Action and Staying Stopped – Workshop – Part 1 of 3 – Earl H.

To welcome our speaker and my dear friend, Earl H. If anyone's wondering where they left their glasses, here they are. I'm going to put them on the piano. Hi, my name's Earl. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, everybody. um thank you very much for inviting me out here to uh to share with you guys it's always an honor and a privilege uh i must confess that i'm relatively brain dead uh this morning it was a really nasty flight from la to new york yesterday um actual pieces of the plane The good news was it was inside the plane. Actual pieces of the plane fell off into the cabin. You know one of those flights where they suspend service and strap everybody in, right? My idea of a good way to spend the day. Horrifying experience. And didn't sleep much. Had a couple hours sleep, but apparently that's all I'm going to need because here we are. Hi. Thank you. I was mildly intimidated by that. All right. So, I'll knock down some Diet Coke and go. So, something about these 12 steps, apparently. We're going to discuss those. My disclaimer, not that I need one, but there's a lot of people who have lots of ways into the book, into the steps, into this experience, the purpose and value of it, their own styles, their own ways. Some people really love to get into the minutiae of the book. You know what I mean? Okay, today we'll be reviewing the ninth word in chapter three. Is it a German root? You know, I mean, it just... I just kind of... When that goes on, it's just... I mean, I'm an alcoholic. I've never really paid much attention to the facts. It's always been about the feelings for me. And I'm the kind of guy that I got to feel it. I got a feeling. I got catch a buzz. I got get that excitement going. I got feel like there's a way in for me There has to be... I don't want to understand my life. I want to experience it. You know, I want be complete as Joseph Campbell said. I mean I want a be present in the moment. I want to feel life. I want a feel love. I want feel friendship. I want field purpose and value. Understanding has never been that big for me. And it seems that that's always come as a result of action that I've taken. So for me, I've always had to in reading the book and being in book studies and in 12 and 12 groups and studying this and breaking it down and going and listening. There's so many great messengers in the program. There's a lot of people and there's so much more. There's just so many people that have different ways. My thing has always been that I've got to keep my eye on the prize, you know what I mean? And the prize for me is that I can become a man who's comfortable sober, right? Because for me, this isn't about stopping drinking and using, it's about staying stopped. How do I stay stopped? How do i have the process of recovery lay that down upon the process of my life. That's what I'm after. I'm After finding a way to make it possible for me to live a life that has a code of love and tolerance, as the book suggests to me, that ours is a code of love intolerance. And I think it's interesting that they suggest that to me... I'll speak for me. I think it's interesting that they suggest to me that I should lead a life based on a code of love and tolerance. Out there, they're talking about love, you know? In here, it's love and tolerance. They throw tolerance right up there because they know me. They saw me coming. You know, I'm notoriously intolerant of myself and of others. I'm a self-centered, frightened human being, alcoholic. I mean, I was talking to somebody and there's a book study in my living room on Thursday nights. Ava came in and spent some time with us a few weeks ago in that very meeting. And I was Talking to someone about, um, and by the way, if occasionally I just stopped talking and there isn't just standing here looking at you, you know, just you know and i'll be right back all right so i uh what the hell was i talking about ah um we're in the book study we were talking about the fourth step i can't even remember why i was bringing that up to hell with it so um i've got to find a way in i gotta find away in the only way i get in is by doing It's not, to me, I don't think it's so much about understanding this. I don'T think it'S about, for me, it'S not about breaking down the minutiae. It'S not abOut, as my sponsor, the late great Donald Madden, my original sponsor, used to say to me. You know, just, it'S NOT about getting into it. It'S about wrestling with it, certainly on a certain level and listening to the dialogue. I go and I listen to the guys that get into the minutial. I listen to the guys who really, really, really want to break it down. And that's great, but at some point I have to live it. At some point, I have feel this thing. I have be able to bring this sense of what I've come to understand into the action of my daily life. I got to get to a place where I'm comfortable, clean and sober. I'm not going to get that way until I'm relieved of the obsession to drink and use. As long as I got the beast whispering in my ear I'm not a comfortable man sober and I can't live like that because I got to live life on life's terms Right, um, whoever's running the show apparently has not read as earl sees it, you know Because what's rolling in my head a lot of the time and what's actually happening are two completely different events I have to get in line with with life on Life's Terms and when It hits the fan as it often does and I recognize that I'm not in charge of the fan right, I've got to have some tools available to me to minimize the wreckage I will create in the frightened state I'm in when that occurs right I've gotta get a hold of some kind of balance the only thing that has ever brought me balance I got here it was very clear that I had lived the life of a maniac there was absolutely no balance in my life whatsoever I was in the extremes all the time. I was either a victim or an assassin I was never in the middle, you know, it was just you know Don't hurt me don't hurt. Me. Don't her me. I'm gonna kill your family You know, I was Appropriate and how I was responding to the world, you now No balance when I got sober. I as a sober man with no balance. I became maniacal in sobriety right i mean i got come in a surprise and they say well you know what we exercise i'm like good we'll exercise then we'll exercize you know and i exercise until it literally you know rip the muscle from the bone you know i mean it's just you know work it out i'm working out i can have you know it's like something's wrong i can't you know i ran until i had stress fractures in my feet and was hallucinating you know sitting in the back of meetings how far did you run today 13 miles you know And I came in with 74 broken bones, you know what I mean? So me running 13 miles is, you Know strange things are happening all the way, you Know snapping and bopping down the track Right Became a workaholic just no balance No balance. No balance What I discovered was is that sober I was running from the beast I was run in from the Beast all The time trying to keep the Beast at bay Just that whispering in my ear You know that that that thing That's that kept reintroducing the insane thought to me was based, I've got 16 years of experience that says for me to drink is insanity. Yet I would be standing in the back of Ohio street on a Saturday night where my site, my sponsor was the secretary. I had the cleanup commitment surrounded by the guys that we were all sponsored by Donald, right? I mean, I'm in close. I'm in. I'm in the action of sweeping up a meeting. And the beast would appear and just, how you doing, Earl? You know, you're sweeping up and it's just, huh? You're having a very, very bad day. I can see that. You're very, very stressed out. It's terrible. You know what? You are a wonderful human being. You are a lovely guy and people treat you like shit all day long. I don't understand what the hell... It's an ugly world. Oh, it's a cruel and ugly world and I can see that you're upset by this and then falling into what I would consider, Earl, a clinical depression. Your sponsor, he's looking at us. He's looking at us, okay. Smile and wave at your sponsor, go ahead. Very good, very good. All right, listen. First of all, we got to keep this just between you and me. And here's what we're going to do. We're going to go out and we're going to just have a couple of drinks. Don't overreact to that, Earl. We're just going to go have a couple drinks. We are going to unwind that spring inside you that's wound so terribly tight. We will work through this because I'm here for you. I've always been here for you, haven't I, Earl? I love you. And we're going to work this out and we're just going keep this between you and me and we are going zip right back into the meeting. No harm, no foul. You'll see, you'll see. It's wonderful. I love ya. I'm in the middle of sweeping up i mean i'm doing it i'm in the meeting sponsors right there two guys i love dearly my two original friends in life are standing over there i'm thinking well yeah that makes sense see i can't have that because that guy is going to jump up the beast is going to jump off and talk to me and deliver to me the option of a drink until the planets line up just right and i'm just beaten down enough by life and i've just depressed enough and I'm just isolated enough. And I've stopped going to meetings just enough and I've stop calling my sponsor just enough to get me to have a couple of drinks and isolate me from the pack, isolate me from my kind. Now, the minute I have that drink, I activate the physical phenomenon of craving and I got a whole new brain I'm having a conversation with. I do that. I relinquish the power of choice. The beast is back in charge and I got a hole different voice in my head now because he's been whispering and being nice because he has to. I give him a drink. It's a whole nother car. Oh, thank you. I feel much better now. And listen, get yourself a piece of paper and a pencil. We got to write a few things. We have a lot to do today. All right. So let's just get the list together and get in the car because we're on our way downtown. OK, now and and I know, Earl, you seem to need to act as if you're involved in this process in some way. You seem to feel like you need to be in the decision making process. It makes you feel better. So, okay. All right. You pretty this up any way you need to. You want to weigh it out. You wanna see, should I drink today? Should I not? Should I drink the day? Should i not? You want do that go ahead, but we will be drinking today. You know, and it was only in sobriety they looked back and realized, you know, whether I was doing this, you know, should I? How come I never picked no? Why is it that I never pick no? You'd think if I was deciding every once in a while, I'd go, well, not today. Never happened. Always chose to drink. Always. So I got to recognize that for me to be comfortable, there's only one, the only way I'm going to stay stopped is if I can get comfortable sober. The only way I can get comfortable sober is if I'm relieved of the obsession of the mind, the greater aspect of the disease. I've got to be relieved of this obsessive thinking. I've gotta get this voice out of my head. When I'm dealing with life on life's terms and I'm looking at the options that are available to me on a daily basis, drinking and using can't be on that table. As I review my options, that's not something that I'm considering. It's done. It's gone. That's the whole point of working the 12 steps as far as I'm concerned See, we got this triangle with a circle right mind body and spirit brought together as a whole human being Therein lies the balance i've sought my whole life and never had drunk or sober But the only way a guy like me can experience any kind of balance in my life Is if i'm freed from my addiction if i'M freed from the beast If i'M free from the physical phenomenon of craving and the obsession of the mind that physical allergy Right. I've got to be rid of all this stuff I've got to get rid of it. The only way to do that is this triangle which AA adopted. Unity is the body, I bring it here. Right? I couldn't get sober, but we seem to be able to. Step one says we admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives had become unmanageable. I need to do this. I need you to do it with you. I've gotta do it for you. I couldn' t do it on my own. I couldn''t get sober but we seemed to be able to stay that way together. That unity is the Body, I'll bring it to you. I've Gotta be with you." The recovery is of the mind, the greater aspect of my disease. How do I get relieved of the obsession of drinking juice? Work the steps. That's what they're for, right? Having had that awakening, the spiritual awakening is the result of working the steps that was the whole point to be restored to sanity, soundness of mind, relieved of the obsessive and the obsession to drink. The third side of the triangle is spiritual. I can practice these principles and carry the message. I can be of service. How can I help you? But like the book tells me, I can't give away something I don't have. Right? I got to do the work. I got get in there and I got wrestle with these concepts and these ideas, and I've got to try this stuff out, right? I got try to activate this stuff in my life so that there's a feeling associated with it for me. It's the Zen way, man. It's like chop wood and carry water. That's the deal what we do around here, man, is we chop wood carry water because I get up and I go to a meeting. Head says don't want to go to meeting. Thanks for sharing. Off to the meeting we go. Right? Don't want work the steps. Why? I'm kind of big on that Herbert Spencer thing. You know, I'm rather proud of my ability to show a great deal of contempt prior to investigation. You know? I don't want to. I don'T want to! Why? Because I don' t know anything about it and I hate being bad at anything. If I can't be good at it immediately, I don''t want to play. It's the way it is, right? I don ''t want To be the newcomer. right? Go to the step study, first step study. Hi, what's your name? Earl, complete idiot. No information about this at all. Oh, good. What I loved was my sponsor. I remember when I first went to him and asked him to sponsor me. I wasn't even human. And I went to them and I said, you know, will you sponsor me? To which he replied, what? He said, will you sponsor me? He said, yes. 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. And I went, OK. And then put my head down and started to cry because I had just asked somebody for help. And you don't realize you haven't asked anybody for help in years until you do it and then you think, my God, I haven't done it. And I just started to cry. And he looked over me to his assistant, Jeff, and he said to Jeff with a big smile on his face, oh, wonderful, he's destroyed. I remember that I looked up like, oh my God. This is the guy I picked? And I now come to understand, well, of course he was thrilled and delighted to see that I was destroyed. I had been beaten into a state of reasonableness by alcoholism. He wasn't going to have to convince me of anything. He was just going to tell me what to do and I was going to go do it because my ass had been kicked. I wasn't gonna debate things with him because he, it was very clear. You know, my best thinking didn't get me to AA. It almost kept me from ever getting here at all. So I became this kind of, there was this willingness on my part that he found delightful that all my ideas, I tried them all and we'd all been beaten into the ground together me and my ideas and I could come and he could just say do this, do this and as a result of the doing of it that I could have an experience so Ava's looking at me like could we get to one here we got an hour for one and I don't blame you it's always funny to watch the people Ava is one of my dearest friends I love her dearly we have a blast every time we get together. She shows me around New York. We have a great time, right? She comes to LA, she meets my wife, you know, and comes to our home. And it's very nice. And, uh, and as she was, and she was being, she's a perfectly reasonable woman. You know, it's remarkable. I mean, it'S a very reasonable person. She says, you know, okay, here's the schedule we're going to do. You Know, you got six hours. So two steps an hour, 50 minutes, 25 minutes, a step, a little break for the smokers. You know what I mean? A little body brain. Well, we'll move through the thing. And I'm listening and I'm thinking, that's a very good plan. That's a very good plan. And I'm just so concerned that I'm the weak link in this plan. Because we never know who knows no one ever knows what I'm going to say. It's such a crapshoot. Who's speaking? Earl. Is he good? We'll see. it's different every time and it has to be different every time for me it has to because gotta get between those man guess it right in there there's nothing but right now for me it's gotta be right now that's the thing that work in these steps the value of this the buzz that's available is that that we can be here together this morning, this place, right here, right now. There's nothing else because this is where our lives are. We're not having lunch now. Odds are we're going to. Odds Are. Can't do anything about the fact that many sirens in New York at night. I got two hours sleep can't do anything about it must let this go and be here now and have fun and look into the eyes of my brothers and sisters and know that I'm safe we're on the ground we're not in a plane we're here now this is good and that the steps give me back right here, right now when I was drinking and using I like to go down I like heroin, alcohol, barbiturates These are a few of my favorite things. These are the things that I like. My idea of a good night sitting around checking my pulse. But if I can't get those, I'll take a big bag of the cocaine. Let's go up. I'm perfectly happy driving the freeways decoding license plates. Psychotic. I'm perfect. I'm really happy doing that. Because it's not ultimately, it isn't about up or down. It's about I got to get out of right here, right now. Because right here, right now, I'm self-centered. I'm afraid right here. Right now, dealing with feelings. Can I can I deal with them? I can't even I can even name them. You know, I just know that this feels terrible. I'm scared. I'm not I'm comparing your insides, your outsides to my insides. And I'm losing every time. I'm a comfortable human on the planet. You medicate me effectively. I can go out into the world. Right. I've got to find, so the thing that I'm trying to get away from with drinking and using is right here, right now. My alcoholism robbed me of now. So how can I live life? How can I be free? How can i know God? How can l be a friend? How can L love you? I can't love you in 20 minutes. Well, there are those that would disagree. I'm sorry, an inappropriate thought floated by. I'll just let that go. You get what I'm saying, don't you? Life is now. I've got to be present in this. I can't be of service. I can have purpose or value later. Now is the only time I can do that. So that for me is like just to kind of frame up, that's why I work the steps. That's why involve myself in the steps, to be relieved of the obsession of the mind, To be able to experience some sort of balance and inner peace, and be present in the moment. To be relieved of the obsession to drink and use. Relieved of it. Which is what I think brings everybody into the semantic debate of recovered recovering recovered recovering. I'm just... I can't even get into that. You know what I mean? It's like, am I recovering? Yes! And I do not suffer from alcoholism in the slightest. I have no obsession to drinking or use. It's not even a thought. doesn't even occur to me, let alone be obsessed by it. Am I recovering? Well, yes. That this is a process and I move towards unobtainable absolutes in my daily life, right? Everything that I do now can be done much better than I'm currently doing it, which is great news for me because if I get the buzz from doing this stuff, what that means is there's a bigger buzz ahead that I'm going to know a greater peace. I'm going to know a greater love. I've got to know what greater honor, I'm gonna know greater discipline and as a result, greater freedom in my life if I continue on this path. This is really good news because out there drinking and using, I mean it just goes bad so quickly. You know? First little buzz, oh secret to life. You know? My reaction to the first getting high was, I need to do this as often as I possibly can. And I did. What I didn't know at that moment was what was going to happen, that slowly over time, the buzz I was getting out there is going to get smaller and smaller and smaller. And the price I was going pay for it was going get greater and greater and greater. So that in the end, I'm paying a horrific price just to get even, just to get to zero. I'm not getting high anymore. I am not having a good time. There's no euphoria being experienced by me. I'm just trying to get out of the pain and the madness, right? It's turned on me and it's chewing me to pieces. In here, it's the opposite. The more I do this, the more I chop the wood and carry the water, the bigger the buzz gets. The more in touch I get with a spiritual life, the more connected I become to you. More and more and more for me, the distance between myself and others is not what separates us. More andmore and more, the distance between us is what joins us. And I feel more and more connected to my God and to my fellows, the inner self and the outer self of who I am become closer and closer and closer together. I mean, it's almost in that Eastern way, you know what I mean? That it's coming together. You know what i mean? It's coming together and that's the peace and the grace and the dignity that a maniac like me can begin to move towards if I'm willing to work the steps. Now, having said all that, step one. All right? I think we've laid a little groundwork here. Let's move into the steps. Step one. Step one, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives had become unmanageable. Step two. Sorry. Sorry. Ava went. Basically, what they're asking me is, what's the problem? What is the problem here? If I don't get real, real clear on what the problem is specifically that I'm addressing, how am I going to come up with a solution to that problem? I got lots of solutions. Screwdriver, excellent tool. Excellent tool. Solve a lot of problems. If I have a flat tire, this is really not of a lot value to me. I got to know what the problem is so I can come up with the proper solution of the problem. The problem for me, lack of power is my dilemma. I may be in the book talks about it a lot. Talks about it in the doctor's opinion. Talks abut it in several chapters. I may like normal man. It lists five different alcoholics. I have a book here. Third edition, I apologize. I don't have the modem to modem book. I'm sorry. I apologize for that immediately. I'll come around to the fourth edition, I will, I'll come around do it, but I like 449 being where it is. It comforts me. It lists classifications of alcoholics, the psychotic, the one who's normal in every respect, except when he drinks, except when the question of drink is involved. Luckily for me, I read them and I go, yeah, well that's me, then I read the next one and I go... My hand just keeps going up as I read through these different... I identify with all these guys, right? I have to. Thank you. Saw that happen, didn't you? Back, girl. Come on, back. Step one, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol. So what's the problem? What's the problema here? Lack of power is my dilemma. I have an obsession of the mind and an allergy to the body. I got a soul sickness that manifests itself in that way and in the mind and in the body. I can kick and be relieved of the physical phenomenon of craving, and the book refers to craving as a physical malady. I can kick, but I haven't dealt with a greater aspect of my disease. I have to be relieved of the accession of the mind or I'm never going to be able to get comfortable sober. Staying stopped is going to be a remarkably difficult experience for me, and I don't want the struggle. I want the freedom. I'm sick of fighting. I've got to stop doing that anyway. So I don't want to live my life battling the beast. One of the most horrifying things I've ever heard of in my life, there was a guy who used to come, I used to do a workshop every Tuesday night. I did it for five years and one sabbatical right now for three months. It just got fried and not unlike today. And this guy kept coming to the workshop and you could tell when you You met him, 30 feet away you thought, oh man, troubled fellow. You could feel the pain on him and it was very hard and one day I walked up and I introduced myself and he said, I've been coming to this and I've got almost five years of sobriety and I'd love it if you'd sponsor me and I said, of course I will. We started doing the work and we were talking and we're outside in the parking lot week after week we're doing this and standing there and I'm talking to him and he kept telling me about this friend of his that really didn't want him to be sober my head I'm thinking well you know get rid of them you know you got somebody stands between your sobriety or is in opposition to that my opinion is immediately that individuals removed from my life I'm not interested in somebody who didn't work in opposition in my own well-being and he would talk to me and he was stopping he would look away for a second and then he'd come back and talked to me, and I suddenly realized what was going on. The person that was in opposition to his sobriety was in him. When he got sober it had been such a horrifying experience for him, he'd had a psychotic break, and there were two people living inside Jeff. And what Jeff did every single day was Jeff would wake up, and sober, physically sober, and this this individual inside him would begin to tell him how today's a good day to drink. And he would battle this other individual, the separate entity in Jeff's mind about whether or not to stay sober. During the course of the day, this other individuals would get drunk, not with Jeff but would get drunk and talk to Jeff as a drunk person. And then so the next morning when they would wake up, right? This other individual who lived inside him didn't remember getting drunk, didn't the difficulty of being drunk, but Jeff did because he was sober and he would begin the process again. So he would do this every day, talk to this individual and then talk to me and I looked at him one day and he was really in crisis and my goal was to try to get him to some outside help. That was my job with him is to try and get him to some out side help and I look at him and I said, he doesn't like you talking to me does he? And he said no, no. And I realized I was in kind of a precarious situation so we got Jeff to the the right people, but I thought that's the most remarkable five years of sobriety I've ever heard of. That this guy managed to stay sober in the face of that kind of psychosis that was occurring in his life. That was his commitment to sobriete. It was absolutely a remarkable thing to me. I can't live like that. I have the option and the opportunity to be relieved of that thinking, to get that, be rid of that, and I've got to do it. Step one clearly is, is this me? Is this me. suffer from an obsession of the mind and allergy to the body. I don't have to get off the couch to do step one. I can read the book, go through this, answer honestly, is this true for me and do I identify with this? The answer is yes, move on. Step one, yeah, I'm powerless over alcohol. I've tried everything. My whole life is unmanageable as a direct result of this one thing in my life. I attribute all the problems of my life to my drinking and using? All of them. They're all either created by or exacerbated by my drinking. So, having established my problem, what's my solution to this problem? What can I do to be relieved of this condition? Step two. Luckily for me, the very, very next step. This is my problem. What's my resolution? Step three. What's My Problem? What's my solution? Step four. Could I come to believe that a power greater than myself, something outside of self could restore me to sanity, soundness of mind relieve me of the obsession to drink. Could I come to believe that? Again sitting on the couch tried everything. Self-knowledge has availed me nothing understanding. A guy called me an alcoholic when I was 16 and a half years old. He says Jesus you're an alcoholic and I looked at him like what's your point Of course I am. Working for me, thank you. You, on the other hand, seem quite irascible. Would you like a drink? You seem upset. Yeah, I knew I was an alcoholic. I did not know what alcoholism was. I didn't know what I was up against. I didn't understand the depths to which I would go. I didn't see the writing on the wall. I knew I was an alcoholic and I was okay with it. So step two, could I come to... The knowledge, the information, my own understanding and awareness never stopped me from drinking. Right? So I came to you basically saying what does someone like me do? What do I do? Right? We're going to talk about it. Am I going to go to AA meetings and listen to you? And as a result of listening to you, I'm going to feel better? Maybe. Temporarily. Or is this ANA thing, me constantly coming to you sitting with you, getting some momentary relief as a results of a meeting? Maybe, maybe not depending on how the meeting goes. Right? And then I leave to do battle once again that My respite is in my infrequent companionship with you. I'm screwed. I'm screwd. I've got to find something else. It's going to have to be a power greater than me. Some people say the group works for them. Cool. Some people say nature. Excellent. Me personally? God. Me personally. Now, I came to AA saying there was no God. No God. I laid on a mountain in Mexico in 1974 and watched my family bleed to death right in front of me. Swore I'd never love another human being again as long as I lived. There's no way I'm ever going to tell you who I am. There's not way you're going to love me. I'm out. And any God that would take a kind, gentle, loving creature like my little sister Kimberly and leave a lying, cheating, thieving, dope-feeding alcoholic like me on the planet? I have no use for a God of this type or an ounce, God. came in a raging against god until my sponsor just got sick of it donald and he loved these moments by the way he would lie in wait for me wait for me to just say one more stupid thing so he could take the two by four and just bash me right between the eyes with it right and i was ranting about god and he just looked over at me and very calmly with a twinkle in his eye because he's loving this and says to me, Earl, you can't be mad at a God you don't believe in. And I just looked at him and went, I have to go now. It just, you know, and there it was. I had a relationship with God. It was just a bad one. I had an argument with God about my relationship with Him. I had had a bad relationship with Gott as a direct result of my point of view. My attitude, my insistence upon things being different than they are. Ridiculous. I didn't see that. I wasn't aware of that. It took someone who'd done the work and gone before me to point this out to me. And however mildly loving a way, he chose to do it. But there I was. There was the truth for me. And that I had to get right with this relationship. What I love about the steps is the steps are about me, God, and you. There's nobody else to play with. But that's it. It addresses me. It addresses God. And it addresses you. And I like the order in which they're placed because it's very clear that I've got to get it together over here. I've Got to get It Together Over Here. It's Me, God and You. I've GOT TO Admit That I'M Powerless. I'VE GOT TO Seek God As A Result Of This In Step 2. I'VE GOT TO Be Willing To Say, Yeah, It'S Going To Take Something Outside Me. Left to my own devices, I'm screwed. I have to surrender this to some force outside of self. The great leap. It's the great leap right before I have to pull the trigger. Because instead of could I come to believe in this? Yes. Where am I going to begin this process? The very next step. I'm going to pull a trigger. I'm gonna get out on my knees and I'm gonna turn my will and my life over to the care of a God I may or may not understand. Huge. Particularly when you think about where a lot of us come from, the pain, the dis-ease, the disconnectedness, the isolation, the loneliness, what do they call it? The morass of self-pity. the incomprehensible demoralization that we experience that drives me off into what appears to be the abyss, to relinquish control, to let go for really the first time. That little slogan, let go and let God, right? It's a tidy little statement. It's acute little quip, right, that used to piss me off. Oh, well, that's lovely. That's lovely. Let go. I'm going to put that right next to turn it over. Thank you. Love those. Love those little AA slogans. And I love what we do to newcomers with them, you know? The newcomer comes in. He's just stepped out of hell into the back of a meeting, all right? Probably a little edgy, you now? A little concerned to have just stepped into a world completely unknown to him. no understanding of what's going on, nothing. Filled with a head full of alcoholism, how can it be any other way? Steps into the back of an AA meeting, looking relatively normal, some of us, some of Us not, and sits down and we walk up and, hey, how you doing, how are you doing? We're all alcoholic, right? And I remember when Vegas ran up to me smiling and said, hey, Vegas alcoholic. I said, so what? Ain't exactly the highlight of my life, Vegas. I don't know what you're so thrilled about. Get away from me. And he looked at me and he said, keep coming back. A couple of AA hot chats over here went, yeah, did you see that? Very good, Vegas, very good. Keep coming back. Deep, man, deep, brother. And I'm sitting there thinking, oh, this is good. loving AA so far. Yeah, thank you, Vegas. I'll keep coming back. I'm sure at 3 a.m. this morning when I'm ready to either kill myself or several other people, as I usually am as I slowly fade into my one hour of sleep a night I'm getting so far, right? I'm certain that keep coming back is going to be very helpful. Thank you. And it's also very clear that there's some deep spiritual significance to keep comingback. I can see that because the friends over here with, oh, yeah, deep thing, right. Y'all know what keepcomingback does. I don't. You win. I're the loser. We've all pointed that out at this particular AA meeting. Love an AA so far. If you're new in here, right? I hope you have more courage than I did. Step up to the plate and ask him, excuse me, do you understand what let go, let God means? You understand the deep spiritual significance of this? Because if you do, I'd love to hear about it. Well, if there are in my neighborhood, if they're honest, about 75% of them would say, you know, I don't know what it means either. They said it to me when I came in. I'm just saying it you I you know oh I love that signs it's good like a prompter huh five minutes till what all right I thought good news something big is gonna happen in five minutes guys oh so this is what I'm saying step one what's the problem lack Lack of power is my dilemma. I'm powerless over alcohol, my whole life's unmanageable as a result of that one thing. If that's my problem, lack of power, what's my solution? A power greater than myself that can restore me to sanity, soundness of mind, relieve me the obsession to drink so that I can walk the earth a free man. That's the buzz I'm looking for. Step two tells me this is possible. This is up ahead. This is what encourages me to continue. And that's all I've ever needed out of this book personally. I've ever needed from any page in this book is not this deep, critical-minded understanding of the nature and the root of the words and how they were connected. I don't think when they reviewed this book or edited it that they thought, said, you know, we better take the word evening off of page 239 because the other words in that sentence are of a Germanic root, and that one is not. I don't think that's what was going on. Were they conveying a sense of what it is I must seek, what it ist I must have? If so, I'm compelled to read the next page. That's what's up for me. There has to be an experience that leads me to the next thing. It's almost like... I mean, have you ever read the Zen Cone? Have you ever heard of the Zen Code? Have you never read the little Zen sayings and you read it and you go, you know, blackbird sits on branch in winter. And you read that and you're like, wow, that was entertaining. and you go to the next one. But if you're willing to take the time and you read that same thing twice a day, just read it twice a Day. I think this applies to the book. It's like it's a masterful Western cone of 164 pages, right? Is if you read it, you know, Blackbird sits on snowbound branch or whatever it is. Blackbird says on snowbrown branch, Blackbird said, yeah, Blackbird. So Blackbird, all of a sudden, the childhood memory comes in my pop as you're reading it. Oh, and there's a sense and a feeling that comes as a result of that particular image, the visualization of that image or the sound that's mentioned, the cracking of the ice or something. And something starts to happen to you and there is an experience, a feeling, that comes at the end of the day and there comes as the result of it that's comforting or peaceful or settling in some way to the self. That's what this does. This book does the same thing. It's a book designed to bring about an experience Self-knowledge availed me nothing I stood at the turning point The book tells me It's not about getting it It's about getting Getting it Can I have an experience that moves me to the next page Am I compelled to read on If so, we're doing great Break Thanks We'll be back Any questions so far? How could there be? Sure. I don't know. Ask it, basket. That's what we need. We have one. No one has any questions so far? Yes, ma'am. Hi, Amanda. The question is, who gives a hoot what kind of alcoholic we are? why should we have to fit into any particular category excellent question seconded by this woman over here yeah and I agree with you you know all that stuff is in the beginning I think as people could say well I identify with that or identify without a little bit or identify with that and it just allows you to move on um you know you'll hear people in meeting say hi my name is you know Bob I'm a real alcoholic or you know I mean I as opposed to the rest of us you know who thought a sounded like fun we just come you know alcoholic you know I agree with you we never will we can't point to anybody else and say you know I'm an alcoholic and well actually in a meeting I did here one time it's one of the greatest things I ever saw in an AA meeting is that my home group on a Monday night and they asked for anybody that's new just stand and give us your name and the nature of disease so we can get to know you better at the break, right? And it might mean we actually do that, right. And this guy gets, anybody new in this camp goes up and this guy stands up. My name is Claude and I'm an alcoholic. And he goes, and so's that guy over there. And sits back down. I thought that was the greatest thing I ever said. You know, he's right. that guy is. I've heard him say it before. I love that stuff, right? Yeah. It's just stuff that you can go, yeah, well, that's me. Carry on. You know, I'm an alcoholic. Who identifies me as an alcoholic is me. Nobody else. You, nobody else. What we identify with, how we come to that is how we came to that. A lot of us knew it before we got here. It is amazing for me because I am a low-bottom damn near dead drunk when I got here I mean there was I got here and went yep that's me yep that me yep you know what I mean there's no question what I it's amazing to me because it's outside my own experience but I see it happen are the ones that come to a that aren't convinced have somehow gotten here not yet convinced that this is where they need to be and it must have something to do with the amount of education that's going on in our communities over the last 25 years that they find their way in here. They got the nudge from the judge, you know what I mean? Or a family member's forced them in or they're here under threat of some terrible event. And they go through this process and discover that they are. It's just amazing to me to watch that happen. I love watching that happen. It happened to a guy I'm sponsoring right now. Let's see, he's got to have about 57 days now. Yeah, 57 days. He's very funny too. We were at a meeting. The last meeting I was at with him he had 51 days and there was a guy who'd shared right before him who had 41 days so he had 10 days more than this guy so the guy's sharing about you know his plight as a recovering alcoholic at 41 days right and the guy is going through a lot and my guy raises his hand you know dave alcoholic and he looks at the other guy and he goes and i got 51 days brother i gotta tell you I've been there yeah last week you were there oh god we're classic aren't we so did I help with the question thank you we are over here all right any more questions? We've covered so much already. All right, step three, made a decision, right, to turn my will and my life over the care of God. I mean, to keep this one simple for me, some people have apparently have no problem with this step. They come in with a significant spiritual life in place. It's odd that the normie thinks, How can you be an alcoholic and have a spiritual life at the same time? Easy. You have a profound faith in God, and you drink uncontrollably. That's how you do that. That's How That Happens. But the third step for me was very scary. This was a very scary step because I knew going into this process that my life was on the line. I knew that I was in the last house on the block. I knew that if this didn't work for me, I was a dead man. I knew there wasn't another game that I was going to get in that was going help me with this. This was going have to work or I was screwed. Because I was so angry at God when I got here, what the third step meant to me was, was I going to become willing to turn my will and my life over the care of a God I was incredibly angry at? Was I willing to turned my will of my life over the carer of a god I saw as an unjust and unforgiving God? Was I willing to turn my will and my life over to the care of a God that I may or may not understand, I may ou may not believe in? That this is all up for grabs. This unseen, unknown, untouchable presence. This experience where I had yet to meet the individual who could tell me about the face of God. This was really an alarming leap into the abyss, if you will, for somebody like me. The beauty of this thing though is is that on the one side I had my experience of 16 years of chronic alcoholism and drug abuse, and on this end I had a bad relationship. I jumped. I pulled the trigger. I got down on my knees and to the best of my ability turned my will and my life over to the care of a God I did not understand. That was the best I could do. The best I can do. I don't understand if this God thing, if this is what I must seek to relieve me of these problems, how can this be the same God that I've had these other... There was so much self. There was such self inflicted upon this relationship. There was much willful behavior inflicted on this relationship there was so dogma in my head that I was inflicting this relationship with that I couldn't see it for what it was. it was so befuddled and enmeshed. I couldn't just let it be what it was. So, I did this. I turned my will and my life over to God by getting on my knees and saying the third step prayer and getting back up. And how that felt was... And I felt it was spooky. Right? I mean, what I basically felt was is that my life is on the line. I just took a pair of dice and I don't even know what the game is we're playing. And I threw them out on the board having no idea what to expect. That was the leap of faith, right? In spite of my own experiences, I must go this way. In spite OF MY OWN CRIPPLED BELIEF SYSTEM, I MUST GO THIS WAY. Those who have what I want are saying, Go this way! See, that's the amazing thing about Alcoholics Anonymous is I'm sitting around in meetings and there's guys like the late Fred Ellis, right, in these meetings. And this man would talk and I believed everything that man said. If I stood next to him, I felt like I'd taken 20 milligrams of Valium. I just, boom! Nice. Fred makes me feel good. Now, I was too afraid to talk to Fred, right? So at the Thursday night beginner's workshop in Brentwood, California, Fred was always there. At the end of the meeting, Fred would stand up, like right over here by the podium, and guys would come up and talk to Fred. Guys he sponsored would check in with him and ask questions and Fred would share his experience, strength, and hope with him and I would stand behind Fred and burglarize their conversation. Right? I did this for many, many weeks and then one day Fred was talking to these guys and all of a sudden Fred turned around and went, Hi Earl, how are you? He stuck out his hand and I went, huh! Paralyzed. My God, He knows my name, you know, which was entirely too close a relationship for me in early surprise Right and there he was hi. Hi. Hi got to go down You know run home pace Jesus Christ, Fred knows my name ah so I did this step it felt like you know when you get on the roller coaster and you're going up the thing and it's going click click click the third step is where you hear the click and stop well buckle your seatbelt, here we go you're on the ride now pal and that's how it felt to me it felt to me because as soon as I did it felt a little spooky it felt like wow man I really did that I did that as well as I could do it at that time and I got back in my seat in the book and basically the book says at that point we were hope you're serious about what you just did like okay now you tell me couldn't you said you better be serious before you do this right that would have I could have hovered right there at the brink of three for several years having heard that but he said we hope you were serious about what you did because see now we have to embark upon a plan of rigorous action right or this is all just a conversation right a lot of guys sitting around in the bars you know going you know that third step's a bitch anybody in here ever heard of a guy named mike ross it's apparent i need to tell you about mike roth now one hand went up mike rost was bigger in life in every respect big man i think when i got sober fred uh mike must have had i don't know you know, like 1,100 years of sobriety. He'd been sober forever. He was this old guy, gruff, grough man. And we used to love the guy. My friend Christopher and I, we would go to this one meeting where Mike always went. And if he didn't have 10 years, he wouldn't even talk to you. You know what I mean? Because he figured you could die at any moment. There's no point in investing any time in you. I mean, just this hard-edged guy, right? But what we loved, we didn't care. You know What I Mean? What we loved about the guy was what he shared in meetings and the way he would say goodnight. Because, I mean, every time you'd see Mike and he'd be walking off towards the door to leave and we'd be behind him and we would go, Good night, Mike! And Mike would think that a friend of his was calling out to him and Mike would turn around to say goodbye to a friend and go, He'd just dismiss us. You're not even worth saying goodnight to. You know, we only had like eight years, you know? guy was hysterical but he saved my life more than one time we would be sitting in a step study i remember going to this one step study brand new and i mean my head's on fire i'm in flames just nobody can see it you know what i mean i'm walking into meeting and i'm gonna get us even yeah you see him i said i'm going to say we're going to talk about the steps okay good good good apparently steps are a big thing we'll talk about stuff forced it ah four step haven't done that yet let's hear all about it great very good i just you know sit in a meeting i'm like out of my mind but but you know people are walking up on how you don't know fine I don't find my newcomer mantra you know how you doing fine fine you know in my head you think I'm thinking things like you're not being attacked you're not being attack he just said hello you're nothing attack mayday mayday person coming at me huh dicey in my and I'm sitting down a guy shares about the four step talks about the four-step great length great detail minutiae just I mean, just, God, could there be any more about this step? It's brilliant. I remember thinking, got to get that guy's number. Fabulous. Fabulous! Broke the step down. What more could I need to know? Next guy raises his hand. Goes on for five minutes about the fourth step. Just fabulous. It's just unbelievable. Couldn't be less like what the last guy talked about, but delightful. Very entertaining. Great stuff. Thinking, okay, all right. We've got two ways to do this now. By the fifth guy, you know, I'm thinking to myself, okay, well, I don't need to buy a new gun because I'm only going to use it once. I'm ready. This is it. I can't do this. And all of a sudden in the back, a big mitt goes up in the air and the guy calls in here, Mike Alcoholic. Here comes Mike Ross, right? And he goes like this. And I go, geez, maybe he knows, an old guy. And I see this go up. It goes like that. I got to ask, has anybody in here read this? And I just went, thank God for this guy. And he just basically says, when you do your fourth step is when you're done with the third. I got that. That sounds good to me. He made it very clear. When should I do my four-step? Did you do the third? Yep. Get on it. Make a list. Make a list." Okay, okay. The guy just had a way of...it's just don't want to go round and round and round. Want to move, want to move. Want to carry through this process because here's the thing about this whole thing. You are not going to get this right, according to Mike, in your first pass. this isn't about getting it right this is about getting it doing it having an experience as a result of the process the cool part about the steps is you know you're not like okay is everyone in here recognize that you're allowed to do the steps once we don't allow you to do it any more than one time so you better get it right the first time if you don't you're screwed you know. You will be relegated to the half measures room and there you must stay until one day, mercifully, you just drink. Now, if I do the steps to the best of my ability, I'm doing something. I'm taking an action. As a result of the action, an experience comes. As a resultado of the experience, I change. So then when I come back to step one, I am looking at it from a different perspective. It's a new step. Right? I remember going into a meeting. I was 11 years sober and there is a guy. I was meeting this woman at this meeting and I go in there. I'm not going to a meeting, I'm going to meet her, right? And I slide in and right before the meeting starts, and there's one seat, she's got a seat for me in the front row. Oh good, all right. Now the front room is six feet from the speaker because it's just a table, you know, a fold-down table, and here's the leader and the speaker sitting there. And this guy, Jack, is going to talk on step one for 20 minutes. Oh, Christ. And I'm in the front row and I can't just go, can't hang with you, Jack, and run out the door. You know what I mean? I'm stuck. I'm going to have to sit and listen. Now I got to live in your sobriety at this time, right? You can't tell me a thing about step one. I have done step one, done, put it to bed, case closed, 100% done, step one you're not gonna i don't want this is hell i'm in hell i gotta listen to this guy go on about step one well it turns out the guy was jack prose who had 43 years of sobriety at the time he talked for 20 minutes on step one and blew the top of my head off he was talking about concepts and ideas and a level of awareness that had never even occurred to me before just talking about the step just kind of tripping on where he was at with it right and when the meeting was over I looked at my friend and said, she said, well what step are you on? I went, well, one. Apparently I'm on step one. And the cool thing about AA is that if you hang around here and actually pay attention, that's going to happen all the time. All the time! I thought I was very cool with God until a woman, I was about 16 years sober, and a woman with two and a half years got up at the podium, started to talk about her relationship with God. Blew my mind. It was great. That's what goes on around here. Different people coming at it from different perspectives and different directions. So if you're thinking about doing that, if you do the book, you come up to me at the end of this and go, delightful, Earl, very entertaining. However, I do it a completely different way. Okay. That's my response. Okay, good. That means more dialogue. What I love is people who get up here. Occasionally we'll do this sort of stuff and somebody will come up and go Earl, I find your comments on the process of recovery disturbing. Really? Yeah, I think you're killing alcoholics, Earl. For Christ's sake, you need to do it this way. Here's my workbook that I've developed over the last eight months. And I'd like you to take this workbook and explore what I've seen as the relationship between God, self, and others. Okay, cool. And Earl, please, for God's sakes, just don't talk in AA anymore until you've read my book. Say, all right, thanks for sharing that with me. That's lovely. And I love how pissed off people get about this stuff. It's hysterical to me. I'm standing in a room with a bunch of dead people sitting up pretending they're paying attention to me, right? We're alcoholics and drug addicts and we're arguing over how to develop a relationship with God. It's like, okay, I can't get too upset about this, all Right? It's just, it's crazy, right, What we're doing, we're wrestling with the concept of God here. Right? In this third step. I wrestle with the... That's what Israel... Israel means one who wrestles with God. Right? The book, it says to me in a portion of chapter 5 that I've heard God knows how many times in 22 years. God couldn't would if he were sought. It doesn't say God couldn'd would if you were found. God couldn't it would if you were sought then I must seek God I'm given very very specific instructions on how to go about doing that later on in the step I must see God but what I've got to do at first is throw myself at it to open up my arms and say I let go I let God I surrender I can't God can I'll let him God could restore me to sanity soundness of mind relieve me of the obsession to drink now what's interesting is that these actions the action of these steps where I seek this God is remarkable to me. It's about my willingness to get the stuff that I place between me and God and me and my fellows out of the way. I put it there, I get rid of it. I don't ask God to get rid of it, I do it. I don' t ask you to do it, I do. I do not sit in my apartment and wait for life to come knock on the door. I must get up and go outside. I had a sponsor, my second sponsor after Donald died, I had a second sponsor for six years. He's a great friend of mine, and I love him dearly, Al F. He's the guy that... Get between those, right? He's big meditation guy. Very difficult to talk to because he's just being there while you're talking to him. He's fantastic example. He's responsible. You don't do what he says. You just watch him and feel him. You know what I mean? Just right there. He's an amazing human being. Absolutely. amazing. But he said, you know, Earl, if you give your life to God and sit in the closet, what you get is coat hangers. It took me six months to wrap my head around that. I'll be back when I have any idea what that means. Donald used to say to me, Earl God comes in shoe leather. Okay. Apparently God is a shoe salesman. So I get it. These actions I take to open myself up to this experience of a power greater than myself. I can assure you I do not understand God. I pray to a God I don't understand. But I do pray to a God that I see the evidence of in my life on a daily basis. On a daily basis. You know, it's there if I want it. That's a lot of what the big buzz is for me are these sudden realizations that if I just stand still and feel the life that is around me that there's something quite remarkable going on all the time. that's the cool thing man it's better than any drug I ever took I took so much LSD that I was classified legally insane by the military right and this buzz is better you know this buzzes better yeah I've done enough heroin in one night sit around you know just checking my pulse just yep there it goes again good I've slowed it way down. I've drank enough alcohol to come to in different cities. No buzz better than that clarity of being completely present in a moment and feeling the presence of God. That's an amazing, amazing event. And this is the only way that that's available. How I begin that process is by being willing to turn my will and life over the care of God as I understand Him or don't understand Him. To get out on my knees and say the third step prayer. And I mean literally get down on my knee, not figuratively speaking. For me, literally. I literally get out of my knees and say that prayer. The reason I do that is I've got to humble myself. Humility is the willingness to learn for me. And I have to present myself willingly. And that way, I know for a fact. There's no mistaking. I can't say, well, I feel willing as I stand there with my chest out. But if I'm willing to get down on my knees and just do it from a position... I'm not being submissive. I'm relinquishing power. I'm delinquishing control. Come on. I'm here. I'm willin'. If I ask, God will come, what the book says. I haveto ask. I gotta ask. So I do. So that's step three for me. It's nice and simple, easy. It's about the experience of it. It's gathering an experience. It's creating an opportunity for a deeper and more meaningful experience.