Powerlessness and Surrender – Workshop Steps 1 2 3 – Part 2 of 2 – Local AA Speakers

This panel, which is Nancy Kaye from the Elkridge Monday Night Group, Dave Dee from the Bowie Friday Night Speakers Group, and Kristen Kaye. And Kristen Kay from the Towson Women's Group. No. They'll be sharing their experience with steps one, two, and three, which are steps one. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol that our lives had become unmanageable. Two came to believe that power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Three, he made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to care of God as we understood him. Good morning. I'm an alcoholic. My name is Nancy. Sorry, habit I stand. I just feel really, really uncomfortable when I sit and I'm sharing in front of a bunch of people. So my preference is to stand. So good for you. I don't get to read my books because I can't hold a microphone, put on my glasses and read a book at the same time. My sobriety date is July 4th, 1988. My home group is the Elkridge Monday Night Group of Alcoholics Anonymous. I do have a sponsor that I use and abuse on a regular basis. And I'm absolutely privileged and honored to sponsor other women in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I hope I told you my name is Nancy and I'm an alcoholic. Thank you. I want to thank Chandler and Tim for asking me to come out and share with you. It's a privilege and an honor when I'm asked to do anything in Alcoholics Anonymous, and I'm not here to be an expert on the steps. I'm here to share with your friends and family my experience with Step 1, my experience mit Step 2, and my experience wit Step 3 because I've learned through Alcoholics Anonymous that's truly all I have is my story and my experience and what those steps mean to me. You know, I did study to make sure that I knew what the steps were because I really don't want to give wrong information. But I'm just going to share with you hopefully somebody else out there. Let's see, it's five after. Sweet. So, yeah. There's a little glare on it, but I can see the four. So when the little hand or the big hand gets to the four, I'm going to stop because they told me 15 minutes, your first 15 minutes. I do like to follow directions today. First step for me, just a little bit, I picked up my first drink at age 10 and I put down my last drink at the age of 26 and I got to my first meeting with Alcoholics Anonymous when I was 25 years old. So I had 16 years of drinking in there. I'll help you with the math. I just turned 50, recently celebrated 24 years of continuous sobriety. So I'm amazed at that because I really didn't think I'd make 24 hours, let alone 24 years. When I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I didn't get here on a winning streak, probably much like you guys. There are a lot of serious events that have been going on in my life. and my last day of drinking wasn't by far my worst day drinking. No big calamity. I had hit a lot of bottoms before I'd gotten to Alcoholics Anonymous, but the one that got me to Alcoholic Anonymous was coming to on July 4th, hating me more than I hated me on July 3rd. And I don't know how else to explain that. I had gotten so tired of being so sick and tired of bein' so sick and tired o' bein', so sick an' tired o'veein' me. And that's what propelled me into Alcoholics Anonymous. Not the many arrests that I had along my path, not the marriages I had gone through, not the children I had Gone Through, just having been introduced to Alcoholics Anonymous, knowing that there was a different way and just coming to that day going, man, I can't do this one more day. I just, I Can't Do This. There's got to be another way. And so for me, the first step, I really didn't have a problem with unmanageability. I could clearly see if you looked at my life, the unmanagability in my life. The 12 and 12 starts out saying, who likes to admit complete defeat? I don't, but I had been to enough Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to know that my life was clearly unmanable. At the age of 25, I had already been through two marriages and given up custodial rights for a child. I had been homeless living on the streets of Atlantic City and Philadelphia for about three years. I had arrived at my mom's doorstep, 85 pounds dripping wet, with a T-shirt and a pair of blue jeans, and those were my worldly possessions. So I clearly did not get to Alcoholics Anonymous on a winning streak. I grew up in a 22-room house with a three-acre yard and a swimming pool and a basketball court, having life handed me on a silver platter. So to go from that kind of a lifestyle growing up to where I ended up, I couldn't blame my dad anymore for not loving me enough, my mom, my brothers, my sisters. I couldn'T blame it on the schooling. It was none of that. What got me to Alcoholics Anonymous was a physical act of picking up a drink and pouring it down my throat. And then what happened to me after I took that first drink was who knows? I don't know. I don' t know who that first drank is going to cost, and I don''t know what that first drink is going cost. You know, so when I got to Alcoholics Anonymous, I knew unmanageability. I mean, it was so clear to me. There wasn' t a question that I could manage my own life. What I had a difficult time with was the powerlessness part of Alcoholics Anonymous. And throughout my sobriety, I've been able to learn powerlessness at different levels and I'm actually going through learning another level of powerlessness. And those are probably the hardest lessons for me is to figure out how powerless I am. But the thing that got me on powerlessness was I was sitting in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and someone was sharing and I grew up with a dad who was very strict, very stern, very yes ma'am, no ma' am, yes sir, no sir, by the book, military just. That's just how my dad was and I actually inherited a lot of his qualities and my husband doesn't always like those qualities but that's just, you know, that's what I was raised with, that very firm, very strict. You know, hearing the stories of, you know, pick yourself up by your bootstraps. It'll build character, that kind of stuff, which actually I hear more from the men in Alcoholics Anonymous. So I really relate to that. You know? I wasn't the little prissy princess. I was the, you now, forge your own way, stand up, you kno, put your big girl pants on and, you know, just man up is how I was raised. And so I thought that the power came from within me, that if I just buckled down, if I juste willed this, I could make it happen. You know, like I can just do this if I'm strong enough, if I're good enough, if whatever, I can make this happen. And I'm sitting in a meeting and I'm sharing this with someone after the meeting. I love meetings after the meetings. And they're like, Nancy, if you think you have so much power, Why don't you stop at 7-Eleven on the way home, buy a box of Ex-Lax, take the whole box and then come back tomorrow and tell me how much power you had over stopping what was going to happen. And you know what? It sounds silly, but that actually did it for me. I can read all this good information in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I am a visual person, and that's how I learn. I learn by doing. And that made so much sense to me. Twenty-four years later, I understand that as much today as I did the day that that individual shared that with me. I understood that once I put a drink in, and he went on to share with me, you know, Nancy, once you put a drinking your body, you have absolutely no control over what's going to happen to you. That's powerlessness. I got that. It made sense to me when that individual broke that down for me, That made the first step mine, and it became real for me. And I understood what powerlessness was. You know, and then I moved on to the second step, and working the second steps with my sponsor was, again, for me a little bit challenging. I didn't have a problem believing in a power greater than myself. What I had a problem with was believing that this power could restore me to sanity. Little bit of background information. My dad is a psychiatrist by trade, and he runs mental institutions for a living. My addresses growing up were the Connecticut Valley State Hospital, Colorado State Hospital,, Augusta Mental Health Institute, St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Washington, D.C., because our house was on the grounds of those mental institutions until I was 18 years old. And so that's what I equated insanity with was the patients that I saw on the hospital grounds. and I had a real challenging time understanding that I had any insanity in my life at all because I thought if you were insane, I would be one of my dad's patients. And so I had an incredibly difficult time with that. I also didn't have a whole lot of friends. Nobody wants to come over Nancy's house growing up and there was no sleepovers or, you know, I'm not going there for a birthday party. um you know but i grew up um going to church i went to private schools my entire life you know we went to church on saturday sung in the choir on sunday i did all that deal so i didn't have a problem with believing in a power greater than myself i i got that there was a god out there i gotthat there was something hanging out the moon and bringing up the sun in the morning and you know all that stuff i knew that that existed now my perception with my God was really skewed. It was just really twisted, the strange mental twist that it talks about in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I got that piece. Thank God for sponsorship because when I sat down with my sponsor and we talked about the second step, she saw the challenges that I had with the second stop and understanding what insanity was. And for this alcoholic, she just let me move on without totally understanding the insanity of my disease until we got to the fifth step. Once I did my fifth step with my sponsor, I could clearly see that the choices that I made in my own life were absolutely insane. Normal people do not spend their entire paycheck on booze and other things and not pay their rent, not pay Their electric bill, not make their car payment. Normal people don't do that. Some people who can't manage their finances do, But most normal people don't literally spend their paycheck on booze. That's the first thing I would do when I would get my paycheck. Normal people don'T sit at the bar for two to three days and leave their child at a daycare, and the child has no idea where they're at. The daycare has no ID where they'Re at. That'S absolutely insanity. And I couldn'T see that. I just thought that'S the way it was. You know, oops, forgot. You know what I mean? And so for me, I was really challenged with the second step. And like I said, thank God for sponsorship. She didn't make me totally understand the second step and we worked through the rest of the steps on that relationship with God. And today the God that I have in my life today is very different than that higher power that I approached when I first got to the second step, which brings me to the third step. I thought when I got to the third step, that I had to have this great understanding of what God was. We had to be BFFs and just hanging out and doing the deal. And I understand turning my will and my life over to care of God. And quite honestly, when I got to the third stop, the only thing I turned over is my alcoholism. I can manage my job. I kann manage the boyfriend. I cann manage my meetings. I can manage my relationship with my children. I can, thanks, got that. I turn my alcoholism over to God. And on a daily basis, and this is just for me, what I've learned and what I believe is that I don't turn over and take my will back on a day-to-day basis. Every day I say, good morning, God, this is Nancy, I'm an alcoholic. Please, no matter what happens in my life, don't let me take a drink. I do some readings, and one of the readings I do is the third step prayer. And when I do that third step prayer in the morning, I truly believe I'm turning my will and my life over to the care of God. It doesn't mean that at some point during the day I'm going to get human and believe that I can do things better and get things my way and kind of take over, but at no point have I ever taken my will back from God. The day I pick up a drink of alcohol is the day I take my willback. My God, and this again for me, my God loves me enough to allow me to be human. What I learned in Alcoholics Anonymous with the third step was, it was just making a decision and going on about living. And I was sitting in a meeting again, and I heard this speaker share that the third step is just a decision. It's like when you're driving down the road and you get to a stoplight. You know, when you are at that stoplight, you have a decision to make. Turn right, turn left, or go straight. You see I did that backwards, right? Turn right. Turn left. Or go straight? I make a decision to go right. The stoplight turns green, I step on the gas in the car and I go straight through the light. I only made a decision to go right, absolutely nothing's going to happen until I take some action. It was explained to me that the action of the third step is continuing with the rest of the step. In my daily life when I wake up every morning and I say that third step prayer and I turn my will and my life over to the care of God, I have to put some action behind that because I can say those words and my actions are going to show you something totally different. I'm not going to look like I'm somebody who has God working in their life, you know? I do have self-will and self-willedness. Self-will can run riot in my life on any given day. To the best of my ability, I try to act like God's working in my Life and I really, other people may not have to work for me. I have to do little mental exercises and things that show me that I'm turning my will and my life over to the care of God. For me, it's constant communication with my God, with the issues that are going on in my life right now. I'm like, God, please just take this because I can't do this anymore. You guys get me with this. And I do that all the time. It doesn't mean that I am not doing God's will. I'm trying to open that communication to have more of God in me and less of Nancy. I get me in so much trouble. This decision maker is horrible, horrible, terrible, horrible. If I don't follow the directions that's given me, just like this morning, I ended up over at where Ten Hills meets because I knew the directions. Open the book, read the page, Nancy. Here's the directions, Follow the directions that's given you. And I get constant reminders of that every single day. Thank God I have sponsorship that's not one and done. You know, my sponsor is constantly making me look at the steps, work the steps. And the last thing I'll say, it was one thing for me to go through the steps and work them on my own, but when I have to share this stuff with another woman, And they make that distance, and I'm working on right now, that journey from my head to my heart. Once it gets in my heart, you can't take it from me because it's mine. It's not just knowledge. I feel it. I know it. I live it. So that's it. I'm done. Thanks for sharing. You're standing. Hi, everyone. My name is David. I'm an alcoholic. David. A little bit too close for me. Intimidating? And I don't have any problem being heard usually, so let me probably back off a little bit on the microphone. Nancy, it's great to hear you, and it is a privilege and an honor to be asked to come share my experience on the first three steps at this meeting this morning. You know, I do have a home group. It is the Bowie Friday Night Speakers Group in Bowie, Maryland. Did I say my name is David and I'm an alcoholic? I did the same thing you did. All right, I'll say it again. The microphone got me all discombobulated. And I have a home group and it has sobriety. It's June 23rd, 1990. And so like Nancy, I've been sober a few years in Alcoholics Anonymous and more than half of my life now has been being sober in Alcoholic Anonymous. And it's really when we talk about the steps, and this is a workshop on the steps, so I'll try to speak less about my story and more about my experience with the steps. I can tell you that I didn't come to Alcoholics Anonymous for the first time when June 22nd, 1990, I came to Alcoholic Anonymous for the third time somewhere around October, November of 1987, three years before. And the reason that I did not get sober in 1987 was because I didn't have the first step. And so for some folks, they'll come to Alcoholics Anonymous and they're convinced that they're powerless over alcohol. For others like me, I got here young, I wasn't even legal drinking age, and I knew I had a drinking problem. But I had to spend three years in and out of AlcoholicsAnonymous getting convinced that I was powerless over alcohol. And for those of you who have done that, if there is a hell to be had on earth, I will tell you, it is coming in and out of the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous knowing that you no longer belong out in the bar room or out drinking but coming here and not feeling like you belong here either. You know, the book talks about knowing a loneliness as few do. It talks about pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. It talks abut those kind of things. I know what those things are. And on June 22, 1990, what I brought to you all was a man laying in a hospital bed, 22 years old, with the whole side of his head smashed in from a fight alcohol-related, who had spent three and a half years in and out of the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, who had broken the hearts of everyone who loved him, who was by all accounts going to die that night or be brain dead the rest of his life, who mentally had been a good student at one point and destroyed any chance of ever being able to read, study, or do anything again who spiritually was a man without a soul. And so that I never want to forget that picture of in my mind of me laying on a hospital bed with my head smashed in and blood coming out of mirrors holding my hand of my grandfather and him watching me die and asking him if I'm going to die and seeing the tears run down his cheek and know the answer. I never wanted to forget the coldness and the darkness that I felt laying on that bed, knowing that my life was over and knowing that at 22 years old it's not supposed to be over and it wasn't supposed to end this way. And I've been very blessed to have been given a second chance. And anything that I can tell you that changed from that three and a half years in and out of AA and laying on That Bed Dying with everything spent with nothing left, no hope, and not only did I not have any hope for me, there were very few people who had any hope for me outside of you and Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, the family, I mean, God, they had spent three and a half years. There had been treatment centers. There have been countless one-day chips. There have Been Countless New Starts and Countless Failures. And they were just broken and done. And any difference between that night and sitting here with you this morning, 22 plus years later, and with a very different life, I assure you, the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, handed to me, shown to me taught to me in word and deed through a sponsor so what I'm going to do here this morning is walk you through what my sponsor did for me pretty much 22 years ago on the first three steps and share a little bit of my personal reflection because one of the great things about being sober while and as Nancy said working the steps over and over and over again with others that I sponsor because I believe that that is the foundation of long-term sobriety, a sponsorship. If we're not passing it on, man, I dry up and I shrivel up and I die. You know, there seems like there's a, for God to work in my life, it seems like I have to have the hand of a sponsor and I have to be sponsoring other men. And if that doesn't happen, it seems like the power doesn't flow. And so when it came to step one, there's two words for me. The first word is we, and the second word is powerless. And what I found for me is that I could not be part of the we until I really truly conceded to my innermost self that I'm powerless over alcohol. And in a big book it's really important to get to the first step. And to prove that to you, we have a doctor's opinion that's written by a medical doctor that describes the nature of alcoholism as sort of a two-fold disease. One is a mental obsession. I've got this mind that when I'm physically sober tells me that I can drink again, that it will be different this time. We kind of talk a little bit about it in step two when we talk about insanity, right, the strange alcoholic insanity. It's not the crazy things we do when we drink. It's that mental obsession that tells us it will Be Different This Time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know you've gotten locked up the last five times. You've been to the mental institution and you're going to see the judge next week. And by the way, your family won't let you come in their house and hides their money whenever you're around, but this time it'll be different. I'm not an alcoholic in Mexico. These are the beautiful � I can drink on antabuse. I mean these are the things that the mental obsession tells me when I'm physically sober. And then once I take that drink, I have this physical allergy that says more, more, more, More, more. And those two things lead me to the case of insanity and death. It's so important that we get this idea that the big book, you know, now I'm a sort of student of, you know, classical big book AA, right? And so I really do believe that 164 pages are the program of recovery. And I'll add the other 30 that's the preface, right. So I'll say there's 194 pages that are the Program of Alcoholic Synonyms, the core of it. And now, so when we come to step one, where do we first see step one? I didn't see step four. I didn' t see step five. I didn''t see step six. I didn ''t see steps seven forever reading the big books. I don't know how many times I read it. I didn't see it, and finally my sponsor had to point it out. It's on page 30, right? And so we get 60 pages of the book before we even see step one show up. That's how important it is. Sixty of that 190, a third of the books, is before they even tell you really what the first step is. And here it is, it's almost one sentence. We learned that we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first steps in recovery. Concede, a concession, a surrender. We just had a presidential election, right? And so Mitt Romney, even when CNN called it at like 11.30, man, he's holding out going, I don't think I'm done yet. I can get one more vote. Somebody's going to turn around. Two hours later, though, he finally had to concede. He had to finally pick up that phone and go, you know what? I'm not going to do this. I'm gone. And for me, it took those three years in and out to reach that point where I conceded. Now, I didn't concede that AA was going to work. What I concedes was that alcohol had beaten me, and there was no hope. Fish swim, birds fly, alcohol is like Dave Dosh drink. I'm done. I'm hopeless. I will drink myself to death. I don't know how long it will take, but that's the road ahead of me. The second word in that step is we. You know, I really didn't get the we until I got the five. We'll talk about that later. So powerless was the most important. The we, I came back to believe. In the first tradition, we talk about the unity of alcoholics and non-alcoholics. What I found from long-term sobriety is that we admitted we were powerless when I realized I wasn't any different than you, that you all had been where I had been, that you had done the things I had done, and you weren't there anymore. There is great power. That's what kept me coming back. And really for me, the bridge, really the core of two, the bridge between one and three, between knowing I'm powerless and seeking a power through the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is you. It's you all. Why did I keep coming back for three and a half years in and out of these rooms? Why have I come back for 22 years? Because there was something here. Because I feel like a part of something here because I'm home here. I had a chance, my buddy Dave N., who celebrated 12 years last night, he and I had the chance to walk into Dr. Bob's house in Akron one day. and have coffee at the table where he and Bill met. And we walked in the door, it was just a couple of us, and it was really quiet that day there. And the woman who served as staffing in the house said, welcome home. And for me, this idea of Alcoholics Anonymous' home is the place where I belong. And it's what I was missing my whole life, it seemed like, until I got to you and gave up, you know. And in step two, what it's really about, step one it talks about, if you read through the big book, It's the foundation of recovery. It uses those words. It is the foundation. Nothing can be built until you have a solid foundation. You know, it's digging down. It's to hard work. It's taking it down to bedrock when there isn't nothing. It's like the Marine Corps. You've got to be stripped of everything for them to make a man out of you or a woman out of you, right? And that's kind of what, for me, the first step was. The second step is really a simple idea. It's becoming willing to believe. Just becoming willing TO BELIEVE that there might be something here. becoming willing to believe that there might be something in AA, that you all might actually have something. There might be hope. And they talk about that being the cornerstone. So you have a foundation. It's raw and it's rough, and you lay this big. I just got back from being over in Europe, and there's these big, amazing cathedrals. And you'll look at them towering up 400 or 500 feet, and you come down arch after arch after inch, and you get to this big, big, big stone on one side of the arch. And that's upon which the weight of all that structure rests. And it's usually a big, solid, massive, massive piece of rock. And for me, that's what the second step is, is coming to believe. You all have an answer here. There's a power here. I'm coming to seek it. I'm open to it. I don't know what it is. I don'T know if it will work for me. But you all have and answer. You're pretty sure that it will works for me and I'll give it a go. And that's why I brought you on step two. You know, by the time we get to the end of step two and I'll jump ahead a little bit. Now we're 90 pages into the big book, right? So by the a time we got to, you know, right after How It Works which we read all the time and we get through the ABCs and here's what I do with men that I sponsor and was done for me. Usually step one and two are kind of given. I described you laying in a hospital bed dying, right. I knew alcohol had beaten me. It had beaten physically, mentally, spiritually. I knew it had beaten me. In step two, I had come back to you year after year, even though I kept drinking. And when I could no longer come back because I was laying in a hospital bed destroyed, you came to me. You came to be. When I was home in my house and I couldn't get out and go to an AA meeting, you came the me. So you all were that bridge that told me that there is hope here. but you have to be convinced of a few pertinent ideas my sponsor told me in order to do the third step and so he cranked open his big book he was he was always like Clint Eastwood with the big book man it would come out and it'd be like right to the right page you know and so we got to step three and that book came out and he said Dave let me ask you a couple questions he said our description of the alcoholic and childhood to the agnostic and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent and ideas and you've had some you've has some adventures recently haven't you, Dave? I said, yes, Tom, I have. He says, Dave, do you believe that you are an alcoholic and cannot manage your own life? I say, Tom I believe that in the core of my soul. Dave do you believe probably no human power can relieve your alcoholism. I say Tom there have been great people who have loved me until I've broken their heart. There have been gifted men who have tried to help me you know whether it's if the physician or the psychologist they could not help me. I I have had judges. I have, you know, I've had countless people try to help me. There is no human power. I've been preyed on by priests. I've head demons cast out of me and none of those people, I know they've tried to helpme. I knowthey meant well, but they couldn't helpme, no human. Yes, I believe that, Tom. Dave, do you believethat God could and would if he were sought? I said, Tom, is it your God? I don't know that my God can do it. You know, my God was so small at the time. And I wasn't sure. I was so bad and broken that I didn't know that God, the God that I had at the time, would help a man like me. But I was sure your God would. I was certain that good orderly direction, that higher power, this language in the spirit that I felt, that's why I kept coming back because I knew God was here. I knew he was here, that's what I kept calling him back. I said, is it your God, Tom? He said, all you got to do, Dave, is just be willing to believe that we might be right and you might be wrong. And I said, all right, I'm willing. And he said, guess what? If you're convinced, you're at step three. Now there's a manuscript that was written before the first edition of the big book, and I like a little bit in that manuscript. It's got a little clause in there before you get to that point. It says if you are not convinced, reread the book up to this point. So we've got 90 pages of the book. Well, it wasn't quite 90 at the time because they didn't have quite as much in the fours weren't in there. But you had a significant amount of the books. And what they're saying, if you don't believe those three pertinent ideas for you, read it again. Maybe Bill's story, maybe the doctor's opinion, maybe something will click. And if you're still not convinced that those three permanent ideas apply to you, throw the book away. Throw the book way. There ain't no fake it till you make it. You're either convinced or you're not if you are going to go on. And so in the third step, it is that admission that my life run by me is a complete failure and a disaster. and the willingness to turn my life over to God and what that meant for me early on was not really God. It meant my sponsor and the men that had carried the message and the women who I had seen with the sparkle in their eye and AA for three-and-a-half years at the time that I was turning my will and life over with confidence that you were right and I was wrong and that I wasn't going to do, finally. Those three-an-a half years, I didn't do the 12 steps. You know, I sat in meetings waiting for the miracle to rub off It didn't rub off on me. I had to take action, right? And so in the third step, the action I had to take was a prayer, was a pray. I had be willing to say, I've done a terrible job running my life. I've had other people try to direct my life, you know, judges, people who love me, mothers, girlfriends, you know, I have doctors try to fix me physically and that hasn't worked. I'm going to turn it over to Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm really going to turn it over to the guidance of my sponsor. I mean, that's really what I did early on. I have a different God today. But early on, that is what I had to do was turn my life and my will over to you all. And I said this prayer. You know, there is a prayer in here. And I'll take out the these and nows because I have hard time with these and them. God, I offer myself to you. Go with me and do with me as you will. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do your will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them will bear witness of those I would help with your power, your love, and your way of life. May I do your will always. There's a prayer I use nowadays from a guy named John Wesley who wrote it about 200 years before Bill Wilson wrote these words. It says, I am no longer my own but yours, God. Rank me with who you will, put me with whom you will. Put me to doing, putme to suffering. Let me be employed for you or set aside for you. Let me be exalted for you or humbled for you. Let me have all things or let me have nothing. I fully and freely offer myself to you. And now, my Lord and my God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, you are in me and I am in you. So be it. And this covenant that I've made here this morning just now may it be ratified in heaven this day. Amen. So that's my experience with the first three steps. Thanks for sharing. Now we... Are we on? Okay. All right, thanks. Well, that's a tough act to follow with both of you. But hi, I'm Kristen and I'm an alcoholic. And I'm honored to be here today and to be asked to speak. When I'm asked if anything at Alcoholics Anonymous, I do the best I can to say yes. And it's really special for me to be here today. I have a lot of stuff going on with my family. My grandmother is really sick up in Boston, and they called in hospice. And I didn't know if I was going to have to take a plane today or what was going to happen. And my higher power let things happen so that I'm here today, and I'm really honored to be there. I'm honored to still be here because that's what we do in Alcoholics Anonymous. We keep walking. We do the next right thing that we're supposed to do. And I feel God's presence here when I'm with all of you today, and I know that she's going to be taken care of no matter what. So, you know, it's a good practice on steps one, two, and three in the sense of being powerless because, you Know, I thought, well, so I guess maybe I'm powerless over drinking, but I'll still, You know, manage my life, and I'll Still keep these things. You know? I can give up alcohol, but I'm still wanting to control my life. And this is just a really good practice at I am powerless over a lot more than just alcohol. If I don't give my will over to my higher power, you know, my life goes crazy basically. So I have a sobriety date and it's April 4th of 2006. I have home group, Taliesin Women's. I have sponsor and I sponsor women in the program. And, you now, I feel the same way about sponsorship. I feel, I mean, I was thrown into sponsorship immediately. I was sponsoring girls when I had, like, a few months sober, which is totally crazy. But, I mean, the people that I fell into first in AA were just like, we're going to go on these 12-step calls, we're gonna pick people. I mean it was like crazy. And so I got into sponsorship really, really early in my sobriety. And it has been something that has kept me right in the middle of AA. So I started drinking when I was about 12 years old. I got sober when I Was 22. It was not my first exposure to AA that I got sober. I was sent to AA when I was about 18, and at that time I landed myself in a hospital bed. At that time, I had put so much alcohol and other substances into my body that I put myself into a coma. So I had catheters, IV. I mean, I was up to all sorts of machines. And I wake up, I come to, and I am pissed that people are standing around me and they're asking me if I was trying to kill myself. And, you know, and I was just like, oh, I'm still here. You know, it was one of those. And I wasn't intentionally trying to killed myself. That was just a night out. Like, you now, I mean, that was like a whoops, I mixed the wrong stuff at, you know, so that wasn't intentional, you know, um, and, and I'm the kind of arrogant alcoholic that thinks, um I can't be unmanageable and I can, I can really be powerless over this stuff because I still look good on paper. Like, you know, like I'm still doing this thing, you know, because I didn't end up homeless and I didn't have those things where I always look to as maybe alcoholics or the people that are on the streets and they have the brown bag and they wear trench coats and they're all like scarred up, you know. And I was like, I'm in college and, you know, I've been in college for a long time. You know, so I'm getting A's and, you know. I still have these things, you know? But inside is what for me really, really was a good example of my powerlessness and my surrender And I just felt so terrible inside, you know. I was what they say is like spiritually bankrupt in AA. Like I could my feet. I mean, I would wake up and be like another day, you know, another day of this because I wasn't someone that had the ability to drink whenever I wanted, you know, as much as I could whenever I wanted because I didn't I wasn'T old enough for most of my drinking to actually get it whenever I wanted. Um, but I was someone that thought about alcohol obsessed about the next drink thought about what happened the night before and was playing it out the whole next day about what did I do? I mean, constantly on my brain was alcohol. Um what you know, when was I going to get it? You know, and I'm someone that drank, um, till I had no more left physically. Uh, I passed out and didn't had no capability of actually putting alcohol into my body, or I ended up in the hospital. And like I said, you know, I've ended up in the way too many times as a direct result of alcohol. And I'm, you know, it was so arrogant for so long, I did not want to admit complete defeat. I did not wanna admit it. I did NOT want to surrender. You know, I had no problem putting on crazy songs in my dorm room, dancing around to the song, like, call it what you want to call it, I'm an alcoholic, you know? And like, I would be like, yeah, an alcoholic. Yeah, whatever. You know, like I knew it, you know, it wasn't like a surprise, but that I wanted to do anything about it. Not, not happening, you know? Um, and it was also the sense of like, I just want to be able to drink the way I want to drink and I don't want people to bother me. Um, and it was bothering other people. Um so they bothered me, you know, my family every I upset a lot of people in my family. Um and and I, I was just, I was hopeless, you know, and finally when that hit happened to me. The pit in my stomach happened where I was like, I can't go on this way, you know? Um, and because I had had that introduction to AA, um, when I was about 18, finally I'm in my last semester of college and I hit a bottom where I just couldn't go On. Um, I couldn't believe the depths that my alcoholism had taken me and I wasn't doing what like normal college kids were doing anymore, you know, um and and something happened to me right though. I had this moment of, you know, I believe my higher powers presence came into my life. And I was walking to my therapist at the time because I had called him and said, I really messed up. I'm freaking out. Could you have an appointment? I'm like, I think I'm dying. I mean, I was like losing my mind. And he said he could see me and I was walk into this appointment and I thought to myself, maybe I shouldn't drink anymore. And it was weird because like that really was never a thought. Um, it was me, but I don't know if I can. And that was what scared the crap out of me. I don' t want to live like this anymore, but I do' n't know what it even would look like to not live like thi s. That was the only life I knew. And it was surprising to come to AA and find that other people understood that. And they would be like, that's really not normal, but we get it. That' s not what people think. They don' T think, well, why don' r I just make myself puke so I can drink more? You know, like and they're like, that's like not normal. So anyway, so with my first step, it was like, OK, I had I was so hopeless and helpless that I just said, OK. All right. I'll I'll do what you guys are doing, you know, and I admitted I was powerless and with a higher power. I was totally weirded out with the idea of God. I didn't I grew up with a religion, but I had chose to not follow it. I chose at some point when I was drinking that I don't want my God to see what I'm doing, so I'm going to pretend he's not there. And so when I came to AA, my sponsor was like, okay, so we pray every day, we get on our knee, and I was like whoa. Like this is way too much for me. And so she's like well that's okay, you can pray to whom it may concern. And so that's what I did. And it really works. You know now I call my higher power a God, like I have a relationship with my God, but that worked for a while. I would get on my knees and I would say, to whom it may concern, please help me stay sober. And then at night, I would go to bed and I was like, I would pray, to who it may concerned, thanks for keeping me sober today. And that worked. So I really believe when they say, you know, that your God of your own understanding, that was my God of my understanding. And my sponsor would ask me every single day for my first five months of sobriety if I prayed that day when I would see her because I saw my sponsor for every single Day of my first Five Months of Sobriety, which is crazy. That's not most people's experience, but I got sober in upstate New York and the home group that I landed in that my therapist sent me to happened to be very strict. And I moved to Baltimore and I got a sponsor here and she really helped me come to that understanding. And she would say things, you know, I really, really related to the, like, my heart power is not big enough, you Know? And when I would say that, my sponsor was like, we'll use mine and and that idea was just like baffling because it was you know like wait so you think yours is strong enough for the both of us you know and and and she would just be like yeah I know it is and and so that that belief just it started to come over time I continue to pray and my prayer life I'm not gonna sit here and be like I pray every day I'm really good there are like literally like I go through cycles and sometimes I just like am like okay I know there's a God but like for some reason the past three days I didn't get on my knee like what's up with that, you know? And it's just what happens in my sobriety, in my recovery, in my program. But I really rely on that higher power. And in my third step, you know, it's turning my will and my life over, you know, to my higher power is, it is actually amazing. It's a relief, but I didn't feel like that when I came to that step. I was like, well, if I give my will over like what's left of me, you know? And, and I have no ability to make the decision. You know, I didn't really like that, you Know? Um, but what happened was I would get in enough pain where I would say, you now, to my sponsor or my friends in AA, I don't know, this one seems too hard for me to handle, you Now? And then I would be nicely and gently reminded you don't have to handle it. You have a higher power, you know, give it up, stop hanging on so tightly. Um, and my sponsor always tells me, she's like, you're one of those people, some people like they turn over and done. It's bam, it's gone. God's got it. And they, now they're like coasting easy, you know? She's like you leave claw marks and things, you know? And it's true. You know, I'm like gripping it just until the end. And then I'm like, okay, fine. This is too hard. You You know, but eventually I get there, which is why I'm still sober today. Eventually I get to the point where I give it to my higher power, you know, and and the cool thing about step three is that this is a step that I have to continue to do. I know it's not technically a maintenance step like the ones are at the end, but this is what I have to do when I do not practice a third step. I feel resistance in my daily life. And so for me, what that looks like is, oh, I really wanted to make this plan. And the quality of my problems today, it's really amazing when I think about, oh, my problem today is I really want to go to this social event and I can't. Like, oh. Like, problem. I was on death's door so many times. I'm in the hospital beds. I'm passing out. I'm blacking out. My mom doesn't know if I'm ever going to make it home. Like, you know, and now the quality of my problems is like I might be late to a social event or something, you know. And so but anyway, so the third step for me is because I'm sort of a control freak. My third step from me has to look like giving it over to my higher power before I'm planning out the final outcome. You know, my higher my higherpower always takes care of me if I choose to let him. And that's the biggest thing for me. It's like, OK, take care of Me. I'm in your hands. You know, I'm going to give this over to you. And I do not just give drinking over to him anymore. I need to give all of my will over to my higher power. And so that means that I have to be a better employee. That means I have to bea better sister, you know, a better family member, a better girlfriend. And when I'm practicing a third step and actually turning that over, my life is amazing. Amazing. You know? But that third step is, you know, it's hard for me when I get into spots where I think my higher power isn't strong enough. Um, and the cool thing I wanted to also tell you a little bit about this quickly about the second step that I did, um, with my sponsor that I do with the girls I sponsor because I am consistently going back to this when I'm feeling iffy about my third step. Well then what is my higherpower? What am I turning this over to? Um, my sponsor had me write a list and it was my old higher power of like what I came into AA with and my ideal higher power. And what that means is the characteristics. If I came in and I stuck with all the old ideas I had about what a higher power is, you know, they were things like holds grudges, is judgmental, is crusty. For some reason, I thought it was like a crusty old man, okay? You know, doesn't listen to my prayers unless I say them in a specific format, you now. And that was a hard thing for me too. And now the higher power that I believe in, because now the ideal actually has come true. When I wrote this out for the first time, I was like, this is ridiculous. People think they're getting one over on me when they talk about this cool higher power. Like, no. But I have some stuff on this list like forgiving, cares about me, listens to me when I actually communicate, tries to make things clear to me, and loves me for trying. And so that's what's important to me is I have to make a consistent effort. I'm not perfect. I'm going to be perfect. My higher power actually doesn't want me to be perfect because if I was, then what would I need him for? And so for me, it's that heart feeling of my higher power just taking care of me. And I rely on that now to help keep me sober every day, one day at a time. And I'm here today by the grace of God. My higherpower is phenomenal because even when I don't feel like it, I show up. You know, even when I don't feel like doing the next right thing, I do it. And it's not because I'm some great giant or some awesome person. My higher power has shown me consistently that when I do the next right thing I will be taken care of and I will not have to pick up a drink. I don' t have to go back to that person that I used to be because that was ugly. It was, you know, that person was a fall-down blackout drunk and she had nothing going on in her life. And, you know, I don't talk in that weird third person. But I feel like that was a different person than you're actually seeing today. I feel Like That Was a Different Person. And only through Alcoholics Anonymous and being accountable and my higher power really just taking care of me every step of the way am I sitting here today in front of you. And I thank you all for listening, and thanks for letting me share. Thank you very much.