Step One and Spiritual Experience – AA Joe H Step Study – Part 3 of 11 – Joe

My name is Joe. I'm an alcoholic. From my experience with these steps, we're at a very important point in the admission of the first step. Just to kind of review what we've covered so I can be centered for anybody who hasn't been here. we've spent approximately three weeks three hours on the first step basically the first half of the first step, the admission of powerlessness over alcohol we started with the doctor's opinion and we learned that we can use every statement in the doctor's opinion as a question for ourselves do I believe this is this true does this fit me and we looked at an exercise with Bill story to look for the similarities and not the differences and to mark everything that you can relate to in the way he drank and the way he felt and the way he thought we've looked at page 17 to 23 to further our admission about the body to answer a question can you control the amount of alcohol that you drink once you take a drink the bottom of page 22 and the top of page 23 they asked me to once again look at that and and use those statements as questions am i positive that once i put any alcohol whatever into my system something happens which makes it virtually impossible for me to stop and does my experience confirm that that once i put in the alcohol whatever into my body something happens we then turned our focus to the mind to answer the question can you control staying stopped What is it that gets you back to the first drink time after time after time? And we spent 20 pages from page 23 to page 43 on the mind of an alcoholic, the obsession, the idea that outweighs all other ideas. Some people call it an excuse. Some people don't think at all. Some people bring to mind every reason why they shouldn't and they find themselves in the bar. and we spent quite a long time on that. On the bottom of page 43, this book, like myself, repeats itself over and over. They give you medical explanations. They give psychiatric explanations. They give stories. They give point-blank statements. They repeat themselves over and I believe everything from the doctor's opinion to page 43 has really been to look at two things, which they will once again look at again on page 44. But at the bottom of page 43, I think they summarize what we've looked at from page 23 to 43 as far as the mind. Why do I take that first drink? With a statement. The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink. except in a few rare cases neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a higher power. I think if you believe that, it's time to go on. If you don't, you have some reservations about what we've covered up to this point. On page 44, we're really going to start to see now how this book can be used as a checklist list and how we will use these statements as questions because on the top of that page it says in the preceding chapters you have learned something of alcoholism so I asked myself have I we hope we have made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic and here they go repeating those same two things once again if when I honestly wanted to did i find i could not quit entirely could i control the stop or if when drinking did i have little control over the amount that i drank could i control the amount than i drank after after i started to drink see they may help us look at those two points once again if those two things are true you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer now there's a big question to consider there's lot to that if i use it as a question for me do i believe i suffer from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer do i think there's any more outs for me a little bit more of this a little bit more money the right girl the right job the right amount of information about myself self-knowledge the right amount of fear the right threat the right judge the right wife the right boss do I think there's anything human left for me to keep me sober that will keep me silver or do I believe I suffer from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer now it would be real easy if we could leave the first step at that and I'll tell you when I was new this is how I wanted to rewrite that step I admit that I'm powerless over alcohol and that's why my life is unmanageable you see the strange dichotomy there I admit it in my life I admit that i am powerless over alchohol and that my life isn't manageable so in the back of my mind I think if you take the alcohol and you put it aside everything will be fine and i'll be able to manage my life just well just fine so i needed some time to try that and it took about four and a half or five months and i have tried that since to run my life on my power my own power myself will to become convinced that the second half of step one has nothing to do with the first half unless you're still drinking and drugging and that my life is not unmanageable just because I'm powerless over alcohol. You hear it all the time, those who have been to meetings. You'll hear people use a term, I hit a sober bottom two, three, four, five, six, seven years. you know what is it that really gets people after they've had some time in this program you'll hear the common thing i quit going to meetings but i think under that you hear a real basic thing with most of those people that go out after a long time that they might not admit right away they thought they could manage their life on their own self-will took over the ego rebuilt itself and they thought THEY COULD RUN THEIR LIFE NOW THAT THEY WERE SOBER Which means to me they never got the second half of the first step. They thought that, yes, maybe I am. Maybe I can absolutely admit the first half of that step. When I put booze in my system, I can't tell you how much I'm going to drink. And I have a mind that's going to get me back to drink and they get a little relief. They do a little work. The obsession to drink is removed and then they take up the reins and think they can run their life on their own power. This is also a part of the First Step that's overlooked a lot and that really needs to be looked into at depth how much of your life can you really manage now let's once again as we did with the disease we looked for the disease within in the body my mind my body is different and we look for the D disease within the mind we did not look to find out why you were alcoholic out here in the world the family you came from the friends you grew up with the schools you went to the jails the treatment centers the institutions we did not look at the reason why your alcoholic in the result of your alcoholism we did look for the reason while you're alcoholic in this circumstances of your life so it would only make sense that we look for them manageability within maybe you can show up for meetings maybe you're in a marriage maybe you're holding down a job let's not look at any of that as to why your life is unmanageable let's look at what goes on in here within because you know how many of us like myself have gotten all the little ducks in a row out here i'll give you an example i left the penitentiary and i said to myself if i was in this job with this kind of apartment and this kind of bank account and this kind of car and this kind of a wardrobe with this kind of woman and this kind of money everything would be fine and I would be able to do real well and within a year and a half after getting released from the penitentiary I had that woman that job that car that wardrobe and that bank account and I was still dying inside and by then the plan had changed now I want to be here and I want to have this so I'm really glad that they helped me look at the unmanageability of my life within there's a great guide there's a great paragraph on page 52 that helped me look at the unmanageability of my life we also find that this is another great description of untreated alcoholism sober and this was me before I ever took a drink once again we were going to find the root of the disease that was there before I over took a drink talks about we had to ask ourselves why we shouldn't apply to our human problems the same readiness to change our point of view as we were with alcohol and the body and the mind my reaction to alcohol now we're gonna look at my human problems you know manageability of my life I'm having trouble with personal relationships and I don't see that as out here i don't see that as the relationship itself out here because i have one girlfriend that gives me too much attention i have another girlfriend that doesn't pay me much attention i'm mad at one for not giving me attention i met at the other for giving me too much attention so it's not really the personal relationship out here i have trouble with it's it's the way i feel about it and the way i see it in here i can't control my emotions that's with him i'm prey to misery and depression they just seem to drop on me from the sky i don't really know where they come from and it's always somebody else's fault i canít make a living now a lot of you are going to be able to say what do you mean i'm holding down a job i'm doing real well but does that does that job that living that you think you're making satisfy you is it personally satisfying enough to where but it can it can keep you sober i have a feeling of uselessness i'm full of fear i'm unhappy i can't seem to be a real help to other people was not a basic solution of these problems more important than whether i see newsreels of lunar flight isn't it more important than anything that might happen in the future to look at myself as i am right now sober i'd like to go back to the first page of more about alcoholism page 30 and there's a real simple statement here that kind of sums up what we're looking at here for me and we hear it read in almost every meeting we go to you know they read a portion of chapter 3 it's the last sentence in the first paragraph the delusion that i'm like other people okay we've just spent 43 pages looking at how i'm different from other people in my reaction to alcohol when i put some in my body i lose control over the amount when i don't have any in my system at all i'm obsessed and it gets me back to the first drink the delusion that i'm like other people but what about or presently maybe sober has to be smashed because see i suffer from the delution that okay i'll i'll give in i'll admit i'll commit that my my physical and mental reactions to alcohol are different but let's get the alcohol out of the way because see I still think that alcohol is the problem so if we get the problem out of the way I should be able to manage my life just fine but see they changed my perception about both of those things alcohol was not my problem although it got me in a lot of trouble and caused problems in my life it was the solution to the problem and every time they took it away and I put alcohol aside it didn't get better it got worse because here I am, 28 days, 14 days, 7 days and there's the root of my disease staring me right in the face as we have identified it in this book restless, irritable, discontent I'm full of fear, I feel useless and there it is, it caught up to me once again and I give in to that and an obsession sneaks in and I take a drink to relieve that spiritual sickness that I suffer from So I start to see that not only is alcohol not the problem, but when you take alcohol away, there I'm left with the real problem. And that presently, sober, I'm not like other people. Not only can you take a normal drinker, my neighbor, and convince him that his drinking is causing him a problem and give him a sufficient reason to stop, like this book says, a warning of a doctor or a love affair or change of environment a threat from a wife he can stop his drinking. Okay? But there are also normal people who if you take them on a Monday morning and convince them that a certain behavior that they're involved with is killing them and they admit that and they see that by Monday evening their mind is not trying to talk them into doing it. You see, I'm not like other people now that I'm sober. Now, I feel the same things my neighbor does, but can I do the same thing he can with it? He can hold on to resentment. He can retaliate. He can get revenge. Can I? He can keep fear. He can stay afraid. He can do weird things to get rid of fear. Can I ? You see what I want to think is that when now that i'm sober now that the booze is out of the picture i want to think that when i'm feeling something like resentment or fear or i'm being real selfish or dishonest i want to think that what i'm feeling is the bottom line see but i realize that once i know the difference once i'm consciously aware that resentment is is what gets me and fear and my dishonesty and my selfishness once I know that and once I know I'm in it I'm not fighting the emotion I'm fighting booze because the bottom line for me is not what I'm feeling the bottom line for me is I will drink I will go back to something that you've convinced me a month ago or a week ago or yesterday that's going to kill me I will go back to it based on the way I feel the delusion that I'm like other people drunk with booze in my system, with none in my system at all, or right now today without the obsession. Sober has had to be smashed and I would say if there's one sentence in this book that sums up every problem I've had since the obsession to drink has been removed, it would be that. The delusion that I'm like other people right now, today. I can do what he can do. I kan stay angry I can stay afraid, I can retaliate I can get revenge See, I think I'm like normal people now because I forget that you didn't take away my problem. You took away my solution and now what's my solution? And I also forget what's going to get me back to the first drink. So if I really start to look at this first step in depth and I come to the admission about the body and I can really only find that by looking back through my drinking I then get to look at can I manage my life now today sober so I had to try that I'm a hard-headed alcoholic I had to try that and I woke up four and a half five months dry and that paragraph on page 52 fit me perfectly absolute untreated alcoholism I was having trouble with personal relationships. I couldn't control my emotions. I was prey to misery and depression. I wasn't making a living that was satisfying. I had a feeling of uselessness, full of fear. I was unhappy. That was baffling because I was further away from my last drink than I'd ever been in 17 years so i start to see that lack of power is my problem and on page 45 that's exactly what they finally have gotten me to see lack of powers my dilemma i have to find a power by which i can live it's interesting it doesn't just say quit drinking i have to find a power by which i can live see i needed that before i ever took a drink it has to be a power greater than myself obviously so my next question should be where and how am i going to find this power well that's exactly what this book is about its main object is to enable me to find power greater than myself which will solve my problem now it's interesting there it doesn't say the main purpose of this the main object of this book is to enable me to find a power greater than myself so i can solve my problems this is one of those statements we're going to see from here on that separate this process from self-help from therapy see what i want to do is i want to take the second step and i want to take the third step and i want to write an inventory and i want to read it to somebody and i want to see my character defects and then i want to forget about six and seven and then i want to work on myself really hard now i'm working on this and now i'm working on that see because i think i've done this work to get some power so i can solve my problems it says here the main object of this book is to enable me to find some power greater than myself which will solve my problem i've also seen that my problem is much deeper than i thought physically mentally emotionally spiritually where did it start see i always thought the progression of my disease began with my first drink and ended with my last and i'm here to tell you uh i've been around long enough to know that my disease did not end with my glass drink or i wouldn't be here today and i have also written enough inventory to know the root of my disease is spiritual in nature and it was there before I ever took a drink. They helped me see the insanity and they helped me see that it's not what I did under the influence and they gave me that exercise I talked about to make a list of the ten craziest things you've ever done and I made that list and every one of them was under the influence and the guy laughed at me and he said the number one craziest thing you ever did every time you did it you were absolutely bone dry with nothing in your system at all and that was to pick up another drink based on your experience with alcohol. So, can I answer those questions on page 45? Do I believe that lack of power is my problem? Do I have to find a power by which I can live? And do I believe it has to be a power greater than myself? if i can answer those then i should probably obviously ask well where and how do i find this power it's interesting in about 10 pages they're going to tell me exactly how and exactly where to find it back on page 44 the second paragraph they are now going to start to talk to me you see I didn't even know I was an agnostic because I didn' t know what the difference was between an atheist and an aggnostic and I was told that an atheist is a person who denies the existence of God period and an Agnostic believes that there's a God but does not believe that that God can work personally for him in his life and I saw that that's what I was I thought for some reason i'd done certain things in the past and god had given up on me he was a he was eventual god he was keeping score he was keeping track and he was punishing me and i'd given up the idea altogether long time ago i was taken to the catholic church as a child and to the congregational church and one was really bland and one Was really scary and i was stuck somewhere in between so they start to talk to me the person who doesn't think that this power can really work in his life to one who feels he is an atheist or an agnostic such an experience seems impossible this spiritual experience I've just admitted I need to recover from the illness that I suffer from but to continue as I am means disaster especially after I've admitted that I'm an alcoholic of the hopeless variety i've admitted that i'm a drunk that wants to quit and sees that i can't that's a hopeless condition to be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live a spiritual basis are not else are not easy alternatives to face now the first time i didn't think much of that because i just didn't want to die and the the the idea that i could live a spiritual way was unknown to me but it wasn't that scary but now that i've done that for a while a little while and i know a little bit about what that entails both of those alternatives are scary to me in the chapter there is a solution it talked about none of us like the self-searching the leveling of pride the confession of shortcomings which this process requires that's a little bit about what it takes to live on a spiritual basis there are days when to die is a little more attractive than to continue living on a spiritual basis but thank god i have some tools that have been given to me to get out of places like that so at this point when i'm facing my own agnosticism my doubt and my prejudice about god and how he has or hasn't worked in my life these are scary alternatives especially if some of you come from backgrounds where you've tried different things a little more than i have where you're trying certain religions where you try certain spiritual things the idea even though it's right in front of you that you're ready to die from alcoholism and the only other alternative is to live on a spiritual basis those can be real scary those two alternatives but it isn't so difficult about half our original fellowship were of exactly that type agnostic at first some of us tried to avoid this issue hoping against hope I think that's a very interesting statement hoping against Hope we were not true alcoholics but after a while we had to face the fact that we must find a spiritual basis of life or else that's something i had to do i believe i have to find a spiritual way of life for else die perhaps it is going to be that way with you but cheer up something like half of us thought we were atheists or agnostics our experience shows that you need not be disconcerted now they help me look at what i've been raised with and everything i tried to get along the way If a mere code of morals, I was given values and beliefs and morals as a kid. I knew right from wrong. But if a mere quote of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. But I found that those codes and philosophies did not save me no matter how much I tried. I could wish to be more. I didn't want to keep breaking my mother's heart. I didn' t want to being a liar. i could wish to be moral i could wish to be philosophically comforted in fact i could will these things with all my might but the needed power wasn't there my human resources everything i can bring to bear the money the education the family the friends my human resources as marshaled by my will were not sufficient they failed utterly at the beginning of that paragraph they asked me to look at a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life they asked me is what i read in this book living by these principles helping others self-sacrifice is what's in this book a better velocity of life and i said yeah and they said do you think that that philosophy by itself will save you or do you need some power from the process which goes along with that philosophy for living. It's kind of like prayer without power. It's like having a set of values and beliefs and morals as a kid and really wanting to live up to them and not being able to. That's how frustrating coming to this program being given a set of principles to live by and then finding you don't have the power to liveup to them. It's kinda like drinking with a head full of AA. we might not keep you sober but we'll sure mess up your drinking well if you come here being more moral degenerate like me and they start to feed you a bunch of these principles that they tell you you have to live by to stay sober and then you don't get any power from this process you just sit around in meetings of alcoholics anonymous waiting for the day when you're going to become honest and unselfish you have a miserable experience in in store for you and that has a lot to do with why people see that they finally hit a sober bottom you know i can't apply this better philosophy i've been given philosophies and techniques and morals and values and stuff i've wanted to live up to all my life but i didn't have the power to apply it so i'm seeing at another level the powerlessness you know it's great to see it in my symptoms i can't control the amount i drink once i start and i can'T keep myself stopped and that's a physical craving with a mental obsession but what about down where i live and now that you've taken the booze and the drugs and everything out of my system what about emotionally they took me back and they helped me look at that paragraph once again on page 52 and they asked me this, can you sit in a chair right now today, now that you're sober, can you sit on a chair and do everything for yourself that booze and drugs used to do when they were working? So I went back through and I looked at what did the drugs and the booze do when we were working. Well they made the fear go away and pushed me across the gym floor to go ask her girl to dance that I couldn't before i drank they made me brave and strong and funny they set me out there in the world to make a futile attempt at living life that took the pain away alcohol took the pain away made sense out of things helped me to feel apart can i sit in a chair now today and do that can i fix myself can i make those things on page 52 disappear can i make fear go away can i make that feeling of uselessness disappear can i make a personal relationship better on my own will and i start to see the level of the the unmanageability of my life is within the unmanagability of my life lives where the booze and the drugs used to go and make it all better and i can't manage that so i really start to see the depth of lack of power and i really start to see what a dilemma that is i was also told this lack of powder is only a problem when you finally want to do something lack of powers not a problem one i accepted being powerless and my life being unmanageable but the day it became absolutely unacceptable being powerless in my life you know manageable and i want some help but i saw that i couldn't do that then lack of power is a dilemma before that it wasn't a dilemma because i pretty much thought i knew where to go to get power except it didn't work anymore lack of powers only a dilemma if you want to do something with your life and your life is within i don't find my disease within and i do not find the unmanageability within because if i do i'm going to have to work on it out here to fix it in here and it doesn't work that way i found my disease within i found the unmanageability of my life within and the great promise was if you can find both of those things within the great news is the solution is within the solution is not out here let's get this and this and this and the job and the car and the woman and all your ducks in place and then everything will be fine and you won't suffer from this disease and your life won't be unmanageable that's a fantasy they start to talk about doubt prejudice what i've put between me and god since i was a kid when we mention god we have reopened the subject which our man thought he had neatly evaded or entirely ignored that's me they know how i feel they've shared my honest doubt Honest doubt. People like me had honest doubt about God. Well, if he's real and he works in people's life, how come when I asked him, he didn't? Because I always asked him for what I wanted. I never asked for his will. How come I turned out so messed up? I mean, there was some real honest doubt there and prejudice. Well, he works for them. Why won't he work for me? He says that he's forgiven and God works in his life, why won't he do that for me? There was a lot of honest doubt and prejudice. I've been so violently anti-religious. That's me. To me, the word God brought up a particular idea of him which someone had tried to impress on me during childhood. A punishing God who keeps track and keeps score. Perhaps I rejected that particular conception because it seemed inadequate. with that rejection I imagined I'd abandoned the God idea entirely where I lived on the streets the thought that faith and dependence upon a power beyond myself was weak, even cowardly I know how that feels I looked upon this world warring individuals and warring theological system and inexplicable calamity with deep skepticism so we're looking at the kinds of things i've put between me and the idea of a loving god doubt prejudice skepticism i looked askance at many individuals who claimed to be godly how could a supreme being have anything to do with it all and who could comprehend a supreme being anyhow yet in other moments i found myself thinking when enchanted by a starlet knight who then made all this there was a feeling of awe and wonder but it was fleeting and soon lost I had those experiences camping and out in the woods and growing up in Michigan and going to camp and seeing the ocean and the great lakes yes, I have had these thoughts and experiences they want to make haste to reassure me that they found as soon as they were able to lay aside some of this prejudice and express even a willingness to believe in a power greater than themselves, they commence to get results. Even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that power which is God. Thank God I don't have to figure it out. I thought when I saw God as we understand him in the third step, this decision that I was headed for, I thought before I got to the third step, somewhere in the second step I was going to have God figured out, defined and comprehended and they told me if you could figure him out you would be him if you understood God you would be God that I could just start with a simple conception even just a willingness to be willing to believe that maybe there's some power that can work in my life and I think if you've really seen the first step I mean there's really nowhere else to go you know you can't really go to the second step in a good mood you can't really go to the second step from a good place and I have a hard time seeing how people go to this second step from a place of acceptance in the first step I mean it's kind of like when it's unacceptable when I've really seen the powerlessness and the unmanageability and I don't want to die I mean I'm right there there better be something much to my relief I discovered I did not need to consider another's conception of god boy was that a biggie i mean every place i ever went they said you're welcome here as long as you believe the way we believe thank god aa doesn't do that they let me choose my own conception and at that time all i chose was power the the idea that i need power and it's better it better be greater than me i had a problem with the word god that's okay they told me that was all right that i don't need to consider anyone else's conception my own conception however inadequate would be sufficient to make the approach and to affect a contact with him as soon as i admitted the possible existence of a creative intelligence a spirit of the universe underlined the totality of things i began to be possessed with a new sense of power and direction provided i took other simple steps I hear people all the time that think you go through the first three steps, if at all, and you start to get some stuff in your life, some promises. This says I can start with my own conception and as soon as I can admit that, I will start. I will begin to be possessed with a new sense of power and direction provided I continue to take other simple steps. I have found that God does not make too hard terms with those who seek him. Why should he? He's everything. In this last three lines is where I started to find some ideas that would work in a conception for me. To me, the realm of the Spirit is broad and roomy, all-inclusive, never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek. It is open, we believe, to all men. I heard an old-timer one time in Texas and he said, if you're working with somebody or if you're having trouble yourself coming up with a conception that works for you, go through this chapter and look every time they use a capital letter in a word where it shouldn't be capitalized. And you will find words that will help you choose a conception. Like we've just read. Creative intelligence. Spirit of the universe. The word power. They will use these terms all the way through this character. but the ones that helped me was when they talked about broad and roomy never exclusive or forbidding i think the first conception i chose was that that i wanted to believe i was willing to believe in a loving god that would forgive me for everything i had done and work in every area of my life that has strengthened and grown and thank god that sepsis came to doesn't say you take the second step and wake up the next day with absolute faith it says you will come to believe and that second step gets stronger all the time when therefore they speak to me of God they mean my own conception this applies too to other spiritual expressions which I'll find in this book I shouldn't let my prejudice that I have against spiritual terms deter me from honestly asking myself what they mean to me at the start This was all I needed to commence spiritual growth, to affect my first conscious relation with God as I understood him. Afterward, I would find myself accepting many things which then seemed entirely out of reach. That was growth. But if we wished to grow, we had to begin somewhere. So we used our own conception, however limited it was. I could start with a simple conception. Maybe it's going to be as simple as, I'm willing to believe that there's some power greater than me. I mean, my God, look at the higher powers you've had already. I started to examine that. I've come to believe in some of the strangest higher powers you could imagine. Women, sex, money, geographical locations, groups of people, books, philosophies. They told me this next question was the first half of the second step. And they were going to break this second step up into two parts. And that the first question that I needed to answer was do I now believe or am I even willing to believe that there is a power greater than myself? Some people say that's the first half of the second step prayer. However you want to look at it. That was the first question that I needed to answer. And there was really only two questions, two major questions that needed to be answered from this chapter. Do I now believe or am I even willing to believe that there is a power greater than myself? As soon as a man can say that he does believe or is willing to belief, we emphatically assure him that he is on his way. It has been repeatedly proven among us that upon this simple cornerstone a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built we talked about the cement now this once again is not going to seem real important until you get to the end of a fifth step and they ask you to go home and review the cement and ask yourself are the stones properly in place this is the first stone we're going to put on that foundation page 17 told me how to make the cement two parts the feeling of having shared in a common problem and the common solution found in this book we built a foundation in the first step and if that foundation is strong I don't ever have to go any further than on that foundation and now we've placed the first stone on that Foundation you know the cornerstone of a building they put the date on it and it's the first tone they put in place well here's the cornerstone of my sobriety the corner stone of this spiritual structure they begin to talk about either willing to believe or a belief that there is a power greater than myself that was great news to me for I had assumed that I could not make use of spiritual principles unless I accepted many things on faith which seemed difficult to believe earlier they talked about a way that faith can be acquired and this sentence they talked to me they talked a lot the idea do I have to accept the second step on faith or can it start at a simpler level just a simple belief yes I'm willing to believe and I was told that there will be a process to go from a simple belief to absolute faith. Point A, point B. And then ironically it will be the same process that you have used to come to believe and have faith in everything you've ever had faith in in your life. So they asked me what are some of the things you've had faith in before you came to Alcoholics Anonymous? And of course the number one thing that I had faith in for longer than anything was booze. I mean, I had faith in Mommy and Daddy and a couple of women here and there. I had some faith in money. I had Some faith in places I could go, groups of people, books. But for this exercise, I chose alcohol. And they asked me to imagine somebody coming to me the day before I took my first drink and setting a bottle of booze down in front of me and saying, Joe, this stuff is going to do for you what you can't do for yourself. This stuff is gonna be the dominating force in the next 17 years of your life. It's gonna put you in the penitentiary, 10 institutions. It's going to destroy friends and girlfriends and your family. but it's also going to take that confusion and that fear and that stuff inside of you and it's going to make it go away for brief periods of time. It's going work in your life but then it's gonna turn and almost destroy you. You know, what would I have said to that guy? What would I've said to the guy who came to me the day before I took my first drink who laid out everything booze was going to do for me and to me i would have said you're crazy i don't have any faith i don'T HAVE ANY FAITH IN WHAT YOU'RE SAYING BUT I HEARD IT'S A FUN THING TO DO SO LET'S TRY IT I'M WILLING TO BELIEVE THAT THIS STUFF THAT YOU TELL ME IS SO MUCH FUN MIGHT WORK SO LETS TRY HOW DID I START THE PROCESS WITH ALCOHOL I STARTED with a simple belief maybe this is what it's cracked up to be maybe this is fun my brothers say it's fun my sister says it's fine everybody says it's one let's give it a go and I started the process with alcohol at a simple level yeah I'm willing to believe this might be fun okay so then what did I do I reached over and I picked up a bottle and I made a decision and I took some action and I took some action. And I took some action, and after a period of time, it's probably different for all of us, I got some results that I could see, feel, use, and direct in my life. Then I had faith in Boos. So what's the same process that's going to take us from a simple belief at the second step willing to believe to absolute faith somewhere down the road well you're going to do the same thing you're gonna make a decision based on a simple belief based on the first step you're to make a decision in the third step you take some action four five six seven eight nine and those promises are going to start to come true in your life like at the ninth step like at the third step like it the tenth step you're going to get some results that you can see feel use and direct in your life you're gonna get some power then you'll have faith so the same process that took place with everything in my life that i ever had faith in is what's going to take place in this process faith will come as a result of res as as the the direct result of some results that you can see and feel they're not going to ask you to take the second step and then when you wake up tomorrow morning ask you do you have absolute faith in this power i think um next week we'll start with um the second question in that step Thank you.