and I haven't studied this there is a woman who professionally does work with both and the differences and I'm just suggesting that I think that there are some differences because we have they call it we have to take the tiger out of the cage three times a day and there is something called well the I'm uncomfortable right now so I feel like eating something and I don't know that that's a bodily or a mental obsession that's attention and the thought and if you're spiritually fit you don't eat and if you're not spiritually fit you do eat right and I I just think it can be very self-will that's I guess what I'm well as long as you believe that there is a choice then you're not powerless and i don't care if you call it self-will or willfulness or self-centeredness all of those words are applicable to unmanageability from my standpoint because i do believe we have free will but it's not free when it comes to addiction that's the whole point of no choice okay abs i totally know i'm there absolutely i have no doubt about that but i'm use then if i have a thought then i i can make a choice about like that night i called my friend of a thought you can make the choice if you have an obsession which is a subgroup of thought right and it's a thought that takes possession of you without consciousness or with some consciousness like jim or fred but you have no control over it if you have any control over your thought you're not powerless yep so every time i go over this particular area of experience i literally am boggled in my own mind with that distinction between the thought and the obsession because i saw experientially prior to coming to the program that I was not making a choice sometimes I had a little thought most of the time I didn't I was like Fred with the strange mental blank spot I just began drinking there was no thought there was no decision mm-hmm like Jim had a thought I vaguely sense I wasn't being too smart but it was overridden by the obsession that is the idea that's a lie oh it won't hurt me this time because I've got sandwich and milk right right yeah exactly and that's the rationalization and the denial that we expressed in different ways right yes yeah but but the the the subtlety and yet not so subtle is that i really do not have a choice if i have a choice i don't i am not powerless therefore even with some consciousness and some background and some knowledge and some memory and some success in my willpower previously There'll come a moment, and Bill says it at the end of the material that we looked at last week, page 43, we'll have no effective mental defense. Right. Despite the memory, despite the thought, despite whatever goes on in our consciousness. Right. Yeah, and I'm actually even having an experience as I'm talking to you right now of the impossibility of this and that's the guillotine that hangs over our head as you said absolutely at all absolutely i don't pay that much attention to it normally because i'm in a much more positive place in terms of our relationship with power but when i spend time like this in it it's kind of like almost almost getting goosebumps yes yes yes yep yep right the obsession of the mind why is it with addicts that we have it like is there a reason i can understand the physical allergy and the craving and all that but where does the no choice where does the obsession come from like i don't get that like why would it what would my mind turn around and go it's okay to have a drink but i know it's perfectly not yeah yeah no no it's a really good question i don t know the why answer um bill makes the observation that it's so yeah and he says that it s because we're not spiritually fit meaning we don't have a connection to a power other than ourself so that's the premise in the big book that when you're not connected to a Power other than yourself a higher Power God is we don't understand it spirit of the universe as he says sunlight of the spirit um that we don t have a sufficient shield to prevent this defective thinking from taking place so I can't explain why but I just explained the sort of the dynamic and the phenomena of it take the spiritual connection well you know I'm as you may have heard I kind of hesitated even using the term spiritual I'm trying to almost neutralize the use of that term anymore because I'm not sure it's totally necessary um and that's why I really try to use there's a life force or a power available to us other than us but my good friend dr. Berger who is in the program 49 years a clinical psychologist he talks about the best in us manages the worst in us and I like that yes the Buddha's talk about the true self and the false self the higher stuff and the lower self so I don't mind either way of handling it what I know is that it's it's a power other than my own power but the power in the universe that's available to me and I don't have to I don' have to know what that is I just have to believe that it is exactly yeah does that make sense it makes a lot of sense yeah yeah it makes it more inclusive and it makes it actually it's it's still mysterious but But it doesn't connect to religion or any type of traditional spirituality. And that's what I want. I wanted to be much more inclusive for people to be able to kind of like, Oh, okay, yeah, I don't have to believe in church or God, as my parents did, or the teacher said. But there's, there's hope in the universe. It's a mystery. I can't explain it, but I can connect to it really. I can because I've seen other people do that, yeah? Yeah, and I thank you for that, Herb. Yeah, well, thanks for the prompting to explore it with you because although I am a big book fundamentalist and literalist, I also want to respond to our current culture and experience so that we're not being dominated by vocabulary that was prevalent 80 years ago. My primary fellowship is Al-Anon, but I've noticed, I was in your workshop two years ago, food, this whole idea of this food issue coming up. And so one of the stories that I wanna tell you is this is what really made me realize. and so I was going back the five minutes before. So, I had this bag, I mean, oh my God, of Takis. And they're spicy tortilla chips with all bad crap in it, right? And I remember going down the aisle in the market and it was like the voice in the head, do not go down that aisle because you know what you're gonna do. Oh, okay. No, I really want to go down the, I mean back and forth. Oh yeah, you shouldn't have that. Yeah, I know but, and then I was like, I'm effing getting the Takis and then I get the Takies and it was always an excuse just to eat this bag. Tomorrow you'll start. Tomorrow you will be abstinent. And it never happened because right? The resolution is a it's a freak it's a joke we don't know that we since i mean i'm sure that you sincerely meant it and and you just yeah it's looking at it today you can talk the way you do but but back then you couldn't at all see the truth no and so herb it really it it and i so i've been 20 days abstinent from you know the junk and the takis which is really a trigger food for me right and and this awareness of that's what i use to numb not whether sad uh lonely tired but um Surrendering. I mean, surrendering to that power. Surrendery to that mystery because I've tried and tried on my own. Yeah. And in the first step, I do believe surrender is an appropriate term in the way that you used it. I'm surrendering in complete defeat on my home power And I'm surrendering in hopes that there is another power that can help me. Yes, yes, yes. But I keep saying, you know, it's a daily reprieve. Don't forget about that for me. Well, on the other hand, and I understand that the glass is half full with that perspective or half empty. I like to look at the glass half full. it's just a different perspective on the same reality and that is my my my task today is to do what I need to do to maintain a relationship with power as long as I do that everything else will fall in place I do not have to worry or be afraid hmm I do have to look back over my shoulder shoulder as long as i'm looking forward walking forward getting guidance staying clean in terms of an alignment with god's will is the best i can understand it and trying to help other people when i'm look forward doing steps 10 11 and 12. i don't look backwards and i i'm very rarely look in the rearview mirror. That's awesome, yeah. I'm noticing that like the codependency that I have the process addiction is definitely hindering or jumping in there to help me with my food addiction not to help me i can see it it's a trigger i see it as a trigger and it's uh and i can see the two really together there like um i don't know anyway i just wanted to say that but with the uh the process addiction the uh helping unasked for helping it's very little consciousness I have of stepping in and giving the bit of advice like I'm, I don't want to do it. And I even promise myself and try to listen for what I think is a long time but it's not and even practice what we do in our meetings and say to myself don't do any crosstalk like you're if you give advice to choose to state one of my kids or whatever that's just like crosstalk and and i know it in my head but all of a sudden it just becomes too much and there i am in there telling them what to do no one asked me and uh like the ready fire aim stuff you know such a helper oh i am and i've been listening i know i know been listening a bit to the richard roar tapes talking about the enneagram and i didn't think i was a two but i and i may be in in the helping you absolutely no control over that like i just see people and i go oh my god i just go get it like i do an ice cream or something in the fridge like it's you know it's like i'm like a robot and uh that's a really good word that you just used and i haven't used that word in years but that's great word we're operating like we're a robot like a zombie you know seriously yeah that we're in this kind of uh zone where we're doing things that we sort of conscious of but we're repeating yeah behavior that creates such suffering and that we know where it's going and we do it anyway yeah yeah and yeah and I know that's exactly where I need to be in this step one in order to do it and I in order to do the steps in a real thorough way which I haven't finished completely before and I so I'm glad that I am having that experience and I have been trying put in place a better practice in the morning and the 10 11 and 12 but because I don't want to just wait and I want I'm praying for that willingness to actually do that because when I do the practice in morning the prayer meditation and contempt contemplation prayer I just have a way different day I wouldn't say I'm perfect in the helping part but I'm better with the food that's for sure you're gonna get better if you if you're willing to try and you're willing to fail and you willing to go up and be have the humility to tell yourself with a sponsor or or accountability partner so that's that's great yes yep yeah it is I'm super happy thank you my image and you'll see me do it all year long you have to look up at the screen my image is that we say messed up against this gently pressed up against it just like you just described knowing that will back off and we'll take a rest and we get complacent but we'll get back up and we just step into it again all right I loved when you just shared about I need to maintain a relationship with power because if there's just something that's been happening these last years through all my ups and downs i've definitely that's been a deep commitment every day to i got that how much that was needed so but you know when you talk about powerlessness and no choice about you know it's kind of ignorant to think you have a choice once you're in the obsession too. I really want to understand kind of, is there a way you can just say what you'd really love for us to get as a thesis statement kind of? And I can say more if you want, but I want to just start by like, what's the headline about what we really want grasp in this? The big book suggests two words, knowledge and self-knowledge, as important as they are, are ineffective. My mind will not tell me the truth. it will be either in an inability to see correctly or an inability to see directly meaning at all or to see accurately what what the truth is and and that's really the point that our mind is inherently flawed that's why he uses the term insanity so that there is no thought there is no knowledge there's no consciousness there's no awareness that is going to prevent the obsession from taking possession of us that's that's the the headline yeah thank you does that make i mean it's a repeat of a lot of what i've said but it's encapsulated does that help at all yes i mean i really like hearing you just say it again it's one of those things like just one more time i need to hear it wait a minute and i think what i'm really trying to get for myself is to really claim it more deeply because as much as i've maybe even said some of those words repeated them with sponsees said it for myself i feel like there's a some days five percent maybe some days thirty percent where i still maybe maybe it's pride or or whatever you could tell me maybe better much better but but some way in which there's not a full acceptance of that being true I still want to keep some sense that I do have a choice even though I know I don't well okay but see maybe that's exactly accurate is what you've said is that I think I know and I know that i know and i still want to think that i have so you're in the head whereas the now the headline is to get into the gut into the heart into experience through connecting all of that information that we've just used and all the words that we just use connecting that to our actual experience so did you go back and take a look at periods of abstinence whether you're before the program or in the program and relapse and what were you what were aware of conscious of just before you relapsed yes I did experience with that give me just bring out one of them as an example and give us a little color in it okay um I'll share this you know I'm Just a reminder, my two main programs are sex addiction and food addiction. And maybe I'll talk about something in the sex addiction area just because that's harder to talk about in groups and I think it's important for me to do that. And I always feel like everybody's uncomfortable and that's just something that we sex addicts got to deal with. And I would say it directly to them, deal with it. This is important because you're going to be talking about concepts and words that we don't normally get to hear. So I would love for you to share that. Okay. Well, so after, you know, in SAA we define our abstinence. You work on it with your sponsor by saying what's in your inner circle. So you define those behaviors with a sponsor that determine what sober behavior for you and doing these causes you not to be sober. And so I had been in a place of at one point after I came in and a years of seven, eight years of slipping like three, four times a week. I was going to meetings regularly and trying my best and so earnest. It was all about me trying to figure it out and make it happen, make it stop. And it was just failing all over the place. I was a chronic slipper. I got it at one point and got the surrender, got the fact that I can't do this. I have to give this, I need to be saved by something bigger. And then you know, I had a period of at one point the 12 years of sobriety on that inner circle and real freedom and felt the shield there up for me um and then at one point um i think throughout that period there was always a little bit of lingering when stress comes up i would like uh be such a relief to go to there and you know but i wasn't going there and so you know it was it was a period of great sobriety and then um right beforehand in this slip for me i um it was just something that i got triggered um someone told me a story about my dad my dad was a minister public figure i love my dad and um but anyway this this person just kind of very loosely told me that he used to see my dad going into the sex shop in this town 40 miles from where we lived um yeah kind of i did the kind of what i thought was the right things i was i could feel myself upset it was bothering me i made some phone calls i talked to a sister who's in recovery um but then i went down to this apartment i was with in my family hometown and i went to this room in the in the building where my parents lived my dad was dead by this time so he wasn't even in the picture but yeah and then so i was trying to get ready for bed and then all of a sudden um i got back into a place of this is the only thing that can where i can hide from i didn't want to feel that at all so i would say in that five minute period right before and a thing that was really big for me was phone sex so at the lowest part for me i was probably i was always about appearances i'm a good three in the enneagram and um so always had to have it look good and hiding behind but had a real private secret back room kind of this is just for me and then i look fine in public so kind of had that quality again but when i was at my lowest bottom i had about probably ninety thousand dollars of phone sex charges that had been charged up on a graduate school budget which was pretty deadly but but anyway so i get yes all of a sudden this came back and i was praying and calling and and i think right beforehand it was kind of a hopeless feeling of oh it this is just who i am this is what what I come from and then I was back on a phone line yeah so what what opened the gate for you here to have even the tacit permission for a return to the old behavior it sounds like you connected it to what you had heard about your father well I did I mean I I sure tried not to because I thought wow this is vulnerable territory um i put a number of tools into place you know i called i wrote um well and and so again what you're saying here though is the tools are ineffective yeah that's truly true again obsession yeah yeah the knowledge the self-knowledge the tools i put them all in and i lost the battle yeah that's right because it's not about tools and it's not about knowledge it's about a relationship with power yeah and well it sounds like what happened is that there was a lot of tension around hearing this about your father embarrassment because that's not the persona that you want you want to have a father that is what he is and not perceived to be the reality i'm being awkward in my conversation but do you get what i mean yep i sure do yeah yeah and um i'm a three on the enneagram so i relate to you uh and but but that's all that just means that you weren't spiritually fit it was the you broke your shoelace and the tension and i don't mean to diminish the emotion that you had or the occasion of it i'm just saying it could have been anything so so review the week or two before that and ask yourself and this is this is rhetorical you do not have to answer this in terms of your own reflection it would be good for you to answer it but what were you doing or not doing within a week or two or a month before this relapse absolutely that's great okay thanks this is it's rhetorical but i can answer it too i think yeah i was overworking i had let my my meditation go for about five weeks before oh really yeah oh my god yeah our work is done here no not really i mean that's the core issue oh so so for five weeks you believed that you had power and didn't need god right how did that work out not well yeah yeah well and what i missed in that too, was I sort of made this more about God just like even there, I had a flash of a thought like, well, where was God? I just shut off my availability to God. So yeah, I think what's really helpful in your guiding me here too is just like, um, I want to claim the depth of the powerlessness that you're trying to get us to hear. Um, I just really want to get it deeper this round. Um, I think I always thought I got it but a like just Yeah, and I share this all the time with others that I work with too. But is that the daily reprieve the dailiness of this stuff that you know, um, yeah, I really let that go. And I started to think that I could handle all this, you know? Managing Yeah, yeah. Well, you started off by saying I was overworking. Yeah, which means that you were out of balance Because you're overworking, you probably either need more sleep or you're getting up early and staying up late to work. And therefore, you don't have time for meditation. So it doesn't fit in because it's not a priority. And the image I have, and you've probably heard me say it, is the spiritual shield like Star Wars. And this shield is either up or down, meaning intact or not. But even if there is a shield, if the shield has a defect or a vulnerability in it, then the entire shield can be penetrated. Yeah, wow. You see what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say, I think one other kind of worry that I have to really be on guard about is, you know, the good life that we get from this recovery and this transformation is so good. and that i you know that phrase that i forget how it goes exactly but don't let your good life be the enemy of your good life and you know i i was i i think i just tipped over in a place where that neutrality felt huge expansive and like it's thrilling to be free of this and then all of a sudden i kind of took ownership like wait a minute i think I'm kind of doing this I started to flex it a little bit and think I could even do more and yeah and it was a problem yeah well the principle that you were attempting to articulate I believe is in one of the traditions and it became one of my mantras uh in 2009 when I was re-evaluating my life we sold our family home and i downsized and began to reevaluate my activities and i came across bill wilson saying in one of the traditions the good may be the enemy of the best yeah you see what i'm saying the good i mean you and i are really good everybody on the call is really good at a lot of things but there's one or two things that is our destiny that is our sweet spot that is Our Bullseye and to the extent that we're doing a lot of good things we're not doing the bulls-eye and so it's a distraction to dissipate your energy in a lot a good things rather than focusing your energy on the one or two things that are the invitation for your destiny i really want to hear that today yeah well you would quoted it somewhat closely to that and it's an incredible screen to evaluate our activities and our priorities yeah what are my gifts if i were to spend much time cutting my lawn that would be a good exercise probably but a total waste of my time i should hire that out and spend a little bit more time preparing for a workshop because i'm really good at delivering the message in a workshop yeah you hear the balance of that yeah well and i know what i'm also hearing and i don't know if i think you're saying this too but the bullseye is engaging the way everything I can to keep that shield up I mean that to me feels like yeah the answer is yes and once again I'm very positive oriented rather than negative oriented I don't look back over my shoulder and fear the collapse of my shield gotcha I look forward and keep polishing and strengthening my shield through 10 11 and 12 i'm i'm going forward expanding the light i am not being chased by the darkness that i think that whole three enneagram bit i get caught up in the polishing the shield becomes a thing that i'm doing too and my own spiritual director said herb pay attention yes you're a recovering narcissist and the workshops could aggravate that yeah because you get a lot of you're very good at it and you get in the way of your ministry amen god writes straight with crooked lines hmm isn't that great yeah it's good and the alanons talk about using our liabilities to become our assets in fact bill says that someplace in the 12 and 12 regarding steps six and seven i believe yeah yeah the very things that are the blemishes in me are the sources of energy to do the work i do yeah thank you so much i have a lot of relapses you know i came in to oa how which is my primary addiction i'm also an adult child and i qualify for alan on you know i have all that like background that pro i think i think a lot of compulsive over readers are um fall into the category that i do because that's sort of our outlet right so um so some of the things that are on my mind now is the problem of the chronic relapser and what that history of those different relapses how that makes it harder for me now and i know and of course that's part of looking you know i i appreciate what you just said about um not running from the darkness but going toward the light. I certainly have a problem with morbid reflection that I have to work on and I like the idea and this expression that it's okay to look back but don't stare. I think I stare way too often. So, I learned from the past, yeah. Yeah, so it's the learning without getting discouraged by the past. Right on the money, that's right, yes. When you look back over the shoulder, you can see sharks but if you look for too long you'll get frozen and the sharks will have you as bait I think that's a good description probably of some of my relapses in my thoughts so a lot of fear driven stuff for sure yeah and you know we have an expression in away when you go back home to you know we call it our refrigerator of origin some of us yeah though a lot a number of them have been there when I went back to my dysfunctional you know childhood home source of a lot of trauma and a lot stuff coming back so the real the real question here is with your cycle of relapse can you identify what was your consciousness awareness feelings thoughts within the five minutes before the relapse after a period of abstinence I think that sometimes I'm aware and I think that I'm uncomfortable I'm usually there's something I'm kind of obsessing about that I don't like like my job or something someone said or honestly feeling like I'm not loved enough like I come to this conclusion that like people appreciate me I get into that kind of pity party thing that's what are your thoughts about managing that I think that frequently that can easily just automatically turn into the beginning of the obsessive thoughts about getting relief and then the fear then sort of the running from the darkness thing um it sounds like this has been going on for a while then yes so what's the problem hmm there's a lot of problems i think i can really identify with um with letting other things take priority of of the many things i need to do to stay recovered and keep that connection is there anything that you can do to say recovery and keep that connection I can certainly have a lot of structure to my really life I need really do you think the structure is gonna be the answer then huh to the extent that it that I'm doing structure ensures that I am doing all of those things that allow me to establish and maintain a connection okay so if there's anything that you can do to maintain structure and maintain connection you're not powerless no I think I'm powerless no no you don't know you just need to get the right formula and you'll be just fine I guess what I'm saying is I think knowing that I'm powerless means I need to connect with with the power. But that takes like any relationship, right? That takes time and effort and intention. It is true. It does all of that. But that actually doesn't guarantee the gift. There's the conundrum here. And I can't explain that there's an x plus factor, there's a blank space in there. I don't know how you connect. I know that there's a certain correlation between everything that you just said and the connection I know there is in fact, the tenth step promises that by the time you get there finishing the ninth step you will have been connected but not because you did the work I don't understand what actually precipitates the connection I was given the gift of connection before I asked for it. And you are struggling very much in a program, doing cyclically the correct things, and yet you're not getting connected. You're not giving the traction that you want. Yes. I can't explain that. I can encourage you. Stay the course. Stay with us. do this work be as diligent and intentional and um as consistent as you can be and let's see what happens thank you be also very patient with yourself and know that you you cannot make this happen yeah that's hard yeah because on the one hand you might say well then why the hell would i put myself through 52 weeks of herb kagan and all this work that's required if you can't guarantee it and i can't and i i know it will happen i don't know when it will happen and the book says it will happen at the end of the ninth step the end of your completing your nine step, not my teaching the nine step. You're completing the nine-step. And I'm a witness to the validity of that from 25 years of doing workshops with hundreds now thousands of people. So you breathe in, you breathe out and you put up with yourself. It is the hardest part. It is so hard as part. Thank you so much. Eight years ago, you had two years of abstinence. You're in a program. You have a sponsor. You know the protocol. You've got some success because you've got two years of abstinnence. Do you recall the occasion of your relapse? Oh, vividly. You want to talk to me a little bit about what you ate and what you were thinking just prior to the fact that you ate it. I was in a fromagerie in Montreal. What is that? It's a cheese shop, a cheese and bake bakery shop with my brother and mom. And I was gonna buy some cheese. Sure. The woman starts talking to me in rapid fire French and gives me a little wedge of cheese to taste and I took it. Yes. And I ate it. And I could've stopped there. Well wait, no, it's too late. Too late. Too late? I've already taken it. Well, I don't know that. Is cheese on, well first of all, eating outside of a designated time period is off the charts, right? That was it, that was it. Middle of the afternoon, I've already had lunch, dinner's still hours away. So let's just focus on that. You walk into a cheese shop. So what's your consciousness about FA and your two years of abstinence as you're walking into the cheese shop? I just wanna be a normal person. well there you go i just want to be able to no no there it is but you're not no no and no no no no and you never will be but you walked in there with that thought yes see and so when she offered you of course normal people would be polite and take the cheese and and i was embarrassed that i didn't understand french like where does that even come from it doesn't matter it's not a it's Not a relevant question at this time maybe in the fourth step it is but you see you walked into a cheese shop so what were you thinking when you just before you walked Into the cheese shop what were You thinking in terms of the cheese shop and in terms Of your fa program I should stay in the car well you did have the thought yeah tell me about how did you override that thought well my mother's elderly you know I rationalized it I'll help her in there and okay smelled so good and yada yada okay so you can see that already now your luck you're lost yes yeah you're last because the obsession now has possession of you you've already accepted the thought that you want to be normal that your mother's elderly that you want support her you don't want to embarrass yourself there's so many things going on now so you're a lost soul all right so in the two years of abstinence what was from your standpoint the ingredients to your success of abstinence what were you doing what was the you know I mean this was a wonderful accomplishment two years of abstinent how did that happen in contrast to the prior relapses lot a lot of conversation lot meetings a wall after a wall daily meditation tell me about that what were you doing in during that two years especially the maybe the one month before the relapse what were you actually doing in meditation what I had been doing for a long time which is just sitting quietly and focusing on my breath for 30 minutes why to still my crazy monkey mind why because I'm irritable restless and discontented if I don't okay all right that that's a really good answer so from a psychological standpoint you found sitting quietly breathing is good yes alright anything else I mean why were you doing I would imagine your protocol as 30 minutes of quiet time is your note is your terminology why were you doing 30 minutes of quiet um because be real now i i don't i don t want you to be reading the book in your sponsor's direction i want you tell me why you were actually doing it right because i was supposed to because i was afraid not to and because um it had become a habit at that point yeah i've been in fa for four years by then and it was just part of what i did every day yeah yeah yeah yeah okay and so the i believe the original purpose of quiet time is something to do with step 11. yes which would be prayer and meditation and i didn't hear any uh reference to that in your conversation i didn't hear any reference of connecting to power other than myself no so you're really not doing step 11. you're doing something and it's nice and it is probably very effective to reduce the tension psychologically but it has nothing to do with spirituality okay and i i offer up the occasional little trial balloon of prayer but my i don't have the belief you know i didn't then i still struggle with it so that that's where i get caught no but i mean we could have more conversation but quite frankly i we've you've put your finger on the reason for your vulnerability to the obsession is you didn't you were not spiritually fit i wasn't yeah i was also enraged which is a whole other story that i'll get but that's just that no that's no if you're out if you enraged that's just another symptom of being spiritually unfit yeah that's all no no you can't have an authentic meditation practice and be enraging they don't go together yeah you can to be in resentment and fear and unhealthy sex and keeping secrets and have an authentic meditation practice they don't go together they're completely incompatible yeah so there we go yeah well i mean that's the see there's the rigor of the of the looking at that two to five minutes just beforehand and then trying to examine the behavior in the month pre-year because the man said to me the cheese that you ate is not the relapse the relapsed happened when you're not doing meditation to have an effective relationship with power up to that point it's a diet program and it's self-help program right yeah and that and that doesn't work for addicts it works for normal people and you want so desperately to be normal then you just hadn't accepted the fact and i hope you have by now oh but i'll also say that the awols didn't get me there either your experience of you know being 10 years in that's why i'm hoping that what needs to take this time working with a big book will because the red book doesn't do it for me um the redbook is a good book but uh it is not the big book no it isn't no it's an easier softer way than the big book it was created by some people in the south it was actually condoned by dr bob and used a little bit by him and it's got some good stuff in it it's just not deep or broad and thorough and precise like the big book is I sponsored a number of people I did the tools faithfully I had I had what I thought was neutrality around food it sounds like you did it sounds like you had a wonderful neutrality but you've indicated now there was a a progressive deterioration. Can you describe that a little bit? Yeah, I think it started with, I would start to feel very judgmental. I would sit in meetings and I would think, oh, she's not doing it right, or that's not helpful what's being said, or it could be anything. It could be a little irritation. They didn't set the room up the way I would have, whatever. So there started to be some judgment. And when I could, and I had a wonderful sponsor who would encourage me to don't worry about it. Let that go. When I chose to talk about it, which I didn't often, often I would just kind of tuck that away because I felt that that was part of the judgment of myself too. i judged myself and if i tell anybody this then they'll know you know what a uh you know low base person i really am so i guess i started having secrets yep i was not i was after a while i was not able to be as honest as i had been in the beginning bam that's it i mean chapter five spends an awful lot of time talking about rigorous honesty yep yeah yep that again and i use the phrase that's the worm in the wood and it gets progressively worse you started keeping a secret about your judgmentalness and your irritation even though you talked a little bit about it with your sponsor which is actually quite good but you didn't want to continue because you didn'T want her to think you were that bad, right? Right. And it didn't stop. It didn't stop. I think if, um, yeah, well, if I had been able to be completely honest and I, and I'll, I will say that a lot of times people that I spoke with, somebody would call me or one of my sponsees would be so painfully honest. I would like you know i would feel like oh my god enough enough and and i i it all it all kind of came together and fell apart in that way well let's see what you're describing it's a wonderful description you're wonderfully conscious of it is the dimmer switch that it began to click down a little bit there was a littlebit of dimness with the secret with the judgmentalness with the irritation i mean step 10 is very clear we enter the world of the spirit watch for resentment fear dishonesty selfishness when they crop up deal with them and put yourself back in alignment rather than being disturbed so the moment you didn't do that is the moment of your the beginning of your relapse as you said wonderfully it was progressive and it took months it sounds like end up in a relapse but the relapse was the first time you kept a secret or the first time you said oh i don't need to tell her that or or that you had an irritation that you didn't deal with immediately and you allowed it to fester for perhaps 24 hours that's that's the relapse not the eating of the food yes and i had a wonderful sponsor at the time who sensed that there was something changed about me that something was different and she always said the food's the last thing to go yeah that made no sense to me as long as i was eating right and keeping a right size body i figured i had it yeah yeah well see there you go and and so oh i'll see now you're revealing even something different in terms of your attitude as long as i'm managing my food and i have a right-sized body i'm good where i would rather have you said and realize as long as i maintain a relationship with god and help other people i'm going to be okay but that's not what you said that's not what happened no exactly no that's it and so the dimmer switch goes down a notch at a time the darkness is so imperceptible as it descends so gradual that we don't even know it's getting dark until we're in relapse yeah well yeah you've just described the no one was more surprised than me yeah there yeah right of course yeah it felt like it came out of out of the blue it came out of i wasn't expecting it i wasn t i wasn having food thoughts i thought you know whatever but it came as a surprise yeah but the clouds had accumulated such depth and weight that they blocked you from the sunlight eventually this is a classic story but it needs to be told that way so that people can see that it doesn't happen with the first little secret or the first withheld conversation or the untreated irritation. It starts there, but it doesn' t manifest for weeks or months, yeah. Some of the things that I believe were within my control I now understand they're not I had this horrible feeling of fear while while doing this like oh crap like there's no way out I'm feeling like you know like wait I came in for help and now I'm worse off than I thought I was you know going to be and that's a gift that awareness is a gift eventually you'll treasure that awareness not and you won't see it as worse off you will see that you're seeing actually the truth of your hopelessness that's what is something that is the new experience yeah because I felt I guess a level of safety in the delusion that's the purpose of delusion by the way yes and um when that was dispelled i was left in a very vulnerable state thinking oh crap now what you know what can i do Because it had always been a belief of mine to think that I had some power over this. And I didn't believe that I was in a relationship with a higher power. And I think one of the first things that I told my step-guide was that the thing that stood out right away was that I forget about people, that I'm dishonest in my relationship with my higher power You're dishonest you're saying? Yes. Okay. Because I felt that I had some power greater than my higher power is what I'm realizing to be able to control my circumstance and then when I realized, you know, I was lying about that control. I never had control no and you know just listening to you drive us to think a little bit more deeply about our addiction and what we were thinking I realized there were times that I had a thought and there were times that i didn't have a thought you know or that I thought that I have a thought and I was really already hijacked though you're speaking my language this is what i pray for people to have the experience of you know yeah and you know all of the things that i've written down uh about myself about i can say that i don't know what total honesty is that's what i could say because whatever i think be when once you find out that that you are living in your own universe, your alternate reality. That's right. You have to question what you really think. Is that real or is this something I made up? Am I, what is really, am I being honest? And it's not a practice that I can safely say that I've lived in with total honesty. So no, if you ask me, am my honest, I'm not honest with my higher power and that's just between me and my higher pal i realized that because i've said i trust you and to give a situation over and before i could finish opening my eyes i'm already mentally taking it back and trying to run things yeah so that is being dishonest so all the other stuff that goes without saying if i can't be honest with my higher power in a way where it's just between me and my higher power forget about people of course i'm dishonest there i mean i can point to obvious things that's what i'm trying to work on i'm trying to work on my spiritual relationship and my level of trust lean into this as you're doing and know that when you get to the fourth step with this awareness you're going to have a very big experience the fourth step is going to be the manifestation of the first step and you'll see it in writing okay yeah well it's been it's been a journey it's not the one that i thought but that's okay because i tried to when i do the set aside prayer literally set aside what i think i know right and just come in with an open mind so i could have a new experience and that has worked and i i do have a new experience yeah i have a new understanding and i also have developed a greater compassion for people that i sponsor because i'm not operating on my thoughts anymore i'm operating on an understanding of what addiction is and i didn't have that there you go that's nice there it is thank you so much I identify with some with the fact that I'm in delusion but I can still rest control I can feel that really like clearly my mind that I have this belief that if I just try a little bit harder yeah if I know a little bit more if I try a bit harder ya know earlier stay up later and run harder in between no you're you're on it girl you know hospital bed yeah that's it but um but yeah I something you said from a couple of I think I might have been last week maybe a couple calls ago where you were talking about how finding a word that gives you goosebumps you know you know and finding a connection and I feel like the seriousness of this disease hasn't hit me yet and yeah and yeah so I don't know I am I the set-aside prayer has been really helpful I do that every morning but to be honest I say I have a connection to higher power I don make it I don t make a concerted effort in the morning to connect to my higher power. I do a fairly good job of a nightly review but if I, you know, I'm in delusion at this idea that I have a solid connection to at least attempting a connection with a higher power because you know I can't force that connection. I can only, you said something about being in a space where you're receptive to allowing and that really resonated with me because I realized like I can't will my connection to my high power I can only be open to something greater than myself and being in a spot to allow it in if it wants to yeah but I don't make that effort like I don't have it I know we're not in step two but everybody is beginning to talk to about step two and power which is normal it's organic once you begin getting a sense visceral sense that you don't have sufficient power then everything in you longs for some type of effective power so this is although we're not there it's normal that we begin edging our way toward it and do you do you know what step 11 says do you have your book there in um step 11 page 59 did you read the first half of it go through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with god as we understood him yeah how about stopping there so what does it say about contact you said you don't have a very good contact what what does it say there what's the adjective there so in the book in step 11 yeah is it improved conscious Oh conscious improve our conscious contact see the underlying assumption is that we are in constant contact this is something that you'll have more knowledge about an experience with in step two but you're not conscious of it but bill says on page 53 god is or god isn't what is your choice god is our god is if god is god is everything or god is nothing what is your choice so the underlying thought from my standpoint and this might help you is that we are in constant contact because god is the life force beneath our own life force supporting us in life in reality what our task is is to become conscious of that in step two and to begin improving that in step three improving the consciousness of the already existing contact does that help a little bit yeah it does you know another thing my sponsor says to me that resonates is I'm uh I'm a slow learner and quick forgetter and and i do the human race by the way yes yeah and i you know i that resonates with me with the idea that i am always connected but whether or not i can feel it and be aware of a different story not about feeling it do not chase that dog that's very elusive that's right if you feel that it's great enjoy it but don't chase it when you chase the feeling you chase it away It's about becoming aware of and conscious of it. That's it. And to know that I am chronically and constantly in constant contact. The journey is the destination because there's no place to go. Yeah. We just have to wake up that we're already there in a relationship with a god that we don't understand and in terms of both steps 2 and 3 and 11 bill suggests in a value proposition in step 11 in the 12 and 12 he says as air water sunshine and food are necessary for the sustenance of the body prayer meditation are necessary for the sustenance of the soul and now the question is do you believe that you hardly go a day without missing a meal because your body will tell you it'll get tired it'll get cranky etc if you don't feed it and water it correctly your soul will wither and die without prayer meditation now it's easy to hear it's easy to say do you believe it the only way that you will know that you believe it is that you're doing it because your feet will tell you the truth when you're in action praying and meditating it's it's a witness to your belief yeah thank you as i was younger it was alcohol but then i conquered that no problem and i conquered drugs and i conquered some debt and but now my can i an example of my addiction to excitement so my fiance and i before we go to bed we you know kind of make a plan for the morning and i we said okay yeah we'll leave at 10 o'clock and we'll get there you know sure so in the morning i say you know she has a routine she starts your coffee and she does her thing and whatever it is and i'm sitting there tying my shoe getting ready to go and i go hey can we get going and she kind of looks at me annoyed and whatever and then i'm like okay so i back off and then she because she's nice gets going on she's like okay let's go and halfway you know a couple miles into the drive i'm like oh hey i'm gonna stop at this coffee shop and she just looks at me and she goes is that why you wanted to leave and i said yeah why didn't you just ask me if we could go to that coffee shop like i'll manipulate you however in lots of different ways and it's they seem like little things but it just creates like i don't there's so many ways that i don you're not comfortable unless you've stirred up the shit yeah and well because that and i don t mean i'm not qualified to do any psychological work here but it seems to me that your family of origin was a storm and when that's happening you're comfortable oh man yeah i mean it's all family origin and i just i never realized it but now what's your as we've just verbalized it both of us have just verbalize it so what's your take on it so my take is now i'm now i am aware of it i've had my spiritual awakening and i see it when it happens so i wrote the word presence while i was taking notes and i'm addicted to chaos so much sometimes i don't really know if the e becomes before the c or the s or whatever so i just kind of fudge it a little i actually know okay look it up in the dictionary like i need to take the time to take responsibility for my life when i when i feel that part of me going to chaos like if food for me is terrible like I'll go to food and just numb out so I guess I whatever I can do to escape the moment but the whole point of our exercise with the mind is there's going to be two moments a moment where you might be aware that the storm is heading to you you see the sandstorm but there may be a moment more likely where they're already wrapped in the sand and you realize that it's chaos that you've created and the big book suggests in step 10 watch watch for resentment and fear and dishonesty and selfishness when they crop up so if you see it coming you can pray but also when yours when you realize that you're already in it the book says in step um in step 10 in the 12 and 12 it's a spiritual axiom when I'm disturbed there's something wrong with me you just said something very easily and smoothly that is deep wisdom that most people don't know is unresponsible I'm responsible for my feelings I'm responsable for my thoughts I'm responsible for actions a hundred percent that's a spiritual awakening and so when I'm disturbed I'm responsible for being disturbed then I say okay I'm gonna pray because I'm powerless but I need to talk to somebody because of human and eventually turn my thoughts to helping somebody else eventually you see the the relevancy of step 10 while we're beginning this journey yeah can i one more thing my so my core and kind of what you're alluding it's feelings coming from my family at origin i wasn't allowed to be angry sad fear you know hey let's be happy so i i actually i also i can't identify my feelings so this just happened where i felt something coming up when it shouldn't have been it was just a normal conversation with her and i recognized anger for the first time instead of like turning away or starting to cook a roast or whatever i just i i just stayed there and i don't think she couldn't tell that i was angry but i was like oh my god i'm angry she's asking me about money even though it's a and I just and I and we talked about it the next day and I was just like I've never done that before like like had an emotion realized something was going on it was just it's been mind-altering that's the beginning of emotional sobriety we have instincts for survival we have emotions for survival but we have a brain our cortex that gives us the humanity to be able to manage our instincts and our emotions that's emotional sobrietty when you're standing above your instincts and your emotions and going, yeah, it's a shit storm in me right now and I'm responsible to manage it somehow. And we call it a practice. Because knowing what you just are aware of and what I'm just talking about, knowing it won't prevent the sandstorm. but it will help you to navigate it more effectively and at some point stop creating the sandstorm a practice and that's what it is that that centering practice well that's part of it but the tenth step is a practice I practiced dealing with my being disturbed and I get better at it as I practice like going to the gym. The first day in January that you go to the gym, you're pretty awkward but if you stay there regularly and you have a good trainer that you listen to by April you're in pretty good shape practicing on a periodic or a regular basis no thank you all right thank you so much for being there you all of you it's been a wonderful wonderful workshop please let's close out with the serenity prayer God grant me the serendipity to accept the things I cannot change courage to change the things i can and wisdom to know the difference. Amen.