Earl H. at the 12 steps workshop – 2026

Thank you. NAPOD features NA speakers and workshops in the same format as Sobercast. We upload a new speaker every day, and it's easy to subscribe by searching for NAPOD, N-A-P-O-D, all one word, on any podcast player app or go to napod.xyz if you'd like to listen online. Hope you enjoy the podcast and have a great day. Oh, you're one. I am not a trained killer, so I don't know me either. Oh, okay. My name is Earl. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, everybody. So the steps. Jeez. Is Howard here? There's Howard. One of my heroes. Well, Howard. I love Howard. Anyway, so the steps. You know, I think it's interesting to me to have a guy get up and talk about the steps For me, it's... I got the steps the way I got them. I got those steps the same way they were passed down to me by my sponsor. I got some of the... And I'll carry on for a bit about... This is the way that I worked through the steps, this is how I was taught, this is the ways it works for me, this isn't how I engage in this process. and there'll be six other guys that'll go, well, that ain't right. You know? They'll say, well, my sponsor took me through and we did it this way and this way and Christ, you're killing people with that way. And it's often this way and that way and then this guy's got this way. I mean, I must personally know 15 guys that go through the book in a different way. They perceive it a different ways and they teach it a different away. They share it a differentway And I don't think there's a wrong way to do it. I mean, I think that the point is to go through the steps as outlined in the book and wrestle with the concepts that are afoot there. I mean that's the whole idea. And for me, I'm just – and everybody's got a different personality. Some people are very, very big into the minutia and they get into it and they dissect it and they take it apart and then they put it back together and then They get the desired effect as a result of doing that. For me, it's a little bit different. But for me, I've had to kind of keep my eye on the prize. You know what I mean? And the prize for me was to find a way to be comfortable sober. I mean, kicking was the least of my worries as it turns out. I mean I can remember I think two years before I got sober I had been admitted to my second-to-last detox. It was a little bootleg sanitarium in Hollywood where you give them $150 cash and they strap you to a gurney and shoot you full of anticonvulsants and just let you rock. And as you're losing your mind and thinking you're going to die, you reintroduce yourself to God and you say, look, it's me. I know we haven't talked in a while, but I'd like to cut a deal here if I could. If you just get me through this sane and alive and both seem to be in question, I will never, ever, ever drink or use again. My ass is kicked. I can't take the madness. I can'T take the violence. I can'T take it from... I admitted to, I'm an alcoholic. I admit it. I admit I'm a alcoholic. And I would get up off that gurney after 72 hours and I would stumble to my car and I'd be drunk that night. I drank for two more years. I could not stop drinking. Knowing that I was an alcoholic didn't mean anything. It didn't seem to have any impact on my ability to stop. I didn't know what it meant. I didn' t know what an alcoholic was. I didn''t know anything about alcoholism. I didn't know that I suffered from an allergy of the body and an obsession of the mind. I didn' t know that. I thought if I kicked, that was it. But what I couldn' t get a hold of as a result of the denial I was living in was that stopping wasn' t what it was about for me. I had to find a way to not start again. How could I not start against? How could this process of recovery be laid down upon the process of my life? How could do that? And I found that for me, and I thought Clancy spoke about it brilliantly as always last night, when he talked about the difference between him and the bodies that he would step over on his way to work and on his way home, and being willing to take an action outside your own best thinking, in opposition to your own best thinking. I've got to find a way to stay stopped. I will not stay stopped unless I can find a way to be comfortable sober. The only way for me to be comfortably sober is if I am relieved of the greater aspect of my disease, the mental obsession to drink, the thing that makes it impossible for me to be comfortable, sober. I have to be relieved of that. I've been taught that the only way to successfully relieve me of that is to work the 12 steps as outlined in the big book. We got this circle with a triangle, this unity, recovery and service. And it's an ancient spiritual symbol that stands for mind, body and spirit brought together as a whole human being. Therein lies the balance I've sought my whole life and never had. AA adopted it. It's the same thing. Unity is the body, I bring it here. The recoveries of the mind, I work those steps. Having had an awakening, having been restored to sanity, soundness of mind, the leads of the obsession to drink service. I can practice this principle. I carry the message. How can I help you? How can I tell you when you come to me and say, I can't stop drinking, but can you show me how I can say yes. And it has absolutely nothing to do with as Earl sees it out of this, which is good news for anyone that it's out of his book here. Let's just go through this book And what's really interesting is that I've been through, I don't know how many times I've gone through the process in the book. I don'T KNOW HOW MANY TIMES I'VE LED WORKSHOPS, BEEN A PARTICIPANT IN WORK SHOPS. I'LL LISTEN TO SO MANY PEOPLE AROUND HERE THAT HAVE SUCH A GIFT FOR SHARING THIS STUFF AND PASSING ON, YOU KNOW, CATCHING THAT BUZZ THAT YOU GET AS AN ALCOHOLIC, AS A SOBER ALCOHOLE WHEN YOU BREAK FREE AND YOU'RE FREE, WHICH IS LIKE THE WHOLE POINT. SO I HAD TO KEEP MY EYE ON THE PRIZE AS I WENT THROUGH THE STEPS. WHAT I'M TRYING TO DO IS I'M TRIING TO WALK THE EARTH A FREE MAN. I'm trying to no longer be a slave to alcohol and drugs. I'm starting to be relieved of the obsessive thinking. I can't have that beast whispering in my ear anymore, telling me that a couple of drinks will solve the problem I currently have, whatever that problem may be. I've got to get that out of my head because sooner or later, right, the shit's going to hit the fan, and I'm going to discover that I am not in charge of the fan. Right? And when that happens, I better be armed with some tools that will allow me to get through that experience without creating significant and possibly irreparable damage in my life, like me taking a drink. I got here once, and I've stayed for 22 years. I'm a firm believer that there is absolute, having never done it but having seen it so many times, because I've been able to get here successfully and stay sober for a significant period of time, is absolutely no guarantee that if I were to go back out and drink, I would get back here again. The last Diet Coke on the island. When we get to the forest up, I shall discuss that in further detail. I have a terrible resentment. All right. So, step one. What's the problem? I mean, that's what the beginning of it is for me. It's like, what is the problem here? What is it I'm dealing with? What is that I'm up against? Because you know what I mean? I'm aware of a whole bunch of great tools, but if I don't know what the problem really is, I don' t really know what tools to apply to the problem that effectively solve the problem. I mean a screwdriver is a great tool. screwdriver will fix a lot of problems. But if I have a flat tire, it's a very little use to me. I've got to get the right solution to the right problem. So I've gotta be really, really well schooled in what the problem is. And lack of power is my dilemma. Lack of power is my dilemmas. I may be normal in every other area of my life, but when it comes to the question of drinking, I'm nuts. I'm not. I can make rational decisions that move my life forward and every other airborne. When it comes to drinking, I'm insane. I seem to be completely powerless over alcohol and my whole life is unmanageable as a direct result of that one thing. But when I look around in my life and I think, well, it's so easy for me to project my problems onto someone else or compare myself to someone else and say, well I don't have a problem, he does. I mean, you know, he's sleeping in a car and I'm sleeping in the bus. Much smaller accommodations. I don't have a problem. He does. And on and on. I mean, so it's... I have to do that. And in the book, the book goes on at great length about describing to me the nature of alcoholism. Describing to me about the obsession of the mind and the allergy of the body. That I drink and I activate the physical phenomenon of craving. And that just takes over. I can't tell you when I start drinking I can tell you how much I'm going to drink or when I'm gonna stop because I don' t know. I could be an absolutely delightful charming individual. You could have me over to your house we could have a little wine we could have a few cocktails I could just be delightful and then I could come over to your house the next week for another little gathering we have a little wine we have a couple cocktails and I'm trying to throw your couch through the front window we have no idea how we got there or I've taken your car and I'm off or I'm attacking somebody I'm trying to kill someone and we don't know why and when asked a couple of days later why did you do that I don't know I don't know. So I never, ever, never, I never know what's going to happen. So it seems to wreak havoc in my life at its own pace, like it has its own mindset. It has absolutely nothing to do with any plan I put together. It just is this independent force in my light and it manifests the soul sickness manifests itself in an obsession of the mind and the algae of the body. If that's my problem, lack of power is my problem. What's my solution? A power greater than myself that could restore me to sanity, soundness of mind, relieve me of the obsession to drink. Sounds like a good deal to me Now I've tried everything On my way in here As I was effectively burning my life to the ground I tried everything I have a high IQ At least I did early on Sometime after 16 that started to drop Steadily But I would apply myself to other problems And self-will would avail me something Right? Not in this case Not in his case And I had to accept, am I going to live a life based on spiritual principles or am I gonna, you know, continue to wander through this life attempting to blot out the intolerable nature of my existence? And I paraphrase. But, you Know, and that was really what it got down to me was live or die, live or Die. You know, and what's so great about alcoholics, I think is when you tell them, you look, here's your choices. You can either live a Life based on Spiritual Principles or you can die this terrible alcoholic death. You know? And a lot of alcoholics will ask you, well, how terrible a death are we talking? I got to weigh this out because it's just the thought of, of taking, it's like you're taking my breath away. You're taking my breadth away. So there is that really horrendous moment, I think then accepting step in, in, In step one, it says on page, I think it's page 30. It says I must accept that my innermost self, I'm an alcoholic. Um, yeah, you know, I I think I did that two years, three years, four years, eight years before I stopped drinking. You know? It was just the crushing blow, that ultimate defeat that led me to be willing. And the book talks about being beaten into a state of reasonableness. I mean, that's what it took for me, was to be beaten to death but somehow still breathing and willing to say, okay, I'm willing to take action contrary to my own best thinking. I'm willing to go to a sponsor and say, or a treatment facility initially for me on a free bed. And they said, go left. And I went left. I didn't ask them why, or please explain to me the nature of left, as you see it. I didn'T get any. They said left, and I just went left, my ass was kicked. And they SAID, if you don'T want to die, you better go to Alcoholics Anonymous. And I SAID OKAY. And I came to Alcoholic Anonymous having kicked the physical phenomenon of craving lifted, but the obsession of the mind was raging. I came here so full of alcoholism, so crazy sitting in the back, and I had no idea what you were doing. I didn't come here because I wanted what you had. I had not understanding of what you have. I just knew I could no longer live with what I had. And I think that's a great way to get here. I don't know what you've got, but it can't be any worse than what I've got. Bring it on. So he said, well, you know, we do these steps. Fine, show them. Well, step one, lack of power is my dilemma. That's my problem. Okay, what's my solution? It's going to have to be a five... I mean, I'm sitting on the couch reading a book and going, yep, yep. That's the problem. That's it. That's going to have to be the solution because I've tried everything here. Left to my own devices, I am a dead man and I have accepted that. So you say it is going to take God? Okay. Let's go to God. I renounced God on a mountain in Mexico on November 6th, 1974. Renounced God. Swore I would never love another human being again as long as I live. And there is no way you are going to love me because I am not telling you who I am. So I came here just ready to receive the gift. You know? Really thinking clearly. And I got in the back and sat in the background and was going to burglarize your conversations. He said, it's going to take God. I went, fine, great. Want to get God in the mix? Great. Let me tell you about God. And what I professed when I got here was that I had no relationship with God. I hadn't renounced God. There was no such thing as God. There was no benevolent force that was going to impact my life in a good way. Maybe you all as a group could have an impact on me, but this God thing was out. And I carried that as long as my first sponsor would tolerate it, and he waited for precisely the right moment, and he loved these moments. He loved doing this to me. And I was ranting about God, and He said, Earl, you can't be mad at a God you don't believe in. and i i found that to be a cruel and vicious remark because it just hit me like a two by four between the eyes and i just looked at him and went i'm going home now it was just brutal because he was right what i had was a relationship with god it was a bad relationship as a result of my attitude So, then they say, okay, could I come to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity, soundness of mind, relieve me of the obsession to drink? And the answer was, okay. I'll roll with that because I don't have any choice. I'm not doing this willingly, gladly, happily. And as Clancy talked about last night, it doesn't make any difference how I get to the action. It's just that I take the action, is as my sponsor told me about taking direction from him, direction that was contrary to my own best thinking. What he said was you don't have to like what I tell you and you don' t have to think it's a good idea, you just have to do it. If you do it, you'll get the result. So my attitude towards the steps was if I do this stuff, it doesn't matter if I announce I do not believe in God and then get down on my knees and turn my will and my life over to care of a God I don't believe in. What I did by the time I got to the third step, notice we are moving through these babies, man. step one is I've identified the problem. Step two, I've identified what the solution clearly is going to have to be. I'm not happy with that, but there seems to be no other way to go about it for me. I'll stick strictly me. All right. Step three says I'm going to have to make a decision to do something about this information. What do I do? I get down on and I'm on the couch reading problem solution. Yep. Yep, yep, yep. yep, yep, step three. I get out off that couch. I'd get down on my knees and I read this third step prayer and I turned my will in my life over the care of a God. I don't understand. Don't understand them. See evidence of that God in my wife on a daily basis, clearly a God evidence ofthat everywhere, right? Do I get it? DoI get God? Nope. I've tried, I've taken a lot of psychedelics, man. I have tried to wrap my head around infinity and it just won't go. I get to sit there thinking about it and I get way, way, way out there until I just scare the hell out of myself and just back in the room, man. A little too far for Earl. Just freak myself out. Right? But I see the evidence. The evidence is there and the evidence comes as a result of action that I take. Right? Because this process, what this process does taking this contrary action, doing these things that would never even occur to me as an individual as an alcoholic man that would not occur to me, what happens is this change begins to take place. I started changing. I didn't know it. The guy sitting across from me going through the process with me, he noticed it. It was starting to scare him a little bit because I was startingto change. I was having the same reaction to him. I said, wow, man, this is getting spooky. You know what I mean? Christopher's like balancing out over there. You know What I mean ? He's not just going from victim to assassin. You knowWhat I mean?. He's just not. He's having these calm days, you know, and we're going through the process. Right. So I did it. I did step three. I just got down on my knees. I opened the book. I took a deep breath and I said the third step to the best of my ability. I've done it thousands of times since. But I mean, that was the beginning for me to just be willing to take this little action of just down on the knees. Say this thing back up on the couch. There was a crack in the armor, man. there was a crack in the armor. Did I know that? No, I saw this as ridiculous down on the knees. God, thanks for listening. Okay. Back up on the couch, right? What are we doing here? And then you read and you're reading the book and there's a line right after you do this where it says essentially, we hope you were serious about what you just did. Yeah, great. Now you tell me, I felt like that place on the roller coaster, you know, where you're in the car and it's going click, click, click, I felt like to click and just stop. Here we go. No getting off now. Turn my wheel. How I've come to view that is if I look at my life as this pond, it's just this little pond. It's just the Earl Pond. Up until I got to AA, I was throwing rocks and mud and dirt, just drugs and alcohol. I mean, I'm just throwing this stuff in the pond and I'm seeing it sink to the bottom and I think, well, that didn't have that big of an effect. Well, the fact is, is that every rock that hit that pond, a ripple effect occurred. And whether I intended it to occur or not, regardless of what my intention was or was not, the action that occurred was unavoidable and that was the rock hit the pond and the ripple effect of that touched absolutely every single area in the pod. There was no avoiding it. Everything was being affected by that rock hitting that pond. And I just kept throwing poison in there and poison in THERE. And it left no little area of the pond unaffected. It all became poison. And what I didn't know was, was that the minute I got down on my knees and took that action, that first action for me, and I said, God, and I did the third step prayer, and I got back up on the couch, physically did that, I threw something else into the pond and that ripple went out and it began to just very, very subtly, very, very simply in a very small way affect the nature of this pond. Right? And then I got up and it said, well, I hope you were very serious about what you did. And I'm thinking, well you know, I don't know, you know you didn't ask me that. You didn't say be very serious before you take the third step. I didn't see that. So I did and I thought, well that was the best I could do, apparently we should continue you from here? Because what I kept hearing was from my sponsor was keep moving, baby. Keep moving. Keep going in that direction because he figured if I sat down at any point, I was dead. He was one of these kind of sponsors where when I asked him to sponsor me, he said yes. And I just started crying because when I ask him, I realized it's been so long since I've asked anybody for something so long. I didn't know it had been that long until I did it. God, it's been forever since I have reached out to anyone. And as I'm crying, he looked over my head to his assistant and said, oh wonderful, he's destroyed. And I thought, no, no. See what I've done now? I've turned my life over to this madman. I've made once again a terrible decision. Turned out to be pivotal in my life. I was with him long and I was in my parents. Great man. Anyway, so it says I've got to embark now upon this plan of action or everything I've done is a waste of time, right? One, two, three drunk. One, two, Three drunk. I can do the first three steps and be sitting in a bar with plenty of other guys sitting in abar willing to discuss step two with me over a couple of tall ones. You know that's step three is a bitch, isn't it? Yeah, there's a bar in Santa Monica where if you come and bring him your one year chip, they'll let you drink all night for free. How cold blooded is that? Right? You get welcome back to the dark side real quickly, man. Right. Because it's like alcoholics that want to like torch that joint anyway. So it says I got to embark upon this four step. So I'm reading in the book and I'm doing this four stuff stuff and I've completely baffled by it. I'm thinking I've been to school. I've made the college I can read. I can understand information. I've read, you know, difficult stuff, you Know, but I'm really there's just something in my brain that's going, you know, don't listen to that. Don't pay any attention to that. But something just blocking me. I can't read this stuff. So I got to go to outside sources and I got start doing the thing I swore I'd never do. I got started following around those step guys, you now? Those book thumpers. Those guys that talk about the program as outlined in the big book. The people I've avoided at all costs up to this point, right? These are not the people. These guys are no fun, right. Little do I know they're the keepers are the biggest buzz a guy like me could ever know, right? Keepers are the big buzz, man. Those are the guys. Go find them, right. There's a whole bunch of them on that table right up there. Anyway, or you look at it and go, yeah, this guy talks about the steps. Great. Hey, wait a minute. These guys are great. Hey, that guy's wonderful. That guy in the traditions, teachers, amazing stuff over on that tab. Anyway. So it says I got to do this for a step where it gets fun. It's the beginning of this process, this action plan and it's supposed to bring about the promise of step two in my life. So, fourth step. I've got to swallow some large chunks of truth about myself. I'm going to do an inventory on resentment, fear, and sex. Traditionally speaking, as I was taught it, this was a four-column inventory. Look at Peggy. There's one of the greatest things I've ever experienced in my wife that's going on. I'll let you in on a little secret. There's a person here who's a great teacher, an absolutely fantastic teacher, a guy who spent a lot of time in Los Angeles, highly regarded in the 12-step community in Los Angeles. Moved out of town and is now highly regarded. And for good reason. He's a remarkable teacher, has an incredible mind, and he sees it differently than I do. He doesn't see it the way I see it, right? So we got into it yesterday. What I mean get into it, you have to understand, We're reasonable men. I came to him and said, I see it differently, but I have an open mind. I want to hear about how you do it. I wantto wrestle with how youdo it. Iwantto understand how youdoo it because maybe it'll change the way I do it Maybe they'll change it completely. Maybe they'lhave some small impact, some large impact. Maybe there'll be another way that I wanttodo it. I think that there's three four-column inventories and he says there's four three-columninventories. Right? It all adds up to the same thing. It's just kind of how you get there, right? So we're ranting back and forth. So ever since then, every time I see him as he walks by, he goes. And when I got up here, I sat down, I looked at him, and I went. And what's a great thing, I mean, we're a couple of hopeless alcoholics, right? That should have been buried decades ago. And here we are arguing about the nature of the 12-step process. I mean it's the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life. I love this stuff, right? Because it's good natured and I have nothing but love and respect for him. And he's very, very nice to me. So, he's like a teacher of mine. He's been sober significantly longer than I have. So, in this four-step, in a four-column format, there, you know, I write down my resentment. I resent Club Med. Why? Call them too. They've run out of dyed coat. What areas of my life are affected by this? Absolutely not of any particular importance, but you know. Let's just say I resent my father. Why? He beat me. Right? What areas in my life were affected by that? A lot. My security, my self-esteem, my personal relations. Right? My security. Right? Did I say self-esteem? Self-esteem, yeah. My ambition? You bet, right? Several of the seven that I see as being listed in that book. Four, what was my part in it? Where was I selfish, dishonest, self-seeking, and frightened? And I write this down in black and white. But I do it in rows, right. I do the column. Who do I resent? I write them until I'm done. The last inventory I did had 518 resentments on it. Thomas Jefferson was on there. I mean, I saw what that man did with his life. Who could live up to this? He set the bar entirely too high. I hate the man, Thomas Jefferson. I got it all out, right? And then I wrote specifically why I was resentful towards these people. Then I wrote down the areas of my life affected. And thenI wrote down my part in all of this. And I did an inventory on sex, right, and not who had I slept with, but who hadI harmed sexually, you know? I mean, if I'm two years sober and I walk up to some woman and using my smooth, you know, suave, two-year-sober manner and I wake up and I say, I like you. And she says, You're scaring me. Go away. I have been rejected here. And I mean somebody says to me, What do you think of Becky? And I say... I hate her. She's a terrible, terrible, mean-spirited woman. Now, I've harmed her. I haven't had sex with her. But as a result of my sexual advances to her, I've been rebuffed. I've spoken poorly of her in the community. I've armed this woman. She's on my inventory. Right? I deal with the sexual inventory. And the reason that they pick these areas, I think, is if you want to see where an alcoholic will absolutely whack out, these are some good areas to check out. Self-righteous anger, resentment, sexual behavior, fear. Right? I mean, I'm medicated self-centered fear from the time I was 12 years old. And had I known alcohol would have done that, I'd have started drinking it at around four. If I could have got my hands on it, that'll make this feeling go away. Toss it over here, right? Works perfectly. So I do this stuff, resentment, fear, and sex. And what happens is, is then I go to my sponsor and I don't read it like this. I read it in the rows. I have this resentment. I resent this person. This is why. These are the areas affected. This is my part in it. I resent these persons. This is how it affects these areas. And I mean, quickly, there is a remarkable, rather unattractive pattern presenting itself showing me this. I'm being forced to look at my side of the street because my whole life it's been about you did this and you did not do that. You shouldn't have done that. And how come when you said you were going to and then you didn't? And then I mean just point all the time. Right. I am taking absolutely no responsibility for all of this. I am justified in my anger. 30 years sober, which is what happens to you when you turn 30. I don't. It's the truth, right? And the rest of us in our little 20s just have, we just got to roll with it, right. Yeah. See, there is a bigger buzz up ahead, right, so I do this inventory. And then before God, I read this to another individual. And I remember my first fifth step. I had finished my fourth step when I called up Donald and I said, I finished my four step. I'd like to get it with my fifth step, and he said, All right, well, you know, I've got some time Tuesday, and I say, No, no, you don't understand. I'm not leaving this stuff laying around. We're getting together now. He said, Fine, I got to speak out in Eagle Rock or somewhere. Come on over and you can read it to me in the car on the way there. Fine. So I've got this document in my car, and I go over and I get in this station wagon with him, and off we go to Eagle Rock. And I'm reading this inventory. We had to pull over twice because I was so upset over actually telling this stuff to another human being because this went so... Talk about contrary action. Saying these things to anotherhumanbeing was beyond anything I ever thought would ever possibly have to happen in my life. My brain was just screaming at me, You don't understand. These people have tricked you. The federal government is running AA. This is how they get people to give this information up to their agents. This is why they track this information. I mean, it's just wrong to do this. It's wrong. Based on my way of looking at things, this is wrong. There is no value that could outweigh the damage possibly done by doing a fifth step. as I sit in this car doing one because this guy is my link to the human race and I'm convinced at this point if I don't do this process, I'm going to die drunk. Right? I'm gonna die drunk there's just overwhelming evidence that that's the case. So I'm reading this and he's pulling over the car so that I can get sick when I get out of the car and I get back in the car and we read some more and pull over, pull over oh God and he pulls over back inthe car and we reaad the whole inventory and we get to this place and he goes I gotta eat before the meeting we pull into this hamburger stand right and we get hamburgers and we're sitting out on these tables and there's a bunch of families and stuff and everybody's sitting around eating hamburgues and I'm reading my finishing up my inventory and you know how when you're scared your voice kind of goes up when you get scared and then this happened and then I did this and this was going on and people are like going kids, kids and the people the families they're getting up and moving away and it's like me and Donald out there right and I finished my inventory and I am so emotionally raw and drained and exposed and frightened. And he looks up at me and he smiles and he says, Wonderful. Now, we don't kill people here one day at a time. That was the first direction I was given by my sponsor. And I said, Okay, I can do that. And I can tell you I have not killed anyone from that day to this. And I did not kill anyone prior to that. I have never, to my knowledge, killed anyone. I was planning a murder when I got here, very seriously planning a murder, very, very committed to the process of seeing this particular individual dead. And he his counsel to me was we don't do that here one day at a time. And I said, OK, and I laid down my plan and stuck with the plan he had in mind for me, which was Alcoholics Anonymous. And today I walk the earth a free man. And I firmly believe, had I done that, even if I'd gotten away, I would not be free today. That's just me. That's for me. I wouldn't be. I'm not the kind of guy that could willfully, premeditatedly do something like that and not have it scarred him for the rest of his life. Anyway, so I did this fifth step, and as we got to the meeting, then we get to the meaning, and I'm just vibrating, right? Because I'm looking at him and thinking, now I have to wait for him to die because he's the carrier, keeper of my secrets. And I'm thinking he's looking rather fit and this could take a while, you know? So we go to the meeting and the secretary says, ah, our speaker's here. Donald, good to see him. And is this our first speaker? And he points to me and Donald says, yes, it is. And I looked at him and I looked up at the secretary and I don't know who to hit. And the next thing I know, the meeting starts and I stood up with them. I'm the five-minute speaker. They had a five-minutes speaker and I'm in. And I got up there, and I said, my name's Earl. I'm an alcoholic. And I just did my fifth step with my sponsor. And, well, that's all I have to say. And I sat down next to Donald and looked at him. He looked at me and he said, sensational, wonderful talk. And I'm just vibrating. I mean, I feel like I'm naked, right? And that was the beginning. And there have been several inventories since then over the last 22 years. There have been many, many fifth steps that I've listened to. I mean, and I think it's important in terms of the steps. It's not just me doing them. It's me doing they and then turning around and taking the next guy through and letting this guy have it as his beginning and letting him not see it as I see it and letting he not understand And this guy being willful and resistant and hostile and angry as he does it, that he doesn't have to have a good attitude. He doesn't Have to think it's a good idea if he does It I'm In I'll Participate I'll Help Him Through That Process And I Will Carry The Message To Him As It Was Given To Me The Great Part About This Is Is That I Got What I Got in the beginning, I've been given so much regarding the steps since then by Joe and Charlie, by Howard P., by Luther W., by Clancy I., by Scott R., by a woman who had two and a half years sober as I sat in a meeting in a very disgruntled state of mind with 19 years sober. And she got up and was the first speaker in a meaning with two and half years over and she blew the top of my head off because she was seeing it differently than I had ever looked at it before. And she added color and depth to what was mine in terms of my relationship with God and my relationship with my fellows, because what the steps does for me is that all the stuff that I put between me and you and me and this God that I don't understand was my responsibility to go about the business of getting that stuff out of the way so that I could hook back up with my I have a sense of self that was even remotely close to what in fact was occurring. Have a relationship with you and have a relationship with God. I mean, I remember I was five years sober and all I had ever done was go to AA meetings. I went to seven to nine meetings a week minimum. I had two panels, right? I was sponsoring guys. I never turned down. I was just so deep in this thing, building the foundation upon which I stand today. And I was informed that there was a convention in South Bay, which was about 30 minutes south of me. And I wouldn't I was so scared to do anything but what I was doing because I was afraid I would get drunk. Right at five years sober. I mean, I'm a slow one, man. I got here totaled and I went down to South Bay by myself telling no one. AndI bought a little registration thing and I went into this meeting and I walked into the back of a meeting that had over 2000 people in it. I've never seen anything like it in my life. The energy was astonishing to me. And I stood up against the wall just trying to breathe in this environment. I mean, the vibe was just overwhelming. And there was a guy at the podium and his name was Franklin W. And he was from Olive Branch, Mississippi. It's like burned in my skull. It was like one of those life-changing moments that Peggy talked about, right? And I'm standing there and see short-term memory does in fact returned. I remember that you said that it's like, I'm over here going, wow, good Earl. I'm very impressed with myself that I remember. And I love listening to Peggy. Peggy's a teacher of mine. Dick's a feature of mine there's plenty of them around, right? All you gotta do is show up and be willing. And was open-minded enough that Franklin W was at the end of his talk. And he said, and I'll sum up alcoholics anonymous for you in six words, those six words being trust God, clean house and help others. And I had a spiritual experience right there. Just blew the top of my head off. All these little pieces of all these things I'd heard around AA that were in the book, that were in the fellowship, that people were talking over coffee just went. And it was this thing that I knew could sustain me through anything life could throw at me, that I had shot at being an actual human being on this planet, not hurting people anymore, Being a part of the solution instead of part of the problem. And I vibrated on out of there. 16 years later, last year I'm 21 years sober and I'm speaking at a conference and I turned into one of these guys speaker boy, you know what I mean? They fly around and throw up there and wah, wah, Wah, Wah and then they throw you down, you Know what I Mean? Throw you on another plane, my favorite thing to do fly an airplane which by the way, new resentment I'm on the plane, Miami scare we're rolling down the runway, and the plane goes, and takes off. And I'm going, what the hell was that? Instantly, I'm not happy. 10, 15, 20 minutes into the flight, the pilot of Miami Scare comes on and says, Oh, by the way, that was just the engine stalling. The number two engine stallings, no big deal. And that's it. That's what he has to say. Now I'm saying, first of all, how many engines do we have? I don't know. If he'd have said, number two of the 11 engines that we have, I'm good with that. I don't recall seeing a plane built like that. Five on each wing and a big one on the tail. I had to talk that out on the plane. I resent the pilot and whoever was involved in building this particular aircraft. You find your way through this stuff, you know what I mean? By the time we got here, I was good. But now we're talking about resentments that kind of chirped up there a little bit, so I thought I'd share. I thought I'd share that with you. Anyway, what the hell was I talking about? You know? Franklin. Thank you. And thank you, Peggy, for what you said last night. Yeah. I guess the point I'm getting at is that whatever step I'm on, if what I'm Getting from that is a willingness to be propelled into the next step, I'm in good shape. If I'm willing to swallow large chunks, if I'm willing to look at what the problem is for me, if I're willing to have the teachers that are in here talk to me about this and continue to talk to you about this, I can go through this original process and I can stay an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I can be relieved of the obsession to drink. I can engage in a process that daily allows me to experience a reprieve from that illness so that I walk the earth absolutely not suffering from the disease of alcoholism at all. I don't suffer from alcoholism. And I know the debates and stuff. Am I recovering? Am I recovered? Personally, I'm both. I'm recovered. I no longer suffer from the disease of alcoholism. And the process of recovery that is in my life, as a result of my constant involvement in this process, I continue to grow. I continueto learn. I continuetoremainforeverastudentofalcoholicsanonymous. Because the days are going to come where Howard and I are going to sit down and he's going to say, you know, I got another way of looking at this. And, you know? The spherical nature of this. This is not this linear flatline experience, man. This is the Zen thing, man. And this is the spherical, living, growing experience that is my life as it relates to Alcoholics Anonymous. This experience of AA. This is just so chop wood and carry water. It's unbelievable around here. I chop the wood and I carry the water. I look at the Japanese rock garden. Now I'm a Westerner and I look in a Japanese rock yard. And what I see is Asians trying to get over on me one more time with a rock garden, you know what I mean? and they got the western boy standing there staring at a bunch of rocks you know what I mean and they're in the background going look at that fool looking at the rocks but see because of this process and what I've learned around here I can stand and I can look at the rock and all of a sudden I see a relationship between the rocks and I continue to look at the rocks I see relationship between rocks and the ground and the ground and that little thing over there and this and that and all of a certain it's a community and all the sudden it's a mountain range and all of a sudden it's a universe unto itself. And I'm catching a buzz looking at a bunch of rocks, love the opportunity to catch a buzz at any time. And if looking at the rock garden will do it, it'll do it. If I'm told to carry these buckets of water over that well, pour them in and pick those two buckets up, fill them with water and carry them over to this well and pour them out. And then take these two buttons. And if that's right now, that sounds on the surface like, okay, how boring is that? Right. Done it once. You're thinking, nothing new here. Yeah, there is. There's the next time I do it. There was an old Zen saying that says you can't step in the same river twice. And I think that the steps are the same way. You can't do the same 12 steps twice because as you go through the 12 steps, it brings about an experience and that experience changes me as a human being. I go back to start at step one and I'm looking at it from an entirely different perspective. I have changed. I see it differently. I go forward. I remember the night I went to a meeting to meet a friend of mine and I got there at the last minute. She was sitting up front and I slid in a chair next to her sitting right there. And the meeting started and they said, and tonight our speaker will discuss step one. I thought, oh, great. Step one, if there's any stuff around here, I've got not get step one, I need no discussion of step one and now I'm trapped. I can't stand up and go, sorry, pal, I got this and walk out the door. I'm strapped for the meeting. And this guy is going to go on for 20 minutes. Turns out that his name was Jack P and he had 43 years at the time. And he talked for 20 minutes on step one. Again, Papa Earl's head is blown off and I'm back to the drawing board. Right? And here's the thing around here, the beautiful thing of this. I'm Back to the Drawing Board on step 1 happily, gladly back at the drawing board because he's changed it all for me again. We're going a little deeper this time. There's worlds within worlds here. I know there's stuff he said about step one in that 20 minutes that just went But there was enough that I heard that stretched me a little further, caused my consciousness to have to expand just a little bit more to grab hold of what he was talking about. And I was off to the races again and off tothe races again. So I'm happy to stay a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, remain open-minded, willing to see it another way so that when the next guy comes along and says stuff to me and I wrestle with these concepts, like I do with Howard, and I discover that the way he's seeing it is directly applicable to what's in that book and it is, yet I see it differently, then this is all good stuff. We get to mix it up in the good water. You know what I mean? We're playing, we're throwing, we'RE standing there throwing stuff in each other's ponds and we're not harming each other. Nobody's trying to lead anybody else to the dark side. You Know What I Mean? We're all trying to move forward and remain free and it's this great, wonderful, beautiful experience. It sure beats the hell out of the gossip and the talking crap about people and you know what I mean? And, and deciding that this guy's a good, he's a good speaker. He's in, this was a bad, he'S a bad man. He'S a good man. You know what I mean? Instead of what's the, forget the man. What's the message going on? Is the message good? Is a message solid? Yeah, I'm in. Give me the information. And that's what I think is great about the steps is that you embark upon this thing and you begin to wrestle with these concepts that are absolutes that none of us will ever attain. It's not the point. The point's not about getting there. The point's about being willing to go that way. So I like going that way, I like being a part of this. So step one, what's the problem? Lack of power. Step two, solution. Power. To resolve the problem is step one. Step three, I make a decision to do the things necessary to have that solution occur in my life. Four and five, I begin the action plan by addressing me, my side of the street. And I swallow large chunks of truth about myself. And at some point in this deal, we'll do six through 12, right? See ya. Unruly island dwellers. My name's Earl. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, it's Friday. date. But we figured we better finish the step before something bad happened. Today's 6 through 12. Shouldn't take long. Safe travel to Howard P. and Clancy I. They've left the Island. Now that they're gone, I think we can clear up a few things. Dick, I'm going to want three of these, one for me, one for Clancy, and one for Howard. Howard and I have been going back and forth. Every time I see Howard, he holds up three fingers. I hold up four back at him. We've been having a debate on the fourth column, whether or not it exists. If there's four inventories with three columns, or three inventories with four columns. But this is six through 12, so we won't dally around there. 6 and 7, hooking it back up with God. 8 and 9, hocking it back with others. 10 me, 11 God, 12 you. Nobody else to play with. It's a pretty simple layout, right? Step 1, what's the problem? Lack of power is my dilemma. If that's my problem, what is my solution? Step 2, that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity, soundness of mind. Relieve me of the obsession to drink, the greater aspect of my disease. Because if I don't get relieved of the obsession to drinking, I can't get comfortable sober. And if I can get comfortable sober, I'm going to get drunk. That's me. So that has to be relieved of that obsession. This whole process is designed to make that possible for a guy like me to be comfortable sober. I just saw Matt sitting over there and I got to say, man, outstanding talk last night. That was incredible. Over lunch, we were all sitting around. And when you hear this laughter erupt from our table, it was... And then when he said... We'd tell stories about Matt's talk and I'll laugh and come on with the next thing. It was great. It was a great talk. Anyway. And the reason I mention that, you're all thinking, why is he talking about Matt now? Is that because having worked the steps, I'm not nearly as self-centered as I used to be and I'm able to actually hear somebody else talk. See how I just pulled that together. I'm a little loose in the head. I've been here a week, you know? I'm relaxed. I remember a guy sponsoring him, Britton. He asked me to sponsor him and I said, well, no, you have a sponsor? And he said, yeah. What he told me was work the steps unless it's a hassle. And that was his approach to the steps. I kind of have a different skew on that. For me, it's work the step or die. That's what it is for me. Work the steps or die. It's not a close call. It's work the steps so that I can really fine-tune my program. You know what I mean? It's to work the step as the foundation upon which I will stand a free man. That's where it's about. It's the foundation on which I stand. So six and seven, I hook it back up with God. I become willing, and I ask God to remove the defects of character because I'll remove the wrong stuff. If I'm deciding, let's make a list of my defects of character. I got defects of characters I enjoy. I demonstrated one of them in the buffet earlier. I like to eat to the point of stupor. I went over to Steve and I said, may I recommend the pork and the white chocolate bread? It's big piles of both. Oh, God. So it's just pretty simple. I mean, you know, there's lots of discussion about God. I think wrestling with the concept of God is a great thing. It's a noble calling. I love the discussions of God. And I always have to approach it personally from the standpoint of I'm talking about something I don't understand at all. I don'T UNDERSTAND GOD. I see evidence of God every day of my life. I'm open and willing to experience the presence of God, and I do on a regular basis. I see things going on that are clearly beyond any understanding I could possibly have. I went snorkeling yesterday. Presence of God. I'm looking at a little reef. It looks like a bunch of coral stuck on the bottom of the ocean there, right? A little fish swimming around it. There is that perception of it. But if you lay there bobbing in the current, kind of pick up the rhythm of the Ocean, As you're bobbing there, listening to yourself breathe through this tube and you're watching the ebb and the flow. This suddenly becomes an ecosystem unto itself, a world unto itself. And you watch the peaceful cohabitation of so many different species, right? Working beautifully together. And what the only thing they ask of us when we go in the water is, please don't touch it. Because the minute you touch it, it begins to die. And I thought, that's a telling remark for somebody like me. Leave it alone. Leave it along. Do not get into it. Look at the coral. Look at beautiful coral. Let's move it over there. Look at a beautiful fish around the beautiful coral, let's break a big piece off and go put it in our living room. You know, wait a minute. Leave it alone. Just look, experience this other world that I prior to that had no consciousness of to see a fish go by and say, oh, well, apparently that's yellow. I thought I had seen yellow before, but apparently not because that is yellow. And just these eye openers, right? This is the presence of God, right, to go look at just to look right over there and you see the ocean hit the skyline and you think if somebody painted that, you'd think it looks fake. And there it is. Right? To hear my sponsor laugh. Presence of God. Right? To see an alcoholic in service of another alcoholic. Two of the most self-centered human beings on the planet. One out of self being of service to another. The presence of God How I feel in my heart for my wife, the presence of God. The friendship I feel for Steve, presence of God. Mort walking up to me in the middle of this and going, I know you're a busy guy. Will you sponsor me? Yes. Okay, I'll check in later. Goodbye. Presence of God later that day, standing in the chow line. Mort with what clearly was seven to nine pounds of food on his plate turned and said, Earl, checking in. The fact that you know that's funny, presence of God. Right? Me every once in a while getting a remarkably surly thought in my head, leaning over and whispering it to Pat, who just busts up laughing that that rolled out of my mind. One, that I said it out loud. And that was just crazy. Laughing. Presence of God. On and on and on and on and on and on and there it is. It's amazing. So it's anywhere you look. It's available at any given moment in time to experience the presence of God so when I ask me to turn my will and my life over to the presence of the God I've just described okay. Do I have to understand the God? No. Am I doing it? Is there evidence of this around me every day? Yeah. When I say I ask God to remove the defects of character, I got to figure the God that brings us the laughter in the face of such horrific stuff, that God, I will turn my defects of characters over to that God. You bet. Right. And then people say, well, what about the war that's coming and this that's coming? I say for me, I have to differentiate between man's inhumanity, man's will and God's Man's inhumanity towards other men. I personally do not believe this has a thing to do with God. To the contrary, it's a demonstration of the total absence of an allowance for the presence of God to be in the mix. It's just an unfortunate thing. Anyway, so I ask God to remove the defects of character. And what's very interesting is, I don't have to sit there and wait for, okay, am I lustful? Yep, yep, there it is still. Okay, so that didn't work. An angry man. God, remove this useless, troubling, harmful anger that exists within me. Okay, well, that guy's pissing me off, so clearly that's not gone. I mean, it hasn't been an event for me. It's been a process of these things being removed. Of staying sober, taking care of my business, doing my part. Donald Madden used to tell me, God comes in shoe leather. I had no idea what he meant and then I got it I turned my wool of my life over to the care of God I asked God to remove the defects of character and now I go about the business of doing the things I've been taught to do in Alcoholics Anonymous I shake people's hands I sweep floors I pick up cigarette butts I make coffee somebody said I heard a person with two and a half years blew my head apart one day said you want to find a guy in your life get a job a job because then you've got this opportunity you to go be a service 40 hours a week. Get out of yourself and be there doing somebody else's agenda. Be out of self, out of stuff, out of something. Learning how to do this stuff. So I go about the business of doing that. My next sponsor told me if you turn your will in your life over to the care of God and go sit in the closet what you get is coat hangers. God comes and so now suddenly the shoe leather thing is making sense. I got to go out and I gotto do the work. I gotta chop the wood and carry the water. I gott be in the world to experience His presence. And that's exactly how it happened for me. It made no sense But here I am doing it. And one day a guy walks up and says something to me in a meeting. And I know that every single time an event like that has occurred in my life, I have hit that person. Because that's what I do when you walk up and say something like that to me. I hit you first and hard. And this guy walks off and says that to you. He says that for me. And I said, as I went through the anger, I wasn't there. I wasn'T there. And I looked at him and said, I don't like you. And walked away, baffled by what just happened. The process, the opportunity to engage in the actions that bring these things about in my life, being an active member of Alcoholics Anonymous, participating, had picked my pocket like a thief in the night. I went for the rage, wasn't there anymore, was gone. My defects of character were being addressed. not by my sitting in a dark room focusing on the presence and the power of God and being open and waiting for God to remove these things from me as if it were I would exhale them to God, but more the process of recovery that I found in Alcoholics Anonymous. There's a second appendices in the big book, Spiritual Experience, talks about that for most of us this spiritual experience is of the educational variety. And there's a lot of different words in their transformation, right? Of these words. And they all mean change. They all mean changed. And how the change has happened for me is by getting my feet moving in AA, right, head out to kill me, head full of alcoholism, rampant alcoholism in the meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous as a newcomer and them saying, make the coffee. and thinking, you miserable people do not understand how damaged and broken and homicidal I am. If you did, you wouldn't say to me, make the coffee. You know, you'd be calling in for backup. But you tell me to make the copy. And with my head saying all of that and thinking how stupid you were and unobservant you were because it was so easy to see how angry and frightened and damaged I was that I went on about and did what you said. I made your damn coffee to prove you're wrong, and I proved you're right. And I shook people's hands to prove your wrong, and I approved you're Right. And I worked the steps to prove You're Wrong, and I Proved You're Right, and I stopped trying to prove Your Wrong and just started to try to be one of you to the best of my ability. The thing that I could not dare to do. The thing that I could never dare to do which was to say to you I'm desperate for what you have please help me have this thing. I couldn't say anything like that. I had said to one man help and that was as far as I was going and that was to my sponsor help and he did and he just kept throwing little pebbles of AA into the pond of my life right and while I'm screaming and shaking my fist at him. He's throwing the loop, right? It doesn't matter. He's thrown AA into my pond and the ripple effect of each of those things is affecting every area of my life. I'm making coffee so he won't tell me to go get drunk because I need him because he's my only connection to the human race. So I'm Making the Coffee so he Won't Leave. So he'll stay there and will still talk to me and give me things to do. What's happening as the result of my doing these things is not that he's so much saying as I'm changing as a result of the action I take. So for all the wrong reasons, I'm getting the result that was promised to me here. For all the right reasons, eight and nine is very, very dangerous territory. Everybody's worried about four and five. Man, I say do six and seven and do not valley at six and seven. If you look in the book, there's all this talk about four and five, right? All this talk about finishing five and sitting for an hour. No music, no TV, nobody else. Just sit quietly and reflect upon the first five proposals. Have I built my house upon sand? Am I on solid ground with the work that I had done? If so, move forward into six and seven. A couple of sentences on six and seven, that's it. And a lot of conversation about eight and nine. Because eight and nine, they're letting me out of the house. I haven't left the house yet. Sit on the couch, step one. Yep, that is a problem. Sit down on the couch, step two. Yep that is the solution. Step three, down off the couch on my knees, turn my will and my life over to the care of a God I don't understand, get back up on the couch. Right four, invite a guy over for five. Before God I read this to this other individual. He says, good luck. He leaves. He leads. I sit there eight, six and seven. God, a lot of defects of character. Please take them. Right? Seven step prayer. Boom. Eight and nine. Eight. Okay. We're going to let you out of the house soon. And frankly, we're concerned. Here's what we want you to do. We want you to be very, very, very, very clear on what it is we're going to do when we leave the house. We're not sending out announcements. We're not making phone calls, emails across the nation alerting the media. Earl will be coming out soon and making an announcement to his community. Having become the spiritual giant that we all love and frankly revere. You know? Nuts! Right? I'm very sorry. Here's your money. Back in the house. This is about my side of the street. This is a story about me continuing to clear away the crap I have put between me and my fellows and me and God. And that's why I do 4 and 5 as me, 6 and 7 as God, and 8 and 9 as you. And they're done in that order. I put a lot of stuff between me and you and me and God and in 4 and five I swallow large chunks of truth about myself to get this stuff out of the way. To clear away, to start to tear down the walls. Tear down the wall so I can't walk out into the world and immediately start pointing at you. Look at what you have done. Look at why you have caused. Look at the way you... Also, it's all about you and never about me. I tear down their walls. And eight and nine, I got to go make direct amends. I got make direct demands wherever possible. Except when to do so would injure them or others. And you work with your sponsor on specifically what that means. I don't want to get in conflict with a bunch of sponsors, right? Go home and I've got 600 emails. If I've harmed you, I'm very, very sorry. To make amends means to change. It means to chance. So it's not that I can call you terrible names and apologize. No, I'M COOL. Five minutes later, you say something that bothers me, so I call you terrible names. And apologize. Uh-uh. Right? I'm very, very sorry I stole your car. I estimate the value of the car at $10,000 at the time of the theft. If that's acceptable to you, here's a check and I will give you a check monthly until that $10K is paid back. And I will not go steal your car and sell it to pay you for the car I stole from you. I'm going to change. I'm gonna stop stealing cars. That's what I'm gunna do. Right. So I'm sorry. Anything I can do to make this right, please let me know and I will make my best effort to correct the wrongs that I've caused. It's just very, very simple stuff. Sorry, here's your money back. And it's like little, there's just like little catchphrases I've heard along the way in AA that have made that so good for me. Like I remember when somebody said, Earl, they don't want your money. They want their money. Oh. Because that's long ago. And this feels like my money here. Yes, until you repay the money that you did take from them, and it's their money. Got it. When I looked at my amends initially, I firmly believed I was living in a one-bedroom apartment in the Pacific Palisades, and I was paying $325 a month rent, and I Was having trouble making the rent. And I started making amends. I mean, literally, $5 check there, $4 check there. You know, a lot of $5 checks. When one of those got paid off, somebody started getting a $10 check. And that one, another guy. And I just started paying them. Six and a half years later, I had made my amends. And I lived way below my means for a long time. Because every time I started thinking about, I could get a better car, I got a better job now, I can get a bigger apartment that I can actually invite people over to. I can improve the outside appearance of my life, thinking to myself, well, this would be a demonstration of the power of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, wouldn't it? For me to show up in a nicer car, nicer clothes. Wouldn't that be to the newer people? They would think, you see, it works. It's a load of crap, right? I thought I was going to have to pay until I died and that my children, if I were to have any, would assume the remainder of my debt. I paid it off. And I didn't really get it, I was just doing it because I didn' t want to piss off my sponsor. You know? And then I got and he goes, you know, you can get a nicer place now. I said, okay. He said some interesting words, he said, you've earned it. Wow, thanks. Kind of shook me up, you know? Because I'm not used to people saying things like that to me. And then I remember the day I got this new place and in my early sobriety I worked as a house painter, right? It was perfect job for a guy like me. Just a blank wall, Navajo white on Navajo White, apartment building painting, right, and I would paint and you just get the paint and you'd just paint and when you hit a corner, you turn. And you'd be like, and you would just haul ass all day and to just take the madness right off me. I could just splash my madness up on this blank canvas and just be completely insane. And every once in a while, Cecil, the big old painting contractor, would come by and go, damn good job, boy. How's it going? Nice! Paint! And I got... So I'm going to paint my new apartment. And I go to the paint store and I've used my money to paint off my amends. I've got enough money to get the down payment and the this and the that and all the stuff and I got the place, I didn't have enough money left to buy the stuff to paint. So I go back to my old paint store that I had owed when my painting business had crashed and burned. I had owe them like $2,500 and it started with $5 checks on $2.500. It turned into $10 checks. It turned into $20 checks. You know what I mean? And I paid them all off and I went in the paint store still being the old guy, still thinking like I'm that old guy not knowing how things have changed in the world for me as a result to the actions I've taken. I'm completely unaware of it. And I walk in the paint store with my hands in my pockets and my head down. I said, hi, you know, I don't know if you remember me, but I've done a lot of painting through here a few years back and I'd really like it if you would see your way to front me some supplies so I could paint this new apartment I got. You know, I want you to know I'm good for it and I'll make a right because you could run an account with these guys if you were a known painter, right? But they'd closed my account, you know, three, four years earlier. And so the guy says, what's your name? And I said, well, my name's Earl Hightower. And he went in the back. I went, well... You know, get your keys out, Earl. Here we go. And the guy came back out and he stuck his hand across the counter. He said, you're the guy that pays your bills. What do you need? And he shook my hand. And I was like, yeah. And I went outside and got very emotional. Cried a little bit. It just reduced me to tears. He said, we trust you. We trust you How the hell did that happen? I'm a liar I'm not a thief I'm violent Crazy person Nobody trusts me And I've given them very good reason Not to every time I can And this man is saying to me Take whatever you need I couldn't believe it I got all my stuff and I painted my place up just the way I wanted it. And I paid that man off because I had a job. I had income, little job. It got to be a better job and a better Job. And that's the way those things work. See, if you do the steps and your goal is to finish the steps, get another goal. Because my experience is you don't. Nobody graduates from AA. There's no, well, some do. Frankly, with disastrous results. But there's no diploma. I actually did give a guy I sponsor a diploma. Nino Finale says to me, I believe we're done here, Earl. I've worked the steps. I'm married. I got a job. I believe our work here is through. And I said, you know, I think you're right. Come on over. I got something for you. And he came over, and I had made up a diploma. We hereby certify the poor God and our fellows, blah, blah. Nina Finale successfully completed the course of Alcoholics Anonymous on this day of our Lord, blah-blah-bluh-blub-blab-blum-blup. Signed, Earl Hightower, sponsor. Rolled it up with a little ribbon around it. He came over and I went, you know, no, no, here you go. He goes, what's this? I go, that's your diploma. For what? It's your AA diploma. We're going to graduate you and allow you to move on now. And he opens it up and he reads it and he goes, okay, so maybe that wasn't a good idea. May 26th of this year, Menino will have 20 years. Two beautiful children, job, wife that he loves. An amazing guy. He's a saxophone-playing heroin addict from New York. Didn't have a chance in hell of making it to 20 years old, let alone 20 years sober. Grown man. Amazing guy. Working the steps. Eight and nine, make your amends. Ten, eleven, and twelve, me, God, and you. Same stuff. Because I roll through that pass and it tells me, you know, amazing things are going to happen. These promises are popping. Now there's a lot of promises. There was one promise that said, You will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door upon it. I read every other promise in the book. I thought, I could wrap my head around it. I didn't have a feeling about it necessarily. I couldn't experience it. I had no experience to draw upon to think that any of these things had ever happened in my life but there was a possibility of it. And when I read that one, I went, okay, now you went too far because I know my life. I will always regret my life and a great deal, the last six years of my drinking was my attempt to shut the door upon it. If you live through what I've lived through, if you've done the things I've done, that promise can't come true. I mean, it's a great program. I'm in. I'm with you guys. I'm will you. But please, that's not going to happen. I'm going to stay. I'm gonna do this stuff. I believe you when you say I already feel like it's working. My life's changing. I believe it. But that's an unreasonable expectation and I believe you've told me an expectation is a resentment waiting to happen so I don't want to set myself up to come to believe that something like that could happen for me and when it doesn't happen and it's not gonna, that I should come to resent you as a result of that. So really, so that I can stay, I'm not buying that one. We're taking that off the table. You don't have to promise me that for me to stay. Okay? I'm still going to stay That has come true for me. That step. That promise. That promise has come through. I don't... I mean... And it came true for my in an AA meeting on a Monday night in Los Angeles in the church that my father helped build where my family's funeral took place. It was a Monday-night meeting at the Bel Air Presbyterian Church up on Mulholland, and I went up there as a whim because I couldn't go back into that building after my family. My family's funerals. And I finally got up enough guts to go up there alone one day and I'm in the meeting and the leader of the meeting recognized me and said, Hey, how you doing? How you doing?" And I just said, I'm going to sit quietly in this meeting. There's about 50 people sitting in there talking about stuff. And this guy says, Earl, would you like to share? And before I could say no, this woman across the room said, are you Earl H.? And I said, yeah. And she screams and she gets up, bursts into tears, runs across the meeting and throws herself in my arms and is crying uncontrollably in my arms. Apparently there's an amends to make here. I don't know what I did here. He does not look familiar. And she sits up and she says, before I came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I was in a plane crash and people died and I didn't and I've been ashamed to be alive ever since and I was drinking myself to death and somehow couldn't pull it off when I came down to Alcoholic Anonymous and I told them, you know, You can't help me. And she said, they said, you know, there's this guy, Earl H., who's had a similar experience. Maybe you should talk to him. And suddenly, this event in my life that I knew could never ever be of any value to anyone ever. It was just going to be this wound in my wife that would never completely heal and it would be my cross to bear and I would just carry it with me the best of my ability to my grave and the end of it. And this woman gets hope because I'm here with you. That this must be the place she should be, because if I'm not going mad and I'm not drinking because I'M with you, then she wants to be with you too, because that's her fear. And suddenly this thing was of tremendous value, and that promise came true for me. And from that day forward, I have not regretted anything in my life, nor do I wish to shut the door on any of it. It's amazing what happened I mean, this goes so far past not drinking and using It's unbelievable if you just work it 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 10, I continue to take personal inventory And when I'm wrong, promptly admit it That means The word promptly was put in there Because they saw us coming Better get rid of that right now Because I can borrow $1,500 from Mort today promising him that I will repay him on Tuesday in Los Angeles. Now, Mort's smart enough to say, hell no. But Mort says, cool, I'll lend Earl. He's a stand-up guy. We'll give Earl $1,500. So he gives me $1.500 and Tuesday comes and goes. Mort figures, well, you know, he'll get to me tomorrow. Tomorrow comes and go. And then Thursday comes and Mort gives me a call and says, Earl, you're the one that said, you've got to get me my money back on Tuesday. You know, it's coming up on Friday and I actually need that money for Friday. Pay some bills I have. And I'm just wondering. Now, I can immediately develop a very strong resentment towards Mort for throwing this in my face like this. That he would shame me like this is just unconscionable. You see how I can just... He loans me money and now I'm resenting him. I can do that like that, right? So I continue to take personal inventory, and when I'm wrong, promptly admit it. I've got to get it out right now because I'll fester and die with that stuff. Now, now, now. I've actually witnessed members of Alcoholics Anonymous in a conversation talking away all of a sudden just stop and go, you know what, everything I said up to now has been absolute horseshit. I'm going to start over now. All right. And people look at him like, what? What is he talking about? Just some guy just realized, you know what? I'm lying here. And stop. Now, I don't know about... How many people in this room no longer lie? Please raise your hand. Eli's the only one. Right. You work in these programs, life's changing, you lie. I lie. I would lie for no reason. It's a baffling thing to lie for No Reason. Have you ever seen yourself do it? Where somebody walks up and says, Hey, Earl, what did you do this afternoon? and say, well, I went to the movies. Yeah, guilty right there. I didn't go to the movie. And the weird part is telling this guy I went through the movies in no way, shape or form improved my standing with this individual. They had no value of any kind. The movies was not a smokescreen for someplace else I shouldn't be. I just threw it out there. And I'm standing there, and the guy's going, yeah, well, what did you see? And I'll be like, well you're talking to a lie again now. Right? And it just snowballs. I mean, I'm sitting there thinking, why did I say that? I don't know, I don' understand why I just, without any conscious thought, just lied. And all I can come up with is, is that somewhere in my mind I'm thinking, you know you haven't lied in a while. And at any moment, you may need a whopper. So you've got to keep your lion machine well-oiled. You know what I mean? So you're going to occasionally just toss one out there so that you're good at it, so when you need it, you got it. It's there. That's all I can come up with. Lion. I don't know. It's amazing. Eleven. I seek. I seek Does not say, I wait. I seek to improve my conscious contact with God and pray for knowledge of His will for me and the power to carry that out. Conscious contact. Awake. Experiencing the presence and the Power of God. Conscious. The ocean. Roomful of dead people celebrating their lives in the Bahamas. You know? It's just an amazing, amazing thing. And what do I pray for? Well, according to that step, I pray from knowledge of His will from me and the powerful power to carry it out. Thy will not mine. Thy will not mine." That's my mantra before I speak. I just sit, usually read the 12th edition before a speaker gets up and when I'm in that barrel, I just sit there and say, thy will not mine be done. Thy will not mine be done be done thy will not mine be done try to get me out of the way so something reasonably valuable could happen because if I'm in charge we're going to hell quick I can't be in charge that's one of the great things about alcoholism is that it beats an individual into a state of reasonableness. You know, I have 16 years of evidence of what me in charge will get you. And it's a horrifying mess, right? It's a great thing to come here beaten into a State of Reasonableness so that the door, the armor's cracked open just enough that people like Donald Madden and Norm Alpey, you know, and these guys up here, right? Eli sitting up here. Right. And, and my sponsor Luther and Pat and all, you know, Matt sitting over there and all these guys can pour stuff into me that has value that has this, this withstood the test of time that gets a guy like me where I got to get to. Right? And so I pray for knowledge of his will for me and the power to carry that out. And I meditate to quiet the mind so that when the answers come, I can hear them because I'm happy to report to you. God does not talk to me directly anymore. I do not have to decipher God's messages that are coming to me through the radio as I'm driving the freeways at 4 o'clock in the morning. I'm not getting my messages that way anymore. I'm getting them by getting quiet, sitting still, sit still and quiet the mind. And the answers come in the form of a thought, an idea, an intuition, a feeling. You know, just a sense of what I know to be the right and proper thing for me. And oddly enough, it doesn't always seem to be based on my particular moral psychology. It seems to be the sort of stuff that seems to shape and expand that that morality. It seems to change things for me because it offer it comes to me in the form of me having a thought that seems to be contrary to my own mind, to my own way of thinking, my own way of doing things, which is a remarkable thing to have something pass through the brain that seems to be in contrast to it. So it must not be coming into the brain. I mean, I'm not Muktananda. You know what I mean? I'm Not overcoming the mind with the mind that doesn't work here. I get, I'm mixing margaritas. The minute they start trying to do that, you know, it just seems to come. And I think the important thing about meditation for a guy like me has been that it's not about being able to sit still, quiet the mind and be there. And as an example, stare at the flame or just count one, two, three, four, and then back to one. Right. And to be able to do that successfully because I can't do it successfully. I count the one. It's a nice shirt more to ask. Oh, oh, let's start again. One, two, God, how much more time is this going to go on? Oh, screw it up again. It's Valentine's Day. I've got to be really pale. Oh Jesus Christ. All right. And that's how it works. And I've learned it's not about staying on it. It's about having the willingness to recognize and acknowledge without judgment that I have gone away and that these thoughts have presented themselves and that I just come back and then go away. Okay, come back. There I go again. Come back. It is the willingness to just come back and it changes things. I mean, the Buddhists have some very interesting things to say about this, that centeredness that I seek, that centeredness comes and I come back. I come back. The God in me sees the God in you. We come together, balance, peace, peace. What a guy like me looks for? I'm prone to violence, distortion, things like that. And I wish to be, I made a commitment to nonviolence very early in my sobriety. And except for a couple of slips, I have maintained that for almost 22 years. Over 22 years now. Over 22 years, I'm not a violent man. I've actually gotten to the place now where if I see violence brewing, what I see is two people who couldn't get it together. I see two people that could not work it out. I see two People that could Not come to terms with their own feelings. That's what I say up couldn't handle her feelings. I'm out because the vibes negative to me and I got to get away from it. So I'm Out of that stuff now. I know I wish no part of it. Um, so that's where I pray for and that's how I meditate. They receive the answers that I need. Step 12 is the third side of the triangle. Unity is the body I bring it here. Recovery is to the mind. I work the 12 steps to be relieved of the obsession to drink and use so that I can walk the earth a free man so that I can be free. I can be free free of the obsession to drink and use comfortable sober that those could go together for me for the first time having had a spiritual awakening is the result of working the steps That was the whole point I did them, to be relieved of the obsession of the mind, the greater aspect of my disease. I can practice these principles and carry the message. I can be of service. How can I help? Me, God, and you. Me, 10, 11, God. 12, you. Same order as 4, 5, me. 6 and 7, God 8 and 9, you same order. Me, god, you me, god you 10,11 and 12 because I just made a pass that for through those first nine steps. Now I need to keep this ball rolling and kick myself back into step one because step one will be new now, brand new as a result of the change that has occurred, the transformation that has occurred as a results of taking the actions of the 12 steps, I change. I come back to step 1, I view it from a different perspective completely. It's a different step. So step 12 for me is to be of service. How can I help? How can i help? Not because I'm a good guy, because I don't want to die drunk. So I go to meetings and say how can I help? Guy calls me up and says can I talk to you? Sure. How can help? People think oh boy isn't he just all centered up. Well, if I am at that moment, it's because I said what I just said. That centers me up for me to say out loud. How can I help? Reminds me of that's what I'm supposed to be doing, because my natural inclination is when you walk up and say, oh, can you help me? It's the thing. What's in this for me? What can I get out of this? I go right there. But if I say, sure, how can I have? Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, right. This is about you, isn't it? this is not about me, and let it just be about you and be of service. Is it convenient all the time? I guarantee you no. My wife will tell you, I get, it's just my story, it doesn't have to be a big deal, I mean, I give a lot of phone calls to speak because God said, make that one a blabber. And just so you think, you know, speaker boy doesn't get carried away with being speaker boy. I know my place in the scheme of things in AA I've spoken at the world conference the international, the world CA and the right always just a bunch of drunks sitting in a room that's all it ever is I know for a fact if the guy who makes the coffee doesn't show up nobody gives a shit what I've got to say where's the coffee there have been potential revolts at the bar up there over the pace of the cappuccino machine it's the guy who unlocks the room so we have a room to come to it's he's the treasurer who pays the bill so that they'll let us back in again next week It's the guys who clean up so that they'll let us back in next week. It's The Guys Who Pick Up the Cigarette Bus in the parking lot that don't even smoke because their sponsor said, you want to catch a good buzz? Go pick up the cigarette bus. And their sponsor is directing them to a source of energy that you'd never believe until you go pick up The Cighouette Bus. You got the meanest, nastiest newcomer you've ever seen? Make him the greeter. it's just it works my sponsor I went up to him and I said I'll do everything you ask me to do around here Donald I will clean up after these people I will mop the floors in Ohio Street I will clear I will remove the coffee mugs at the Five and Dime I will do anything that you tell me to but I will never ever speak at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous because I have stood in the back of these rooms and I've seen how judgmental these sons of bitches are and I'm not getting up there And he said, that's a lovely sentiment, Earl, and you're the first speaker here next Saturday night. Because he knew. I'd draw a line in the sand, and he would say, step over that line, son. Step over that lines. We must be willing to go to any lengths to get this. And you, Earl are a hopeless, low-bottomed, suffering alcoholic. And you're suffering sober as a newcomer because as Clancy so marvelously puts it, my problem was not alcohol. My problem was alcoholism. And I had a head full of it when I got here. The obsession of the mind was in full effect, and I needed these steps desperately to relieve me of the obsession of mine because I could not get comfortable sober. I would have moments of relief always followed by an even deeper, darker state of mind that what that therapist told me when I was out there drinking and using was true, that I had been damaged beyond repair. And these steps, if taken, change all of that. That's just my experience, that an individual who is completely broken and of absolute value to anybody like me could come in here and find a life of purpose and value. And I assure you, if I've said anything that you find in the slightest bit valuable, I can assure you with 100% certainty that it was something I learned here. i did not come here with it it's not original thinking on my part i did not come up with this is the only difference between me and the other guys this is how i explain it as my experience but the things that are of value that i may have said all come from those who've gone before me members of alcoholics anonymous men and women who got up here and told the truth about their lives the miserable wretches that they were and what has happened to them because i mean, the thing is this about these steps. If you look around and you find the guys with the great career, you're broke. So the guy who's got the great job, you covet that in some way. And you think if you stay here and do what he did, you'll get that car. It's a mistake or that job or that money or that woman or that man or whatever it is that you feel will be the thing that will make you happy. Because let's face it, we're Americans, man. We live in a world that says, that tells us 6,000 times a day, you get a clean clothes shave, you can have that woman buy this shaving cream or buy this razor, right? You want to look good? You want an old freedom in America? Drive that car. You know what I mean? We get cold all day long. It's out here. The thing that's going to make you happy, the thing that will make you complete will be enough success to have these things. And it's a complete crock of shit. what this is about is the real deal the real world reality that it's an inside job the steps of the inside job the peace I look for the ease and contentment that I found with those first couple of drinks that sense of self of security of purpose of value of being able to be in the moment that all comes as a result of doing the inner work I think of myself today is an extremely successful man. Now, I make a very good living. I live in a beautiful home. I have a beautiful wife. A good deal younger than I am. It's just what guys like me figure, you know, I got the pretty wife, right? I can go out and get the Ferragamo's for my feet. I got some nice ties and suits. I got a nice car, right, we could go out there. I mean, I can look good. But none of that brings me peace. None of it. Because it all goes away quickly. It's an illusion. What brings me piece is the purpose and value I've found here as a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm a drunk. I'm hopeless, horrible, hideous drunk. I'm heroin addict. I will steal from you. I will hurt you if you get in my way. If you stand between me and the bar, I will hit you. There was a bar mentioned here, the Ore House. I was blacklisted for life from the Ore House, which is virtually impossible to do. But if you start a riot on tequila night and the ER at Daniel Freeman Marina Hospital is filled with people that were in that bar and you started it, you get told the next day never ever to show your face there again. And I haven't because I'm convinced to this day I go over there and I go, Oh! You! that's the kind of guy I am left to my own devices and my own thinking I don't live like that anymore I have a wonderful life I'm comfortable being Earl I have glimpses of being in between those being right here, right now right here right now with you and that's a result of working the steps I'm not worrying about the flight home I'm no worrying about did we ride the scooters far enough did we get enough of that did I do the right thing Was I proper in my scooter etiquette? I'm not sure. You know, I mean, please, man, it's now. This is my life now. This is our life now." It's not, geez, will we be done in four minutes? Probably. Don't worry about it. It's going to be all right. As a matter of fact, I can't say that. I can tell you it's going be all in four minute. But I am not one of those guys who'll tell you it's gonna be allright. How the hell would I know? But I can tell you this. It's all right right now. It's alright right now The state of grace is available Right now To everybody I don't care how disgruntled Upset Legitimate resentment You have Self-righteous Anger you've got going on Problems that you're facing at home And the stress is starting to build Now Now Now Contrary action available Now Freedom as a result of it Now Walking the earth, free men and women. That's a huge deal. That's our way past not drinking and using. What are you doing? I'm not drinking! Are you using? No! How are you feeling? Great! Not interested, man. Don't want to be a mean old-timer. Don't wanna be. I wanna be a nice guy. That's why I have the sponsor I have. I aspire to be an nice man. A kind man. That's what he is. A kind male. He's kind whether you are or not. Love the power. That's ninja-like, man. To be kind whether you're being kind to me or not, that's samurai. That's the power I want in here. I want that. I want to be the guy that walks in the room and everybody just gets calm. I want it. I want you to be that guy. Not that guy yet. But I've heard of a book study. There's a book studying you've got to be 25 years sober to go. Can you imagine? The new guys, 25 years sober. And they talk about the book. I've got to know what they're talking about. What are they talking about in there? I'm convinced they all come with dark glasses on. You know, and they get in the room and they close the windows and the doors and they all take their glasses off like light beams coming out of their head. It just evolves into something else entirely, you know. I've Got Two and a Half Years to Go and I'm in that sucker, man. Got my glasses and everything. I'm ready. So there's a bigger buzz ahead. You know, that's the good news for us, man. Work the steps. Be of service, right? Trust God. Clean house. Help others. Meet God in you. Trust God, clean house, help others. Do that and the buzz just gets bigger and bigger and bigger. You got resentments? Great. Thanks for sharing. Drop that shit at the door and come on, man, we're walking the earth free men and women. Got to express that freedom. Got to be in the world. Got to have a good time. Got to show the new guy coming in. Yeah, I drink and use like you, bro. And I'm good. You want it? Come on. We got it. We trust God, we clean house, we help others. Don't believe in God? Don't worry about it. Don't trust anybody? Don'T worry about it. DON'T have a house? DON'T worry ABOUT IT. We'll fix you up. We will fix you up! Because we know, WE KNOW that we've been there and we're back. And we're happy about it! I love you. Thanks. Thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed the podcast. Sobercast is ad-free, and we'd like your help in order to keep it that way. So if you'd like to help us be self-supporting by pledging a dollar to a month, visit SoberCast.com and look for the donate links. Thank you very much.