Step 12 and the Grace Period Before the Ego Grows Back – Tim M.

That was good. To set the tone for the meeting, I will read an extract from the chapter to wives, page 111. The first principle of success is that you should never be angry even though your husband becomes unbearable and you have to leave him temporarily. You should if you can go without rancour. Patience and good temper are most necessary. Our next thought is that you should never tell him what he must do about his drinking. If he gets the idea that you are a nag or a killjoy, your chance of accomplishing anything useful may be zero. He will use that as an excuse to drink more. He wil tell you he is misunderstood. This may lead to lonely evenings for you. He may seek someone else to console him, not always another man. The topic of tonight's meeting is relapse and Tim will share anything between 30 and 45 minutes on the topic after which the floor will be open for questions rather than typical sharing. I will now hand over to Tim. you're muted there we go i'm unmuted now so uh i'm tim i'm an alcoholic um just because i know not everyone in the room knows who i am well i'm not really anyone i'm just i've just been sober for 28 years and i've been sponsoring people for 27 uh that's my only qualification just because you've done something for a long time doesn't mean you're good at it just you need to know that uh just means you've done a lot of it um so you maybe have more stories to tell but i don't know if you're more effective what to do with sponsee relapses um i'm going to tell a lot of little sort of stories and anecdotes and ideas which i before we even get on to what you even do once they've relapsed and come back if they come back is to understand the nature of the relapse if you understand that it just makes things so much easier the first point may be a very obvious one but by the time they've relapsED it's too late I remember I was coming back from town on a Friday evening many years ago and i was standing at the bus stop and a little call came through on my mobile phone from my sponsee and she said it's me and i said yes she said i've had a hot toddy and i thought well that's very nice for you but i i don't know what to do i can't i can'T drag it out of you if you've had one you've HAD one they'll have to call me when it's worn off um and that started a very long relapse actually then she called me a few years later and said she'd finally got a year sober and i hope she's still sober now uh but once they've had the once once they're drunk it's too late um now when they've drunk again it's very sort of tempting it depends what sort you have sometimes you have a sponsor that drinks again and they go and live in Mozambique and then you never hear of them again others others call you and want to talk about the fact they've relapsed as they're having say the hot toddy or whatever and this is in very very inviting so you think well that I might be able to get through to them or something uh so I'm going to tell someone else's story I'm gonna tell a clan one of the famous clancy stories about this and I know I've said this before even maybe a couple of weeks ago But it's such a good story. Who cares? So newcomer relapses and calls up Clancy and says, I've let you down. I've left the group down. I've led a day down. And most of all, I have let myself down. Clancy, will you will you come over and help me? So it's 11 o'clock at night and Clancy says, well, whenever anyone anywhere reaches out the hand for help, I want the hand of AA always to be there. For that, I'm responsible for it. So he goes over and he talks to him. This this drunk with tears of sincerity rolling down his cheeks until four in the morning and they finally get it all sorted out. and he drives home he has one hour's sleep he gets up he has a shower he's got to go to work in a few minutes and there's a call and it's this newcomer again and the newcomer says Clancy I thought you said you were going to come over um I've had conversations with people when they're relapsed and then later that day they literally don't know they've had the conversation with me but they were speaking perfectly clearly at the time there was I'm such a I used to be a lot more of a mug with with this sort of stuff than I am now I'm wiser to it now but uh I wish people well if they've drunk I wish people well but there's no point in in trying to carry a message um there's a some various workbooks by Jim W from San Antonio and there's a passage which he puts in all of them which is chilling I'm going to read it out this workbook cannot help those who are active in their addictions and this is the key line we don't know of any program that can help these people. Perhaps it is as simple as this, when the time comes to face the healing process these people avoid the process via their addiction. Common sense tells us we need to totally abstain while working on this healing process. The mind that made us sick cannot make us well in its present state nor under the influence of the addiction. We need something higher than us different than us other than us which can and will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves this is a mind training and spiritual awakening program so it is important to be consciously present and i think that applies not just with alcohol but with other addictions too um so when i've tried to sponsor people in a in aa and their anorexia is out of control nothing goes in, nothing. Waste of time. You've whatever the process is, has got to be halted. Tom W tells a story, he says alcoholism is a lot like dancing with a gorilla. You're not done dancing until the gorilla is done dancing. Except in the original story, it wasn't dancing. It was dating. except in the original story it wasn't dating so if they're dancing as it were with the gorilla uh you you got to wait till the dancers stopped there's no point trying to get in there and get between the alcoholic and the gorilla because you'll get your arms and your legs yanked off And not just by the gorilla. I've got to recognize my own powerlessness over that alcoholism. Another of Tom's stories is about this French Canadian doctor in AA called Dr. Gill, who had a thick French accent. I can't do a French Canadian accent, but I can do a French accent because I'm a form of the French passport um and Gil would Gil would say alcoholism she has three phases the first phase is the fun phase that's when you're having fun the second phase is fun plus problems you have your first divorce you lose your third job but you're still having fun the third phase problems and the point of this story is whilst they're still having fun don't interfere with it by the time you get to people who are just in the problems phase some people are willing so in the big book it talks about the well-known stages of a spree. So it's an under-discussed line, the well known stages of espree. Once they've gone out, you've got to wait till it runs its course. That could be a couple of hours. My friend James, who some of you know, had a bottle of wine after eight years and he's been oh i don't know 17 18 years sober since then just a bottle of wine that was all it lasted one night that was it uh sometimes it takes days weeks months or years to run its course and sometimes it doesn't run its cause it's it's got legs again um some other points about relapse there's a story called the strange or not the strange strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde and it's about this doctor in scotland i think who takes potions to become this monstrous character called mr hyade uh in the book it says to indulge unstated vices without detection so he wants to do something and get away with it uh and he takes this potion he becomes this other character so that he himself the doctor is not implicated in what mr hyde get up gets up to say he'll take the potion and become mr hyade he'll indulge whatever vice he wants for indulgent violence mostly um and then he'll take another potion to bring himself back to becoming Dr. Jekyll now a couple of strange things happen during the course of the story if you if you don't want spoilers then you know go go make a cup of tea right now um but during the cause of the history of Dr. Jackal course of this story um he starts turning into the monster without having to take the potion also he needs higher and higher doses of the counter potion to bring himself back and then eventually the counter portion to bring itself back stops working and he can't turn himself back and that's the the difficulty is people think when they go out they they i've work with a lot of relapses over the years they always think they can come back I thought I could uh I first came to AA in I'd been stopping starting drinking for two and a half years uh but I came to AAA in January 1993 and back of every single relapse I had a number of relapses between them then and July 1993 behind every single one was the thought that if things get really bad I'll just come back so I can handle the consequences of a slip what harm could it do I mean something really dangerous might happen but it's really unlikely there was basically the perception that a slip is a calculated risk and it's not I mean it is a calculated risk but there's more I might turn and not be able to get back and my friend I've always to say this he's unfortunately sadly the best example my friend Paul in my first two years of recovery we spoke for about an hour every night uh on the phone uh until around july 1995 for a few weeks he kind of stopped calling and he drank again and and he's he's not i don't think he's properly back he's tried to come back a few times he's got a few months but it's never taken again so we don't bring ourselves back we have to wait till we're brought back by the process um it needs to work itself through um when i start drinking i don't want to stop the person i become when i go back into the drinking world has no interest in sobriety that's why there's no such thing as a safe slip also even if people can bring themselves back physically that won't necessarily do it um there was a when i was in early sobriety in russia in 1993 um i slipped and then tried to go to lots of meetings but it wasn't taking in the same way i found it really easy in the in the january february to just not drink now after a couple of slips it was incredibly difficult i couldn't go a couple of days i had to stay with people to not drink physically um and then as soon as i was back in my flesh i was drinking again uh so you can bring your body back today it doesn't mean your mind will come back your mind will comes back when it wants to come back so relapse is a very very serious thing i think the seriousness of it can be underrated um underestimated especially with the word slip which makes it sound like slicker on a banana skin or something of course the origin of slip is Bill W describing someone as slipping from God's grace um now there are diverging views in AA on what is behind a slip uh Bill as I say Bill W talks about people slipping from God's grace as though it sort of happens involuntarily um in I think it's in Cleveland I may it's either Cleveland or Akron uh they had a pamphlet this was in the 1930s where it stated that if you slip you've done so on purpose and you've resigned from AA there you go you've resigned your membership so there were different perceptions at the time as to what was going on my personal view is that the truth is is somewhere in between and we'll come to that when I look back at my own relapses there were two things going on in every single one by the way some people say you shouldn't really call it relapse unless you've actually fully recovered fast it's basically continuing to drink that's really what's going on I think that may be accurate but every single time I resumed drinking two things were going on first of all the thought of a drink occurred to me secondly I acted on that drink on that thought of because it was my thought I was still in charge I still saw myself as the captain of my own ship now i can't control what thoughts come into my mind so the only solution if you have a mind which wants to drink is to surrender your decision making process literally about what to do with your day to a higher power um i canít retain any agency myself or Iím stuffed as soon as the thought of a drink occurs to me if i'm in charge i'll drink um what's her name grady oh h says that she hears people saying today i have a choice and today i choose not to drink um and she says well thank god i don't have a choic because some days i would choose to drink that's why i don' t need i need not to be in charge That's why I need my higher power to be in charge, because my higher powers and first. Whenever I drank again, I was always still in charge. Which means that I needed surrender. And how now? How do you surrender? It was basically surrendering to the actions of the program today each day so that my day from the moment my weary eyes creaked open in the morning until they snapped shut at night the day was not my own that was how I treated it I I the day was too dangerous to have in my hands because of what I would do with it I was on a very very short leash when I got sober I was a very slippery customer so what it meant was taking the actions of the program regardless of what i thought or felt about the actions um it's impossible you can't hand over to God very easily when you're very new you have I my experience you have to hand over the actions of the program um because that's something concrete that's Something you can you can see people doing you can follow someone else's instructions because you can See them physically in front of you much easier to do that than to follow what you think god is asking you to do uh later on there comes a crunch point where it's between you it's like you're in a boxing ring and there's you in one corner and the desire to drink in the other and you know that you're going to get knocked out by it and the only thing standing between you and the drink is the higher power because other people are just not powerful enough anymore so they cut there came a crunch point for me in 1993 where i had to um say to this higher power i just i cried out to it really um what the words i said didn't matter i at some psychological level i threw myself at the mercy of this higher power recognizing I would drink otherwise and said whatever you need to do do it and I was fine that night I didn't drink and that was from a point that I knew that I would so ultimately it's between although it's all about the program of action behind that there's the safety net is throwing yourself at the mercy of God in the moment and a sponsor of mine who was relapsing once phoned my sponsor, my sponsor and said well when I feel like drinking what do I do? Do I do my step four? Do i pray? Do l meditate? He said it doesn't actually matter what you do as long as you do what you believe to be your higher powers will and if you have to lie screaming on the floor until the pain of not doing what you want to do passes do that kind of doesn't matter the only you have to be able to get through one day not doing the thing that you want to do and this is in the big book itself in in the the alcoholic anonymous number three story where they say to him you can stay sober for 24 hours can't you and he says yeah anyone can stay sober for 24 hours I can as long as I've thrown away the right to choose whether or not I'm going to drink and simply surrender myself to sobriety and commit to sobriete and so I'm well I'm just going to have to put up with being sober whether I like it or not just for today and that that was when the relapsing stopped um the causes of relapse um when a sponsee does come back i pretty much always run through the uh that this is a pretty standard list of possible causes we run through the possible causes uh to try to identify what's going wrong and here they are the first one is step zero which is the as it were the step before the steps um and this was my problem for a while i i wanted to stop drinking forever but not just yet um to get sober i've got to want to get sober forever and forever to start now so while i still wanted to drink at some level nothing was going to happen uh there are step one um there are there are step one reservations particularly uh about the physical craving and there are two sides to a reservation about the physical craving um i believed that i could have what i called a controlled outbreak in that i Could go and blow away the cobwebs without too much serious too many serious things happening uh and of course you can't that's the whole point of the physical craving you can t predict at the beginning of the drinking bout whether you're going to be whether nothing is going to happen or whether you'll get run over or arrested or whatever and it was like russian roulette um the other one we've covered already is the belief that i can toy with my alcoholism and come back um there are step two reservations which i suppose will step one step two reservations about um uh believing that i can stay sober without a spiritual awakening that the knowledge of aa and a few of the aa actions will be sufficient to keep me sober um believing that I can just take aa at my own pace you know progress not perfection easy does it's amazing the slogans you can find to support that approach um and sometimes people would say it's not a race and i think it is absolutely a race now it's also a race against janet and susan uh it's a race again one's own alcoholism which as they say is doing press-ups in the car park outside um i think the game is to have a spiritual awakening more quickly than the alcoholic ego grows back and i think that's the deal um and there's now a lot of people i don't the difficulty is that aa meetings and fellowship are very effective at keeping people sober for a while and it gives everyone the impression that they can keep people sober indefinitely but of course that's that's not the case if you hang around aa for a long time you'll discover that's not the case that the grace period uh the the grace period we get obviously we have there is a grace period because if there weren't how would you get to the spiritual awakening in step 12 to keep you sober if you didn't have grace to get there it's like you've got to get a free pass to get to step 12 now how much of a free path you get seems to vary from person to person It's impossible to tell until it's too late. So you have to treat yourself like you're on a short leash because you just don't know. You just don'T know. So there are reservations about how fully do I have to give myself to the AA program to guarantee sobriety? And then there are some step three conditions which I think stop people from giving in to the notion of sobriete fully. And you can help tease these out with people by saying, finish this sentence for me. I believe sobriety is not worth it if X happens. What's X? What are the events that you think, well, if that happens, it's not worth staying sober or conversely, I believe sobriety is not worth it if X doesn't happen. What ambitions or goals or demands do you have where if they're not met, it's not worth staying sober? So the bad events you want to avoid and the good events which you think I have to have that to be happy. Because I had this, I had very specific demands about finance and success in the external world. And as soon as things looked as though they weren't going my way, I thought, what's the point in being sober and I'd be drunk again? I had to get to a position where I was willing to stay sober. Even if lots of terrible things happened and even if none of the good things I wanted happened. So the conditions had to go. So this is what I do. I review with people when they do come back from a slip possible causes. Is it step zero? Is it Step one? Is Step two? Is It Step three? In almost every case, the actual effort with the programme has been half hearted. Often it starts well, but then dwindles in the days or weeks before the slip and then boom, they're drunk. Very, very occasionally you have someone that is working terribly hard at the programme but slips anyway. It's exceptionally rare in my experience and almost always there's a nasty little secret or there's another addiction which people are acting out on. and my sponsor when i was acting out uh said beware of your own orthodoxy the reason you're being such a good little aa boy in all these areas over here is to hide the fact you're doing x y and z over there so sometimes like the super diligent sponsors who are doing absolutely everything you know tickety-boo straight away there's something being hidden somewhere because that's where the energy is coming from to be so perfect on the surface so but but that's rare it's really in almost every case there's half measures going on um the the only answer is to offer someone the full program to set out the facts uh which is very which are very basically that uh uh only full measures in my experience guarantees sobriety and what does full measures mean it means hammering the first nine steps and um hammering the last three steps now sometimes um when there's a lot of relapse history um that there's funny phenomenon i'm this is going to sound like a mad like i'm being completely mad but i think this is a genuine thing doing the steps to avoid doing the step And this is where people will engage in the process of the first nine steps again and again and again, in order to avoid actually changing anything. So there's lots of time spent reading and writing and talking and analysing and sharing all the defects and doing page after page of inventory. But the person won't get up in the morning, they won't make their bed, they won't stop stealing they won't stop lying they won' t show up at work do you know what I mean and I've been guilty of this without drinking of doing lots of formal step work but without any real effort to change the things that need to change so sometimes you have to come at this if that's the history when people know the big book backwards you haveto come at it differently look at the daily program first um and get steps 10 11 and 12 in place uh these are people these are people who've been through the steps before but have relapsed and have got a good understanding of the program in principle the problem is often not that they don't have a handle on the character defects the problem isthat there is ongoing current harm to people in their lives and that's why the focus can sometimes be best on steps 10, 11 and12 but ultimately it kind of my expression it the thing which guarantees sobriety is willingness and sincerity the exact it's not about the exact mechanics of what you give them to do uh something my sponsor said once it doesn't matter what you Give Them To Do as long as you give him something to do and they do it that if you know sometimes people say well if my sponsor had asked me to you know stand on my head on Oxford Street I would have done it of course no sponsors ever asked anyone to do that but I have a feeling if someone thought that that was what would keep them sober it would it's the act of surrender to the action which seems to make the difference my first run through the steps was between you and me embarrassing I wouldn't give you tuppence for how I worked the steps in the first year technically it was a complete disaster but I did it sincerely and I stayed sober and the main boxes were ticked. The secrets were conveyed. I made some some terrible amends, but I made them. They were accepted. And, you know, I started to take action. This is the key thing. I started To take actions to get my life in order under the direction of the sensible people around me um a couple of patterns to watch out for um there's one one pattern which you could call good dog bad dog so when the sponsee comes back lots of remorse from the drinking hugely sincere immediately after the slip initially very high levels of compliance like almost going above and beyond but then it dwindles and then they disappear and then THEY RELAPSE AND THEN THEY RINSE AND REPEAT and this goes round and round and round what's usually going on here um when you talk to when i've talked to people who've got this cycle because this was my cycle actually good dog bad dog um there was one chap i used to talked to a lot I didn't try and help I don't know how much it helped but kept me sober um well I'd say what happened before the slip in a few days so my head told me this my head was telling me that my head my head and it struck me as really interesting this because I thought well this is the root of the problem because when I look back at my own relationship with my head or my you know toxic thoughts um have you heard people in meetings laughing about oh my on the way to the meeting my head was telling me this one said oh I'd never have laughed about you know what their head was saying now that's the right attitude because you're treating your head which is the alcoholism or the disease as some like crazy goblin in the corner some kind of vampire gerbil in its little wheel going round and round and around with its fangs but having no power having no there's no substance so it's just it'sjust rubbish just rubbish whereas this chap who's mesmerized by my head was telling me this my headwas telling me that and i thought i said to him do you think your head is your higher power and he said yes there you go so when his head would tell him to go to a.a he'd go to aa and when his head would tel him to drink he'd drink so the reason this is important is because with this kind of pattern which i've called good dog bad dog it looks like someone is doing what you're asking them but they're not they're doing what they have judged you've suggested something they've judged it to be the right thing so they're doing it because they judge it to Be The Right Thing not because you've suggested it whereas the ideal thing with a sponsor I found is is to do what my sponsor suggests not because I think it's a good idea but because he suggested it and I trust him and Clancy's description of sponsorship is one of his descriptions is to take actions you don't believe in because the person who's suggesting them is doing better than you um the the other uh pattern i'm going to finish fairly shortly i think is is what we might call pseudo surrender and this is where people are very good at some things but not good at not good at others i've talked about this a little bit already overcompensating in some areas uh so my friend sarah who is now a clinical psychologist at um one of the big teaching hospitals in london but she was uh uh she got sober same age as me same year she used to wake covered in cold pasta that was one of her drinking stories naked covered in cold pasta what a sight that must have been um anyway she's a clinical psychologist now um but she was good at talking and analyzing this is her own story she doesn't mind me telling she's good at walking and analyzing but she wasn't very good at leaving the house um and she phoned janet janet was sarah's sponsor and she phone janet one day janet i'm too frightened to leave the house then she reeled off all of the diagnoses for why she was too frightened to leave the house like sort of scouts badges it's not they're not real i mean you know anxiety is anxiety but the question is how how we're going to treat him. And what Janet suggested, now I'm not condoning this, I'm just reporting what happened. Janet said, I'll only talk to you if you call me from the phone box at the end of the road and I'll know because it'll be a different number than the number you're currently calling on and I can see the number you'RE currently calling on. She put the phone down. Sarah called her back from the home number and Janet said that's your home number click so Sarah got up the courage took a while got up the courage and called from the phone box at the end of the road panting panicking but she did it she did the one thing she didn't want to do she trusted Janet and she wanted to talk to Janet and Janet said how was it and Sarah said it wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be and Janet says you've learned a very valuable lesson about fear there haven't you the story in the big book about precisely that about walking around the block um so the point of that story is uh sometimes um the sticking point is the action that the person absolutely doesn't want to take and once that action starts being taken the whole thing starts to roll and progress starts being made so with this sort of pseudo surrender where like people super surrendered in areas a b and c but not in areas d e and f to bear down hard on areas d e and because that's where the problem is the good the like the compliance on the other side is is the distraction uh that was what was done with me um i've got lots of stories myself about the the sponsor zoning on on the last thing i want to do making it my number one priority and that's been incredibly important for my recovery and that a bit the ability the reason this is related to relapse is the ability to do the last thing that you want to do because someone else has asked you to do it someone you trust has said this is going to be in your best interests that's ultimately the thing that muscle is the muscle that you need to exercise to be able to not do what your alcoholic head is telling you to do and that's why it's so important to start learning how to act against one's own impulses um so there we go that's all that's all i've got on that i'm going to hand it back to you down masquerading as alistair this evening to see if we can field some questions okay thanks tim the meeting is now open for questions for tim which can be done by the raise hand function or just give me a wave and come in and ask Tim Sam come in thanks Tim that was really helpful does any of what you said change when you apply it to different addictions like sex and love muted there we go okay so for the backup recording i'm repeating the the question uh for the sake of uh the recording um so uh does everything apply also to the other addictions let me see there's a note i need to read i don't know where he's put it now okay um so my relevant experience is is particularly with the the the sloth topics uh i know a lot less about food but i've uh worked well i've got slight issues myself and i've worked with a lot of people over the years um and and there are different there are differing views on this so um be aware that there are differing there are there are different approaches um i've seen people with the s stuff with the slar stuff um try really really hard and the abstinence is not achieved 100 straight away and lots of my friends i've known a lot of people in the food fellowships uh who say a similar thing that with some people they take they start taking all the action promptly and uh the food stuff clears up straight away other people it's patient progress over weeks or months before abstinence full abstinences fully maintained uh the latter is the case for me with the with the SLA issues that it was it was patient progress even with like full throttle action um uh I found myself slipperier than other people uh but I know I know there are other adults out to people in this room I know There are other people in This Room who've got more extensive experience on the on the s stuff than than me but I think the same general principles are certainly for me the same general principles apply when it comes to the the reasons for relapses it's all the same reservations behind it thank you ingus hi thanks thanks tim um i'm working with someone who is slipping a lot um and i can't i can' t i guess you've kind of talked about it but i guess how would you approach a situation where i say where i say you know at some point you need to be willing not to slip or willing to stay sober i mean i can't and i can't give you that he says but i'm powerless it's i'm powerless you know what can i do i'm a little bit stumped i guess it's kind of understanding what are the kind of the drivers in terms of the step zero one two and three but how would you approach kind of conversation like that okay so it's a that's a very good question so um this question of powerlessness over the relapse the the line uh which i think is very helpful is that we're powerless but not helpless and so there isn't a contradiction there what powerlessness means is that left to my own devices i have no choice but to drink or engage in whatever the behavior is um the whole point of aa is that your powerlessness remains uh as it were sort of permanent state but with the help that's provided it's sort of placed in this structure of assistance um of the program the principles the power behind it i.e the higher power and then the people the four p's um and with the combination of the entire fellowship the program the principles and god anything should be possible so there's a there's a little bit of a danger of hiding behind the powerlessness of step one the examination of powerlessness takes place in a context where there is no help available that's what demonstrates the powerlessness um with my own there are a couple of other points i want to make about slippiness with the slar stuff because it is the one of the reasons it's slightly different in my view this is just a this is very much a personal view i may change my mind even later tonight but um the effect of if the chemical and electrical effect in the brain of uh a fantasy which flits through your mind or uh if you're uh walking along the street and you're as it were triggered by someone looking at you in a particular way the chemical rush is is it it's almost as though you're creating this slip itself inside your with your own brain chemistry now with alcohol and uh and uh cocaine is a good example actually that they um uh nora volkoff you can look her up Later with a V, I think Nora Volkow, Mexican neuroscientist. She talks about experiments where they showed cocaine addicts footage, film footage of people taking cocaine in a kind of cocaine taking environment and they measured the brain waves, what's going on in the brain. and then they did the same with cocaine addicts taking cocaine and they discovered almost no difference in the brain function between the two so that watching the film of people taking cocaine was causing the same changes in brain chemistry that taking cocaine was doing which is a little bit like the dr jekyll and mr hyde being able to turn into mr hyder without taking the potion now with alcohol um i think a lot of the slips that i had started off with the fantasy about it and it's it starts in the brain and you're kind of setting yourself off my experience with the sloth stuff is it was far more instantaneous than it was with alcohol you kind of had to work at it with alcohol but with this last off boy was it quick um but but here's the thing I think I always set myself up by never having fully accepted um the value valuelessness of the acting out there was still part of me which still believed there was some value in acting out that I was missing out on something and that's the thing that I was able to actively work on is to get rid of the notion that I was by abstaining from x y and z everyone's little list is different in in sloth um abstaining from xy and z that getting rid of the idea that I was actually missing out on something and this applies as much to the the intrigue the flirting that the um that the uh sort of toxic romantic relationships as it does to sex it was uh and it was fat the latter which was more more my my uh downfall um but i had to really see that there was nothing that there were there was no good at the bottom of the the genie's flask um there was nothing there whilst I still believed there was some good in there I was opening myself up to those fantasies and then I was reopening myself up to relapse so now the thing is one's got to be sort of gentle with people particularly I think particularly with the the slur stuff I've seen people actually in much more baffled desperation with the slur stuff than I have even with alcohol because people can't work out they can't find the reservation and so I try and be as sort of slow and gentle with people as possible about helping them find what the reservation is with the alcoholics the reservation it's not buried deep it's just really like drinking and that's it um or there's some some event they can't uh some event from the past that they they can'T bear to face so i did uh angus does that answer your question at all yeah thanks a lot um okay come in okay thanks um i i have a question with the good dog bad dog behavior but not in terms of the substance but actually in terms of working like doing the step work and what your experience is like when people sort of have that like they're doing everything you say but then you don't hear from them or they like so it's like this cycle of but not with actually relapsing but just with not being engaged And I'm wondering if the questions that you pose, like it's not worth staying sober if X doesn't happen or it's not worth being sober if x does happen. It's sort of like it is not worth by doing full measures if x doesn't happen or not worth doing full measures if x does happen. Can you use the same criteria? does that is that a question is that i i think so um so i think there's actually a slightly broader question which is how you deal with that how you dealing with that cycle um what one thing that i do with people who have a history of being terribly good for a while and then gradually going off the boil and then disappearing is insisting on daily contact before 9 a.m in the morning that works pretty well and what happens is you'll hear if you you need to listen very very carefully you'll hair stuff in their voice you'll here a change in the voice or change in the tone and you'll say hey what's that about um you seem pretty keen to get off the phone today what are you frightened of today what's bothering you and very often they'll reveal something which they wouldn't otherwise have revealed and then next day they're fine again so i think it's if If you if you stay close to them, you can often spot something before they know it's going on. Now, it's not it's Not foolproof. And ultimately, you have to remember, it is down to the individual. You know, Maureen's great sort of rule of rule-of-thumb that if you if they don't want it, you can't say anything right and if they do want it you can say anything wrong. So but but on the margins, I think obviously how we do sponsor people does matter. Otherwise, we wouldn't be sitting here today. We I think we have a duty to do our absolute best. But it's ultimately down to them. What's often going on? this is an it with the kind of good dog bad dog thing is their higher self um knows that they ought to uh stay sober but their lower self doesn't yet want to and there's a fight between the two and at one point in the cycle it's like you know those weather the weather device where when it's those old barometers where when the weather was fine and the mercury was high that the sunny person would come out and then it would when the pressure dropped the mercury would drop and it would twist around and then the rainy person would comes out and that's what you've got is you've two sides and the two have to be integrated somehow and one way of doing it to integrate those two sides is to say, right. Those those are two voices. There's a voice for your higher self which wants you to get well, which wants me to have a life, which wants you succeed in the world. There is another part which is just just wants to get loaded and just wants do X, Y and Z. Let's not spell it out. Now you aren't either of those things you're the you're the what you're a person that gets to pick between those two things and so your job is to pick which one of those you want to run with whichever one you pick you're giving your full force to have you ever noticed with sponsees sometimes you're talking to a sponsee and it's like they've taken the side of the disease, they've taken the just the side at the alcoholism, they take in the side that the ego and you're now in a boxing match and they're fighting the corner of their ego or their disease or their alcoholism. And do you realize you're not talking to them anymore? You're talking to the ego, the disease or the alcohol ism. And they're throwing the full force of everything I know about the program to fight against the program and there's a the way around that you see the problem is when people flip back and forth thinking that those two voices that either of them are who they are and they're not those two voices are simply ways of looking at the world the right mind and the wrong mind but they're not either and the trick you can say to someone in that moment hey have you noticed that you've just taken the side of your ego now I want to ask you do you really want to do that how about you side with me against your ego and let's see if we can't make do you think it might be more in your interests to side with me against your ego than to side with your ego against the whole of AA. Which do you think would be more in your interests? And it gets people to separate themselves from the voice and work out which voice they really want to listen to. And then I've actually, I've heard my sponsor on the phone to someone I'll finish in a second because it's almost eight. I've had my sponsor on the phone to someone saying um uh this is why i was in the car with him in texas i get sort of get trained on how to sponsor there's all these calls the calls are constantly coming and he lets them know that i'm there and they don't mind and i i've heard him saying to people and now we've heard enough from your ego i'm addressing andrew's ego right now andrews ego i'd like you to step aside and let me speak to andrew for a moment now and drew what do you think about this he literally really separates out the ego within the person, from the person and asks to speak to the person. And it's pure AA this. It's when people say in AA, the disease is telling me to drink, but I know my higher power wants me in here. It'S where you identify something beyond the ego, beyond the disease, beyond the addiction that gets to choose which voice is it in my best interests to listen to and that's how you can get people out of that good dog bad dog thing that's all i've got on that over to you dan i think hi thanks everybody for the questions and thanks for tim uh for the topic tonight can you help me close the meeting using the serenity prayer god god trinity accept the things i cannot change the wisdom to know the difference