The Doctor’s Opinion and Physical Allergy – Herb K. – Workshop – Part 9 of 25 – Herb

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are in the world today. My name is Herb and I'm an alcoholic. Welcome to our Big Book 12-Step Workshop. Please join me in prayer for an open mind. God, please set aside everything that I think I know about myself, my brokenness, the 12 steps, and you for an opened 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 spent quite a while, actually a couple months warming up to the step work. And I don't mean to dismiss the work that we did. was an orientation to all the administration as well as the protocol is for you to be using this workshop in a most effective way i introduced you to the purpose in the spiritual awakening the appendix in the big book so that we get really clear on the vision what's our purpose and whenever we find ourselves bogged down or negative overwhelmed with the suffering and or just the tediousness of the work we can hold that vision up oh yeah that's right I want to wake up I don't know that this will be the process but a lot of people have had the experience of changing of waking up of having more consciousness and reducing their suffering okay i'm going to believe that and do the best i can to show up and do the work in between then the step 11 helps us to become more conscious i hope that you've included some form of what i call intentional consciousness in your daily routine whatever that means for you everybody's different please don't think at all in any of this work that there's a cookie cutter because there's not that there is a formula because there is not there's a methodology there are some suggestions but the actions you take will create very different outcomes for each of you and that's why we're here on the call to share that experience what are your questions that come from that and what is your particular and unique experience some of it won't be unique because we're human a lot of it will be unique, because you're you. And then of course step 10 cleans the channel on a daily basis that was part of my little reflection between our set-aside prayer and the serenity prayer this morning for me, here just before I started my presentation. Make me a clear channel. Remove the disturbances and impediments to my effective communication of whatever the Spirit is intending for me to communicate today. Step 10 does that on a spot check basis. We looked at some of the history of AA through the prefaces and the forwards, but then we started for real this month on step one. And we looked at the doctor's opinion. What's wrong with my body because that's his major opinion that we have some type of a physical deficiency. physical deficiency. He's a medical doctor, but he's also a psychiatrist, so he alludes to the mind, but He doesn't describe it. He talks about the body pretty much. He identifies His opinion, not science, His opinion not research, but based on His exposure and experience to an awful lot of people he tried to help very unsuccessfully by the way mostly that was his big frustration but he was humble and he kept trying and he was sincere and compassionate and he used the word craving in a very unique way i'm not going to go over that now except to confirm it craving happens biologically craving is not before i ingest the substance or engage in the process craving in the doctor's opinion is his opinion about the mechanism of a defective body, of unhealthy biology. And it's not all human beings, it's just unique to addicts. Substance addicts, alcohol, drugs and food. I imbibe in the drink or engage in the drug or take the bite of food, it pulls a trigger biological trigger that's biochemical. But once I start, I cannot stop. There are variations on that theme as I mentioned. I'm a periodic my wife was a chronic. Periodic means it doesn't happen every time chronic does. He says it looks like an allergy. Again, he's using a metaphor. He's not doing science. It's his opinion. An allergy, an abnormal reaction to a substance in the process addiction and abnormal reaction through a process. Gambling, pornography, as we've mentioned many times and then we looked at bill's story the first half of bill's story not the second half just the first half pages one through eight so that we could see his deterioration oh we got a real glimpse at his grandiosity and his low self-esteem if you have any psychological understanding of personality and then when you take a look at his history it explains it of course raised by a grandparent after being abandoned by his two parents when he was 12. And his own physical condition, he was very tall, very thin, very gangly, very awkward but very bright and he wanted to be the number one man. Well that's his overcompensation and he didn't have a whole lot of talent but he was the captain of the football team, the captain of the baseball team, the lead musician in the orchestra. It's wonderful to understand parts of that because it explains how he actually took after his recovery. Now it may or may not have been conscious. own spiritual director when I had some concern about leading workshops, and I expressed that I didn't think it would be good for me to have the kind of recognition that I was beginning to get in the kind positive comments that I was beginning to get because it potentially could inflate my ego. And he said, you need be concerned you really do need to be concerned because it's a perfect mechanism for you to become grandiose and very self-centered more than your heart today this was 30 years ago he said but never let your concern get in the way of your ministry because you are actually helping people and then he quoted the bible god writes straight with crooked lines what a consolation that was for me in the program you hear in the meetings many times you may have even had a sponsor tell you your liabilities will become your assets bill says that in the big book he says it in the 12 and 12 in many different ways our liabilities our deficiencies become the very tools for our being able to help other people because they can identify with our humanness they can identify with our brokenness and i was broken and now i've been healed that's the message and you can believe it or not and you can trust it or not and if you believe it and trust it you'll do the work and then you'll know yourself maybe not today maybe not tomorrow but by the end of this journey you will look back over your shoulder you go oh now i know what herb was talking about an experience of transformation an experience of conversion an experience a radical awakening i didn't know that i was asleep dreaming that I was awake that's not my line it's a line from a philosopher Gurdjieff a Russian philosopher most human beings he said are asleep dreaming that they're awake fabulous because it fits us and that's why Bill I believe wrote out the 12th step the way he did having had a spiritual awakening he realized we were spiritually asleep And so, page 8 describes his bottom and then I asked you to go to page 17 to 23 because it continues with Bill's commentary on what the doctor's opinion was which is that we have a defective body. We're still in that part. This is the final piece and I ask you to take a look at and finally answer those questions in the body exercise, the body worksheet. And we'll look at that here in a minute. On page 17, he says, we're hopeless, thousands of men and women once hopeless. Listen to this, nearly all have recovered. This was written in 1939. He had four years of sobriety. There were less than 100 people. So it was revised, this line, when it says thousands of men and women. The original line in the first edition said 100. It actually wasn't 100. He stretched it to make it look good. He's a salesman, never lets the facts get in the way of a good story. But, you know, there were probably 90, 91 people, most of whom actually long-term did not stay sober. and that's one of the reasons they began changing stories because they didn't want a story in the book of people who in fact had relapsed so the first edition was 1939 and the second edition was 1955. it says there are two components to our fellowship one is a feeling of a common peril down at the bottom a powerful cement which binds us but the other component is a common solution that's the name of the chapter isn't it there is a solution so after bill's story it's kind of like he went down to his bottom on page eight the part we have and looked at is that he was spiraled back up to a very healthy and active vital spiritual life on pages 9 through 16 we'll look at that when we go into step 2 he says this is the great news of the book the word gospel means good news. That's what this is. Good news. There is a solution. Page 18 tells us some more about the illness. It engulfs all those whose lives touch the sufferers. It brings understanding, fierce resentment, financial insecurity, disgusted friends and employers, warped lives of blameless children and sad wives and parents anyone can increase the list and each of you could with your own particular unique personal impact on yourself and those around you he describes what otherwise could have been named sponsorship in those last two paragraphs on that page i'm not going over them you can go over them one is in italics it says that you probably can't help anybody until you've done a fourth and fifth step. That was the interpretation of my own sponsor back in my first year of recovery because I wasn't properly armed with facts about myself until I did a fourth-and-fifth step. The truth is, I wasn' t properly armed with facts about myself until I didn' t do a fourth and fifth step out of the big book when I was five years sober. But I didn' t know and he didn' t know that we did it now. And just do the best you can and it worked we do the best we can and it works for you perfectionists out there i know there's 30 to 40 percent of you that are perfectionists or inclined in that direction relax even your perfectionism is part of your brokenness embrace it breathe be patient take action breathe be patient take action that's a formula to live by the final paragraph is a wonderful profile of sponsorship the word sponsor is not in the big book there were many places in step three and five that he could have put the word if it was part of the culture but obviously it wasn't in 1939 when he published the 12 and 12 in 1951 12 years later the 12 and 12 is replete with many references to sponsorship so in those 12 years the term came into the culture of the 12-step fellowship we feel the eliminate page 19. we feel the elimination of our drinking is but a beginning notice what he's saying the first half of the first step is important but it's not the real problem and it's not the real solution a much more important demonstration of principles how then can we present that which has been so freely given to us middle of the page we have concluded to publish an anonymous volume setting forth the problem as we see it and sharing our combined experience and knowledge which suggests a useful program for those who are concerned about addiction i'm changing a little bit to reflect the population that we have on this workshop some of you are not alcoholic Some of you have a process addiction, it may be drugs or food, or some of you have none of the process, the substance addiction I meant, and have a process addiction. Maybe you're codependent, coming from an adult child of alcoholic or dysfunctional home. Many of us come from that. Sometimes it manifests in a substance addiction and sometimes it doesn't. Al-Anon is filled with people who have a process addiction of codependency, manipulation and control to create a safe environment for themselves, and their delusion is for you. Most of us sense that real tolerance of other people's shortcomings and viewpoints and a respect for their opinions are attitudes which makes us more useful. Notice, it doesn't say, which makes us more happy. Because it's not about us ever in the big book. Oh yes, we are promised to have neutrality with regard to our addiction. Oh yes. We are promised a life of contentment, happy, joyous and free. Absolutely. But that's not the primary purpose. The primary purpose is to be a channel of usefulness. channeling grace from the power other than ourself into the community around us the saint francis prayer is a wonderful prayer that captures that it's great that bill uses that in chapter 11 in the 12 and 12 that's why they call it the um quite frankly a a prayer the saint francis prayer in chapter 11 becoming a channel oh i love that image take it into meditation use that prayer the words and the concepts and the phrases it might take you a month or two or three to go through that prayer slowly trying to understand and connect to the force and the power and the understanding and the experience of those words and that concept It doesn't matter that St. Francis didn't write it. The prayer surfaced in the 18th or 19th century. St.Francis was probably around in the 12th century, but it captures his principles and his way of life and that's good enough for me. On page 20, our very lives depend upon our constant thought of others of others and how we may help meet their needs now that sounds like some type of a mandate from the outside and that never works the answer to why do you do step 11 because my sponsor told me is not a good answer the answer too well why you help others oh because it's step 12 and they tell me to that's not a good but it's good enough in the beginning because we don't know that we don't know but the real solution is when it becomes an organic development inside of us and becomes a natural part of our perception and our action I had a black robe on and I called myself a monk I took the black robe off and I did very unmonkish things for a long time because it was put on to me from the outside it never came up from the inside in 1988 I was four years sober and I had a conversion experience from the insight it wasn't the only and final it was the beginning of the thawing out of the inside I had thought out on the outside through AA and the meetings for four years and then in 1988 i did this work and I began to thought out, hear the words please, I began to thaw out on the inside. And three journeys through the steps over the next 12 years and I do believe I was in a major falling out experience by the end of 1996 when I had done this work over a two-year period with a man Joe Hawk. We have recovered from a hopeless condition of mind and body. Bill is reiterating now and confirming the doctor's opinion. What do I have to do? The purpose of this book is to answer this question specifically. We shall tell you what we have done. Notice he doesn't say we going to tell you what we know what we thought what we felt what we talked about nope he's gonna he says we're gonna tell you What We Did action is the magic word that's a phrase from Chuck Chamberlain one of the AA wisdom men back in the 60s 70s and early 80s died in 84 just before I came in i never met him but he became my hero from listening to his talks and reading his book a new pair of glasses there's a description of the deterioration of alcoholism from the moderate drinker to the hard drinker through the alcoholic if you want a better description go to pages 108 to 110 i believe it's in uh to the wives and it's describing for the alanon four stages of the deterioration of alcoholism so that maybe the al-anon can identify for her or his partner whether or not their partner is in fact an alcoholic and this might explain a whole bunch of suffering they have a beautiful description well it's two pages 100 page 108 to 110th of four stages of that deterioration it's worthwhile reading for yourself perhaps or maybe for somebody in your periphery page 21 he's making that distinction because he's saying that the moderate drinker and the hard drinker can quit any time that suffering gets too bad or they have some type of an external mandate like a court says you're going to go to jail or an employer says you are going to get fired oops okay i change an alcoholic can't do that they will go to jail they will lose their job that's the real alcoholic it says here on page 21 begins to lose all control once he starts to drink this is the teaching of the body this is the allergy and the craving that dr silkwood is talking about bill is emphasizing it here for us Jekyll and Hyde a wonderful reference to the novel about somebody changing radically to a different kind of personality many of us have had that experience a senseless series of sprees he talks about page 22 our behavior patterns differ our addiction patterns differ i've stressed that the question is here in the middle of the paragraph on page 22 why do i take that first drink when i've had a series of catastrophic experiences so he says the body is a problem but it's not the problem we are positive once we take any alcohol whatever into our system something happens bodily and Mentally, which makes it virtually impossible for me to stop the experience of any addict will abundantly confirm this So then he's saying so the body is not the problem. The mind is clearly the problem Why do we take that first drink? if We have a history of losing control once we do I mean, we're smart people and most people learn from negative consequences of their behavior That's an indication right there that we're something's wrong with us. We're There's a percentage of us That are abnormal they'll cause us mental defectives I don't like the word but once I grasped This next section that we look at it's the only explanation I have a deficient mind. It doesn't process reality successfully. My mind does not successfully process alcohol, but my body does not successfully process alcohol. But my mind does not successfully process reality. I didn't over a 20 year period, I didn�t learn from the negative consequences. What is that? I never connected the dots. What is that i never put together the puzzle pieces i didn't know there were puzzle pieces what is that i'm intelligent educated self-reflective on a journey to be a better person truly truly intentionally and yet i was deteriorating in my alcoholism and i did not see the spiral down we're going to address that when we take a look at the bod at the mind in our next assignment so that's assignment four in the set of assignments that you have and i'm assuming you've downloaded it assignment four item number one and two but i'm modifying item two it says read from pages 23 to 43. i'm going to cut that basically in half read from 23 to 35. Read from 23-35 because that warms us up to the whole question of and nature of the mind problem and then page 35 to 43, the end of the chapter allows us to see a couple examples of so that we really get an understanding of and hopefully an experience of what we're talking about here with regard to obsession and delusion i mentioned that you might want to take a look at the way of life document uh for two reasons on on page 14 there's a road map of the circle and the triangle the body mind and will and you can see a good summary now of the body and you can see the words that we've spent a lot of time understanding then you can take a look at the mind and similarly see the highlight of the words that we'll be looking at that you're asked to look up definitions of in assignment four and then finally we'll look at unmanageability the problem of the will we'll spend a month on the problem of the mind like we spent a month on the Problem of the Body then we'll spend a Month on the Problem of The Will we'll spend three months on step one why do we do that because it's the foundation of the arch through which we walk to a new freedom to use Bill's architectural analogy it's the foundation he doesn't say it as clearly as I'm saying it more about that later And then you might read, but don't answer. Please do not answer the questions on page 16 with regard to the mind, but read them so that you're aware of some of the considerations as you're doing the reading of the big book and perhaps the reading the 12 and 12. i say perhaps on the 12-12 because you can read step one at any time obviously in the 12 or 12 and you can't read it more than once you might want to read it at the conclusion of your work on the body and read it again at the completion of your work, on the mind and read it again, at the Conclusion of your Work on the Will because Bill doesn't make all these distinctions that i do he certainly didn't structure step one in the same way that i'm presenting it to you his step one and i'll talk more about that next week is focused on the first half of the first step addiction alcohol the problem although he references later on unmanageability in a way that he unpacks it to allow us to understand what he meant by it he didn't package it as part of step one like i will and i got that insight and training and exposure and experience when i was 10 years sober thanks to the work of joe hawk who introduced me to the set aside prayer and who introduced me to unmanageability the spiritual malady i did not know i did not see i did not understand and i did not experience unmanageability consciously until i was 10 years sober after having two spiritual awakenings i'm saying it that way so that you get a real sense that this is a process and you can't hurry it and you cant have the experience by wanting it or arm wrestling it to the ground you show up, you do the work, you breathe in, you pray, you talk to somebody about your work and then attempt to be aware of what's going on. Mostly I was aware of what was going on in retrospect when I looked back over my shoulder. Hardly ever when I was actually having the experience. all right so I'd like to talk to some people now but I really in the back of my mind you know I guess you would call it a reservation well ain't no guest just can't identify food like I did with my alcoholism I think it's you know the The reason I'm asking, I'm interested in your experience, but I'm also attempting to bring to consciousness of the people on the call that I'm suggesting a focus. It doesn't matter whether you're an alcoholic, a drug addict, a food addict, a pornography addict, a work addict, it doesn't mater. And you may have all of that, But I'm suggesting that you focus on one particular area of suffering in your life today. And you've done a beautiful job of identifying an area where you have reservations. And the reason why I say that, I can't right now, I can see the suffering that I did when it came to food with my alcoholism. I don't know all right maybe it's not about suffering maybe it about your concern for loss of control let's explore that just for a minute did you ever eat something and use it more than you intended no you're not not a food ad why are you concerned about food you said you've been in FAA for six years that's a pretty rigorous program what what motivated you to go and stay well it's more structured than aa i lost weight and it's just like um in the big book okay this it where it says i stopped just in time and which i truly believe uh i mean i had gained the weight lost the way gained away and lost the weight so why wait for a fatal illness to happen before you take care of it i mean first of all what i'm hearing is of you you've been successful with fa so it sounds like it's a great diet program for you um well and along with the steps that has helped me to really go deeper into the steps excellent wonderful so it's also some spiritual components to it that's right and that's why i okay i didn't know i changed the seat on the titanic you know they talk about the fear the doubt and insecurity and these are things that i drank over well what i would encourage you to do because it's totally legitimate what you're saying and the way you're understanding it i'm not challenging that in the sense that you're wrong or right really seriously i i think it's wonderful that you've found a program that supports your desire to have the right body size the question that i want you to ask yourself in the spirit of set aside is to take a look at the body worksheet and look at it from look at those questions from the perspective of food not many people join a 12-step program and are successful for the purposes of it being a diet many people joined one of the eight different eating disorder 12 step programs for a diet and they're never successful long term because it's not about a diet if you're an addict now you have the good fortune of already being an alcoholic and having recovered from that and it sounds like you have a reasonable vibrant spiritual life which has probably helped you connect to the fa program as you said you went deeper with the step work which is just terrific but it may be that you just had unhealthy habits with regard to food that you weren't an addict and that's just fine but wouldn't it be good to know that so ask those questions in the body worksheet about your food history and be open about it to yourself i don't need to know nobody else needs to know but you do i believe it will be very helpful are you in f.a because you just had unhealthy habits and you needed some human development support or are you in fa because you're a food addict and you need god's support that's a it's a very critical question any guy support well no no see but you're answering it without okay i got responding to my my suggestion yeah because that's what you want to think and believe because that's your trigger but i want you to be much more challenging to yourself in in asking those questions i mean we all need god support just to navigate life quite frankly i believe that but um i think it's important for you to know each of us to know whether we actually have an addiction in a particular area or not that's all yeah okay all right I think sir well that was a very I believe helpful conversation for a lot of people on the line for them to get a little deeper connection to their own addiction that might be addiction or it just might be unhealthy habits at this time that's a very important distinction because if it's only an unhealthy habit then with some knowledge and some effort in some good training I mean you can deal with it but if it is an addiction then the next component is having a power in your life other than your own power and that requires a spiritual way of living for particular addiction when it came to the history of my attempts the first one I put down was a lap band I had a lap and surgically put in like 12 years ago and it caused me nothing but grief the entire time I had it but it was only a month ago that I actually had it removed because I couldn't believe I didn't have trust and faith that once i had it removed the weight would stay off because i didn't lose any weight based on the laughing i did it all through abstaining from my trigger foods so that was that was a big you know a big moment for me being able to have that lap band taken out with the trust in the faith in my higher power that everything would be fine and the other issue I had was in the fifth about honesty and how have I been honest about it with myself or others and it was only in the last six years that I even knew about food addiction I'm 61 years old now and the entire time I struggled with feelings of failure that I was weak-willed and of course I blamed everyone else for my position too that if that if you had my life you'd want to eat too because I was so miserable and if I only control everyone and if they would only do what I said I wouldn't have the stress and then I wouldn' have to eat the way that I ate so it's coming to grips with with the honesty part of it and even now in recovery um it's constantly being rigorously honest with myself because i do tend to take the easy road out and want to be dishonest through a mission or not include everything in my daily check-ins with my sponsor or you know a little white lie won't won't hurt anything so that's um oh by the way there are no white lies yeah exactly no that's wonderful rigor on your part um is the self-honesty and the way you included it in accountability because i cannot be self-honest and hold myself accountable because i will cut myself some slack in my inherent dishonest and use that's what you said so you have to reach out and to an objective person as a sounding board for you that's that's my recommendation to everybody whether you call it a sponsor or not i call it an accountability partner yeah because i do find myself looking back but if i you know the permission giving I give myself one extra green bean, then I'm going to take a healthy bump. Oh, yeah. Oh, yes. I'm really good to myself. Yes. If only I could be as compassionate for other people, right? Yes, right. And I really appreciate the summaries you do at the beginning. It really helps me. Each time I get a little bit more and a little Bitmore out of it, so I'm very appreciative of that as well. Well, I appreciate your acknowledging that because actually I was challenging myself today because I know I've said many of those things previously and I'm going wow I wonder if they're getting tired of my here of hearing all of this again and yet it's never the same for me I don't have a script I come prepared in prayer and meditation really to be a spontaneous channel of grace and I want to give a setting for people as to where we've been and where we are and where we're going and that's really the purpose and if any if most people are like me they need to hear it more than once yeah anything else nope that's it thank you i'm a recovered compulsive overeater so um i know about the body thing but i can't wait until we get to the will i'm you helped me so much a couple weeks ago when you talked about our broken will because we talk on vision and about willingness and how it's overrated. And I never understood that until you said that, so. Yeah, well, and I appreciate the comment and also the implied patience with it because I'm doing it by the numbers and we're making artificial distinctions because the body and the mind and the will are me. It's all integrated, it's all working at the same time. I literally existentially don't have a body and a mind and a will that are operating separately. No, they're all operating together in influencing one another. But for our understanding of underneath the underneath the underneath and how it works, I believe that gives us a much deeper experience with our powerlessness when I understand that in the body, it's literally biology. That was a huge breakthrough. I mean, you can really get it when you make the parallel to an allergy. How much control do I have over my cat allergy? Well, that would be none other than staying away from cats. And it really helped me understand, oh yeah, well, alcohol for me is the same kind of biological disruptor disruptor as cats are yeah yes yes i had to i literally grieved the loss of sugar i i literally felt every step of the denial through the acceptance it took like six months for me to you're very fortunate it only took six months quite frankly i'll bet you on this line we've got over 60 people on the line the food addicts are jealous that you got it in six months because most of the processed foods that we have available to us are saturated with sugar yes I was amazed somebody said it's in table salt yeah well you're probably better off anyway unless you have a salt deficiency right and then you could probably take a pill for that i i started to feel like i was killing myself with food again and it's a horrible feeling like i i feel like my um my thinking was off my my body functions were off talk about the allergy when when i took in the the flour and the sugar i started out of nowhere starting to sneeze i had um the aches and the pains the inflammation in the body the congestion um i couldn't breathe as much uh as well anymore and i was hot all night long um yeah the like the night sweats um so it definitely changes how my body reacts um And I just want, I really wanted to get back to because I had abstinence for about two years before that and I just wanted to get back to that feeling. It's such a light feeling. And that is a pretty consistent answer that I get from people who get traction and that is, I got tired of suffering. Yeah. uh yeah i mean it's like that's the bottom i got tired of suffering and then i asked this man when he said that i said then what he said i was willing to take direction yes all right and then i said and then what then i followed the suggestions and with action and i got oh there's a formula i got tired of suffering i was willing to take direction and i got into action i mean if anybody leaves with that formula today our today was very successful yeah i need to get but see and just to make it very conscious you got tired or suffering you prayed you listened to somebody's suggestion and you took the action that was suggested yes it really is the basic formula for success yeah because before that i was blaming everybody else you know everybody else was the reason why i wasn't happy was the reasons why i was fat and overweight was the reason why I had diabetes and i couldn't breathe at night it was everybody else but coming into program it now became me taking action and that action is taking suggestion and i had to take whatever suggestion possible that they gave to me whether i liked it or not that's it i'm glad you added that that's exactly the rebellious side don't have to agree with it i don't have to like it i just have to do it yeah mm-hmm and and that's what i found i found once i got back into the food i became rebellious again and i wasn't taking suggestion again and the difference was having to take suggestion and action yeah thank god i'm back on the road yeah well in fact i hope you just heard what you said because there's two things involved one the humility that i needed help number two is the gratitude that i got it amen yeah yeah amen is right i am finding it a bit hard in that um i've got a number of different addictions and they're overlapping but it's your primary problem so what is your primary uh source of suffering in terms of your addiction probably codependency at the moment that's a really difficult one yeah yeah i can see that all right so what do you think you want to do in terms of a focus for this journey through the steps well this is hard because i guess this whole sense of reality you know is is getting to me and one of the main i mean i was adopted one of main things i wanted was my own family and um so rose did you just hear yourself yeah you're not 18 or 21 i think that's probably accurate yes you're right right and you've still got the story that i was adopted give me a minute give me break yes why don't you release that story it's ancient history yeah all right you're probably a couple decades beyond 21. yes quite a few yeah it's time that you let go of this myth about your adoption it has nothing to do with who you are today no all right but you will find more of that i'm just trying to give you a sense of reality here as you're beginning to engage in this process so let me ask the question again what do you think you want to work on in terms of a focus for as an addiction for doing this work oh my god okay so you don't know that's fine i'm i'm glad no wait i'm really glad for the hesitation because that meant that you gave it some thought you see you didn't give me an answer to satisfy me you took the question in and held it that's terrific so i'm going to ask you to not answer it right now but to hold that question for a while until you come to a conclusion what focus do you want and you might want to have that as part of your daily reflection what do i want to where's the primary source of my suffering and what do I what do i want to focus on it and you're you're asking the question not of yourself you're asking the questions of the spirit that is in you yeah i mean i find i desperately want my family back together but my ex-husband still drinks and that makes me question whether or not i can and uh so it all gets muddled up together to in order yes yeah no life is complicated and and and once you begin praying about it sorting it out you might even want to do a little writing like journaling or reflecting in writing and do you have a sponsor i have and and i was talking to him about doing a step four why don't you do step one because that's the one we're on yeah no no you did you just hear what you said yes if your head's not in the game girl i think what it was was that i feel that the channel keeps kind of getting clogged up because i've got so many you keep getting distracted yes if you want to be active on this call it means that you do the work that's assigned in between the calls yeah we're on step one right do the work on step one yes and i know i need to because i'm starting no actually you don't know that because you're not doing it no okay so ask yourself the question do you need to do you want to those are two questions do i need to and will i three questions all right yes i i know i need too i think i'm getting distracted because of the whole issue of my ex and having a family and again another story that is alive right thank god is it well you may you may only hear me you may not know that what i'm saying is in fact true or your experience and i don't know it but i am challenging you yeah no you're yeah okay all right yeah thank you give me some things to really think about that was the point yeah there was something that you said today in the meeting and i didn't quite catch it because it was right before you went into the homework and i was kind of shifting focus but it was something to do with um you know i i can't stop because i have an abnormal reaction to the substance but i i take the first drink or the first bite or whatever your thing is um because i react abnormally to life um i don't know if you use those exact words but i was trying to i i didn't use the exact words but you got the the general feel of it yes uh-huh and as i mentioned it's hard to separate the body and the mind and what you're just talking about is that uh sort of a collusion of the body and the mind um once i start the trigger's been pulled and i'm lost the real question is why do i start we haven't really taken a look at that yet we'll be looking at that for the first time next week but go ahead so i know it's coming and i know i need to hear it um because i've had I've just had an experience with it as far as you know these answers to my questions you know and you said something earlier today about periodic person versus chronic the reality is is when I'm not in program I'm chronic my reaction to life and to food and to people is extremely painful and it is completely outside of my ability to rein it in on my own when I'm in you're in program I experienced some relief it's not complete relief and I've never heard it expressed that way it makes total sense and so what sometimes what I struggle with is I don't remember the pain that I was in before I came into program because i came into the 12 steps in 2013 for me you know it's a long time to remember i know maybe my memory is not what uh what some people are but um you know and then i have slips and i have flips in program and they're not so bad you know okay so it's an evening oh maybe it's weekend you know but it's not the months that i experienced outside of program recovery is progressive too yeah and and i'm i'm realizing that and i am starting to be gentle with myself um on that because what i realize in the sense of the compassion of understanding your deficiencies and yet not gentle enough that you you don't show up and you don t talk about it and you do n t take some action you see what i mean so yes gentle doesn't mean totally passive it just means compassionate yeah exactly it just means that um i don't have to bring the hammer down on i'm not good enough and that's why i slipped i hope everybody's hearing this that is exactly right yes and you know going through this exercise is good for me because in without really thinking about it what i'll do is i'll remember this last time and i'll remember you know maybe the time five months ago um and it'll be like oh well you know it really wasn't like it wasn't totally out of control you're so prepared for our work on the mind because the problem is that we don't remember to remember yeah we don t remember to remember that's the peculiar deficiency of the addict mind and so that's where i'm at today is just um trying to recognize that that it's not all about me and it's now all about me tightening down the screws and getting it all under control right now my life is unmanageable my work is un manageable after this call i am going to be working in preparation for something on Monday that was unexpected and whatever I do it's going to be so actually your work your work is manageable but it's just not living up to your expectations if not but there's the key and you'll you're preparing yourself for our discussion on unmanageability because what you've just said is that actually you're managing your work quite well. I mean, it's not what you wanted, but you're able to work today to be prepared for tomorrow. Yeah. So you're managed quite well, you're just not controlling. Big difference. We don't control anything. That's the serenity prayer. We don't control any I've lost the word control you know I threw it out about 20 30 years ago because I realized I have influence but I have no control and I have very little influence but i do have some yeah I could I could work today like you're gonna work today to get ready for tomorrow that's influence and it's gonna be good enough and just like the work that I did today to prepare for this meeting was good enough it's not what i wanted it's not in to the level that i wanted it to be but see i can hear in the tone the acceptance of that as a compromise and accepting the reality of the compromise which is probably not something that you do easily does not come naturally to me herb i realized when you're talking that i was periodic you know i wasn't chronic and it really helped me when i wrote down the specific examples of uh you know not being able to stop like when i was 18 i was working in europe i was in vienna it was a hot summer i could hardly walk down the street my thighs were chafing so much stuff like that or just um i was in china for one night i ate dinner i ate two dinners you know one was not enough take advantage of being in china right that's right i love chinese food so um anyway i mean who does that you know uh well apparently you do i do i don't what's that about it's about that i couldn't get enough in fact i mean i was breaking chairs in my office but i thought a client was doing it i mean there was i got to a certain weight where i was like a couple chairs at my office um collapsed and at my home too my dining room that's got to be very emotionally painful and embarrassing yeah well you know what i didn't i i didn t realize that's what was happening you know it all happened kind of in the same period i had a lady who was fatter than me come to take one of my classes but i realized like denial is a real issue for me it's a real no we will see that as a real issue for all addicts yeah that's when that's when we'll really deep deep dive into the mind problem but go ahead so focus on the body problem that is once you start you cannot stop yeah you know I I don't know if that's true but obviously it was true I mean I think I'm in denial about that i remember right now even right now that's why the body exercise is so important because i want you to look exactly at your history and you might what i did was and you probably heard me say this in the hospital program that i was there to support my wife's recovery they asked me to do an inventory of my history my chronology of alcohol drinking and I did bullet point. What did I drink? When did I drink and what happened? And as I did that, it took me about an hour to two hours to do, at that point I was 43 so I'd been drinking since I was 12. So I had about a 30 year span of time. It took me a couple hours to do this bullet point and then when I read it to a group of people in the hospital, it washed over me oh my god i've got a history of a problem with alcohol which i had never seen to that moment i had ever seen it well i have a step guide and she asked me about my weight over my life i was i was about 180 pounds most of my adult life and then i started gaining about 10 pounds a year when i had a family and stuff wait wait see you're into the story now you missed my point you missed my point okay my point is we're focused on the body my point is that focus says did you ever eat more than you intended um and so no this is rhetorical this is for you now when you're looking at the body questions and that chronology of bullet point history that's the only question okay not that you're fat not that you broke chairs not that other people are fatter than you that's all history story it has nothing to do with this exercise the exercises for you to take a look at did i ever sit down and eat more than i intended ever yeah yes what does that look like yeah i okay here's a great example that happened frequently which was i would get a plate of food at home or at somebody else's home or an ethnic restaurant it would look huge well five minutes later i would have eaten half of it and i think oh this isn't enough this isn t uh all right so now you're getting into the story see because this isn' t about story this has only one answer when you sat down to in that exotic restaurant to eat what was your intention um well that's a good question my it's the only question no no it's okay okay my intention was typically to get as full as i could all right and not yeah what did that mean translate that into quantity that you were intending to eat um i need everybody to be specific and not general that's why i'm focusing and focusing and focusing go ahead i don't know if i ever had i i don t know if I ever had a quantity i was uh i know sometimes like i would buy groceries and i would think they would last a week and they would not i don't know that's not an answer to the question it's close no it's in the neighborhood but you're right you're very much on it you see this is going to be a new realization for you when i sat down it never occurred to me to have the intention of quantity yeah i never had the intention of quantity yeah you're tens of pounds overweight and concerned about it but you never had the intention of that that has to be an insight for you well i i was in weight watchers a couple times and i would be one of those people who um bought those two point bars let's say i had like 28 points okay when i was in weight watchers i had a certain amount that they wanted me to eat per day well a lot of times i would eat that amount uh by 2 p.m or something and then actually here's wait wait this is really good now you're thinking the way i would like you to think okay and so you had being in um weight watcher you had the intention of complying with their direction and their direction was to have 28 points that was your intention yeah that was my intention at that time did you ever go beyond the 28 points uh yes i mean you know what no it's not a trick question i heard your pause it's in your head you go are you kidding i did it every time no i think i might have quit i think you know i think that you just quit weight watchers yeah i wanted to go over 28 points you know bam you're no you're on it that's right yeah but i comply with weight watcher's no you know i actually all right here's here's your chat i mean everything else now you're very capable of talking in terms of long-term stories and windy sentences yeah and that's not going to help you okay i want you to focus as specifically as i've attempted to help your focus on that body worksheet and the only question is when i sat down what was my intention with regard to eating and quantity okay all right and and then take a look at each year since you were 21. okay and just put a bullet point i'm not asking for a story or complete sentences bullet point okay of memories in a radar suite nothing really uh you know in any detail but a radar sweep of that particular year all right okay all right thank you I tend to be very hard on myself. So for me, I think self-compassion and acceptance of all the facets of myself is crucial. I did not grow up in an alcoholic family. I did marry someone who suffers from alcoholism. And I guess what this is like when I focus, I did the body work. And for me, it's more I think is what you call a process addiction. You know, in other words, the unmanageability comes with thoughts and feelings, the fear. So I've identified, you know, what happens when I go into that state of mind and all of that. But I guess it's just becoming aware of more and more that's being unearthed there. my emotional reliance on my companion on the journey of life for example you know and it just I've been on the inner journey for many many years I'm in my late 50s now and and I know it's a process I know that to be true because I've experienced that so it's kind of like going more and more deeply when you asked us you said something last time about focusing when this where the suffering is today and so i asked myself why do i respond the way i do to life and where is that response coming from and it's not something that i haven't asked myself before but i'm just so much more aware that's all i guess um well what would you say would be the trigger for you in your process addiction the trigger is probably a fear of abandonment of loss and um all right that's a fear that stimulates what does it stimulate in you how do you attempt to cope with that i think it kind of turns into compulsive thinking um you know a state of kind of fight and flight and and i notice the difference when my thinking is compulsive i know it's kind of based in the mind it's kind of habitual it's a habitual mode of thinking versus the difference when i'm able to what is your intent with regard to that compulsive thinking what is it that you want as an outcome from compulsive thinking lots of thinking your hope sure the ability to recognize it as compulsive as coming from the ego the mind and being able to lovingly hold it then a solution I wasn't talking about the solution I'm talking about the disease and the brokenness and the addiction question again we have you have a fear that's stimulating this reaction of compulsive thinking what's the purpose of the compulsive think from the disease and the addiction standpoint I don't know yes you do okay say the question again herb I'm sorry what is the source is fear mm-hmm the mechanism is compulsive thinking what is it that you hope to achieve as a result of the outcome of the compulsive thinking i'm not sure or at least i don't i i can't figure it out you certainly want to reduce the fear and my sense is in the two words i wrote down is that i can control my environment and the people in it yeah yes yeah right and you said something i wrote it down here my serve for my survival i need you to operate according to my blank like that was something that i wrote down the desire for safety through controlling that's it that's it so you're saying that's at the base of well that's your hope uh coming out of this addiction of the compulsive thinking i'm going to create a safe environment for myself right when i control people and i control circumstances yeah and i can't you ever make an effort to control people in circumstances no i don't have i make an efforts sometimes but i have no control whatsoever well i understand that um are you in a 12-step fellowship yes i am which one al-anon that's what i'm saying and i don' like labels i don''t like words like codependency you know i mean well tell me tell me about that i don't like those terms the codependency why not it it what why why don't you why do you resist that term you know I think I know why I'm a one on the enneagram and to be to me um it just says I'm not perfect and it's not okay not to be perfect that's yeah i know that it's like this flaw and we're all flawed but for me that's like a big oh no i'm not okay because i'm flawed when you're perfect it's your antidote to fear because you can then control the environment and the people in it so you must be disappointed a lot I think so yes well because we can't control people or circumstances and the reason that you went into a solution immediately is that you've been in Al-Anon with really good sponsorship for a long time and your whole perspective has been reorganized right yes yeah yeah yep and it's a wonderful life lesson as painful as it is you know yes and i'm on this journey and um yeah so thank you for letting me share herb well thank you for working with the questions and the dialogue because it's good for you but i keep saying it's it's actually really good for everybody else too then as you heard many times today people are like you said applying what's being said to themselves and that's the whole point so thanks so much thank you yeah where does the responsibility for managing your career and yourself responsibly end and where should i let go and let god do are you are you making the effort in a very conscious and prayerful way to do the next right thing i have not used those words but that's a great okay next okay all right then you've done what your need to be doing you're responsible for the efforts the control excuse me the results are out of your control yes so you show up you think it through you get advice from professionals and maybe some spiritual people you do the best you can that's all you get to do and the rest is up to whatever you believe is influencing all of those outcomes okay yeah that's that's really i mean it's hard to trust the universe well because it's filled with people who are untrustworthy and this particular organization to which i belong is known for eating its young well there you go you you've all used you you volunteered to be part of that organization that eats its young and you might get eaten but i need to accept then that that is the higher powers will or gods or whatever not about higher powers will don't put it on god it's just about reality earthquakes happen because tectonic plates shift okay that's it there's no other explanation god has not got his fingers on the control of tectonics plates it's the nature of geology Your biology is constructed in a certain way based on millions of years of evolution of whatever produced you. Your DNA has determined that you're a white male. It's not your fault, it's just a product of the way all of the cellular structures came together. Now you have to deal with it and whatever other kinds of characteristics that you have. you have and so you show up and you do the best conscious effort it sounds to me like you're very responsible and very conscious and your job is to figure out what is i can influence appropriately without manipulation and or attempted control thank you you're saying exactly what i was struggling to get out thank you yeah yeah yeah no i mean it has serious consequences so I do understand your energy yes sir besides asking for the next right thing what is the answer that's I don't give answers I give process and good questions you're responsible to get good answers from the spirit as you hear it as well as really good professionals as you engage them and listen to them thank you all also for listening in i appreciate it thanks no no um it's an important life issue and and uh it's connected to what we're doing here so in in some way yeah so i had to look at the list of the step guides and i was wondering like because i'm concentrating more on food at the moment i didn't see any kind of like a relevant development fellowship is irrelevant for stuff oh okay right okay all right okay that means literally irrelevant it makes no difference what addiction that you have or even if you have an addiction if you've understood and experienced the step process out of the big book you're qualified to help somebody okay because you're not helping them with their addiction you're helping them the steps yeah okay all right god it's a great question no no no i'm so glad that you're asking that question that's a very very excellent question um so i got my step one because i did some external research i saw i saw oh it's uh it's recommendation in uh not recommendation it's a suggestion that you try some controlled fill in the blank if you have any doubt i don't agree that you do that with alcohol or drugs because in fact that has potentially very negative consequences in terms of jail and death and hurting other people in food it may have that but i don t think it's as problematic to experiment with it yeah but you got a good dose then I got a dose I saw it was like my drug I was looking for the next fix and everything so you know listening to the cold yes you know I understand what it's like for alcoholics who have relapses I had relapsed so just where I'm a little bit here's something that you I would ask you to ponder one of the wisdom men in my fellowship says the drink is not the relapse the drink isn't evidence of the relapse that happened yesterday or a week ago or a month ago I want you to Ponder that the food is not the relapse it's the evidence of a relapse because in fact the 12 steps is not about the addiction it's about a relationship with power when you get a relationship with that's effective the addiction is neutralized well that's that's it sounds um kind of sophisticated and subtle and yet once you really understand and or experience it it's as subtle as a Sherman tank yeah yeah no that's great but but I'm so glad that you witnessed to see this is a practice this isn't about one plus one equals two that's just too predictable this is practice and you personally need to find that your sort of rhythm and your unique way to travel this path in this journey and and it's wonderful that you were willing to experiment and now you have an observation I hope that you can discuss this with the new sponsor so that it reinforces the relationship and actually makes both of you more comfortable discuss what discuss what we've just said there right now or the relapse yes your your level of comfort I mean what a wonderful bouquet flowers to lay at your sponsors feet that for the last two weeks there's been a level of comfort for whatever reason you've been given the gift of freedom from picking up so it's not don't it's acknowledging her as quote the fairy godmother with a magic wand it's just saying that there is something in the relationship that is neutralized your your addiction yeah really appreciate yes you know and what you're saying too is so important there's a there's many moving parts to the recovery process and program many moving parts the most important from my standpoint is that relationship with a sponsor or step guide or both of accountability and what you're doing is witnessing to that so thank you for that thank you thank you so much yeah thank you you know wanting having a desire to be released from my soul condition because I struggled to handle being sober, which means I struggled to handle reality basically. Now it's a question I ask myself is what is my inability to cope with my humanity? Well, it's- It's a it's question that if asked as you're asking it and resolved as you are in pursuit of is going to deflate the ego. so your ego is fighting for its delusional life so yeah and the question is really relevant to unmanageability you see the first half of the first step is about addiction has nothing to do with life in reality it has everything to do with addiction in the body and the mind problems and that's what we're addressing right now but you're already so engaged that you're anticipating because addiction isn't your problem as you've just articulated it reality and living life is your problem and that's the problem of unmanageability and that my speculation my words that's the human condition now i believe that's what bill implied when he said that alcohol is not the problem it's a symbol and a symptom of the problem that the real problem is a spiritual malady i think that's what he means when he talks about unmanageability and when we unpack it in a couple weeks you'll see that unmanagability is the innate brokenness of my will that's why i use that term brokenness the body certainly is broken in the sense of deficient and the mind is certainly broken in the sense of deficient the body has an allergy it's biological and the bind has a uh defect in that it's um got a it's a subject to unhealthy thinking that obsession but the will itself that final component that makes us specifically human that we have free will it is free but it's not free in some areas where is it not free it's free in the innate inclination to choose me my free will is not free in that area i am hardwired to always choose me on my own power bill calls it on page 62 selfishness dash self-centeredness that's it's not a negative comment it's an observation of the way we're built and at the conclusion of the second paragraph on that page 62 he says we can't even reduce it much by wishing or trying on our own power what does he mean by that what's his intent there his intent is the same as the intent on page 43 with regard to the body and the mind on page 53 he says there'll come a time when we have no mental defense against the first drink we need god on page 62 he says we can't even reduce it much by wishing or trying on our own power we need God oh you said the body and the mind and the will are ourselves okay so I asked myself well what's the problem with the body in the mind of the will and you said the body the problem with the body is biological yeah the allergy yeah it's physical and with the mind you know for me it's the thought process so it's a mental yes that's great uh issue but when i ask myself the question of with regards to the will i can kind of look at it and and think whether that's a spiritual issue what do you mean by spiritual by spiritual I mean I mean something that relates to a power other than myself well but you have a willpower that's not spiritual you have will you chose to be on this call this morning that was your choice many people didn't choose that so your free will in the in one sense is not a spirit of all power it's your power of free will but i'm speculating and bill has confirmed in the big book because he put it under the umbrella of powerless that there are parts of my will that are not free and that's what we're talking about here and that may require a spiritual solution but what is that that's not the spirit of my will that's the dysfunction of my world that needs spiritual intervention which means uh intervention by a power other than myself, and you define what it is that that means. My good friend Dr. Berger says It's the best in me that needs to manage the worst in me. The Buddhist talk about the higher self versus the false self. false self and of course Bill talks about God or higher power which in fact we cannot have an adequate concept of so that would be the traditional concept of spirituality did that yes it did have very much it filled in the missing gap that i was looking for in that space so um another question is on clarification i was out at the weekend and um with a friend at a sporting event and i drunk non-alcoholic beer and he drank beer wait a minute you drank non- alcoholic beer did you read the label well yeah said 0.4 percent how much 0.0 percent yeah so it has point zero one percent alcohol is that non-alcohol no no the answer is no it's not you know all right so you are playing Russian roulette um no because I wouldn't pick up anything you know it's going to make me go and pick up a what i would call a proper drink really but i understand what is the doctor's opinion i mean what is the doctor that once we take the first drink uh he said no alcohol at all entire abstinence is the only solution yeah you're taking okay thinking that that's non when it in fact is in fact alcohol that probably explains why i i found myself consuming non-alcoholic beer in an alcoholic way because um you know my behavior was completely uh you know i wasn't drunk at all but yet my behavior with this friend of mine while he was drinking alcohol was completely alcoholic so you began drinking alcoholic beer and you intended to have one how did you do oh i had more than one that's because we were watching a sporting event and i think i need to stick with the orange juice and lemonade there's no question in my mind here's a story now i'm going to share a story with you it's only one story and and in 36 years i have one story about it but this is a powerful story a man who was in my step group in 1988 had had the same spiritual awakening and he was being trained to referee uh national um football and after the games they would celebrate so he stopped drinking regular alcohol and then i was sponsoring him and then at one point he called me and he said he had a oduels which in our country is a non-alcoholic beer and i asked him the same questions i asked you he gave me the same answers he gave you gave me he had one and he didn't think it was a problem and the next week he called me and we had the same conversation and he had had two and the next week you called me. And he had the same conversation, and he had four and the next week he called me and we had the same conversation and he had six the next week he called me and we had a conversation he says oh this conversation is irrelevant I had a court okay i understand thank you that does the thing is my behavior was you know it i was looking at the word codependency and the definition in the dictionary was co-dependency is a condition in a relationship where one person enables another person's addiction whereas my understanding of co-dependency was that it's a reliance on other people for approval and senses of identity i like that definition yeah i like that definition better yeah is it both those can do when we talk about codependency in this room i'm sure it's more it depends on your perspective yeah okay person who's codependent in their behavior is getting their sense of value from other people the person who is codependant on the other side of that is enabling people because they don't want to create any uh conflict because they get their sense of value from the other person and therefore they throw flowers at their feet that aren't warranted as an alcoholic you know i was running away from reality um so you know and clearly it's not wrong to be running the other direction which is towards reality but i wonder if you could just for a minute just talk about you know at what point does thy will be done become complacency i think that's why um we have a tenth step because navigating life and finding balance is a practice the 10 step helps us practice balance and it tells us we're out of balance meaning out of alignment with reality when they crop up resentment fear dishonesty and selfishness bill puts it in the 12 and 12 as disturbance whenever i'm disturbed i'm out of alignment meaning I'm out of balance. Now, I'm less out of balance today than I've ever been, but I need to stay conscious and that's why I do my morning meditation and that is to try to navigate life in terms of the middle way. That's balance. You're asking the question because you know that you get disturbed when you're complacent because you know that that's probably a sign of lack of consciousness complacent complacent isn't contentment very different words okay contentment is the middle road complacent is unconsciousness okay you're clearly not complacent asking these questions I think that's a real actually litmus test of consciousness is that there is something going on in terms of questions and or concerns I don't mean disturbance but your evaluating the path that you're navigating that is hardly complacent Gurdjieff a Russian philosopher and you've heard me say it before said most human beings are asleep dreaming that they're awake late dreaming dreaming that we're awake is complacency the contentment is that we're away navigating and practicing the middle route road yeah nice conversation good thanks please join me in the serenity prayer god grant me the serendity to accept the things i cannot change courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference Amen.