Feeling Different and Apart From – 2121 Beginners Workshop – Part 1 of 2 – Chris C.

My name is Chris I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is February 5th 1987 my home groups the West Portland group in Portland Oregon very grateful to be sober and and very grateful be asked to do something like this I don't know if if anybody will get anything out of anything I have to say but I know that whenever I do this, when I share honestly about myself, share my experiences with the idea of maybe helping somebody else, that I enlarge my spiritual life and I come away with something. So for that, I'm very, very grateful. Howard had asked me, he knew I have a brother that just moved down here and just bought a house up in Scottsdale. He plays baseball and was down here for spring training and just bought a house in Scottsdale. Some of you might have seen it. It's kind of a tan stucco house. Howard asked if I would talk at his meeting, so I'm glad to do that. In keeping with the format, I was told to share a little bit of what it used to be like and then spend the majority of my time on what happened and what it's like now. What it used to be like, just to kind of sum up my drinking, I became a daily oblivion drinker. And the last two years of my drinking... I drank for 11 years. For whatever reason, it progressed very rapidly. I was a daily drinker my entire career. My last two year, I was daily oblivian drinker, was arrested 14 times for alcohol-related arrests. I was in several treatment centers, hospitalized for alcohol withdrawal. I spoke at a meeting about six months ago and I was doing exactly the same thing just kind of highlighting my drinking career before the meeting I was going through 14 alcohol related arrests 3 DUIs, no job daily oblivion, blackout drinking and then I had a little thought maybe I'm not really an alcoholic And, you know, the thing about that is, and I'm going to come back to that for a second because I'm gonna talk about step 10 right off the bat. That really bothered me. You know, here I am getting ready to talk and I get nervous enough doing this anyway and then I have this thought, you now, and why would I have that thought? It created some fear. But anyway, all that stuff I mentioned doesn't make me an alcoholic. Those are just things that happen as a result of my drinking. What makes me an alcoholic, I was somebody that when I was not drinking, I felt different than, apart from. I was very self-conscious. I mean, extremely self-conscious. I was afraid of everybody. I was the type of person that if I was walking down the side on a sidewalk and somebody was coming the other way, I would cross the street to avoid having to say hello to them. I had extreme loneliness regardless of whether I was with people or not. I felt different than, apart from, and full of depression, just black type depression and tremendous amounts of anxiety. And what makes me an alcoholic is the fact that when I had a certain amount of alcohol in my system, it solved all that. It allowed me to be a participant in life. Ten drinks made me feel like what I thought everybody else felt like normally 10 drinks as a type of person as we came down scottsdale to rural road to the meeting here there's a lot of like sidewalk cafes and so forth as a practicing alcoholic i was a type of person that if i was not drinking i would start i wouldn't even walk past those restaurants because i could hear those people judging me in there and i would have their conversations for them. I knew that they were talking about me and it was all about me, kind of like almost self-centeredness may be one of my problems. But with 10 drinks, man, I could walk not only in front of a place like that but I could go into a place like that and I could own a place like that. The problem with the 10 drinks is that I didn't seem to have the ability to maintain that level of comfort I got from 10 drinks. I would drink to excess, to blackout, come to the next morning, shake, hear things. I'd have auditory hallucinations when I was coming off of alcohol. I thought everybody... I didn't realize that that was alcohol withdrawal. I thought it was just a normal part of a hangover. I had no idea that that wasn't alcohol. And do it all over. Swear it off, you know, with and without a solemn oath. All that stuff that Chapter 3 in the big book talks about. And then do it one more time. Coming back to, I was talking about that meeting I was speaking at. I had some fear about, you now, God, why am I thinking that? This is six months ago. I turned 18 in February and so I had 17 years. You know, why would I have a thought like that? And it really bothered me. In the tenth step, it says that we continue to watch for fear, dishonesty, resentment, and selfishness. And when these crop up, we ask God to remove them. We share them with somebody. And then we resolutely turn our thoughts to somebody we can help and then love and tolerance goes. And we make amends if we owe any. And one of the solutions that has been absolutely vital in my program has been that tenth step and picking up the telephone, asking God to remove whatever it is that's bothering me, picking up that telephone and sharing it with somebody. And then hopefully the person on the other end having some identification with them. And what I did is I picked up the telephone and I called about six or seven different people, all with more time than me, explained the story. And every single one of them laughed just like you guys did And then they shared their own little story about it. And something is magical in that identification, you know, because I have a disease that tells me that I am the only one that has this. I'm the only person at 17 1⁄2 years of sobriety that has a thought, maybe I'm not an alcoholic or, you now, and I didn't want to believe it. It wasn't like a thought that I ran with. It was just a thought but it really bothered me. and I'm grateful for those people that are willing to share their experience. I called six or seven different people. Every one of them shared their own story and through that identification, something magical happens where I'm not alone with that anymore and then I can turn it over to God, go back out and be of service. I want to talk just a little bit about the last couple weeks of my drinking because in the 10th and 11th step, it talks about that we're to look for inspiration and an intuitive thought. And one of the things about me is not so much taking action about looking for intuitive thoughts or asking for intuitive thought or inspiration, but I have a conscious decision that when I get an intuitive though to act on that intuitive thought because my mind will tell me that we'll dismiss it as stupid, is that I'm manufacturing this to kind of have some sort of AA, there are no coincidences thing story that I can go to the meeting and tell this is what happened to me and there are not coincidences. And so what comes naturally is dismissing inspiration intuitive thoughts. And so I have a choice to not act on dismissing it but to actually act as if it is an intuitive thought. What happened to be in my last several weeks of drinking is that I got out of jail, eight days of jail for my third DUI. About three days after that, I was arrested again and the police department who had come to know me fairly well had taken me aside and said, God, Chris, you've got a hell of a drinking problem. You've got to do something about this. You need to go see this guy, Joe F. He's an expert on alcoholism. go see this guy he can help you out and you know yeah whatever so next day I'm walking down downtown and there's this one of those sidewalk preachers that stands on the sidewalk with Bible and spouts scripture to anybody who will listen and I knew this guy his name was Monty I knew him from jail and and he as I came by said hey Monty and he's like hey Chris and, you know, he's got his Bible open and he reads something. I have no idea what it was but he reads some scripture and walked a few more steps and I thought, you know that kind of ties into what the cops were saying last night that I should go see this Joe F guy. You know, and I took a few more steps and I though, you know I've been to enough AA meetings you know and I know they say there are no coincidences and so forth and I kind of smiled and I thougt what would happen if for once in my life I didn't dismiss something like this as stupid and actually followed through with it and acted on it as if maybe there's a remote possibility that there's something to this whole thing. And so almost out of amusement, and I desperately wanted to quit drinking, by the way. I mean, I wanted to quick drinking more than anything and had wanted to quit for a long time. Anyway, so I acted on that and I thought, I'm going to go see Joe F. And I turned around and went up to go See This Guy And on the way up there, I was like, please on Alcoholics Anonymous. Please be aversion therapy, 10 days with a couple two-day follow-ups, and then his life's wonderful. And I got up there and sure enough it was AlcoholicsAnonymous. And he told me his story. He did what he talks about in the chapter working with others. And he asked me if I wanted to go to a meeting. And for whatever reason, I had a sense of obligation to actually go to the meeting with him. I didn't want to go, but I went. And I went to this meeting, and this meeting was a meeting. Their format was it was a speaker discussion meeting. The speaker would talk for about 20 minutes, and then they'd call on people for about half the meeting. Then they'd draw numbers, and if your number was picked, you got to talk. But it wasn't a fifth tradition meeting in the sense it was called a fifth tradition meeting. And I'm going to bring this up because this is important when I'm carrying the message. If I'm caring the message to somebody one-on-one or if I'm in a meeting where I'm sharing some of my experience with the idea of helping somebody that's new. But their habit at this meeting is that regardless of what the chosen topic was, if there was somebody there for their first, second, or third meeting at Alcoholics Anonymous, the speaker would talk a little bit about what it used to be like, what happened, and what it's like now. And every single person that they would call on would do exactly the same thing. And then everybody that was part of the raffle did the same things. I sat in the back of the room, And little by little, I started identifying with what these people were talking about. Now, I'd been to a lot of meetings before, a lot being 15 or 20. I mean, you know, not a lot, lot. And I'd never identified because I'd ever been to an event or a meeting where this had taken place. I'd always been to meetings that were more discussion-type meetings where people were checking in or wanting to tell you about their week, kind of almost like a group therapy flavor to the discussion meeting. And I'm not knocking those kind of meetings. I don't attend them, but I'm not knocking them. But anyway, they did this and little by little I identified and there was one guy and if you got called on you would stand up and talk and there were a lot of people and there's one guy that was a few feet in front of me that stood up and he told my story. He came out of a blackout he had a revolver in his mouth he went back into the blackout came to the next morning on the floor had exactly the same thing happen to me except for I had a knife. And I walked away from that meeting with just planted the seed, hope. So whenever for – we can't keep it unless we give it away. And in order for me to give it way, I've got to remember what it was like to be a newcomer and what works on a newcomER. And in the chapter working with others, it talks about we can win over the confidence of another alcoholic better than anybody. It's our unique gift. And then the family afterwards, it says cling to the thought that in God's hands our dark past is our greatest possession. It can literally avert death and misery for others, and that's through that identification. So in my daily recovery and my sobriety practicing this stuff, that's one of the things. I go to meetings, you know, and there's a place in meetings and all the guys I sponsor and, of course, me, is there'sa place where I ended up having to quit being a taker in meetings and I had to be a giver. Being a taker in meetings gets awfully boring. Meetings become dull and boring for me if I'm a takER. And a takEr, I mean just sitting and not participating. And when I'm the giver in a meeting, whether it's in service or whether it is in trying to carry the message or grabbing the newcomer afterwards, when I am participating, that is when I enlarge my spiritual condition and enlarging my spiritual life and I am the one who gets the benefit. Anyway, I got sober. Steps 1, 2, and 3. I was taught that the first three steps are essentially becoming willing to turn my will and life over to God. Steps 4 through 9 is actually how I turned it over and steps 10 through 12 is how I keep it turned over. I did steps 1,2, and3 on the day I got sober and I didn't know it. I admitted I was an alcoholic. I fully conceded to my innermost self like it says in the chapter more about alcoholism. In We Agnostics, it says that we, as soon as we believe or at least are willing to believe, then we assure you that you're on your way. That this is something in the nature of the, you know, this is a foundation that many people have recovered off of. And I had that conversation with myself that morning on February 5th, 1987. I didn't want to believe in God, but I remember saying if I have to believe in God to make this stop, I will. And then I turned my will and life over to God. Now, I formally did those three steps later on, and I did them essentially out of reading the book, the first four chapters, the stories, being convinced of three ideas. A, that we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives. B, that probably no human power could relieve us of our alcoholism. And C, that God could and would if we were sought. Being convinced of those three ideas, and now it's step three. This is the way I was taking through the steps. Step three, like I said, I did it on February 5th. I formally did it out of the big book on my knees with somebody and I did the prayer. And then it was pointed out after that that the next page after that said, although this is a vital and crucial step, it could have little permanent effect unless at once followed by a strenuous effort to get rid of the things that had been blocking us, which we had to get down to causes and conditions, and this brings us to step four. Now, I was somebody that thought that that meant maybe six or nine months from now, not right away, you know? And I didn't have a sponsor that urged me, but what happened is the pain of my alcoholism, that the anxiety and the depression started getting worse in sobriety. And I finally got to a place, well, just to give you an idea, I got to a place at about eight or nine months sober where I was in a class, and I was taking a psychology class. You know, we get sober and we all want to go back to school. So I was taken one class, psychology, and we had a stress test, and it wasn't for, it was just an exercise and for the sake of an exercise, but it was kind of like the MMPI but a little bit smaller than that. And it was how we process stress and it was an auditorium class of maybe 150 people or so. And the professor was in the program, sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous, and he said we self-tested or self-graded it and he asked, who scored between 0 and 25? About 10% of the classes said, you guys process stress great. Who scored between 25 and 50? The majority of the class raised their hand. You process stress normally, you don't have any significant events in your life, blah, blah. Who scored entre 50 and 75? About the remaining 25 or third of the class raised their hand. He said, you guys have a little bit of stress in your life, maybe midterm, so forth. Anybody score above 75? Nobody. Anybody score about 75? Above 100? Nobody. I scored 146. And I went up to him afterwards and I said, I said you know Dr. So-and-so, I scored146. And he had said, the people that score above 100 typically are institutionalized or locked up in federal penitentiaries. And so this was concerning. And I went up to him and I said, hey, I scored 146. And he said, Chris, untreated alcoholism and a lot of people manifests itself in anxiety and depression. Anybody in their first year of sobriety would score that high, especially if they haven't done their fourth step. Do your fourth step! And so about a month later I got on that And I got to a place of desperation and sobriety. And I started on my fourth step. And actually, I got a place where I was going to commit suicide. And either I was gonna work these steps exactly as they're outlined in the big book. And when I got step 12, if I still felt this way, I was just gonna kill myself. And so I started in, did the fourth step, and I did the first step out of the bigbook. I also wrote an autobiography, which my sponsor asked me to do because it says in there that we have to tell somebody all of our life story. So it was custom of this group to write an autobiography and in that autobiography they ask that you wrote down every deep dark secret, everything that you have guilt, shame and remorse over even if it doesn't fit into the resentment category, the fear category or the sexual relations category and I did that And I got together with my sponsor to do my fifth step. And this is important also when working with others, which working with other people and working with them is a huge part of my deal, whether it's standing up here trying to share a little bit of me or whether it is one-on-one or in sponsorship, working with those. I can't keep it unless I give it away. I like that one part in, I think it is to the wives or maybe in the family afterwards where it says, father feels that he's struck a gold mine and it will pay him endless dividends for the rest of his life as long as he's willing to mine it and give away the entire product. Anyway, in this fifth step, a very important thing happened and that was my sponsor sat down with me before I even started reading anything he told me his deep dark secrets and it was just like bam you know all of a sudden And I wasn't the only one, because I came into that step thinking that I was the only person that was not locked up or institutionalized that had done some of the things that I had done. And immediately the magic of that process started to happen, that identification was okay and he had done it and other people had done It. One of the Things I did in the fifth, sixth, and seventh step was I had a habit of prior to doing the inventory process, I would go into a mirror and I would either beat myself up or build myself up. And then two or three minutes after building myself up, I'd be right back down in the gutter because at a gut level, I knew I was worthless. Low self-worth and low self-esteem and feelings of inadequacy were some of my character defects and underlying causes and conditions. And I had this habit whenever I was, you know, it wasn't an issue when I was drinking, but when I wasn't drinking, I would go in and I would assess myself in the mirror. And I did my fifth step and halfway through my fifth stop we took a break and I went into the bathroom and I started to do this again and, you know, this normal process I'd do. And I was looking at myself in the mirror and I couldn't identify what was going on. You know, what's going on? You know? I'm not having this reaction to myself like I normally have, which started in my soul. And I sat there and all of a sudden it dawned on me I had comfort. And for the first time in my life I'd had comfort in my own skin without having to take those 10 drinks. And from there, you know, of course I went and reported to the group that nothing happened. I mean, it dismissed that immediately. But the truth is, is that that is the reaction I've had to life since then for the most part when I'm in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous and when I'M participating in AlcoholicsAnonymous. And when IMPARTICIPATING IN ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, IT'S IMPORTANT FOR ME TO DEFINE THAT BECAUSE PARTICipating in AlcoholicAnonymous for me IS NOT THE FELLOWSHIP OF ALCOHOLICSANONYMOUSE. the fellowship is vital the meetings are vital it seems as though people that stop going to meetings end up drinking but when I talk about participating in Alcoholics Anonymous I mean for me participating in what's in the first 164 pages in the book and practicing you know the design for living that's outlined in there in my daily living anybody or I think at least I can I can come into a meeting and say stuff I mean I've been here 18 years I can quote the big book, but it's irrelevant for me unless I walk out that door and I'm trying to apply it to my life outside of here. I'm try to apply in my marriage. My wife is here tonight, and I usually introduce her as my exercise in patience and tolerance. We've been married for 12 1⁄2 years. I'm somebody that didn't have relationships. All this stuff, and we're not going to go into that. to stay with the format. But, you know, the participation is outside of the realms of alcoholics and in what I'm doing in here and that is crucial for me. The fellowship, for me, I don't believe spells out the necessary spiritual experience in order for me to have that personality change that's sufficient to recover. It helps, and it's important, but it's through the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous that I've had the changes that I'd had. And it's also in participating in my own recovery through other things. One of the things that I want to get into is in Steps 6 and 7, real quickly, there's two paragraphs in the big book. I became willing to have these character defects removed and then I ask. And one of the thing in the prayer where I ask Because I ask God to remove the things that stand in the way of my usefulness to you and to my fellows. And that doesn't mean that all my character defects are going to be removed. What it means is that there may be some character defects that still are alive in my life, but they provide some use. And they are useful to the other people that are behind me. Because I'll tell you, the people that ARE ahead of me that still struggle with their character defects and still have to put pen to paper and still have to do all this stuff, it's important for me and it's life-saving for me to know that they still struggle with things. I was thinking as we had somebody introduce themselves with over 50 years, one of the best things I've heard in an AA meeting in the last two years is I was at a guy in one of my groups who at his 51st AA birthday, he stood at a podium and said, you know, I still have difficulties with the third step. And I mean, I sat there and I was just like, what a load off of me. I don't have to have it perfect. This guy's been doing it for 51 years. He's an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous and he still struggles with some of this stuff. In step seven, it's important for me also to, you know, after I do that prayer is to participate in that process. The 12 by 12, which says God will not render me white as snow without my cooperation. I was taught that what my cooperation was was to participate with the seventh step and that means not only taking the seventh step but I was thought that alcoholics cannot feel their way into a new way of acting or think their way into a way of acting. They have to act their way in to a new way of thinking and act their way into a feeling. Part of the seventh step is when I turn over these character defects, it's to go out there and when I start to get those things that are coming up again, is I have to turn them over again and then act as if they're being removed because maybe they are. And in steps eight and nine, you know, steps eight, the list, a lot of the list was already formed when I did my fourth step. I also had amends that were not in my fourth stuff. There was no resentment or fear or sex relation attached to them, I just owed an amends. And I made direct amends, direct ammends wherever possible. And one of the things there, I don't have any very good amends stories. Mine were pretty dull and boring. But one thing I was taught is if somebody that I owe amends to died and I owed them an ammonds was to write them a letter in the first person and then go someplace and read it to them as if they were there, because maybe they are. And I had one of those that I had to do. The 10th step already touched on. The 11th step has been vital for me. My first sponsor was an ex-Buddhist monk. And so right from the beginning, I was thrown into meditation. And I've done all sorts of meditation, you know, from sitting on Zafu pillows and holding my hands a certain way, to having mantras, to doing walking. Currently, I'm sitting in my car with a cup of Starbucks for about 30 minutes every morning, and I'm quiet for about 30 minutes. And I'm quite with the idea that if I can quiet my head enough that later on when I do get those intuitive thoughts, it's quiet enough that I can hear it. And in step 12, just one quick thing on step 12. I had 14 days sober. One of my lower companions, well, my only lower companion, although if he was here tonight he would say i was his lower companion he saw that i hadn't had a drink for 14 days and he wanted to know you know what what happened how did i do that and so i did exactly what working with others says and i shared my experience and i dwelled on the hopelessness of our situation and then i invited him to a meeting and uh he stayed sober for about 30 days and then he went back out, and then he came back in, and he's going to be celebrating 18 years in I think five days or so. And my point with that is that you hear every once in a while around here that you may need to be around here a while before you can help anyone. My experience is not that. My experiences is that somebody with 14 days can help somebody with zero days and so forth. And the reality is that it doesn't matter whether I have any effect because who I'm really helping is me. I'm the one participating in my recovery and I'mthe one that enlarges my spiritual life by getting out on the firing line and trying to carry the message to other alcoholics. And I'm out of question and answers now? Okay. All right. Thanks. Thank you. Questions? What? Yeah. Oh, the biblical guy? No. The question was do I know what the guy said. I have no idea. It seemed to be related to what the police said and I don't know that it matters. In my head it seemed to be related and I took it as inspiration and my point with that story is that in my head I dismiss things like that as trivial and stupid naturally. I have to make a conscious effort because part of our 10th and 11th step is we're supposed to look for inspiration and ask for intuitive thoughts and that I look for those things and I actually act on them as if they actually are intuitive thoughts. And it says I may pay with some consequences when I'm new because I'm not used to this, but the fact is, is for me, I haveと make a conscience decision to do that. Thanks. Yeah? Question was, what's my take on acceptance? That's not a real good topic for me. But, you know, acceptance is a byproduct for me of working a program. I don't know. It seems as though in some meetings you hear people talk about, I just have to accept this and I just have to practice acceptance and I always think to myself okay how do you do that how exactly do you do that and I don't really know it's the same thing with balance you hear these people talking about I need balance in my life it's like okay how doyou do that and it sounds like they're grabbing the bull by the horns and they're shoving their life into balance or they're shoving their emotions into acceptance doesn't work for me and it may work for other people And there's things that I do that, you know, I mean, I go to a group that, or I don't go to groups. My sponsor guy goes to a grupo. There's a sign on the wall that says that if what you hear here cannot be reconciled with what's in the first 164 pages of the big book, you may have been better off not hearing it at all. And that may be true and it may not be true. I mean there's some experiences that are not in the big book that I have followed that work for me and there's others that don't. Acceptance is something that is a byproduct of me doing my job in Alcoholics Anonymous. If I'm having something that I can't accept, when I go into the steps and I revisit some of the principles in the steps, like in step three where it says, here's the how and the why of it, I have to quit playing God, it just didn't work. I go there, am I playing God? And from here on after, I'm going to be the director or God's going to be the director, I'm going to be the actor. He's the whatever and I'm the agent and so forth. When I start participating in the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, when I carry the message, when I'm practicing prayer and meditation, when i'm keeping my side of the street clean, acceptance is a byproduct of that. It seems to come naturally. It's not anything that I can just go grab a hold of. It''s like surrender. Unfortunately, I wish I could manufacture or surrender because I get so much benefit out of surrender. I wish I could go around and surrender, but I don't seem to have that ability and there may be people in AA that can. They seem to be able to. I have to go through a whole process of stuff before I get to surrender and the benefits of being surrendered are tremendous, but I can't seem to do it. When I stay in the middle of AA and practice this stuff, surrender comes easier. Acceptance comes easier Balance is a byproduct of me focusing on the spiritual program of action not me focusing on balance. Thanks. How do you think you'd score on the stress test? Well, today the question was how would I score on this stress test. That's an interesting question because I actually took an MMPI when I had three years sober. And I had this guy that all he did, his entire job was to analyze MMPIs. And he got mine and he said, my God, you're sensitive. And I said, I am? And he said yeah, you are off the charts on sensitivity. He goes, you must take everything personally. And I said, well, I've improved a lot. I've been sober for three years. And through no therapy other than Alcoholics Anonymous and practicing the spiritual way of life and practicing its principles in my daily living, when I had 11 or 12 years, this guy was in the program and this was his profession outside. So I went back and took an MMPI again. And he scored it. We sat down, he analyzed it, and he said, yeah, you look good. And I said, well, am I sensitive? And he said a little bit. And I says, well... I said last time I was off the charts. And he's like, no, not this time. I said poll, can you poll that record? And so anyway, he polled the record and the record was significantly different from three years to 12 years I was a changed person, and yet I never once focused on becoming less sensitive. I focused on the 10th step, carrying the message and practicing prayer and meditation, being of service and those things. And through practicing spiritual principles in Alcoholics Anonymous, I changed. Thanks. The question was what's one of the most difficult things I've had to go through in sobriety and what solutions I've used to go through them. Probably the most couple, there's not any one that stands out. One was early marriage and learning to be a companion and a partner. And once again, I'm going to sound a little bit like a broken record. I'm not somebody who does very well on a frontal assault on my problems. We tried marriage counseling. It's the closest we ever came to divorcing was in marriage counseling and I'm not, hey, marriage counseling may work for other people. I'm just saying this is what happened to me. When I focus on the problem, my solutions are always worse than the problem. My thinking is my problem. How am I going to think my way into a good marriage? And so what I've done, what I did in early marriage was I practiced a program of Alcoholics Anonymous. If I want a good wedding, marriage I need to go work with newcomers if I want a good marriage I need to be of service in Alcoholics Anonymous and then take that same attitude of service outside of the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and out into life including my marriage pausing when agitated and doubtful like it says is very easy to do in here most of the time but it becomes, it's more difficult out there but who cares if I can be polite and pause and then I'm an ass out there. I've got to take those same principles out there but again, a frontal assault on my problems has never been a very good solution for me. When I practice a spiritual program of action, life just seems to fall into place for me, marriage and work and work relations and all that kind of stuff. It's no different than when I was new. When I had six months sober, you know, I'd be like, you know, but God, you guys don't understand. I'm being evicted. I'm about ready, you know, this far from being homeless. And then the senior AA members would say, just go to meetings. It'll be okay. And I'd be like... You know, what the hell does going to meetings have to do with me being evected? And it's the same principle today. There's something inside my head, by the way, that left unattended will think that now that I have 18 years or 10 years that the solution's changed, that the situation's different than it was in my first year or my first two or three years, that maybe I need to go out and get a different book. You know, there's always, in my group, there's Always the Get the New Book Club, you know? There's kind of a group of them that's like, oh, I got the new book on such and such. And I'm not dismissing that. That may be very beneficial and helpful to those people. It hasn't for me. I'm somebody that if I stay in the solution that's outlined in the big book and I do my job in AA and I continue to practice this stuff, you know, the promise just says that God's going to do for me what I can't do for myself. And that doesn't end after my first year. That's included. Another real quick, the other thing is accepting character defects. I have my biggest thing in sobriety here's my biggest one is fear fear I've had some character defects that when I originally did my fourth and fifth step have 99% of them have been lifted 99% of the power in them have been lift and I have others that a little bit have been left and they've improved over time and as I continue to work you know and continue to I don't want to say work on them but because It's the process in God that does the changing. I create the environment where change can take place, and then God changes me. Fear has been the most difficult one, and I've got to tell you, I still have fears today, and I have irrational fears still. That's maybe not very good news for you new guys, but I'll tell you from where I came from, I'm participating in life. I own a business. I have a job, I have a driver's license, I have all this stuff and I'm actually a participant in life today as a result of practicing the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. I never was a participant in life prior to AA. I couldn't be. I absolutely was rendered completely useless by my character defects and my fear and my drinking and fear has been a big one. I have an irrational fear. In San Francisco I will not cross the Golden Gate Bridge or the Bay Bridge It terrifies me. I go into sheer panic halfway through the Golden Gate Bridge. I mean, it absolutely terrifies me. And I've tried a frontal assault on that. I've try all these other things on it. And I got to a place where I've been comfortable with going across the Golden gate. I used to live for a short period in Sausalito and I worked in the financial district. So I crossed the Goldengate every day. But then after non-practicing it, it's come back. I have a friend of mine who lives in Georgia. She's got 25 years in the program, and she suffers from the same irrational fear. And by the way, I never had this until I quit drinking. But the fact is that, and I've talked to her at length about this, and the reality is that the hardest thing for me is accepting that I'm not perfect and that Alcoholics Anonymous has not struck me fearless, that I think there's something in me also because sometimes you hear people, you think after 10 or 20 years that they have no fears and they haveno character defects. And there's a part of me that has that expectation that I shouldn't have this. I have 18 years. I should be able to cross the golden gate. That's stupid. I mean, I shouldbe able to do that. And it's been acceptance around that. And one of the things I finally came to is that if I didn't have that. It's one of the things that keeps me humble. It keeps me right sides. And in one way, it's a big gift because otherwise I have a tendency to my head just, you know, so anyway. Thanks. Yes? How is your prayer and meditation today different from what it was 18 years ago? The question was, how is my prayer and meditation different today than it was 18 years ago? One thing that's... It's evolved over time. And one of the things... Prayer... I don't think there's been a day of my sobriety where I've not asked God in the morning to keep me sober for that day. And at the end of the day where I said thank you for keeping me sober. And how the prayer has evolved is I've gone through places where I've taken literal parts out of the big book, out of 10 and 12, where now I'm supposed to ask for him to direct my thinking, especially keeping it divorced from this, this, and this. Then I'm suppose to ask from the next step. Then I've applied the principle of the third step that says The meditation has changed from more of kind of an eastern Zafu pillow type stuff, counting my exhales backwards to finally I realize it's like, I don't think God really cares if I sit on a ZafU pillow and count backwards and do mantras. I don' t know. I'm actually in the process. I'm thinking about changing what I do right now. Right now, because I get up so early, the only way I can do it is if I go to Starbucks, get coffee and I get in my car and I sit there, I read a couple of things and for 25 to 30 minutes, I sit quietly and I breathe and that's it. If my mind's racing too much, I have some exercises that help me quiet it. One is I'll do on my inhales, I'll say God in, Chris out. God in Chris out or I'll do God in fear out God in fear out the other one is counting exhales backwards is one mantras I'll take little pieces out of the big book like like what I use is I'm to turn all things over over to the father of light that presides over us all and so I use that word I like that word, father of light. It provokes something spiritual by just hearing it. So I'll say father of life. Father of life, but it's always changing and I'm in the process of considering changing it right now. Thanks. Yes? Terry, how about it? Terry. I heard you talking about the field reading in your opinion. Yes. How long did it take? it took as long it was when I did my fifth step is when I started getting comfortable in my own skin and I did my first step at almost one year which is not the way I sponsor people I got to the place of where the ism the insanity of me when I came to Alcoholics Anonymous I thought I had two problems I thought I was a daily oblivion drinker, and I was crazy. And what I found out is that that's what alcoholism is. Alcoholism, for me, manifests itself untreated in depression, anxiety, feelings of low self-worth, unhappiness no matter what. I mean, it's complete, total self-centeredness. It took, for мне to start getting comfortable in my own skin was when I did my fist up. and it just happened to be right at about a year. I don't think the time had anything to do with it. I think the action did. Thanks. Yes? Do you know if I walked through that, any of these things had feelings of inadequacy? Yeah, the question was in regards to what I said about the step seven and participating with that process. The question was if I could give an example specifically regarding inadequacy and low self-worth, how I act as if and meet God halfway. Is that right? I can't do the seven-step prayer and then go sit on the couch and turn the TV on and expect God to instantly do it. I have to continue to take action and if there's amends I need to make. Regardless of whether it's on my fourth step in my original seventh step or if I'm participating in those steps in the tenth step, I was taught the tenth steps is steps four through nine separated by the word and. But on the seventh step, an example of that would be, for instance, I know there's a girl in my home group who's a supermodel. She's on the cover of 30 magazines and so forth. If she was here, she'd tell you this story, so I'm not saying anything. One of the things that she did on her seventh step, and I know this because I just talked to her about this recently, and she had a problem with... She dressed down, wore baggy clothes, no makeup, was embarrassed about her profession. She thought that people would think she was stupid because she was a model and the same thing. One of the things that she did is she participated in Step 6 and 7 is what she used to when people would ask, oh God, I saw you on the cover of Vogue. She'd kind of be snotty to them and go off because she wasn't embarrassed by it. And so her participation in the seventh step was when somebody would come up and say, oh my God, I just saw you in Vogue. She would then immediately do kind of a mini seventh step prayer in her head and then she'd say, what would somebody, how would somebody with self-esteem or high self-worth respond to this? And then she would respond by saying, oh you did, what did you think of the layout? and she would act as somebody that has self-esteem. And I'm telling you, she went through this thing in about a two-month period to where she used to come to our home group completely dressed down because she was embarrassed about what she did and because of her low self-worth to where now sometimes she dresses up and she's even showed friends of hers in the program and so forth her portfolio and some of her work which is something two months ago she couldn't do. She's got six years, and she's just getting through this. And I can't think of any specific examples offhand of my own, but that's exactly how I would participate in Step 7. Thanks. Yes? Hi, Dave. The question is, how has my God evolved? And what was the second part of that? And how my understanding of that has changed over time. I don't know if I'm going to be able to articulate that very well. When I came into Alcoholics Anonymous, like I said, I just had a willingness to believe. and I was also taught that if you're new which by the way I know there's somebody here the God stuff man don't let that stuff scare you when I came down that was one of the things I didn't want to be involved with Alcoholics Anonymous for was because all that God talk but I found out that I didn'T even have to believe in God to make a start in this program all I had to do to make it start was seek God it says that A, B and then C that God could and would if he were sought, not found, just sought. And so just through... One person put it away. Some people said fake it till you make it. So I prayed to a God that I didn't even believe in or I didn' t know what I believed in. Another guy put it in a way that I really liked. He said, You don' t have to believe in God to make a start in this program. You just have to take actions as if you believe in god. And that' s what I started doing. I took actions as If I believed In God. And little by little, I started believing God. And I called him my higher power for a while and a power greater than myself. Then I kind of got tired of all that and started calling him God for lack of a better word. We used to say that. And then pretty soon it just became God. And I don't know, for a long time I thought God was a feeling and I found out that that's not true. God's not a feeling. For a long term, I used to get those God buzzes. The problem was is that when I didn't have that God buzz I always wondered what was wrong and I finally found out that you know God's not a feeling. It says that it says that when we seek God that you don't and he doesn't make too hard of terms for us but when we see him he'll always disclose himself to us so what really matters for me is the fact that I'm taking the actions and sometimes I have a feeling of a presence of God and sometimes we don't. And sometimes I still question God, by the way. And that's important for me to say that because there's days where I'm just like, is there a God? And then I come back to it doesn't matter. It doesn't mater today. The fact is by praying to a God, whether there is one or not, doing all these actions, I'm somebody that had an obsession to drink alcohol on a daily basis regardless of the consequences and I haven't had an obsession to drink alcohol. I'm somebody that can't live in the world without being anesthetized by a certain amount of alcohol but by turning my will and life over to God whether he exists or not and taking these actions, I have enough comfort to go out in the word and live out there. So the major evolution in my God is that I finally came to terms that God's not a feeling. And I'm not too sure how to articulate it after that. It's more of a sense. It's kind of a a sense of being okay and that I have something that's going to keep me okay. So, thanks. We out of time? Thank you. Thank you very much.