Mechanical Steps and Soul Repair – Big Book Workshop Retreat – Edwards House – Part 1 of 7

Hi everybody, my name is Chad and I'm an alcoholic. You guys hear me okay? Did I unmute and everything? Are you guys good back there? Okay, good. My sobriety date's November the 12th, 1988. I do have a sponsor, his name is Mickey M. He's from Denver, Colorado. And I have a home group, it's the Bothell Big Book Group in Bothell, Washington. We're in the upper northeast corner of Seattle. And we're on Thursday nights at 8 o'clock, and we talk about the big book. We're an hour meeting, and there's about anywhere from 10 to 15 of us. So it's a great little small group. I'm used to really big groups, so I really love having a little small team. I'm honored to be here, and I will get into that as we go this weekend. I'm going to let Nate say a couple quick things, and then we're going to do a couple other things, and then I'll see you guys next week. And we'll get rolling. So, my name is Nate. I'm an alcoholic. Nate. Uh, you mentioned I had to go to Maine, so I did not fly many, many miles. Uh-oh. I am in trouble. I think so. Oh! Oh! Happy to be here. Uh, I am from Gray, Maine. Drove many miles, did not fly. I do have a home group as well, Gray Village Group in Gray, Maine it's very similar to what Chad was probably describing it's very small which is also not what I'm used to I come from at least originally big fiery meetings where everyone is really really excited and lots of people that carry the message but not a lot of people to help so and then we'll get into that too for sure as throughout the course of the weekend that's a big part of my transformation since I've been around here. My sobriety date is September 3rd of 2006. I, too, am very, very honored to be here with all of you this weekend, in particular with Chad as probably one of my closest peers in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. And he happens to live in Seattle and I live in Maine. So if you picture that on a map, our sponsor is in Denver. We share a sponsor. So this is a pretty special adjoining of, I won't say forces because it's not exactly that, but of like-mindedness. It's not very often that I get to spend a full weekend in a room like this with someone that is truly very, very like-mindered and really walking the same path. And I think that's just wonderful. Excited to be here and excited to do that. And I already feel a very warm welcome presence here in this room. So I thank you all for that, and I'm looking forward to getting a chance to connect and meet all of you throughout the course of the weekend as well. One of the things that was important for Nate and I to do is we just wanted to take a minute. You guys all know each other, I'm assuming, or a lot of you, and i don't have any idea. And I'm horrible at reading name tags. So what I was hoping we could do is really quickly, because as one of my mentors in this thing, Don P., did math for me many years ago. And he said, if each one of us in this room take a minute, it's going to be an hour to get through this. So we're not going to take a moment. It's just like, we're not going vape in the room and we're gonna just give us your name, sobriety date, and maybe where you're from just real quickly and that just kind of helps us start to put names to faces and start to kind of get an idea of who's in room and yeah and we'll go from there so let's just whoever wants to start let's start there alcoholic my sobriety days 1990 and I live in Walden sandy alcoholic from Somerville I'm sobriete date is September 2013 recovered alcoholic. My name is Jessica. My sobriety date's March 13th, 2009 and I'm from Plimpton, Massachusetts. I'm Lisa. I'm an alcoholic. My sobpriety date is May 14th, 2018 and I am from Plymouth. Hi, I'm Emily. I am an alcoholic My sobrietty date is May 2nd, 2019 I'm originally from Chicago, but I'm now living in Northborough. Maureen, alcoholic, drug addict. My sobriety date is March 10th, 2019. Hi, my name's Kevin. I'm an alcoholic. My sobrietty date is April 22nd of 19, and I live in Marlborough. Thank you. Hi, I'm Maurean, alcoholic. My sobriety date is July 13, 2015, and I live in Marlborough. Hi, I'm Roy. I'm an alcoholic. My sobrietty date is April 15th of 2014, and I leave about four blocks from here. Mark C., alcoholic. Sobriety Date, August 27, 2019, Sturbridge, Mass. I'm James. I'm here as a supporter. We live at Southbridge, Massachusetts. hi i'm anna from taunton massachusetts and i'm here supporting steve steve alcoholic my sobriety date is january 26 2017 and i live in northborough thank you melissa alcoholic addict um my sobrietty date is september 15th um 2014 and um i'm from worcester hi my name is kathleen i'm an alcoholic my sobriety date is april 21st 2010 and i am from shrewsbury massachusetts hi i'm julianne alcoholic my sobiety date is march 10th 2017 and i'm from holden massachusetts i'm tracy i'm an alcoholic my sobriety date is december 26 1995 and i'm from clinton hi everybody i'm dick h uh from milford and my sobrietty date is uh october 6 1991 and i am debbie al-anon i'm six months behind him hi Marie addict alcoholic my sobriety date is November 2nd 2017 and I'm from Hudson Mass hi everybody my name is Eduardo my sobpriety date is January 4th 1985 and I live in Worcester my name is Eddie, and I'm an alcoholic. And my sobriety date is August 1st, 1991. And I live in Natick, Mass. Hi, I'm Laura, I am an alcoholic, and my sobriety date is November 27th, 2012, and I live Lexington, Mass. I'm Marianne, I' m a recovered alcoholic. My sober date is 8-22-08. I have a home group just for today, Arlington, Massachusetts, and i have a sponsor who has a sponsor. I'm Gwen, I'm an alcoholic and my sobriety date is May 2nd, 84 and I live in Littleton, Mass. Hi, I am Eric. I am an alcoholic. I live in Wakefield. My sobriete date is July 5th, 2011. Hi I'm Jenny Elanon and I also live in Wakefield I'm Kirstie I am from Stowe and my sobriety date is March 4th 2019 hi my name is Andy my sobrietty date is April 28th 2012 and I'm a transplant from Syracuse New York and the bills are undefeated I am Danny. I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is November 13th, 2016. That's all I got. My name is Ryan and I'm alcoholic. My sobpriety date is April 10th, 2019 and I've been from Framingham. My name's Brent. I'm a alcoholic. My sobrietty date is June 8th, 2018 and I'm from Andover, Mass. Hi everybody, my name's Ellen and I am an alcoholic. My sobriety date is March 27th, 2011. I'm From Sudbury, Mass and my home group is the Great Reality Big Book meeting in Westboro on Tuesday nights. Hi, I'm Steve. I'm an alcoholic and an addict. My sobrietty date is December 18th, 2015 and I come from Worcester. Gail, alcoholic. I'm an alcoholic, November 26th, 2018, from Millbury, Massachusetts. Hi everybody, I'm Sean. I'm a alcoholic and a degenerate drug addict. My sobriety date is March 21st, 2018 and I live in Framingham. Hi, I am Elizabeth. I'm alcoholic. My sobrietty date is April 30th, 2013 and I live in Fremingham. Hi, everyone. I'm Justine. My sobriety date is July 16th, 2018, and I live in Tewksbury, Massachusetts. My name is Ed. I am an alcoholic. My sobriety date is January 4th, 2011, and I live in Waltham, Mass. My name is Peter. I am an addict and alcoholic. My sobriet date is 485, and it's nice to be here. I live in Wayland. Hey, everybody. My name's Carrie Ann, and I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is March 23rd, 2016, and I'm from Marlboro. Hi, I'm Noreen. My sobriety date is June 18th, 2009, and I am from Oxbridge. My name is Malcolm. I'm an alcoholic my sobrietytate is July 16th of 1983 and I'm also from Uxbridge. Hi, my name is Margaret. I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is August 27th, 2017 and I am from Natick. My name is Larry Al-Anon. I'm here to support Margaret. Hi, Jennifer, alcoholic. Sobriety day is January 14th, 2019 and I've been framing him. Hi, I'm Kimberly. I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is 1-18-18 and I'm from Ashland, Mass. Thank you. Is that everybody? Great. So, um, I just want to say real quick, I just feel inspired to say this. It's nice. And I remember when I was, when I was first coming into rooms like this and having to even say what everyone just said out loud made me see white because I would get so anxious and nervous you know I remember that very clearly and how hard it was to even say that and also just the reiteration that you know time in the program is a wonderful thing we celebrate it we'll celebrate it at length as I hear tomorrow night with a sobriety countdown however I'm a big believer for myself that we're all on borrowed time today by the grace of God. And time may help, and it may help us get a little further down the road, but I need to show up to battle this alcoholism and lean into God today just as much as I do any other day. So it's not a gauge of how well we are. It's just full disclosure for me. That's awesome. Yeah. So what I was hoping we could do is, it may be a little obsessive to do this every time we gather, but I'd like to at least start tonight and then we'll maybe do it at least once or twice tomorrow, is just take about three minutes of silence, do with it what you want, and just to try and get ourselves all kind of in the room, away from work, away from family. And I got a little bell that's going to ding. You guys might want to shut the recording off or not. Who knows? Maybe the people listening need three minutes of quiet, too. I know I do most days. You'll hear a couple dings that will start, and then the timer will start. . . . . . . . you . . . . . you . you you Thank you. that. In November of 1988, I went to this retreat. I was young and it wasn't an AA thing and this guy stood up and told a story. And if you've ever had that moment where something just inside of you clicks and you go, man, the way I'm living isn't the right way to we live in, and I made this decision, I guess if you'd call it that. I feel like it was divinely inspired to quit drinking and using drugs, and i walked out of this little room. It was at like a retreat center. There were multiple buildings, like a camp for little kids, kind of. That's what it was built for originally, andI walked out this room, and there was this group meeting, And starting to meet over in the corner, and I asked this guy, I said, what's going on over there? And they said, that's an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. And I said、Oh, that isn't for me. And I was dying of alcoholism at a young age, but AlcoholicsAnonymous wasn't for my life. That wasn't it for me." I was introduced to AlcoholicsAnenomous in 1983. My stepdad, who brutally beat my mom and I multiple times, was coming back into the home after being removed for I don't know how many times and he sat down and he explained that he had found Alcoholics Anonymous and that our family was going to be reunited and we were going tobe together and that just didn't happen I was so terrified in that home at such a young age that I would this all kind of flooded back to me the last couple of days as I was just kind of thinking about things and I was so terrified in that home in the mornings when I would wake up, you know, little boys usually we have to go to the bathroom. And so I'd get wake up and I'd be so terrified to even walk out into the hallway to use the bathroom that I would open the window and pee out the window. And if I couldn't get the window open, I would just go in the corner of my room. And, um, and I don't know why or how or why that never got discovered, but I'm sure that the, that whole corner of that bedroom was ruined you know by the time they ended up moving out of that house and what ended up happening in that relationship with my mom is she ended up having to go into hiding and i got shipped off to live with my dad for a period of time in the midwest which is like for a kid like me who you know i i wanted to be a rock star at a young age and i had long hair and earrings and the whole deal and being plopped out of seattle and tossed into this small little town in the Midwest was not a good idea for me, and so I walked away from that Alcoholics Anonymous meeting because AAA was full of people like him, and I wasn't going to come be a part of that. I didn't belong in AlcoholicsAnonymous, and i lived dry for a period, and And I got this counselor, came to my high school. And she did a little presentation to the faculty. And the faculty, she said, hey guys, can you give me some names of some kids that need help? My name was the top of the list. Which at the time, I was like honored. Like, uh-oh. you pulled me out of like an actual academic class to come talk to you and i was the top of the list but as i've grown older i look back and go that's not a list i want to be on but it was a list that saved my life really truly when i was about six months sober i was in a car i call it a car accident i had a friend of mine on the hood of my car and he fell off and He was in a coma for two or three months, and they put him in a room to die. And the humiliation and the terror and the horror of that whole experience. But in that devastation, I had a spiritual experience where I believed I was just given this feeling that everything was going to be okay. And I think that's the only thing that kept me sober that whole time until that counselor pulled me out of school and sat down with me. And I'm going to speed through a bunch of stuff and get to a point here, and then I'm gonna let Nate talk. My high school girlfriend got pregnant. She ended up miscarrying. My plan was I was going to move, right? Because she was messing up my plans. and I was going to move. And then that wasn't going to work out because I was young and can't really move somewhere, start a new life. And so my plan was I was gonna go to treatment. That was my plan. Michael Keaton's movie, Clean and Sober, had just kind of come out. And I'm like, that's what I gotta do. I gotta go, I gotta get out of here. I gotta goto treatment, get away for 30 days, It's like get a break from life, and then I'll be okay. And I called this treatment center with my little counselor because she entertained the idea with me. She knew it was a really dumb idea, but she entertained me, and she helped me. She got the white pages out or the yellow pages out, and we looked for alcohol treatment, and I called This Place. And this little woman on the other end of the line, she started talking to me about what was going on and what was happening and when was my last drink, and it had been a couple years. But I was stark, raving, mad, sober. I was nuts. And she told me that what she suggested I do is go to Alcoholics Anonymous, get a sponsor, go to 90 meetings in 90 days, work the steps. And I told her where to stick her AlcoholicsAnonymous and hung up on her. I looked at my counselor and I said, I'm going to go drink so that I can go to treatment. that. That's complete insanity. And I like to believe that I was struck sober and this God that I believe in, that I didn't believe in then, dropped these little nuggets of things in my life. But that night, my girlfriend and I went to Denny's. I don't know if they have Denny's here. They're little diners. Because Denny'S would let underage kids drink coffee and smoke cigarettes. So we would go there a lot. And I walked in the room, and there was a guy in the back that she knew who had just gotten out of jail. Him and I started talking, and we had some common bands that we liked. And he was a guitar player, and I was a good guitar player. And we were going to forge this new thing in a matter of a few minutes that we were going to take over the music world. And he started saying, you know, and I got to go to these AA meetings. It's a part of my probation. I was like, man, I'm supposed to go those too. Hours earlier, I left school going to go drink so I could go to treatment. And here I am with this guy and he's got to go to meetings and I've got to get to meetings. So he took me to my first meeting. And on our way out of that meeting, he asked me to be his sponsor. And I agreed. Which if anything should tell you about my ego, it rebuilt itself in a matter of a few hours. And now I'm sponsoring a guy who took me to my first meeting. And, and I had no idea how to help that guy. No idea. and um and so on through you know jason was a guy that was in my life for a long time and we were like thick as thieves man we were tight tight tight and um about 15 years ago jason got a record deal and uh and he killed himself a few months later because the insanity of alcoholism was too great he couldn't deal with it anymore and he ended up taking his own life and um my life went a different direction, I decided that what I needed to do was I needed to become a counselor and help people get sober. And mind you, all I was doing was going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. I wasn't taking steps. I didn't have a sponsor. I got a sponsor at one point, but then he had me meet him at a vegetarian restaurant, and I assumed he was vegetarian and fired him because I wasn'T about to have a vegetarian sponsor. I've since grown. I'm okay with vegetarians, but I was like, this guy doesn't know what's going on. He obviously doesn't have a grasp on reality, and I don't want him helping me. The truth is I didn't want help. On August 6th of 1993, I was almost five years sober, and I met the man that was my first sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous. He actually read me the big book about Alcoholics Aanonymous. and I was convinced at almost five years sober that I was going to take my own life again. There was no other way out and I went to this meeting. I met him by chance. I won't go into that, but I met his wife and I met with him the next night I went into his home group and in that meeting I heard a woman talk about being six years sober and her sponsor committing her to a psych ward because she was crazy. And she got out of that psych ward, and she got a new sponsor, and she started working steps. And she went through the big book line by line, page by page, and her life was changed. She didn't have to drink again. So I asked the guy that became my sponsor to be my sponsor, and he told me no. And I stood there and smoked a cigarette outside that church, convinced that I was going to kill myself that night. the pain was so great i couldn't take it anymore and drinking wasn't an option and uh and he came back to me and he said you know somebody told me once that if they ask you can't say no and uhand so that started my journey in the big book of alcoholics anonymous and he read me the book. And he shared his experience with me. And when we went into the first step, we started looking at what is an alcoholic? What is the big books definition of an alcoholic. The big book talks about this thing called the phenomenon of craving. Big book talks about the mental obsession with alcohol. I haven't liked coconut most of my life. I have never accidentally eaten coconut, ever. Right? I don't think it'll be different this time and eat coconut. I just don't. I have the ability to understand that I don't like it and not do it. When it comes to alcohol, I don�t have that. I get a drink in me, and the drink takes a drink, as they say. And I have this mental idea. There was this time I got drunk with a friend of mine. We snuck out, came back in. I puked all over their bathroom. I told the mom, you know, I ate something. I hadn't eaten anything right I puked beer all over her bathroom and beer does not smell like cheeseburgers right when it comes out and I went home and I told my mom oh I ate something I don't know if it's sick or something I'm sure I'll be fine in the morning and I believed that lie for the rest of my life right one of my favorite stories is just because it gets a great reaction is I was riding my little BMX bikes one day and I got to this little store and I Got one of those Big pints of chocolate milk. I was drinking chocolate milk, it was a sunny day. Living the dream, right? 14 years old, chocolate milk and a BMX bike. What else do you need? And I get to my friend's house and his parents aren't home, so that means the liquor cabinet's open. And what that usually looked like was a little bit of everything. You know? And so I took this thing of chocolate milk, I drank about half of it, and I poured just about everything you can think of in this thing. All of it, right? And I would take a drink of it and you can imagine what that tastes like. Only in this room can you imagine it, right? Tell this story to normal people and they are like, I have no idea what that tasted like. It was horrible. And I could not not drink it. And if you're an alcoholic, you understand that. I continued to find myself drinking it. Oh, that's disgusting. And then a minute or two later, you know, whoa, that is bad. And I drank that whole thing. You know? And I didn't have any intention of drinking that day. I actually had an intention of not drink that day because I would take a drink and go, That is disgusting. I don't want to do that. But I could not take the drink. And that's what it was described to me in the book of Alcoholics Anonymous, and that only alcoholics have that. My mom one day told me that she went out to dinner with some friends and she had a glass of wine. And the waiter came by and it was a really busy time. And she said, hey, I'll take a second glass of Wine. And she wasn't done with the first glass. And I'm thinking we're headed for alcoholism, like we're getting a good start of alcoholism here. and my mom's not an alcoholic and she said to me I'm so glad the waiter forgot the second glass of wine because I don't feel so well after the first one. What? What do you mean? You don't feel so good after the second glass of wine. I think that's a good stopping point for me. I covered a lot of ground. Sure. All right. You're good, I hear you. It's always interesting when you're going to spend a whole weekend talking to do a summary at the beginning because you'll probably have the nitty-gritty by the time we walk out of here on Sunday, which is fine by me. Something that my, or I guess I can say our this weekend, our sponsor says often is that when you are invited to a weekend like this You're not there to be the entertainment, right? I'm not here to be the entertainment. I personally am here to share myself with all of you because I believe that that's what God would want me to do today to try to carry this message the way that I understand it, the waythat I feel it in my heart and the way that I know can change, transform and save lives, right, because as I said, we are certainly all on borrowed time. So it's an important message. It's an important message, and I wish that I could formulate words to convey the level of gratitude that I have for Alcoholics Anonymous in the big book because it's just, without that, I can't even imagine. I'd likely be in the ground today is where I would be. Truth be told, however, for an alcoholic, being in the groundbreaking is easier than being alive. Being in the ground is easier than being live removed from a drink because the effect that alcohol has on me once it hits my system, I don't get loose, I get normal. I'm not drinking to go up here. I'm drinking to just get on the level with everybody else. Hindsight being 20-20. I didn't know that when I drank. I didn' t know that's what was happening to me. I didn''t know that And the feeling of being able to absolutely disappear but still be standing right in front of you was the best thing I had ever discovered in my entire life. Because all I want to do is run. If I can't run physically, I can run mentally. And I can running a lot of ways. By no means do I sit here today as someone that has no desire to run from my life. That's just not my experience. I have alcoholism, and that's what I'm really hoping that we can talk about throughout the course of this weekend is truly what is alcoholism beyond the drink? Because as Chad mentioned, when you take the drink away from me, I don't get better. I don' t get better, I get a lot worse. And to try to live life removed from some sort of substance to make me feel just a little more comfortable than I would be is impossible for me. It just is. Removed from God, removed from a solution. I don't know how to be here. I don'T know how TO have a conversation with you. I DON'T know HOW TO talk to you about your weekend or whatever you want to talk about. I'M actually thinking about my rebuttal before you'RE done talking. Right? Because I DONT care. I really DON'T. Left to my own devices, I am turned inward. I am selfish and self-centered to the core even though I aspire to be something so much more generous and better than that. The good news is that I don't have the power to change myself, right? Attempting to change my self and being willing to be changed are two very different things I've discovered throughout the course of my journey in Alcoholics Anonymous. Only God has the power for me. He has the ability to change me. I can't no matter how hard I try in fact usually if I as an alcoholic experience fear I will react in a way that makes it 12 times worse I will I will live out the self-fulfilling prophecy if I think you're gonna leave me I'll make you leave me right if I think I'm gonna get hurt I'll hurt myself if I think I'll quit because you will not take away my ability to ingest rat poison on my terms, right? Metaphorically speaking, of course. But I think we can all identify with that to some degree. Fight for my life to kill myself. I did that for my entire life. I'm not one that necessarily believes I drank my way into alcoholism. I had the isms and the mentality and the hardwiring of this disease as far back as I can remember having a pulse, you know? And I just remember back. And one of the pictures I like to paint is that I remember, you know, everybody when you're young and you're a kid and you're going back to school, like the last day of summer is like the worst day in the world for every child on the planet, right? Like it's depressing. The sun's going down. You know the party's over. Oh, this is gross. This is going to be horrible. I felt like that every day of my life just to have a pulse on planet Earth was never enough for me and I was raised in a home that outside looking in I should have turned out a little more normal than I actually did normal in big quotes right whatever that is but nope nope my alcoholism doesn't necessarily run in my family I brought it to it in a big way I brought a lot of pain and suffering to my family September 3rd of 2006 I was jobless I was homeless I gave up on bathing too busy to get sober at the time as you can imagine people were suggesting you know that I should go in a long term short term whatever term just not where you are treatment and I couldn't imagine stepping back who would manage the world while I was gone, right? But in my quiet moments, I hated myself more than I hated anyone else on earth. I couldn't look in the mirror without screaming and crying and wondering how the hell did I get here? How did I hurt this bad inside? So I can talk to you about my drinking and I will. However, that feeling of just emptiness no matter where I am in life with people by myself, doesn't matter. I'm always chasing something. I am always chasing something shining, a distraction, something that will make life feel worth living in that moment, right? We have maybe some of you even familiar with it being that it's not that far away in southern Maine there's a I will say loosely it's a theme park called Fun Town. Fun Town Splash Town is what it's called nowadays and when I was growing up that would be the it might as well have been a second Christmas for me right it was my focal point of my young life we were going to fun town in summer and what would happen is is that you know my parents would essentially announce it like a year in advance and I lock on to that trip and the obsession of it for the next 364 days about how amazing that was gonna be and how much it was just gonna make life fantastic and how blissed out I was going to be. I'm like seven years old, right? And this is how I'm thinking. So in the book when they say that once this type of thinking is established in someone with alcoholic tendencies, forget about it. That was there with me from the get-go. So I look back and say, in a way, thank you God, but also, whoa, that's a serious misfiring of the connections at that young of an age, right. so you fast forward to day 364 we're on the way and I'm depressed because it's almost over we haven't even gotten there yet right I mean copy and paste to the rest of my life how I see everything right before I once I found alcohol that created that for me every day right every day it didn't matter how depressed i was it didn't matter how hungover i was it didn t matter how bad i hated myself or all the filthy things that i had done all the shame that i was carrying on my shoulders all the things i just wanted to convince myself were a dream because they were so horrible take a sip of booze and all of a sudden anything is possible right it fixes me it fixes me. And I too don't understand this, this, I can leave a half glass of wine on the table mentality. I don't get it. I remember growing up, even when I was, when I Was young and I would just drink and I, you know, I have that phenomenon of craving when, when alcohol hits my system, something fires up and I can't not think about the 17th one that's coming. Right. And there needs to be more. And if there's a risk of not having more, I need to ensure that there is more lined up somewhere. And that evolved into bigger things for me as I went down that line, right? I don't necessarily think I was a drug addict per se, but I did a lot of dry goods to help me drink better. Just put it that way. I don'T care what it is. If it can fill the void of God in my soul, I'll ingest it by the pound. I DON'T care. Booze, whatever. I can lean into things that aren't actually chemicals too, which is also a scary reality for me. You know? money, power, prestige, sex, so on down the line. I can get just as lost in the mental pursuit of those things as I did that Funtown example when I was a child. What that does is that takes me away from now. That takes me away from being here now with God. God doesn't live in the past or in the future. God lives now, in the moment. And that's the only way I can have any shot at this called life because I am hardwired to live in the wreckage of the past and the wreckage the future right I mean they're terrified that something's gonna fall apart tomorrow or I'm looking back saying that should have been different I mean that's just just how I am I the way that I treat myself and this was a concept that was introduced to me through step work and through actually taking a walk through the book and in realizing just how horrible the perception is that I have of myself. I was really unwilling to look at that for a long time, even up into being in sobriety, being in recovery, walking through the book. I had never really admitted just how little I think of myself Boy, and if you thought as little of yourself as I did myself and as I do myself still sometimes today, you'd try to kill yourself every day too. you know and it doesn't have to be with a chemical you know selfishness kills right resentment can kill as it says in our book all these things that I didn't know were out there yet it seems like I mean aside from being locked in a cell somewhere removed from everything I'd probably still find a way to self-destruct all by myself and it's just how I'm hardwired again so I So unfortunately, I am not one that was able to just bounce back and live a decent life removed from alcohol. Actually, my life fell apart when I stopped drinking because I just didn't know how to do it. I didn't Know How To Go To The Grocery Store Without Having A Panic Attack. I Didn't KnowHowToGoOutInPublicAndTalkToPeopleAboutNormalThings. I didn' t want to, honestly. I didn''t care less. I didn ''t want to go to AA meetings because everybody felt creepy. and it just felt, I'm like, you guys are just waiting for my guard to go down and then you're going to, whatever, right? You're going ot screw me over basically somehow. Because, I mean, my whole life I surrounded myself with people that acted that way. And truth be told, I acted thatway, right. Steal your wallet and help you try to find it kind of a guy, right, and God willing that's not the man that I am today, you know. I mean, at home right now, I have my beautiful wife. We just celebrated seven years of marriage, which to me is insane. I can't do that, remove from God and remove from this work. We just passed a six-month birthday of our baby, our first child. This is just – but then you rewind a little bit. But back in the spring, Chad actually came up to visit in March of this past year. And in the four months leading up to the time that he was in town, one of our dogs died tragically. My father-in-law, my wife's father, died on site from like a whatever. Some sort of growth in his head. 56 great shape never a health problem he passed away two weeks later our daughter was born right and i won't sit here and say and i didn't have to drink through that because i don't think that's what it's about right as a side note i didn' t have to drink through any of that but if you would have asked me because i am selfish and self-centered to the core If you would have given me an opportunity to rewind and not go through those things, aside from my daughter being born, I would say absolutely. I don't want to do that. I don' t want to suffer. I don''t want to hurt. I don ''t want feel. And I can look back at those experiences and see unbelievable silver lining and transformation that happened not only in my own soul but in my marriage and my relationship with my wife. And that''s not the guy I am. Right? I avoid discomfort at all costs. To be honest, when I first got sober, I was actively starting to mourn people that had died years ago because I just stayed so numb throughout that entire time. It's like I never actually even registered it, what was actually happening. So yeah, I mean, I found alcohol and everything changed for me. but wow, I was really I too, I came in, I got sober I was living in a shelter at the time and I'm one of those ones that will always look down on you from the ditch if that makes sense, right? So here I am in dirty clothes without a shower for a week and a half and I am thinking am I going to sleep in a shelter room with that guy? Gross! I am still thinking I am so much better then yet I am one of many here right like I'm at this shelter don't have a place to live don't have a job to pay for a place really just cared about that next you know tall boy steel reserve and how I was gonna get through the day kind of a thing and so that's where my journey started you know walking around this this town in Maine with a backpack on my back because we couldn't be there for 12 hours a day you know that kind of thing and I'm thinking even still I'm like this is crazy clearly this I'm way too good for this right and I'm starting to go to AA meetings and I've started to get a feel for some of this stuff and what happened to me through a course of being removed from alcohol for a period of time again I went in I came from from detox to that shelter and I went to a long-term ish treatment place from there and it started to register with me that something may not quite be right with me. I hate, you know, it was monumental at the time, but I started to realize, hmm, something might very well be wrong here. And I would never admit that before. I just wouldn't. You know, It was all circumstantial. It was your fault, your fault your fault. Right? I thrive in the victim role. Right. Love it. I love it. Tell you, I have the flu and i've actually just been drinking for 12 months so i'm gonna be sick you know but bring me chicken noodle soup please right that kind of a thing um and uh you know i just i loved that victim role uh lost it that's what i love about chad and i i i've never heard him give the same talk twice ever and that same happens for me i get lost i lose you know whatever we're here to Let God direct the ship, right? So whatever comes out needs to come out. I'm a big believer in that. But so I went on from there. That's just how screwed up I actually was, to make it a long story short. And I was dry for a period. I hadn't done anything that they had told me to do aside from go to the mandatory meetings that I had to with the other gentleman my age. It was probably like 16 of us that got packed into this big blue van every night to go to a meeting, you know? We'd all be getting our button-down shirts on and gelling our hair and getting the cologne on, and we're ready to go work the room. Needless to say, in hindsight, when that bus rolls up, everybody's like, we need to help those guys. But it was such a – I basically bottomed out. I was sober for like six months, I think, and I was actively thinking about killing myself every day. And I would say that to be morbid. I say that because that was my reality. Removed from alcohol, without a solution, that's still on the table for me every single day. Terrifying. It's easier to think of checking out than to just live another life trying and suffering. Wow. And for the first time, I went and talked to my then counselor at this place and I said, I think I'm in the wrong spot. I need to get a ride over to the psych ward to be dealt with because I want to die right now. And I had not told anybody that at that point. He basically just, I didn't know it at the time, but he started to have a conversation with me and extract some of this stuff and relieve a little bit of that pressure that I had just completely internalized. Wouldn't you have it? By the end of that conversation, I did feel as crazy as I did at first, right? Um, which was a very, very humbling lesson for me very early on. But I realized that I'm not actually crazy. You know, I've heard crazy people don't know they're crazy. We're all fortunate. We're in the room tonight because we're crazy, right? I got my seat here today because I know I'm crazy. Um, so the fact that we know we're Crazy is a blessing, right. And today, the alcoholism that I've had as far back as I can remember that force me into what I would probably look back and say are the darkest, deepest, most tragic years of my life. I can look back on that today and really just with 100% honesty say it's the greatest blessing that's ever happened to me. I could have lived a mediocre, half-awake life in the middle. And I think that probably goes for a lot of us, right? I could've just drifted on by, but God has bigger plans for people, right, I would never believe that, and I don't sit here and say that, you know, I'm on some inspired mission where I hear the voice and I'm doing it, right? More often than not, you look at me and say, is this guy even sober, right, like what the hell's wrong with this guy, because in a lot of ways, and i take comfort in that though, right. The people that i confide in and that i truly crave walking this path with today are those that are not all buttoned up, those that are broken today, those that have challenges. They're not always perfect all the time, right? They have problems in their marriages. They're non-perfect parents, right, because for me to just sit by and say I'm good, I'm okay, I am actively dying. That's the translation for me because I'm not doing okay. and to my earlier point time sometimes is a sentence in itself because how many of us have probably i might myself speak for myself get to a certain point it's like i couldn't possibly say how how messed up i feel right now you know in hindsight i felt that you know when i was like five years sober i'm like i'm my people look up to me i can't possibly say that i'm having some issues you know that almost killed me it almost took me out it almost plucked me right out of Alcoholics Anonymous working a program going to six meetings a week sponsoring tons of people but not dealing with what was really going on inside of me if I don't deal with that today for me that I'm still not addressing the true problem right I may not be drinking today but just removed from alcohol, not pursuing a solution, right? And for me, that really all hinges on my relationship with God. More often than not, for me it's about submission rather than anything else. More often then not, when I'm in a pinch, I feel like I need to do something or act or take action. Sometimes the best thing I can do is inaction. It's inaction, it's to pause. and remove myself and ask god where do i go with this what needs to happen next right because i want to commit murder right sometimes you know uh boy and i we're on a recording here so i should keep it light probably but um i don't want to be blue papered into the psych ward at the end of the weekend but um you know a lot of the things we can talk about in the room together you're not going to talk about at walmart with other folks you know what i mean or well maybe you would at Walmart but you know never mind whatever anyway there'll be a lot more throughout the course of the weekend but I hope at least you know that I belong in the room with you from from that piece so thanks I am my hope is is that as we kind of go through this you guys can not just sit and listen but internalize some of this and ask yourself some of these questions and kind of that we can actually do some step work this weekend and get maybe a little deeper, dig a little deeper. I asked my sponsor about a year ago, I said, how many layers of the onion are there? Because I've peeled a lot. I'm tired. And he said, don't even ask the question because it's never ending. My sponsor is 40-some years sober, and he's still unraveling the onion, you know. and um my experience and what nate talked about is um i had my first sponsor that actually i did work with and he took me through the book and we got all the way through and i started sponsoring people and i caught on fire kind of what nade talked about and i decided to start a business started taking meetings in the treatment centers and i was i was on fire and i would i was sponsoring guys all over the place i was running workshops and i was doing all the stuff and it was great and it was fun and it Was exhilarating and but I had a sponsor that when we got done with the big book and we read 164 he shook my hand he said good luck don't forget the flimsy read call me if you need me i'm not a call you if i need you guy i'm not i'm not 10 years sober and going to pick up the phone and tell you that i'm dying inside and then i wake up every morning next to a woman i hate i'm not going to tell you that and i'm not going to tell the guys i sponsor that and i'm not going to tell a stranger that so what am i left with i'm hiding in alcoholics anonymous i'm giving you the stage character i want you to think i am and i m going home and i' m dying of alcoholism i'm dying of the obsession and the insanity that i can't be real i can t be truthful because what will you say and what will you think of me? So I had a couple, I had another guy that sponsored me for a while. I always feel like he gets cut out of my story because he sponsored me longer than anyone sponsored me but it was kind of you know, it was a really cool experience but my current experience is cooler so that's the one I kind of talk about. So in 2009 and I kind of want to get into a little bit of the unmanageability of the first step here. And in 2009, 2008, I was married. My wife and I got married in 2006. And we have three kids and two dogs, puppies. I mean puppies, I mean nine months old and four months old because we're insane. I have a three-year-old, six-year old, and nine-year old. So we're insane. It's insane in my house. Do you mind just sharing the names of those beautiful dogs? Oh, so my oldest, my nine-month-old dog's name is Ray Charles. Ray Charles was born blind. So we named him Ray Charles, like why wouldn't you? And the other, the little puppy, his name is Snoop Dogg. And he's a terror. I mean, he's just a total disaster. But so we bought a house, and we converted our other house into a rental. And we were living the dream, you know, the American dream. And then 2008, 2007, 2008, the mortgage crisis happened. And I was in the mortgage industry. I still am. And we lost everything. and um i was uh i was at the bankruptcy attorney's office and i stepped outside to call a friend of mine to just be like because i wasn't being sponsored i would i had a sponsor and he had a name and i put his name down but he wasn't really a guy that i called and and i called this guy and i said hey you know i'm not the bankruptcy journey and he's like okay and i said uh i said i need i need help i don't know if this is the right decision i gotta sign this paperwork. And so him and I are in the hallway and I'm doing this thing where I'm adding up the money I owe. And I keep coming to a million dollars. And I go, that's not right. Hold on a minute. And I'm going back through and I'M ADDING THE MONEY UP AND I'M GOING, I KEEP COMING TO A MILLION DOLLARS. AND I DON'T HAVE A MILLION DOLLars. AND I'M 20 YEARS SOBER. AND I'm dying. And about that time, I had met Mickey. I had met him years earlier, but he started doing some artwork for and designing the shirts for Northwest Fellowship of the Spirit, which I've been a part of. And I would just call him from time to time. And guys, if you're in a relationship, or gals, if your significant other says to you, hey, have you talk to so-and-so in a while? My wife would say, have you talked to Mickey in a while? And I'd say no. And she'd say, maybe give him a call. And I asked her one time, I said, why do you say that? And she said, there's something that happens to you when you talk to him. You change. So I would call Mickey and I would talk to him, and I'd say, Mickey, you know, I got this bankruptcy, and I don't have a job. My son was about to be born. I had herniated a disc in my back, and it couldn't work. I mean, it was just like multitude of things going on, right? And my back got better, and then I got in a car accident, hurt my back again, blah, blah. I laid on the floor. My wife said, you know, why don't you pray? And I told her, you know, F God. He's ruined me. Like he brought me all the way to this great stuff, and he's taking it all away. But I would call Mickey, and I would say, you know, the bankruptcy, and my kid's on the way, and I can't be a father, and all this stuff. And he would say it's not about the bankruptcy. And I would says, Mickey, you're not hearing me. I'm telling you it's about the Bankruptcy. And he'd say it ain't about the bankrupsy. It's about your relationship to God. And that's where me and Mickey went left and right. No, no, no. It's a family thing. It's not about the bankruptcy. So that summer, a year later that summer he came out and his wife spoke at our conference and he and I had lunch together with a group of people and he said, you know, just casually, like, hey, what do you say after lunch you and I take a walk? And I thought, okay, that sounds like a nice idea. I tease him today that if my sponsor asks you to take a walking walk, take a run the other way because it is not a walk. You are not going on a casual walk to talk about the birds, right, or whatever might be out there. You're going to do some soul repair. And we started talking and walking. And he was not my sponsor. As a matter of fact, he asked me, he said, do you have a sponsor, Chad? And I said, yeah. He said, when was the last time you talked to your sponsor? And I started kind of adding some stuff up. You know, and if you have to add to figure out when the last time you've talked to somebody is, it's probably been a while. And it had been 18 months since I had spoken to my sponsor and he kind of chuckled and he said, you know, I mean no offense to you but if you haven't spoken to your sponsor in 18 months you don't have a sponsor. He started talking to me about active sponsorship and Alcoholics Anonymous and then what we do is we come in here and we get well ish right? Clean the puke off our shoes, we're able to kind of carry on somewhat of a conversation we can drink coffee without spilling it most of the time, right? We get jobs. Sometimes we get really important jobs. We have kids, we have families. We might run the Boy Scout troop in our neighborhood or coach a baseball team or whatever. We start getting lives and we start thinking, yeah, I've got this thing kind of going on. You know, the Friday night meeting doesn't really need me tonight. I don't need to set up chairs. I don't need to whatever. I got it. I got it on lockdown. And then for me, and this is just my experience, if I coast, I drift right off the road. And I'm in the weeds, and I don' t even know it. And there I was in the weed. And I didn't even know. And so he talked to me and he approached me in a way to say, you know let me help you let me help you with this thing called sobriety because he saw in me that I was dying of alcoholism with time and guys that I sponsored and a family and the other thing is and I just lost it too thoughts are just and there was a thing for me when i when i that i had to be humbled and i went home i went back to the house we were staying at for this conference and i came back and i was getting ready for bed my wife and i were there and and um my little son was asleep and and uh i said you know uh mickey said you why don't why doesn't he sponsor me and uh she's like what'd you tell him i said i told him i'd need to think about it which is like i mean it's like yeah let me let me sleep on it i want to get i don't want to jump into anything here and my wife said to me um i said what do you think she said i think it's the answer to a prayer that i've been saying for a while and so I went back to him the next morning and I said you might be a crazy old man or this might be a divine intervention but I'm willing to go for the ride and we've been riding for a while and a little bit before then I'll speed this up and then I'll give you some time I was I had some this weird thing happen with my hands and then it went away, and then it came back. My hands would get really red and kind of puffy, and I always, it's weird. This piece of my life is kind of a weird thing to talk about, and I talked about it once, and this guy came up to me after this conference I spoke at, and it's why I continue to talk about it, is what he said to me, but, and I'll tell you that at the end hopefully. So I went to the doctor and see, I believe that God does for me what I can't do for myself. I believe That. And I have evidence of it in my life. And this is evidence of that. But it's also evidence of the first step. And it's Also evidence that I don't know what's lurking in the back of my mind. And so I go to the doctor and he's like scratching his head. He's literally, I swear he's leaving the room and I know he's going to WebMD and he is like symptoms. And then he is checking some stuff and he comes back and he says okay hold on. And he comes back in he goes okay what about um do you have this this and this nope not okay i'll be right back and then he's back and he and then He finally just says Chad I don't know but here's what I think we should do I think we Should just draw a bunch of blood and just test you for a bunch of stuff and then we'll see and so I'm like okay whatever so he takes a bunch of blood out of me. We do the whole thing. And then as my wife likes to say, you know it's never good news when the doctor calls. Not the someone at the nurse. But when the doctor calls and says, hey I need you to call me. You know there's something up. And so about three days later he called me and said you need to call him. I called back and got a hold of him. He picks up the phone and he kind of starts to chuckle. And he says I don't know how this happened, I didn't ask them to run this test. The lab doesn't know how the test got ran, but this test got run. And you have elevated levels of iron in your body that are extreme. I have a little bit of blood left and I can test you for this thing called hematomochrosis, which is basically my body doesn't get rid of iron. It holds onto it. And what happens eventually over time as it starts to tear apart your organs, your everything, your kidneys, your heart, your liver, really thrashes your liver. And I'm like, this sounds horrible. He gets me to a specialist and my wife and I go and sit down with a specialist. And this guy like writes papers on this shit. And he's a, excuse my language, and he's a cancer doctor. He's like this, you know, he'sa really respected guy. And we're talking and he's telling me about this thing and the treatment what we're going to do about it and then he says to me and I want to remind you I'm 20 years sober and he says well I heard him say he may have said you shouldn't but what I heard him say was you can never drink alcohol again you can never drink alcohol again and I felt like he had given me a death sentence isn't that interesting and when my sponsor and i started to dissect that what we came up with is is that alcohol was always the back door and now he just took alcohol away and framed up the backdoor even at 20 years sober if it really gets bad i could always go that way and the truth is i could right but but he boom in my face so I never know what hidden little ideas are going on in the back of my mind and um what's incredible about that is that I told that story and one of the things that's amazing about it is when I was diagnosed with it most people that got diagnosed were a good 30 years older than me and the nurses when I would go get treatments they were like this is insane like how did you even figure this out and um and my doctor was like we probably added 20 years to your life because we discovered this so early and now they're discovering it even earlier and earlier in people's lives and um so i told this story at a conference and a guy came up to me and he said that um that he had a similar experience and was diagnosed with the same thing He didn't quit drinking, and he had just thrashed his body. His body was aged 20 years beyond what he was because of what he had done. Recently a friend of my wife's father passed away from it at 50, 50-something. So it's like it's a blessing, but the gift for me was more than the life, was the idea that I have more work to do. there's something still clicking back in here that says maybe maybe i can go out the back door and that's why for me active sponsorship is so important to have someone that i can confide in and that will help do some course correction when needed and it's needed a lot um nate and i when we got here kind of converged at the same time went up to our rooms and then we sat down and talked about how um devastating the last three days of our lives have been you know it was like let's get let's Get Current on what's going on and and not devastating that's a little dramatic but just kind of like how the things aren't working one of the things that my sponsor our sponsor says is so what's not working horrible question you want to put a little cap on the night sure yeah so i feel inspired to talk a little bit about kind of my journey with step work with the book with the program right and what the evolution of like of what that has been and not because I aspired to be great or anything like that, or even wanted to do anything different. It's usually that I got so backed into a corner that I had no choice but to grow, right? And the analogy that works best for me in order for me to take action in my life, sober or not is i really need to be backed up against a brick wall with a gun against my head that's the only way i will do anything different because i too like chad said and i think that's very very important consideration for all of us to be aware of is what is my ace up the sleeve right what's my backup plan what's my back door here right if things really get off the rails if God really doesn't show up if this program just doesn't work well it's a drink or it's suicide right I mean more often than not right interchangeably at times given the situation who knows right and again I want to reiterate I'm not throwing that around loosely that's that's me that's my experience. That's how I think. If things get really bad, I can still just disappear from earth. That's not a rational thought process, right? Yeah, that seems to be like, you know, a Tuesday afternoon if I stub my toe at times, right. I never kind of know where that is. So and I think this is important because what happened to me is when, like I said, When I first came into the program and really dried out and started to hear something, I had a sponsor, and I went to a lot of meetings. Someone had asked me after like a year if I had been through the steps, and I had to kind of backtrack and figure out if I did. If I had, if that's the case, you have not, right? So I had not. uh i was i think i was advised to read certain chapters from the book in varying order or something like that whatever um but you know in hindsight i'm not one that looks back with anger at any of these phases every single phase of my recovery has gotten me to where i sit today tonight um that man helped me a great deal if nothing else he loved me through that first year and just showed me the ropes of AA, right? It made me feel good. Whatever. That's basically what it was. However, again, I realized that I was, again not at the time but in hindsight being 2020, what I really came to the realization of is that I Was bringing fists to a gunfight and not working the program with active alcoholism looking to take me out all day, every day. And I was losing badly. So what I felt inspired to do again, felt like I was loosing my mind, started to get into the work. I found a sponsor that in my area at the time this guy apparently knew how to do the work out of the book. He sat down and took people word by word, kind of through the thing. So that was the next phase. I got into that. I get obsessed with that. and took it and ran with it. And then I kind of got into this next phase where it was a little more talk about God but still very, very mechanic-driven step work. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. In fact, there's a great deal of value. I mean, without a doubt, the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous is the basic text for what we do, right? But this is not a battle ax. It's not used to beat people down. right it's our basic text of how to get well and how to know god it's a beautiful thing right yeah in certain rooms where i'm from if you talk about this book people will get up and walk out i mean what is that right to each his own right but but i choose not to die tonight right and and that's kind of where i stand on that but um so what i did is i got obsessed with with the mechanics right and if you could work the steps once well over 13 times would probably feel even better right so I just started ripping through the step work over and over and again becoming a wizard in my own mind and starting to share my wizard powers with other folks that were in need of my knowledge right and I share that very specifically with the word knowledge because knowledge is not sufficient to combat alcoholism it's not enough and I almost died in the rooms of AAA pursuing what I thought to be the most solid course of a program that I knew at that time right I became so obsessed with the mechanical execution of the process of the step work as it's outlined in our book that i lost sight of the fact that god matters more than that right that's the reason we work this in the first place is to be god dependent to get connected to the god of your understanding so that you can do business right do business on a day-to-day basis and what does that look like and I almost left AA at the end of that I was so bitter that no one was doing it the right way and I got my hands on some really angry speaker tapes and I was sharing them with everybody and I wanted everybody to be on board and I'd go around to meetings and tell everybody how they were doing it wrong and you know you can't you'll catch more flies with honey than vinegar I guess is this as the saying goes, right? I'm not here to be a judge of what's best. I can tell you without a doubt what works for me in my life. And I don't tailor the program for the men that I work with. I show them what I know and what works für mich. And if that's not a good fit for someone, that's okay. We can't be all things to all people, but we are all uniquely qualified to help where other people can, right? And a lot of the times the things that I go through that feel like the worst things that could ever happen to me, two days later I'm talking with someone else that I work with that's going through the same thing, right, and that's how God works more often than not for me. So I go Through the Step work with my sponsor annually today, every year, right. That guy that I just described to you that was obsessed with the work would have scoffed at that idea even though I was doing it repeatedly, right? Because I'd say, I'm not going to be, you know, sponsor-dependent. This is crazy. I'm Not Sponsor-Dependent One Bit, right. Like if you're going to go, oh, what's a good analogy for this? I think you all know where I'm going with this. If you've never been somewhere, you probably want to go into that environment with someone that has been there before you, right, where I just assume figure it out, right? I mean, more often than not, that's what I'd rather figure it out. What my sponsor does for me is he holds up the mirror right in front of my face and helps me to look at things objectively. He doesn't share with me his opinion. He doesn'T tell me what he thinks I should do. More often than NOT, he directs me back to God to get squared away, right. We talk through these things, right, on a regular basis. And that was something also that came to life for me years down the road was an active 10-step. When I call my sponsor, right? Something's going on. I don't even know what it is, right. And he'll gently guide me through where are you resentful? Where are you selfish? Where are being dishonest? What are you afraid of, right ? That's different, a lot different than me calling and just wanting to dump something off on your ear because it puts me back into a place of accountability and removes me from the ability to be the victim, right? Like I said, I love that. I love for other people to be wrong, without a doubt. So the fact that I have ownership over virtually everything that goes on in my life, I'm not saying that in no way, shape, or form, even when we write inventory, by writing the inventory, we're not saying what the other person did was right or even that it was okay, right, but I do have ownership in that somewhere if it's still poisoning my soul today, right? So how do I, with God's help and with the gentle guidance of a sponsor, be able to move through that and to be effective, right. So today, again, like I said, we walk through the work annually, right, and the first time we went through it, again my sponsor lives in Denver, I live in Maine, we're not meeting for coffee, right we're doing this largely over the phone. For me that's like, that doesn't work, you need to be able to see your sponsor, right? And come to find out you can actually have conversations over the telephone too. It works fairly well. And I didn't choose my sponsor to live that far away. It was very, very, much similar to what Chad said. I mean, God made it unavoidable for us to not be walking this road together. I don't know what's best for me. Let's just put that out there, right I at any given time do not know what's best for me I'll choose the easier softer way and it will usually mean suffering I'll never choose the hard road that is the right road I just won't right so so we started to walk through this and I'm like so are we gonna go you know you can start at the cover page you're gonna tell me about you know this that because I was so dead set on studying this text at that point but I thought if I didn't do that I was going to implode or something, right? I was still unwilling to have a new experience and to let him guide me, right. So we didn't walk through line by line and what he pointed out to me was that you know that book pretty well, right, yeah, yeah very well, very well right and in fact if you'd like for me to walk you through this I'd be happy to do so And he said, how well did that work out for you? Touche, right? I mean, I had called him because I was on the verge of dying in a place where I was an expert executionist with the steps in this book. I don't say that for any other reason other than I've met so many people along the road that have been in that exact same place. I know too much, right? I know too much. I'm unwilling to be humble and have a new experience. So when we walk through the steps annually we're not going line by line. He's literally presenting what's in the book to me in a way that helps me to put myself in to the book, right. It's not about knowledge, it's about going inward with this stuff. And what does my relationship with alcohol look like in regard to the first step, right I always like to break the first step into two separate pieces because I really think they are, right? We admitted we were powerless over alcohol. Dash that our lives had become unmanageable. My life had become Unmanageble takes on new life every single year that I reexamine that portion. My life is not Unmanangeable because of alcohol today, as Chad alluded to, right. It's because of my insane selfishness and self-centeredness, my fear, my resentment, my dishonesty. So when I'm looking at that first half it's easy to say oh well I know, I know I'm powerless over alcohol but it's so important that in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous we help each other, we qualify people right? This is what alcoholism looks like because when I first got here I thought to raise my hand and say I'm an alcoholic meant that's it right? That makes me an alcoholic? Not so much you know the mental obsession, the physical compulsion, the strange mental blank spot that precedes the first drink, right? Regardless of what parallel reasoning lines up, the insane idea always wins out, right? Could have just got out of detox, but it's this person's birthday and I don't want to be rude. What? But I'll take a drink on that. That's the way my brain works in those things, that strange mental black spot that proceeds the first drank, right? All I need is to get in my system and then we're off and running i don't even know i'm doing it which is the scariest part i have no control over whether or not i take that first drink fast version and you know really what the question he asks me to explore is what did your relationship with ethyl alcohol look like that made me uncomfortable just to hear it described that way the first time come to find out i had a 100 abusive love affair with alcohol right it took priority over anything i loved it always came first i would always go back for another beating and it would always be different this time right i sacrificed and gave up everything i ever cared about to pursue that love affair so yeah i had a pretty serious relationship with alcohol right and to walk through the circumstances of what that looked like over the years boy by the end of that by the ends of that conversation with another alcoholic you're going to be able to know without a shadow of a doubt whether you need to go to the second half of first step right in the second half of the first step we have uh are you getting them ready no go ahead okay you sure yeah go ahead um so the second have of the first step one of the best ways that uh that that it's not an all-inclusive exhaustive list of these things but is anyone familiar with the bedevilments on page 52. okay so What I find is that regardless, right, I could sit here tonight. I think we could all sit here today and answer these questions and come up with a fairly good perspective of where we're at, not when we came in, but today, right? And I think that's what's so important, real-time snapshot. Where am I looking to rely on myself instead of God today, right? In the questions on page 52 it said, We had to ask ourselves why we shouldn't apply to our human problems this same readiness to change our point of view. We were having trouble with personal relationships. Yeah, yeah, every day, basically, right? When I'm removed from God and leaning on myself, I can't talk with you, like I said, right, I just can't interact. We couldn't control our emotional natures. Ah, right. And honestly, I like the flip side of that because I can be all over the board like this, I could be happy one second, way down the next. But the key for this one for me is what do I do my very best efforts to try to control my emotional natures, right? What do I lean into? What am I using for a distraction, right, what self-destructive behavior am I engaging in in an attempt to curb the way that I feel? Whoa, this is not fun stuff to explore, right. in a lot of ways, but it's so, so necessary. We were a prey to misery and depression. We couldn't make a living. Not just a paycheck, right? We couldn'T make a life. Having a hard time making a life, really being present in what it is that God has for me. Nope. We had a feeling of uselessness. And again, it doesn't say we're useless. A feeling. That means my perception of myself. We were full of fear. We were unhappy. We couldn't seem to be of real help to other people. It was not a basic solution of these bedevilments, more important than whether we should see newsreels of lunar flight. Of course it was. When we saw others solve their problems by a simple reliance upon the spirit of the universe, we had to stop doubting the power of God. Our ideas did not work, but the God idea did. And notice there's a plural problems. right problems we're done talking about alcohol at this point in the book right there's more to it and uh i would encourage everyone if you haven't walked through that exercise on your own in a while maybe do it tonight before you go to bed right take a peek you don't have to why not right we're all in an isolated environment for the for the weekend we may peel a few layers back and that's okay right um but that's that's kind of the more uh kind of again evolution of where i where i kind of went with that what it looks like for me today because the way that i walk through this process today doesn't feel as safe as it used to because it's actually about what's going on in me and not about memorizing words on a page and that's scary so i'll just end with this and piggyback on that and give you another assignment um when i first started working with mickey the first thing he said when we got on on that phone call together and I was like same kind of thing like we're going to talk on the phone and I meet um I meet with Mickey uh 5 30 a.m on Thursday mornings and um that is not a convenient time to meet with a sponsor but it's the only time based on my schedule and his but Well, the first thing he asked me was, and I have this vision in my mind of this, but he asked what it was that kept me from giving it all to God. And the way I envision that in my head is, my mind is we're playing poker and I'm gonna go all-in I'm going all in right you guys understand what that term is I'm putting all my chips on the table out in the midst risking it all I don't have a little stack in my pocket I don' got Nate over here with a little Stack he's holding for me in case I run out I'm going all in. So what's keeping me from going all in with God? And that question should terrify you. It terrified me and I knew immediately what he was talking about and immediately what that was for me. So I would ask yourself, what is it that's keeping you from going all in with this power? Now what do we do? And? Oh, I thought you were going somewhere with that. No. Yeah. No, I was really asking, like, I don't know, where do we go? I suppose we hang it up for the night. Thank you all, and we look forward to the morning. Yeah. Thank you.