Fellowship and Step Work – Big Book Study – Part 3 of 7 – Local AA Speakers

Tonight's speaker, and we've met him once already, and that's Chris. There is a seventh tradition, and we'll just pass these right now. Good evening, everybody. My name is Chris, and I am an alcoholic. It's good to be here tonight. Tonight's topic, we heard last week, Ron just gave a great presentation on step four. If anybody was here, he was phenomenal. We're going to be covering steps five, six, and seven. And we named this particular portion, divorcing from attachments. And there's kind of a reason for that. when i you know when i first came into alcoholics anonymous um i understood that it was a 12-step program uh i got very very involved in the fellowship the fellowship going to meetings hanging out you know getting a sponsor talking with them finding service commitments i was even going back and volunteering at the treatment center that i was at just to give service and And I got very, very involved with the fellowship. But it was only a number of years later when I got exposed to some recovery recordings that I understood that I was shortchanging myself on the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I had made a stab, you know, kind of an attempt to do the fourth and the fifth when I had about seven or eight months. My sponsor suggested it was about time for me to do a fourth step. And I didn't have really any experience with this before. I was going to a lot of step meetings, but step meetings don't guarantee that you can learn how to actually take the steps. So I was Going to a Lot of Step Meetings, and I was hearing people share about their experience with the fourth and the fifth step, But I still didn't really understand it. I just didn't, didn't really follow how the mechanics of the step worked. I had heard things in meetings like, well, you tell your, you know, you write down your story. And I'd heard things like, you just got to tell them everything. And, you know, I heard a lot of things like this, but as far as actually doing the fourth step, I missed the big book. I mean, the big book was just not a prominent fixture in the meetings that I was going to. So when it came time for me to do a fourth step, what am I going to do? I went to the step book. There's a whole chapter on the fourth step in the stepbook. And, you know, I read that a couple of times and I was kind of confused. It talked about the seven deadly sins and I thought I had 14 of them, you Know. And there was just, they talked a lot about different things that sounded religious or sounded psychological. I didn't really understand it. But I knew my sponsor expected a four-step out of me, so I sat down and I started writing. And this is about seven months. what it looked like when I got done was it looked like part life story, part list of all the dirty rotten things I had done that I had never told anybody and I even had some stuff in there as far as patterns that I saw in my behavior. I would see a pattern like I would judge people for the exact same characteristic I had and wasn't happy with having. I saw patterns like this When you do a four-step that way, you don't learn anything about yourself because you're writing down the things that you already know. When you look in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, it talks about the four-stepped as basically being you're going to discover some deep truths about yourself. You're going uncover the exact nature of your wrongs. you're going to find out why you keep shooting yourself in the foot in this game called life. And if all I'm doing is writing down the stuff that I already know, I'm not really achieving what the exercise, the spiritual exercise of the fourth step is asking me to do. So I get exposed to a set of recovery tapes somewhere in early 1991. and it was a big book workshop and it caught me by surprise in a number of ways one of them was when I started listening to this it basically painted the picture that I didn't know what an AA program was let alone wasn't working one and this wasn't really the type of news I wanted to hear I was going to 13 meetings a week I mean, I'd made my life AA and what I didn't understand is it was all fellowship based. There was no program. And when I learned this, the first thing that happened was I got pissed. You know, who are these people? You know this isn't how we do it in New Jersey. You Know there was a reaction because nobody wants to feel small. Nobody wants to think that you know they're falling short especially when you're going to as many meetings and participating like crazy as I was. You You know, everybody was patting me on the head. Chris, you're doing great. You know? I see you everywhere. You know. You're doing good. You're going great. But I really wasn't doing great when I first when I first talked about six weeks ago here. I talked about aspects of the illness alcoholism. I talked to about how alcoholism presents and I talked about the emotional the psychological the the physical, all the ways that alcoholism presents. Now, going to a lot of meetings, which is what I was doing, wasn't treating any of that stuff. It was creating an atmosphere of sobriety. You know, I was able to stay away from the liquor store or the bar. But a lot OF the problems that I was having in my life, a lot Of the emotional, a lotOf the psychic trauma, The bondage of self that they talk about in the book Alcoholics Anonymous was all over me. I mean, I was not happy. I couldn't deal. My relationships were still messed up. I suffered from depression, anxiety, guilt, remorse, shame, resentment. I mean I was a walking emotion and I was going to a million meetings. The thing that really stuck in my mind when I went through these tapes was there's an answer to that. There's a solution to that, you know? We work out our issues on the spiritual plane, and looking in hindsight, that's a great way to finally understand something when you finally understand it, and most of the time that's after we've experienced it and after we're screwed up a bunch of times. After going through the steps quite a few times, what I realize is that the steps treat the untreated alcoholism. The steps treatthe emotional and psychological problems that we all suffer from. It talks in the book where we're restless, irritable, discontented. There's a million emotional issues we have. We're filled with fear. We're filled with resentment. There's times in our lives that we suffer from pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization, and we just can't deal. And most of the time these are states that happen when we're sober, and it takes a lot of us out. A lot of Us can't get past this emotional roller coaster without taking a drink. So the genius in the steps is that it's a spiritual program. It's designed to awaken our spirits. Now, to talk a little bit about step five, I have to talk a little about step four. Ron did a great job last week on step four, I'm just going to briefly explain what step four is. Step four is a four-column resentment inventory. it's a two column fear inventory where you have to answer two questions and there's prayers in the resentment inventory and there is prayers in the fear inventory that you have do while you are doing the inventory then there is the sex harms list which has nine questions and then you are to develop a sex ideal, a relationship ideal you are seeing all the things that are wrong with your relationships you are actually to put down the attributes of what you think would be a good relationship ideal. How do you want to show up at the party next time that you have one? How do your intimate relationships to be? And they don't necessarily have to be sexual intimate relationships. They can be relationships with the family and friends. So you write out an ideal for future relationships, and then you need to start a prayer regime to ask God to help mold and direct you into this new ideal for future relationships. So the difference between doing that and doing a life story is like the difference entre night and day, because what happens is you're able to uncover the exact nature of your problems in life. What is going on? I'm always angry. I always have anxiety or fear. I never feel comfortable with myself or my environment. Why is that? And the fourth step answers that question, why is that. So by doing the fourth steps, what you're doing is you're painting a picture of where you don't want to be anymore. The things that you don' t want to do anymore because they're not working. If they were working, our lives would be a lot better than they are when we walk into AA. We're not running on all burners when we come wandering into AA, and very few of us come in because there's nothing on TV that night. We usually have our ass on fire, summonses in the pocket, loved ones ready to just disown us, you know, the whole thing. so I don't know about anybody else but I want a good quality to my life I want equality in my life across the board I want to be able to get along when I want I want that skill set to be successful at my life not necessarily with money but with everything else with a general quality of life and I recognize in the fourth step where I'm making my mistakes Another part of the spiritual awakening is to recognize that your problems are of your own making. There's a spiritual axiom, whenever I'm upset, there's something wrong with me. There's all these places in our literature that swings the light right back on us. We cannot be victims. Victims never get better. We have to take responsibility for the things that are going on in our life. Our problems do not come at us, they come from us. And this is one of the things that you learn in the fourth step. That may not sound like good news, like I'm co-creating all of my own disorder at best and causing it all at worst. That may Not seem like a good thing, but actually it's a statement of hope. Because if it was all those bastards out there, Your chances of changing all them are pretty slim. Your chances to change in something in yourself is pretty good with the 12-step program. Now, this is my second run through the steps, and I'm doing it the way these big book recovery people are directing me to. And I show up at my sponsor's house. Now, my sponsor didn't really at this point in time have a working knowledge of the big book. There was few and far between in my area that did back then. If you hadn't been exposed to Recovery through recovery tapes or somebody that moved here from Akron or Texas or something, you were just out of luck. So I showed up at my sponsor's house, and he goes, What are all those columns? Where is your story? And I'm like, just humor me and let me read this stuff. And I read the resentments out. I read my fears. I admitted to God, myself, and another person the exact nature of my wrongs. And that's such an important thing. We're kings and queens of drama. If you set somebody loose to just start writing, forget about it. There needs to be some direction, and with these specific inventories, there was some direction. Now, in the process of this fifth step, the self-image that I had was one of low esteem, but basically here's what I see looking back. I had done a lot of really bad things drinking. You pour a quart or more vodka or bourbon down your throat every day at 4 o'clock and then go out in the world, you're going to cause some problems. I don't care if you're an alcoholic or not. You know what I mean? You just � you're stumbling all over the place just causing all kinds of trouble. And there were people who cared about me. I got into some serious relationships. You know, I got married. You know? I started to have a family. I had jobs. I had friends. And, you know, one by one, you end up letting those people down. Now, alcoholism is so strong. Alcoholism is an aggressive illness. Alcohol is like the last thing to go. I mean, you don't have to do that. To pay for drinking, you'll throw your family in the hat. You'll throw your job in the hat. You'll show your driver's license in the hat. I mean, that's not a conscious decision you're making, but that's what you're doing when you continue to drink and you continue to lose everything and everybody. If that is your experience, you're not going to really feel good about yourself inside. And I didn't. I was always thinking that somebody was going to find me out or if they really knew what kind of a scumbag I was. They wouldn't be hanging out with me, and I'd manipulate. I was like the chameleon, like to have friends or associates at business. I would pretend to be what I thought you would expect me to be. I mean, I had all these things going on in my head. I was lying all the time. Everything was a story. Now, you live this way. What happens is inside you die a little bit every time. And when I came to my sponsor with this inventory and I started reading it, I went into that fifth step feeling like a scumbag deep inside. Now not a run-of-the-mill scumback. I was like a special scumbang. You know how we are. I wasn't going to be a run-of-the-mill anything, but I did. I had so much shame and guilt. And as I start reading this, there's really no reaction from him because a lot of times the stuff that we make up in our head is our head story. And it really doesn't mean a whole lot. It's something that we've constructed in our head. And I made myself out to be this really, really bad guy. And when what it was, was, you know, yeah, I would do crazy things when I was drinking. But, you know, that wasn't, that didn't come from my spirit. That came from my illness. And as I'm reading through this inventory, and I'm not really getting like a reaction, like get the hell out of my house, you know, from you sick bastard, you know from, from my sponsor. He was not saying that and you know at the end, at the end when I, when I was all done, this was one of my experiences and I'll never forget it. My sponsor goes, you Know Chris, this, that's not so, that'S not so bad, you know we can, we can deal with that. That's, you know. He goes, he goes, I believe that you were, you were an alcoholic before you even started to drink alcohol. I believe you were like one of those campfires with the red burning coals and as soon as you took a drink it was like throwing gasoline on that campfire and the flames flew up and burnt you and everybody close to you. And right now you're in the process of trying to recover from that. You're trying to make your life a little bit better. You're tryng to learn how to have better relationships and treat people better and be less selfish. And, you know, I walked out of there probably for the first time feeling like an actual citizen, like an actually human being, and not some kind of low-life like Gollum in the Lord of the Rings. I finally started to feel like a human being. And it was my spirit beginning to wake up. I've heard a lot of fifth steps. I've given a lot OF fifth steps every single time there's a quantum leap forward in the person's life if they continue on. I feel like if you've missed the fourth and the fifth step, you've missing almost everything. Because the difference between sobriety, mere abstinence from alcohol, and recovery is like the difference entre night and day. And the only way to know that is in hindsight after you've recovered, unfortunately. because we have no yardstick to measure what recovery is prior to recovering. If you've never done a fourth and a fifth step, you have no experience of what that will do for you. You've only got an idea, and the idea is completely wrong. You need to experience this stuff to understand it. So when I'm working with people, when I make some things very, very clear, Like the book says in working with others, we ask the prospect to read the book. If you're going to work with me and Alcoholics Anonymous, you're gonna read the Book Alcoholics anonymous because I'm going to ask you, are you willing to go to any lengths? And I want you to know what any lengths looks like. Any lengths could be anything, right? You know, and a lot of times we're just programmed to say yes, yes, you know, and not really mean it. So if you're going to work with me, I want you to know what any lengths looks like. And I will expect you to do step work. Now that cuts down on the number of people that tug me on the shoulder and say, can I sponsor you? But that's fine. You know, I'm not into collecting or working 24 hours a day with this stuff. But the experience of the fifth step is really important. There are eight places that I can count in the book Alcoholics Anonymous where it tells you if you hold anything back or you're not as fearless and thorough as you can possibly be at that time with the fifth step, you will drink. Many of us have tried to find easier, softer ways, and we can't. And so this is really something you need to do for two reasons. The number one reason is, do you really want to put alcohol back in your body? Don't you remember what that was like? If you're anything like me, that needs to be avoided as the number one priority in my life. But the other reason is wouldn't you really wanna be absolutely enjoying life? To be able to live it to the fullest, to be able to deal on all levels, to be able to step out and do the things that you know you should be doing, you want to do, but in an unrecovered state, you just want to stay home. You can't deal. It's about quality of life. Now, at the end of the fifth step, there's an instruction. It says we need to...it's a construction reference And basically what it says is, are our stones properly in place? Have we tried to make mortar without sand? You know, have we skimped on any of these processes? Have we held anything back? There's a place where you need to stop and you need to read this. You know? Have you left anything out that needs to be shared? And if you haven't, it says, okay, go home or go somewhere where you can be quiet for an hour, you know, and you need to go over all this stuff. You go over the first five steps and ask yourself, is there anything that I haven't done? Because what you're trying to do is you're trying to build a foundation for the rest of your life, a recovery foundation. Now, step six and seven, they're some of my favorite steps, and they really are a life process. I mean, there's only a paragraph each. There's a paragraph on step six in the big book and there's a paragraphe on step seven. And it basically says, you know, are you ready to let God take all of these defects of character? I mean you've inventoried them. You've discovered the faults, the defects, the shortcomings, your sins. They use a lot of different terminology in the book. You've recovered what those are. Are you willing to have them removed? And on one level, we'll all say absolutely, yes. I mean this is where I'm shooting myself in the foot all the time. This is what's screwing up my life. This is why I can't get ahead. Of course I'll have these defects of character removed at a level. So I see this as a life process. I'll give you a for instance. Well how about lust? will you be completely willing to have God remove lust from you well hold on a minute there let me think about this if God takes my lust I'll never get laid again let's just hold on so there's levels that we're ready to take this stuff on and it's part of a life process it says if you're not willing to have some of these things removed pray for the willingness so as long as you're praying for the wilderness you know you're you're good with step six now the exact wording we heard it read here i love the exact warning for the origin from the original manuscript you have to understand the original manuscript was what the alcoholics came up with Then they took that manuscript and they passed it around to people of science, religion, the medical people, you know, editors. And a bunch of suggestions were made from that original manuscript that ended up in the first edition of the big book. But if you look at the original manuscript, that's the way Bill and the boys finished it off. You know, that is how I feel at least. And step seven says, you know, humbly on our knees, holding nothing back. You know, we ask God to remove these defects of character. Now when some of the people saw the way Bill wrote that, they said to him, you know you can't have those people up, they're never going to get down on their knees Bill, you've got to lighten this up. So he lightened it up. But the first, the early AAs, especially over at Dr. Bob's house, You sure do know they were down on their knees asking God to have these defects of character removed. Or they'd be in big trouble with the doc. Remember, he was a proctologist. You did not want him on your ass. You know what I mean? So anyway, humbly, you know, let's look at this. Let's look AT humility for a minute. Humility, there's some great definitions of humility. There's a wonderful one in the step book. My personal favorite is an accurate self-appraisal. I mean, if you really know where you fit into the universe and you're not exaggerating or you're not making yourself lower than you really are, then I think that's a form of humility everybody. Remember that it says God in these two steps. Now, one of the things that the 12-step abstinence movement gets so much crap for in different countries is our reliance on God. It's obviously a God-help program. It is not really a self-help program. I mean, just read the instructions. And, you know, the thing that I would say to anybody who wants to criticize trying to access the power of God to solve your problems is, well, how are you doing? You know, there's so many treatment processes that are almost negligible results because there's nothing that's going to create the atmosphere conducive to long-term recovery. This 12-step process does, and when it's engaged in, rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. Now my first run through the steps after I did that bastardized fourth and fifth step my first time at about six months, I was now on steps six and seven, right? Well, I went about the task of removing my own character defects because I thought that's what you were supposed to do. Okay? I'd heard everybody talk about, I'm working on my character defects. I'd hear that at, you know, 50 meetings. So I started working on it. I started workin' on my characteristic defects. And I learned somethin', I learned something very interesting is I'm not real good at workin''on my characteristic defect. I don't get very far, all right? You know, I'll say, okay, this week I'm not going to be selfish anymore. You know? And the first thing I'll do is like push somebody out of the way in the express lane or something. I mean, you know, that's just the way I am. Now, if you're going to work on your character defects, the best way I've heard it described is like this. Anybody in here familiar with that game whack-a-mole? You take a mallet and a mole puts his head up and you try to smack the mole and then another one pops up, if you're working on your character defects, you're whacking the mole. And somebody very, very close to me one time said, Chris, you keep whacking a mole like that and you can go blind. I know. I know that's bad. Well, maybe one eye. Anyway, it really is. It's an exercise in futility to try to do that. The word God is in those two steps for a very, very significant reason. My alcoholism was too much for me. My alcohol isn't too much too much to me. I here's here's this. Here's a typical day for me when I was drinking. I would come to in the morning wearing the clothes that I passed out in the night before. And, you know, the alarm would be going off. It'd be like seven thirty. I'd have to be there at 8 o'clock, and I'd get up, and I would stagger into the bathroom, and I do my vomiting calisthenics. You remember those? I'd brush my teeth, try to get a comb through my hair, make it out to the car. Off to work, I go. I'm just ringing. It's not even a hangover. It's poisoned. I get to work. My boss would go, I don't want you to do this, this, and this. I'd get in the van, I'd make it halfway out the driveway and I'd go, what the hell did you want me to do? I mean, I was shattered. So I'd have to go back, you know, what did you Want Me To Do? God damn it, I told you to write things down. You know, so I'd Get Out To The Job Site. And I am not kidding you. I would swear to God that this is the last time I'm going to do this. I mean I am illing. You know what it felt like after a really bad night? You just want it to die. So here I am, I'm at work, you know, and I'm going, I'll say that tonight, I said, no, I am not going to drink, I'm not goingto drink tonight, I'm just going to give this up, this is alcohol, this is bad stuff. You know, and I'll tell you what, if there's a polygraph expert would put a poly graph on me and say, kid, are you ever going to drinking again? No! It would say, yeah, he's never drinking again. This guy go, put money on this guy, he's telling the truth, he'snever going todrinkagain. About lunchtime, I'm rehydrated. You know, you have to drink about a half a gallon of something. And I got some food in me, you know, and my head is starting to feel a little human. And I would say to myself, you Know that decision this morning to give up drinking today? That's a pretty stiff decision. That might have to be modified a little bit. I might have to modify that today. And I would stop at the liquor store on the way home. I was caught in this unbelievable cycle I could not break. It didn't matter if I wanted to not drink. That's not going to keep you from drinking. It doesn't matter what the consequences are going to be if you drink, if you go to jail or die. I mean, I've seen alcoholics with two esophageal varices, right? go leave the hospital and start drinking. Now, you're almost guaranteed you're not going to last 12 hours doing that, and I've seen them do it. So it doesn't matter if it's going to kill you. It doesn't mater if you're going to go back to prison. It doesn' t matter how much you want to not drink until a certain psychic change happens. You're powerless over alcohol. I see the same thing in character defects. I was always so judgmental I could take your inventory from a mile away and not even see my part in it you know, I mean I was trained in taking he's a hypocritical miserable bastard I mean, I just know it and I was unbelievable judgmental and I gossiped I'd get this guy over here and talk about that guy and then I'd go over and talk to that guy about this guy I mean, I was caught in this dysfunctional type of horrible type of relationship type stuff. And I just couldn't seem to help it. I knew it was hurting me. I knew It was pissing people off. I knew I was wrecking relationships. And I tried to stop and I tried To stop. And I couldn't get any momentum. I couldn' t get any trashing with these things. now you know when you make the decision in the third step you make a decision to turn your will and your life over to the care of God as you understand him that means that there's got to be some effort on your part there has to be some action that follows that decision and part of the action in steps six and seven is basically this if you want to be in the best possible climate for the removal of your character defects, you definitely have to be involved with steps six and seven, coming to terms with them, becoming willing to have them removed and humbly asking for them to be removed. But the best possible spiritual atmosphere to be in for the remove of character defects is steps eight and step nine, where you become willing to make direct amends for where those defects have caused harm in your life and actually go out and make direct amends. The word actually is a really good word to put in front of every action step because there are � I heard it described as this. You know what alcoholic insanity is? Being in AA, which is a 12-step fellowship and not doing the 12 steps. Oh, you're in a 12?step fellowship? What are those steps like? Well, I don't know. I don' t do them. So, you know, it would be like joining Oprah's book club and going to all the discussions on the books and never reading them. You know what I mean? But I've got an opinion on it, you now. I'll tell you what I think of that book. Well, did you read it? No. Or it would been like if you wanted the calculus experience. Calculus can help you solve some of your problems. So you go to the university and you sit in calculus classes. You don't get a book. You don' t do any of the problems. You just sit in Calculus like two or three times a week, and you share about Calculus. You know? And you talk about Calcus. You get a Calculus tutor, but you don't toot. And, you know, you're grateful to be in the Calculus class, But you never learn any of the exercises. You never solve any of The Problems. You can never apply calculus to your life to make your life better. It's the same thing that happens in AA every day, and it truly is alcoholic insanity. Now, there's a great story that describes Step 6 and 7 very, very well. Little Joey, okay, he's about five or six years old. It's afternoon, he has just gotten home from school and he starts to get a toothache. Okay, his tooth starts to hurt. Now he thinks, you know, if I tell my mommy that my tooth is hurting, I will get an aspirin, you now, and the pain will go away. But he doesn't go to his mother and tell her that he's got a tooth ache. You want to know why? Because he knows, yeah, he'll get that aspirin and the toothache will go away. But the next day there's going to be an appointment with Dr. Mengele, the dentist. And there's gonna be drills and smoke and needles and blood. And when he walks out of there the next day, he's gonna have perfect teeth. He doesn't want perfect teeth, he just wants the pain to go away and so often that's us. We don't want to be perfect, we don't want all our defects of character removed. We just want the pain to go away. But the only help out there is perfect help. That's the problem. The only help out there is perfect health. It's a spiritual awakening. That is perfect health. That what's out there for us. That is all I have on steps 5, 6 and 7. Thank you for letting me share. We open for sharing, you know, whatever comes to mind. Anybody want to contribute? you. Yeah, in the beginning of the step book, it states that the step book is written to broaden and deepen the concepts as they were laid out in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. The book Alcoholic Anonymous is the basic text. The step book wasn't written to redo the instructions of the steps. The steps were already fine in the big book. Bill, for a number of different reasons, wrote those essays on the steps and the step book. Anybody that's read it's a wonderful book. Nobody can pin the alcoholic to the wall like Bill Wilson in those steps. I mean, I hear me coming out of that every step of the way. But although there's instructions in it, it's not the instructions for the steps you know there's philosophy in it but it's not really a philosophical text it's more just essays that that uh that bill and some some other people collaborated on uh talking about you know the experience of the steps so uh so when it's time to actually do steps it's just more clear in the book alcoholics anonymous than it is in uh in the step book although the step book is a wonderful guide for everyone that wants to live a 12-step spiritual life. It's not really instructional. We're at the hour. We have a nice way of closing. Thank you for listening.