Mechanics of the First Four Steps – 12 Step Workshop – Manor, TX – Part 1 of 2 – Chris M.

Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. My name is Chris. I am an alcoholic. It's a privilege and an honor to be here with you all this morning and be asked to share some of my experience on the four-step and to be in Joe Hawk Hall. This is absolutely amazing for me. I had the honor of being able to do some personal step work with Joe six or seven years ago. We clicked pretty well. He was a great, great guy and a recovery genius. He truly was. Just to tell you where the philosophy and the mechanics and the eventual experience from the steps came from. For me, I was in New Jersey and I was going to meetings. I think everybody in here has probably experienced the meetings where it's not a lot of solution. It's a lot about continuing to share about the difficulties that you're having in life or whatever. I was doing a lot these meetings and my issue was I was really alcoholic. and I was dying inside I was lying inside emotionally on a good day I was restless, irritable and discontented a normal day I would be prey to misery depression, self-centered fear guilt, shame, remorse anxiety that's a normal death and this is during my period of sobriety I got exposed to some tapes I've always been a collector and what happened was I started to collect recovery tapes, and I came across a set of Joe H. and Mark H. recovery talks. Now, in 95 or so, 94, 95, Joe and Mark went around the country and did a number of big book workshops. These workshops were seminal. They were revolutionary, they were so focused on the actual mechanics and processes of the steps that it shifted my whole perspective about what recovery was about. I thought recovery was About participating in the meetings and cleaning up and doing the coffee and driving people around and going out to the diner. I just didn't know any different. And these workshops that I started to collect Started to talk to me about the actual process of taking the steps I cannot tell you how lucky you are to be here There's something like 16,000 treatment centers Or places that you can go to aid your recovery from addictive illness and that you landed in here, I can't even tell you how lucky you are. Inherent in alcoholism is usually an almost utter inability to recognize how much trouble you're in. If you're alcoholic or if you're a drug addict, you know you're în trouble. But let me tell you, you're minimizing like you have no idea. Addictive illness is an aggressive illness that doesn't usually allow you an accurate perception of how much trouble you're in. You know that your family is mad at you, it's hard to keep a job, you can't hold on to your money, you're letting your health go, you know all those things. But it's an even bigger problem than that. And when we look at step one, I need to go through steps one, two and three before I can start sharing on four, just to put it in perspective. When you look at step one, we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholic. And I want to be inclusive if drugs is your problem. We need to fully conceive to our inner most selves that were a drug addict. What does that mean? I didn't know what it meant until some very, very intelligent, experienced people really explained it to me. Oh, am I powerless over alcohol? Yeah, when I drink, all hell breaks loose. Well, that's not even what they're talking about. And then for a while I thought, you know, I'm powerless over alcoholic. I just can't take the first drink. If I just don't take the first thing, everything is fine. That's not what they are talking about either. They are talking about someone who suffers from an obsession of the mind coupled with an allergy to the body a little bit, a dash and their lives have become unmanageable. What does that look like? I'll share from my own experience what it looks like. I know it's a good idea not to drink for men. I'm a pass out, black out violent, insane pathetic alcoholic. Do I know its a bad idea to drink? Absolutely I know. I don't need help knowing it's an idea to drink. I don' t need people to encourage me not to drink. I already know that. The problem is the illness, alcoholism there's a phenomenon that happens and it's called the obsession of the mind. They describe it in the book Alcoholics Anonymous like this strange mental blank spots that precede the first drink or first drug subtle forms of insanity that precede the first drinking or the first drug What happens with me is, for some crazy reason, even knowing it's a horrible, horrible decision to make, I make that decision and I put booze back in my body. It comes almost from a place of unconsciousness. It comes Almost... It's like I'm not even there making that decision. Two or three drinks into it, I'll realize, oh my God, what have I done? I'm drinking again. That's the obsession of the mind. It's the ability of one's alcoholism to blank out and blot out your ability to make sane and sound choices. That's a problem. If you know that the booze or the drugs are going to kill you why can't you not use or not drink? Because of the obsession in your mind. And if you've gone down the scale far enough and this hits you, if this is your experience, you're in real, real trouble. Now the second part of the first part of The First Step is the allergy to the body. That's a craving. When I took a drink, one thing always happened every time The first drink asks for the second drink. The second drink insists on the third, the third demands the fourth, etc., etc. I want the tenth drink more than I wanted the ninth drink. It creates both a physical and a mental craving to continue to drink. Now this doesn't happen with everybody. This does not happen with Aunt Fanny and Uncle Thud. They can have two glasses of wine at Thanksgiving and they're good. What happens to me is I have the two glasses of wine, I'm looking around for beer. There's no beer. I'm looking around whiskey. There is no whiskey in the house. I got to go. I'll see you guys later. You know, I've started the engine and the engine needs fuel. And I have little or no control over that. Now this is a problem. So many of us minimize this situation. So so many of minimize this experience that we have. Our ego wants to take responsibility of our drinking, our ego wants to take responsibility of our recovery or our abstinence. But it's a deeper issue than that. When you admit to powerlessness, you admit to not being able to control putting it back in your body and not being able to be control once it is back in the body. That's what powerlessness is. So the The unmanageability is sometimes the externals. You know, DUIs, I've had three of them. I lost my family, 13 jobs, you know, no friends, having to move back home with mom, you know, the whole deal. I've experienced all that. But that's not really my unmanagability. My unmanigability is the emotional state that I suffer from. My life system is a life system based on selfishness and self-centered fear. I grew up that way, I don't know why that was, but that's the life system that alcoholism was able to live and breathe in. So there's a lot of unmanageability that happens when you suffer from an addictive illness. Personal relationship problems, okay? You're always at odds with the world. can't seem to make a living misery depression, remorse anxiety all of that stuff that is alcoholism that is drug addiction that psycho emotional state that you suffer from now that's basically step one you put all three of those things together and it's not good news it's like Custer's Last Stand and then there's more Indians coming over the hill. You know, I'm doomed is basically what step one is talking about. But then comes step two. Step two is, well, maybe not. There's a power that you can access that can restore you to sanity and can improve your quality of life to the point where your life is no longer unmanageable. what I learned in Alcoholics Anonymous from some very very good teachers is I need to participate in the recovery process with all I've got I needto participate in the recover process I can never go up against booze single handedly I just can't I can't fix all of my problems in my life myself just by deciding to That doesn't work for me. But I came to believe that something has been working in other people's lives. My sponsor was as bad as I was, and now he's got a house, he's in custody of his kids, he's had a really big job, he's gotten a nice car, things are working in his life. So I started to believe that there's something out there that can help me. I don't really know everything I need to know about it. I want to know more about it, but I came to believe that there was a power that I could access. And what I found out in Alcoholics Anonymous is that if I rightly relate myself to God and my fellow man, if I live life along spiritual principles, I gain access to that power, that power that can keep me from picking up a drink, that can restore some sanity when it comes to decisions with drugs and alcohol and help recreate my life based on spiritual principles. Recovery is basically this. It's going from a life system based on selfishness and self-centered fear and shifting from that type of a life system to a life systems based in love and service. When you're in the life system based in love and services, you're recovery and things are gonna go well in your life. For the most part, things are gonna go wlll in your live. You're going to have attitudes of gratitude. You're gonna have spirituality, you're gonna know peace. You're gotta understand serenity. It's a wholesale shift in perception is basically what recovery is. And the second step is just basically asking me to believe that that's possible. Alcoholism or drug addiction is your problem. Spiritual living is going to be your solution. Step three, you know, and I'm doing this very, very brief. And it's the Cliff Notes version. You know, I know where you guys are. You're going to get a much more thorough understanding of the steps than I'm going to give you here today. But step three in its simplicity is am I in or am I out? All right, I understand I'm powerless over alcohol, that my life is unmanageable. that I'm starting to believe that there's a power that if I can access it, I can recover and some things can start going good in my life. Am I in or am I out? Is step three. I need to make a decision to turn my will and my life or my thinking and my actions over to the care of God as I understand it or spiritual life. So in step three basically I have to come to the conclusion that I need to buy into this process of recovery. And the buy-in is going to mean participation. So many of us want the home study course, you know? Just tell me what my problem is. Just show me how not to drink. We all want these shortcuts. Unfortunately, alcoholism and drug addiction are so aggressive that the recovery process has to be aggressive. addictive illness is an unorthodox illness it affects your thinking it affects your relationships it affects your wallet it affects your health it affects everything about you it's an un orthodox illness most illnesses you go to the doctor and say hey doc I'm not really feeling all that great and they'll prescribe something for you unfortunately with addictive illness it's so aggressive that it needs an aggressive recovery process so in step 3 I need a buy in I need to buy into this. Yes, I will do this stuff. What do you want me to do? Just tell me and to the best of my ability, whatever that may be, I'll do it because I've run out of options. I've ran out of plans. Here I am in one more place. You know what I mean? So step three is basically I'm in. I need a quick playing guy. I need to redefine my relationship with spirituality and with my higher power. And I need to make a decision to continue on with this recovery process and do whatever work is involved, to take responsibility for that. Now in step four well let's look at it like this. Any problem, I like the way Bill Wilson uses the example of a business inventory. If you're running a shoe store and, you know, you're bleeding money and you're not making any money, you know, there's shoes on the shelf that aren't selling. They've been there for years. You know, though, there is no more room for new stuff that's going to sell. I mean, you are making a lot of bad business decisions if things aren't going well. The status of your quality of life is in the toilet. As a businessman with a shoe store, you will need to take inventory. You're going to need to figure out what's selling, what isn't. What works, what doesn't. What's good, what's bad. And you need to get ready to get rid of the things that aren't working, the thingsthat are bad in your life, the thingsthater causing problems. You need toget rid of those. To be able to move forward, you have to assess what's going on. The brilliance of the book Alcoholics Anonymous is there's still not a text not a text, more significant as far as what is addiction illness how does it show up in your life and what is the process of recovery for it there's been a lot of books written out there on alcoholism there's also been a book written out on drug addiction I still believe in my heart that nothing is more significant than the book Alcoholics Not because it's been proven time and again to work now, I'm alcoholic I can't manage my own life. I believe that there is a power I can access that can help me with this. I've made a decision to access that. What do I need to do? I need you to take a personal inventory. I need start seeing what is working in my life and what isn't. What is continuing to hurt me and others? What is blocking me off from a successful life? Look, I'm a smart guy. Why am I living home with mom? You know what I mean? Why do I have $2? Why have I lost my license one more time? You know, why am I working in a job, you know, that I'm so underemployed? What is going on? You know why do I continue to keep getting horrible girlfriends? Any number of those questions. We need to start looking at all of this stuff. Now, I'm not exactly sure if you have forms here. I don't know what you do for a four-step here exactly. I know the principles in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. I know you're following those because I know more. But let me just talk a little bit about here. Resentments. Resentment is the number one offender, it says in the books Alcoholics Aneumonious. Resentents kill more alcoholics than anything else. It does not say alcohol kills more alcohols than anything other. Resentiment kills more alcoholic than anything others Because here's what happens. We get really pissed off. We get pissed off at the people who are in our room, you know, our bunk mates or whatever. You know, this place just pisses me off. I don't like the way they do this. I don' t like the rules. I'm getting the hell out of here. You get the hell outta here, you're back on your own, you don't have sufficient defense against the first drink or the first drug you use again, you die. The resentment led to your death. You understand what I'm saying? There's a chain of circumstances that'll happen. Now, in resentments We can resent people We can resentment institutions We can reset principles There are just things that we're angry at Now, every once in a while I'll get somebody going through the steps Who doesn't have any resentments They're not mad at anybody You know, that's a kind of denial I'll ask them Well, have you ever been mad at anyone? Do you ever get pissed off at anybody at any time? Well, yeah Okay, well, let's start with all those people. We can be upset at institutions. We can get upset at the government. We can feel upset about things. We can have a lot of people be upset at the Motor Vehicle Bureau. We can being upset at IRS. A lot of these people are not on our Christmas card list when we get in here. You know what I mean? You write them down. We can upset at principles. We can principle to be monogamous. There's a lot principles that we can upset. at. There's some principles in the book Alcoholics Anonymous that I was upset at in the 12 and 12. Like the spiritual axiom, you know, whenever there's something wrong, it's wrong with me. You know, I wasn't happy to hear that. My problems were of my own making. I didn't want to hear that! I can have a resentment toward those principles, because I don't feel that they fit me. My case is a little bit different. So I need to write all of these down. And how you write them down, you You know, there's people in here that will show you how to do that if you haven't already. I know a lot of you guys do multiple fifth steps and all kinds of great stuff. For a living today, what I do is I host a web broadcast where I interview a lot people in addictive illness. A lot of the people that run the big rehabs, a lot are clinicians. Believe me, I know what goes on out there in the world of addictive illness processes. and what happens in this place is probably the most significant course of action you can have to prepare you for permanent recovery so I don't want to get in the way of anybody and how they teach you how to do the mechanics of this but I have to ask myself why am I angry then I have look at the areas in myself that are harm threatened or interfered with I can't be angry at someone or some institution or some principle without it seemingly harming, threatening or interfering with my instincts or my ambitions. Let me tell you what I mean by that. I define instincts as the things that I have and want to keep and my ambitions as the thing that I want to do. The things out there that I wanna get and acquire. Now if something harms, threatens or interferes with my instinct It's going after something that I consider mine. If it harms, interferes with my ambitions, that means it's interfering with me getting something I want. You know, I'll get pissed off at a guy in a bar because it looks like he's going for the same girl I'm going after. I'll be mad at somebody at work because I think they're trying to take my job. You know? Those are my ambitions. And they'll cause resentment because I have a life system based on selfishness and self-centeredness. Does that make any sense? You know, it's about me. And this is where resentments grow from. The roots of resentment. So I need to identify the areas of self. What does it affect? Does it affect my money? Does it effect my personal relationships? Does it or will it affect my sexual relationship? I need look at... There are about seven areas of the self that I need a look at for every single resentment. Then, there's a line of demarcation. It says, putting out of our minds the wrongs others have done to us, we resolutely look at our own faults. Where had we been at fault? Where were we selfish? Where were dishonest? Where were self-seeking? Where were frightened? Remember, selfish is this is mine, you can't have it. Self-seekings is I want that, get out of my way. Dishonesty, we all know what that is. Fear, we also know what it is. We all know that is too. I need to look at this stuff, I need to be dead on honest, as honest as I can be in any given moment with the fourth column or the area where I've been at fault. Get all of this down on paper. There's a magic that happens between the pen and the paper that will not happen between the mind and the mouth. So it's very, very important to learn the discipline of actually writing this stuff down. There's just a magic that happens between the pen and the paper. So I start looking at this. I start to put together the whole magilla, the whole series of mistakes and resentments and all this stuff. I start putting it down on paper. I get as many of these things down as I can with whom I was angry. The next part of the fourth step is to look at our fears. Now, a lot of us are courageous people. We storm into a bar. We pick on the biggest guy we race motorcycles you know we ride with the harley guys you know to talk to us about fear sometimes is tricky because we're we're courageous we're sometimes we're insane you know well i gotta tell you i was an absolute nut out there you put some booze in my body and i wasn't afraid of anything that's really not the type of fear that i like to look at in the industry i I like to look at the self-centered fear. Self-centered fear was the way I perceived myself. I had a general anxiety about it. I just never felt comfortable with myself or my environment. I just didn't. If they said, Chris, there's a party tonight at 8 o'clock. Let's go. I'd start drinking at 6 o' clock so I'd have my fortitude. I'd be able to step out at 8 o'clock. Well, what's the problem with me going to the party and starting to drink? Because the alcohol and the drugs gave me a little bit of courage. It took away a little bit of that anxiety, that feeling not a part of, feeling separate from. The alcoholic and the addict, we suffer from feelings of separation. We're separate from everything. So I have to start listing my fears. What are some of my fears and why do I have them? And I really need to look at them. Then there's the fear prayer. It asks us, don't we have this fear because self-reliance has failed us? Our life system built on selfishness and self-centeredness has failed us. Otherwise, we wouldn't have these fears and anxieties. We wouldn't be able to live a life of self-relief. We wouldn' t have to put alcohol and drugs in our body to feel okay. Sobriety would be enough for us. So I need to start looking at these fears. And I need the list them all out, okay? The third part of the fourth step is harms to others. Certainly the emphasis needs to be on sex. I know of no other group of people who do a worse job with relationships than alcoholics and drug addicts. We take hostages, you know. We use sex as a weapon, you Know. We'll withhold sex to get what we want. We'll bribe, cajole, rape, pillage. We'll do whatever we can to get what we think we need. We'll go after women like they're a drug. We'll pick one that is attractive to the point where we know they're going to make us feel different. I'm going to go after her because that would be unbelievable. So we're going after women like they are drugs for us. It's like going after a fish. Once we get into a relationship, we start acting incredibly selfishly. It's as if we own that person. We're involved in every detail. What are you doing? Where are you going? Who are you talking to? Who is that on the phone? We're insane when it comes to relationships. We need to really start looking at our behavior with the relationships we've had. there's a review of each relationship I ask my guys to write at least a paragraph, just painting the picture of the relationship then there's nine questions some of the questions are where did we unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion or bitterness who have we hurt we also need to look at the collateral damage in our relationships that can be great we don't ever want to miss that in other words when I was going after these women and I was engaging them in my life they ran for the hills after being burned 3 or 4 times who else has been hurt? the parents, their children their boyfriend or husband who knows all these other people that could have been harmed my wife could have done it I can list all kinds of stuff So that needs to be listed and that needs to be looked at. Then at the end, it says, with this information, because now we're looking at man, look at all this stuff. We can see what hasn't worked for us. This is the stuff that contributed to our failure in having a successful relationship. It says we then develop a sex idea. We then try to develop a sex ideal. I'll usually tell my guys, look, go into some prayer, go into some meditation. Ask God, you know, you already know what doesn't work. You listed it all out. Ask god for some of the attributes of the type of person you need to be. Who do you want to show up as at the next party? You know what I mean? This is really, really important. You attract what you are. If you're a dysfunctional, maniacal alcoholic, who you think you're going to be attracting in relationships? You attract what you are. So I would rather start attracting people that have some kind of qualities. So I need to start developing certain qualities in my life and how I show up and how i react in relationships. So the sex ideal, I ask my guys to put at least a couple of paragraphs together, usually more. Listing out the attributes and the behavior patterns and the type of person you need to be or you want to be in the next relationship. And then it says we ask God to mold our ideals and help us to be the type of people we would like to be. So after we've figured out how we want to show up, every single day we need to ask God for the strength and the direction to become that person. And that becomes a spiritual discipline, and that becomes a cornerstone on some significant change in your life being a better person. I don't know any of you real well. Some of you are probably married. Some ofyou have girlfriends. Someofyou have families. Someof you are estranged from families. But I know alcoholics, and I know each and every one of you wants to be the best person they can be with the people that you care about. You just haven't been able to over the last number of years because you've been shooting yourself in the foot. This process helps us to stop shooting ourselves in the foothold. So we start asking God to mold our ideals and that's what we do. Now, this is an unorthodox treatment or recovery process for an illness. You know, if you've got heart disease or something, you don't go home and inventory all this stuff. It probably would be a good idea, but that's not what the doctor is going to order you to do. Because alcoholism is so aggressive and so unorthodox, it takes an unorthodontic recovery process. Going back to the origins of where did they figure all this stuff out? Bill Wilson and Dr. Bob were both suffering incredibly from alcoholism both of them were exposed to the Oxford Group the Oxford group was where Alcoholics Anonymous came from the Oxford group was basically a group of people that got together to talk about religious and spiritual principles and actually put them together in their life and they did it with an intensity they met almost every night they had weekend house parties they got together and they were really active and they really got busy talking about how to become spiritual people how to have more faith how to live better lives now, Bill Wilson Dr. Bob and their wives basically learned everything they needed to know for alcoholism recovery through the Oxford Group principles. Bill was going a couple of years, Dr. Bob was going about four years. Bill was able to stay sober. Dr. Bobby wasn't. The significant fact in this was, here's how Bill showed up to his recovery process. He went every single night, he was grabbing people to bring him along, he was sharing his experience with other people, he was constantly trying to help people. Every time he was asked to do something, he did it. He got up in front of people. He told his story. He was about the business of the Oxford group or spiritual living. He was About the Business and he stayed sober. Dr. Bob, on the other hand, wanted to just come late, sit in the back, don't contribute anything and leave when he's done. Many of us have approached 12-step recovery groups that way. we'll show up, we'll go to a bunch of meetings but we really aren't going to get active we really are not going to be busy the difference between the two was Dr. Bob was busy and stayed sober I'm sorry, Bill Wilson was busy and stayed over Dr.Bob was minimizing and dodging and weaving and procrastinating and he did not stay sober Bill gets together with him and says look, we need to get busy Dr. Bob had one more relapse and he stayed sober after that for 15 years he helped thousands of alcoholics and didn't take another drink now it's important to see where these principles came from they came from Christian groups that got together to practice spiritual principles I said earlier alcoholism or drug addiction is your problem Spiritual living is your solution, and that's absolutely, absolutely true. Good morning, everybody. My name is Chris. I am an alcoholic. I said yesterday it's an incredible honor to be here. What's happening at the Mark Houston Recovery Center is seminal as far as recovery processes are concerned. One of the things I do is I go all over the country, all overthe world and interview people and talk to people who are involved in addictive illness treatment and recovery processes and for the most part they're not really able to offer you a spiritual experience. They're able to offer you clinical processes. They're unable to offer your counseling. They're not really designed or set up to do that. As a matter of fact, many of their counselors or the professionals that work there don't understand what recovery is. They understand the illness. They understand a lot of things, but they don't have experiential knowledge on the recovery process. What happens here is the people that you're exposed to day in, day out have experiental knowledge on recovery. The difference between that is this. You can have intellectual experience. You can read about this. You can study all kinds of things about alcoholism or drug addiction and you can get a Ph.D. in it but the fact of the matter is unless you experience the recovery process not learn it intellectually but if you don't experience it it's not going to become something that manifests in you and you're not going to be able to move forward. Now, one of the things that's real tricky for us out there is there's a lot of AA, there's all kinds of A's out there. And you can walk into these meetings. I want you to know something, though. Addictive illness manifests in a scale. It says in the book, no matter how far down the scale you have gone, Then it says in the book, whether you can quit drinking by non-spiritual means will depend on how much control you've lost in drink. So what I get from the big book is I get that there's actually a scale that we're all on somewhere. Now, in a lot of the recovery meetings, a lot people are pretty high up on the scale. I don't really consider everybody that walks into the fellowships that we all go to to truly be powerless. I believe that a lot of times they still have some power, choice, and control over taking the first drink. I believethat because I know the type of programs they work, I knowthe type of behavior that they're involved in. Me personally, if I was working that type of a program or if Iwas engaging in those behaviors, I would be drunk as a goat in five minutes. So I believe that there's a scale, and I believe that you can walk into meetings and you can be among a lot of people who haven't really gone down the scale very far, do not really have to get about the business of recovery, and they're going to probably be okay. Now what happens is when you end up in a place like this, you've probably experienced relapse. Anyone that's really tried to separate from drugs and alcohol and found they couldn't, raise your hand. Okay. Now listen, this is what I love speaking to people who've had this same experience. What happened with me was I signed myself into a 28-day program. I didn't want to go. Nobody was making me go. Alcohol had got my attention. I was going to check out. I mean, I was going to die and I knew it. So I heard, you know, go to this place. It was the only option that I was aware of. So I signed myself into this place, you know, I paid a lot of money. In this particular treatment center, they did give me a big book. They did give мне a 12 and 12. But what they did was they had me watch a lot movies and, you now, a lot of lectures. They had people coming in from the outside who, you know, had dubious recovery at best. And I didn't get any counselor one-on-one. And when I left, they told me, you need outpatient. You should probably go to some meetings. Okay. So I did both of those because, you I was scared for my life. I started to go to two AA meetings, and I went to two outpatient meetings, and I was paying money at these outpatient meanings. And listen, you've got to understand me as a person. I didn't like crowds. I didn'T like lights. I didn' t like anybody telling me what to do. I didn''t like being somewhere at a certain time. I didn ''t want to be held accountable. I wanted to dodge and weave. I mean, that was my modus operandi. So for me to engage in that, you have to understand that I was desperate to stay separated from alcohol. Desperate. Or I wouldn't have been doing that. I hated every minute of it. So I was going to outpatient. I was Going to a couple of AA meetings. And what happened was about two months into this process, somewhere in the summer of 1989, I'm driving to an AA meeting and the thought crosses my mind that, you know what, I haven't been drunk in almost three months. I almost don't even remember what that's like. And I heard somebody at a meeting say, if you can't remember your last drunk, you haven't had it. So I said, you now what? I'm going to buy a gallon of vodka. I'm gonna drink it and what that is going to do is that's going to remind me how terrible it is to get drunk and I'm going to zoom back into this recovery process with a whole new attitude and outlook. So what I did was I got drunk to improve my sobriety. Only an alcoholic can do that, and I've got to tell you it was a mistake. I'm three drinks into that drink, I'm 3 drinks into the bottle, and all of a sudden I go, Oh my God, what have I done? I've opened up the cage door to the beast, I'm going to get dragged around by the neck for however long it's going to be. I can't believe it, I'm drinking again. Now here's the crux of the situation. Did the alcohol make me insane? No, the alcohol actually restored me to sanity. The alcohol actually stored me to say I realized three drinks into it what a mistake I had made. I had that subtle form of insanity prior to putting alcohol in my body. Now, this is really what separates us from the heavy drinkers, from a lot of the other people that end up in the 12-step recovery processes. We really, really want to not do this again and find out we can't. We end up for one reason or another, But alcohol or drugs doesn't care what kind of a reason it gives you. You know, all of a sudden you're using again. And, you know, it's hard even to explain it to people. Like, well, you've had four DWIs. You've been thrown out of the house and there you are with a six-pack under your arm. What is the matter with you? And you're like, you Know, it' s not even something that computes. You just don't have the ability to get it. Now, this is what separates us, and it separates us in the rooms, and I want you to know that because you can't work the same type of program with the guy that's sitting next to you over here or the guy that's sittin' next to yo u over here. You have to be diligent about the business of recovery, and you learn that in this place. And I cannot tell you how lucky you are to be in this specific facility. You have to take it from me. I go all over the place, and it's absolutely tragic some of the stuff that happens with us. Your chances of ending up in a place with a true answer is amazingly low, and here you are. Addictive illness is misunderstood by so many people It's misunderstood by people that have it It's misunderstanding by people That treat you for it It's misunderstand by the sponsor That you get It's understand by the family It's understood by everybody You almost have to be The type of person who has experienced That level of powerlessness That I really didn't want to do this You almost have to be one of those people to really have a clue about what is going on with addictive illness. Now, today I was talking with Patty before the meeting and we were trying to decide on a topic for this workshop. I can pretty much talk on most things. But we came up with the spiritual experience. In this book here, I think it's a fourth edition, it's on page 567 if anyone cares to follow along. So, just a little bit of background about where this appendix came from. What happened is in the first edition of the big book, Alcoholics Anonymous, in Bill's story, he tells about the revolutionary change in attitude and outlook that he had. You know, he was on the hospital bed in Towns Hospital And he was getting over his last detox. He's in the middle of, you know, he had hallucinated. He's coming out of that. And Ebi Thatcher is visiting him in the hospital and he's talking to him about a spiritual recovery program. It wasn't really called that back then. It was more or less a way of living spiritual principles that Ebi Thatcher had used to be able to get sober. And on that hospital bed, Bill Wilson had a spiritual experience. Now the way I describe spiritual experience and spiritual awakening is like this. A spiritual experience is something that, it's a phenomenon, it happens, you're transformed by it. but you're not necessarily able to hang on to it. I think we've all had these. The first ones that I ever had were on LSD, you know? You know what I mean? It's like, whoa! It's really a transformational shift in thinking and attitude and outlook on life. Now, you have these in AA or NA. You have these when you do step work. You have a lot of these. And again, they're not always permanent. The spiritual awakening that they talk about is truly our spirits are asleep. We're asleep to a lot of things. We're sleep to a true and accurate appraisal of ourselves, a true an accurate appraiser of our place in the universe. And there's a number of spiritual experiences that build up, I believe, to a spiritual awakening where we truly have a new attitude and outlook on life. Our relationship with the universe, with ourselves and with others is on a whole different level. And I talked yesterday, we've gone from a life system based on self-centered fear and selfishness to a life systems based on love and service. That's really the shift to the spiritual awakening. I believe the spiritual awakening takes a lot of work. I think we can have some spiritual experiences you know each spiritual exercise we take will bring about a series of promises but i think the spiritual awakening that we're looking for is the treatment or the recovery from addictive illness because the people that have had this and that follow the disciplines to be able to hold on to it don't drink and don't use again now i've sponsored hundreds of people in the last 18 and a half years. And if you talk about the workshops, I've probably taken 3,000 or 4,000 people through the steps. I've got some experience with this. And I pay attention. The people who go through the recovery process as it's laid out in the big book and do the disciplines to hang on to that spiritual awakening do not drink and use again very, very rarely will they get in trouble the only exception being someone who's had some really serious surgery and been put on some really series narcotics I've seen a few of those people just have a really hard time and end up relapsing but 95% of the people that have gone through this work and do the disciplines to hang on to it stay sober forever Not a day at a time. A day at the time is how we live our life. They stay sober forever. And permanent sobriety is what we need to look for. I understand when you're new, looking at permanent sobrietty can be challenging. Like, I'll never ever drink again. What about at my daughter's wedding? How will I not drink champagne? We're like that. We're thinking 200 years ahead. And sometimes it's a little easier for us to just take blocks of time and just deal with that. But understand that ideally, the life continuum that you want to engage in is one of permanent sobriety. Addictive illness is progressive. Things over any considerable period of time, things get worse. They don't get better. Every year is a little bit or a lot worse than the one before when you're drinking and using. Isn't that your experience? I mean, you know, you're shooting yourself in the foot a lot more this year than you were last year. It's progressive, and it's fatal at the end of the progression normally. Recovery is progressive too. Recovery is aggressive this way. if you continue to practice these disciplines if you work the steps find ways to be of service live a compassionate life try to be as compassionate as possible what happens is your quality of life goes this way and things get better over any considerable period of time it's been my experience I know this from my own experience and my experience working with others. A little bit about the spiritual experience appendix is that when Bill Wilson had that sudden spiritual awakening on the bed at Towns Hospital, when the wind of the spirit blew through him and a giant white light appeared, you know, he talks about this in his story. What happened was when this book was published, people, this book went all over the place. The first 15, 20 years or so, people were working out of the first edition. And they were thinking, I need to have that too. Where's that bright light? I don't feel any wind of the spirit blowing up my butt. What's going on? So they're writing letters back to general service and they're saying, you know, are we really sober? Are we really recovered? We never saw the light, and Bill had to re-explain what the spiritual experience or the recovery process was. I'm going to start reading here. The term spiritual experience and spiritual awakening are used many times in this book, which upon careful reading shows that the personality change sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism has manifested itself among us in many different forms. There needs to be a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery. A personality change is like a complete change in attitude and outlook on life. But no major decisions in your first year. Just become a completely different person. You can tell I'm not a great fan of the slogans. Anyway, especially the slogans that came from well-meaning but uninformed treatment protocols. Anyway, yet it is true that our first printing gave many readers the impression that these personality changes or religious experiences must be in the nature of sudden and spectacular upheavals. Happily for everyone, this conclusion is erroneous. Bill felt that he might have led people astray because he was talking about having that spiritual experience in like a couple of hours on a hospital bed and that's not really how we have our spiritual awakenings in recovery I've known a few people who've had those remarkable shifts in perception boom, they've gone from powerless and hopeless to all of a sudden the light is on in their eyes I have seen that happen, but it's incredibly rare. And again, if that does happen to you and you haven't done any of this work, you might not be able to hang on to it. It might not Be something that you're going to be able to use the rest of your life. In the first few chapters, a number of sudden revolutionary changes are described. Though it was not our intention to create such an impression, many alcoholics have nevertheless concluded that in order to recover, they must acquire an immediate and overwhelming God consciousness, followed at once by a vast change in feeling and outlook. Among our rapidly growing membership of thousands of alcoholics, such transformations, though frequent, are by no means the rule. Most of our experiences are what the psychologist William James called the educational variety because they develop slowly over a period of time. My own personal experience with this is that I was tentatively hanging on to sobriety when I first got into AA. What happened is after that relapse, after I decided to buy that gallon of vodka, I drank for another five and a half months. It was absolutely, absolutely a horrible experience for me. I came out of that with a willingness that was absolutely born of desperation. I was desperate. I wanted to survive. I knew I was losing my mind. I was becoming increasingly violent when I drank. I was going to shoot one of my family or something. It was really getting my attention because I was Jekyll and Hyde, and I had some affection for my family. It would have been inconvenient to shoot uno of them. And who wants to end up in prison? So, I mean, that coupled with just how horrible I felt all the time during this period of relapse. I went back to AA and I did everything, everything I could possibly think of to do. I grabbed a sponsor, Fish Food Phil. Everybody had nicknames back then. I found out in an inventory it was because I was nicknaming them. uh but fish food phil fish food Phil told me he goes he goes Chris I want you to go to a meeting every night until I tell you to stop okay Phil so I was going to it literally I was going to a every single night I wouldn't let anything get in the way of that every once in a while my boss would say yeah I need you to work overtime tonight I'd say sorry gotta go to a meet I mean I was absolutely desperate and and I really thought my attachment to those meetings is going to mean whether I live or die. And that's what I did. I went to a meeting every night for eight years. Now, here's me. Here's me sober. You know, I'm mad at everybody. You know? I've got that self-centered fear. I'm like sitting in the back. You know, if I get up and I walk out of here, they're going to be looking at me. I don't I don't want anybody looking at me, you know. And if I share, if I share and somebody insults me after I share I'm going to have to go out and kill them, so, you know, I don'T want to have to kill anybody in this group, you know, that would probably make it hard for me to come back, and so I better not share, and, you know, I'M REPRESSED WITH THIS ANXIETY AND SELF-CENTERED FEAR, YOU KNOW, AND I'M ASHAMED OF WHAT I HAD DONE AND I LOST MY FAMILY AND I WASN'T ALLOWED TO SEE MY daughter, you know, my wife moved 7,000 miles away just to get away from me. And I'm living at home with mom and I got a terrible job and I'm driving a 76 Ford Granada with white walls, no clutch, no emergency brake, no heater, you know, no muffler. You know, I'm just like, oh, I was just so filled with shame. Now this me sober, okay? And month after month after month. And what would happen is people would ask me to do something and I'd always say yes. I'd always say yesterday. Oh, you want me to be the cookie guy? I'll be the cookie guy. What kind of cookies do you want? I mean, I'd do anything. I would absolutely do anything and I was desperate to not ever put alcohol back in my body. But But here's what I thought. I thought this spiritual, emotional condition was something that I was going to have to live with the rest of my life. I was gonna have to Live With This. I mean, you know, life is horrible, but it would be more horrible if I was drinking. Now, I believe that if you go to a gazillion meetings and you're always there to help, you can create an atmosphere of sobriety for yourself, okay? What will happen is you'll have a tentative period of abstinence. But the alcoholism is that fear, it's that shame, it's all of those psycho-spiritual-emotional debilitating feelings that one has. That was how my alcoholism was manifesting. And you know what? That's how my alcoholism would have made the obsession of the mind manifest in me. And it was only a matter of time before I was going to drink or I was gonna drug. Now, my particular story is, I was a collector. I'm an album collector, you know. I'd do anything to get out of myself because it was such a burden being Chris, you Know. Let me tell you what I would do. I would come home with a bottle of booze the last couple of years of my drinking, and I'd sit it down, and Iíd start drinking. And Iíd have the TV on, and Iím going to be drinking. And I'd have the stereo on, and Iíll have a guitar in my lap, and Iíve been reading a book. I mean, you know, just anything, you Know, science fiction, you know anything, just I need to be away from me, you know? Anything that pulls me away from me. And this is how my alcoholism was manifesting. Now, because I was a collector, I went to a convention and there was the tape booth. Millions of tapes. So I bought some tapes. I got some tapes from this guy and that guy and I liked it. And I grabbed the catalog and I started ordering from the catalog. And here's what happened. I see this name. It's a big book workshop. And I see This Name and it says Joe Hawk, Salvation Army Talks. Okay, so I go, I wonder what an Indian would have to say about it. I did it, you know. So anybody with the name Hawk, you knows he's got to be an Indian. So I order these tapes and I start listening to these tapes. And, you Know, anybody that's listened to the Salvation Army tapes knows what a paradigm shift you're going to go through when you're listening to this stuff. It's like, whoa, I've been going to meetings like till till till, you know, I'm making coffee till the grinds are coming out of my ears. And and I've never heard this. Now, you get upset at first. OK, here's what happens. You get really upset. Like, why didn't anybody tell me? You want to go back to the meetings like, well, you guys are trying to kill me. You know, that's that's usually the reaction that you have. And you go through that evangelical stage where, you know, I made like 700 sets of those tapes and started handing them out to everybody. You know, some people responded to those tapes. They were usually the real alcoholics. A lot of people are like, whoa, where did you get this stuff? But what happened was, you Know, the truth will haunt you if you're alcoholic. Do you hear the truth? The first stage of hearing the truth is you're going to be pissed off at whoever's telling you. But you have to deal with that information somehow. You have to internalize these concepts. And if they're true for you, if they come from a place that you can recognize as your own experience, you haveto deal with it. So how I dealt with it is I started listening to these tapes and, you know, I started doing four-column inventory and the things that were explained in these tapes. Now, in my area, no one was doing that. You would say something like, I went to step meetings galore. There was just a million, million 12-in-12 meetings. And what I found out, you now, through experience at 12-In-12 Meetings, there are places where people go to talk about the steps, share about the Steps, read about the Steppes, philosophize about the steps and rarely do them you know that's just what these 12 and 12 meetings were in my area and I was going to four of them a week remember I'm going to a meeting every night now my sponsor and I thought it would probably be a good idea for me to start on a fourth step and this is prior to me hearing the tapes and you would say something like you'd raise your hand in a meeting and you say something, I remember this happening. I'm not even sure now if it was me asking the question or somebody else. But the question was, how do you do a four-step? Because in the step book, it's not really clear. They talk about the seven deadly sins and all this other stuff and assets, debits. It gets confusing. So I remember the question being asked at a meeting and one of the old-timers goes, kid, you do it four-steps with a pencil. Well, thanks for that. That's very, very helpful. You know, I mean, and I've learned through experience that someone says something like that because they really don't know. Now, when I got a hold of these tapes, I really started to, and it was kind of a bastardized, you know, when I look at this recovery process today, I did the best I could with a set of tapes and putting inventory sheets together. But what happened was, is when I started to take these spiritual exercises as they were laid out in this book, a shift started to take place in me. A recovery shift started the take place. Now, the educational variety they talk about in here, that's basically what happened to me. I don't like the way they describe it as the educational variety. It's more the experiential variety. Because what happened was, as I was doing these spiritual exercises of the steps, certain pieces of my psycho-spiritual emotional condition started to become treated. No longer was I so attached to what you all thought of me. I mean, I would sit in a meeting just worried about, you know, how are people, what are people thinking about me. I mean, you know, this burden of self, what happened was that started to heal. And I didn't really recognize it as such in the beginning. But over the course of time, through the experiential variety, I started to heel from alcoholism. I started recover from alcohols. I started to know a new freedom and a new happiness. My whole attitude and outlook on life started to change I started to become less selfish and less concerned about myself and more concerned with you things like that and this this happened this was part of my spiritual awakening quite often friends in the newcomer are aware of the differences long before he is himself he finally realizes that he has undergone a profound alteration in his reaction to life my reaction to life was, it's a hostile universe. It's a hostile universe and I've got to dodge and weave. You know, they are out to get me. Everybody! Those bastards! You know that's really what my perception on reality was and my reaction. That such a change could hardly have been brought about by himself alone. Certainly something was starting to work in my life. There was a power. If we have to admit that we're powerless over alcohol or drugs, then the solution would be to find some power. Find some power again because alcoholism is an unorthodox illness and the recovery process is a very unorthadox illness. It's very, very difficult to understand prior to having experience with it. That's why they ask us, you know, they say we need to come to believe and then we can come to have faith. And then we know, you know, you will know when you have experience with it, but prior to having experience with it, you don't, sometimes you just have, you just have to hope. But I knew that it wasn't me. It could not have been me that was creating this change. I was participating in the recovery process. I needed to take responsibility for these exercises and for my participation in recovery, But this was a shift that was so profound, I knew that I couldn't be making it happen. You know, I couldnít get my car inspected. You know what I mean? My best thinking got me hospital plastic on my wrist every time. You know What I Mean? So I knew, I Knew that there was something really at work here. And many of us start to call that God, that power God. I believe that there's a lot of latitude in how you perceive that How you name it, the attributes you put on it But you do have to understand that it's a power greater than yourself It's something that we can make ourselves ready for But it manifests through us and it's something of a divine nature what often takes place in a few months could seldom have been accomplished by years of self-discipline anybody in here read self-help books oh man i had a library of them i had a library when friends and influence people through intimidation you know hide a dagger behind the smile you know i mean i had a million of them. I had a million in these books because I was always looking for an answer. I knew that there was something just totally fundamentally wrong with me. I didn't know what it was, but I thought maybe there's a book. Maybe there's a way to overcome this. I'm a terrible, I'm 32 years old. I am a bad electrician with no money. I'm blowing things up all the time. There's just got to be, there's got to be some answer. Uh, my, I can't be this pathetic, you know? Uh, so, so I had a million self help books and we, we can't study our way recovered. We really can't. We have to act our way, recover. We, we have to change our behaviors. We has, we has to place ourselves under the care and protection of spiritual teachers and recovery processes. And you know what? We're not going to believe it's going to work for us. I don't know about that inventory stuff. Pay the money back! Are you nuts? They don't even know I took it! Why the hell would I pay it back? I mean, we're going to come up with every excuse in the world to not do this because we don't understand why we would have to. You have to be at a point of desperation sufficient to just forget about why you shouldn't do it and just do it. And I was at that point. You know, I had a willingness born of desperation. You know sometimes I almost hoped it didn't work so I could go back and say, yeah, it didn' work, you know. But I did it. I did this stuff. And, you now, there's tons of promises in this book. I really don't like it at meetings where somebody has to read the 12 promises. There's a lot of meetings, Harry will read the twelve promises. Well, you know, they're really, really, Really selling you short. There are so many promises in this book. Every part of the action process leads to a series of promises, A series of changes in your attitude and outlook. a series of changes that reflect directly to your quality of life. And I think offering a newcomer promises that are going to come halfway through the ninth step is just not a really great way to do it, and so we don't in our group. But what we do, we talk about the spiritual awakening. We talk about that shift in perception, that shift In Perspective that happens through a recovery process. with few exceptions our members find that they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource that they presently identify with their own conception of a power greater than themselves the power of God folks is alive and well if you rightly relate yourself to that power if you participate in the recovery process, the power of God can become manifest in you. That is a remarkable promise. How about we read that promise at some of these groups? Because it's absolutely true, but it doesn't happen because we're sitting in a chair. It happens because we get busy about the recovery process. So many things have happened in my life. I talked a little bit yesterday about 2008 being my year. I cannot not believe the things that are coming my way in 2008. It is absolutely remarkable. Now, you've got to understand, I come from a place where no one wanted to have anything to do with me. I was the type of alcoholic who had just become isolated. I couldn't go out. It was me and the bottle. And I'd sit there and I'd talk to my bottle of... I used to drink george dickle you know it's me me and you you know it's being you against those bastards i mean you know and and really truly you know everybody left you know she left me when i needed her most and you know i mean i had this i had just dark tragic perspective on life you know the the shift the shift in perspective and the shift and my ability to work in the universe, to be of service in the university, has become incredible to me this year. Just being asked to speak here is just one of a whole series of things that have just completely blown my mind. The power of God can become manifest in us. All we need to do is rightly relate ourselves to this power Through work and self-sacrifice for others. How weird is that? We need to be helpful to others, and through being helpful to other people, we're going to have a shift in attitude and outlook on life. And all of a sudden, we're gonna grow in understanding and effectiveness. We're gonna be able to accomplish unbelievable things. I always thought that you needed to work, you needed to like, you know, everything's about you and all those self-help books. One of my sponsors said one time, Chris, why do you have all these self-Help books? Where are the help others books? Well, I don't know, Phil. Why don't you pay attention to helping some other people once in a while? You know, that's where it's at. This is part of the unorthodox recovery process from addictive illness. Now, who would have thought? Thank God for the Oxford Group, for Bill Wilson, for the Emanuel Movement, for The Washingtonians, for Jacobi Club. There's a number of organizations who got it. Between 1860 and 1930, there was a number organizations who GOT IT! And basically what they did was they applied the spiritual principles and religious principles that had worked for a gazillion billion years. They learned how to actually apply them, to actually do them, to create that spiritual awakening. And thank God that Bill and Bob and Ann Smith and all of these people were exposed to this process and then carried that message back to us. You know, there's a number of people that recovered from alcoholism and had that spiritual awakening back prior to Bill Wilson. There's a member of the Oxford group who used to be drunks and they underwent this course of action in the Oxford Group and some of the other groups and were reborn. I mean, that's the terminology that they would use back then And they wrote some great books. The Big Bender, I Was a Pagan, For Sinners Only. These are a number of books that were written telling the stories of people who had recovered from alcoholism. So thank God that Bill decided to become the architect of these principles and lay them out in a book and then try to carry that message to other alcoholics. A lot of people had gotten sober and never thought of that. On his hospital bed, during his last detox, the thought crossed his mind that I am going to lay out these principles. I'm going to carry the message of these principles to alcoholics. That one idea laying on his detox bed has led all of us to be in this room today. I believe that. And it's through such shifts in perception that amazing things can happen. And they can happen in all of our lives. Most of us think this awareness of a power greater than ourselves is the essence of spiritual experience. Our more religious members call it God-consciousness. Most emphatically, we wish to say that any alcoholic capable of honestly facing his problems in light of our experience, honestly facing your problems in lightofour experience with these recovery principles, applying these principles to your own life your own problems your own emotional condition provided he does not close his mind to all spiritual concepts he can only be defeated by an attitude of intolerance or belligerent denial intolerance belligerence denial allowing ourselves to be resented out of the recovery process is what kills so many of us We're not running on all cylinders when we get into the rooms. You get secluded during recovery treatment for a reason. We don't play well with others. But there's a lot of things that are really going on with us. There's so many things we know that are wrong. There's some behaviors that we continue to use that have failed every single time. You know, well, I'm going to do this. Well, hasn't that failed like 100 times before? Yeah, well this time it might be different. You know, we should be locked up, you know. Sometimes just to protect ourselves and other people around us. We are in real, real trouble if we've gone down the scale in addictive illness. You know? We need some real help. We need a spiritual awakening. And it's something I mentioned earlier. mentioned earlier, a lot of people will come into the 12 step rooms and they've relapsed. How many of us have heard people? I'm coming back. I've got, you know, four hours. Uh, well, what happened? Well, she left. She did. That's why you drank. Well, yeah. You know, or I decided to drink, you know? I said to hell with this and I decided it's a drink. Now think about this for a minute. Knowing what you know about what alcohol does to you, knowing what you Know about what drugs do to you? How can you make a decision based in sanity to put that stuff back in your body? You can't. That decision has to come from a place of insanity. It has to come from almost an unconscious part of your personality. Because none of us, here's what I would have to do if I was going to relapse today. Let's say there's a bar across the street. I'd have to go over there and I'd Have to go, bartender, You know, I'm going to order a whiskey in a minute But I just want to tell you a little bit about me before I do that You know for about 20 years I drank like an absolute fish Every single morning I was unbelievably ill I became so psychopathic And so dangerous that my family disappeared from The last drunk I had I pulled a handgun on my family at Christmas And threatened to kill them all I mean, the emotional torture that I've felt through drinking is just on par with nothing I've ever experienced again. I was lucky to struggle into AA and find the right message and the right people. Just by chance, I found the right People and the Right Message. And I struggled for years to get to the point where I could look myself in the mirror when I shaved. And I'm finally at a point where I've got an incredible quality of life. An incredible quality of life and by taking the drink I'm about to order I'm going to go right back to the depths of absolute hell. Can I have a double? You know, I mean that's what I would be doing by going across the street to the bar. But that's not what we do. We go over there unconscious of all of this. We go över there powerless. We go overhear suffering from the obsession of the mind, that strange mental blank spot, that subtle form of insanity where, eh, what's a drink? Maybe if I put some milk in it, I won't get indigestion. That's all we're thinking when we pick it up. We don't see the series of consequences that's going to happen. Now, there has to be a serious shift in attitude and outlook. There has to been a serious change in your perspective on life to be able to achieve recovery. I'm going to talk a little bit more about that perception after we have a break. There's donuts. There's some really great stuff over there. Grab yourself a cup of coffee. We'll be back at 11, 1105. Okay? Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise. If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message. Until next time, have a great day.