Applying a Specific Test for the Agnostic Mind – Ray M.

Thank you, I'm Ray and I'm an alcoholic. And thanks to the Grace to Godness program, I haven't found it necessary to take a drink all damn day long. That blows my mind. It's been that way for, I don't know, 4,000 some odd days. Since when is this? Since January 1st, 1996. Which doesn't make any sense to me. I remember the night before, I decided I was going to do a New Year's resolution. I was gonna try this silver thing for one year and I was just gonna look back after a year and see how it looks. So I wanted to do that if I wanted you to do the drinking thing. And I decided to do it here but I really wondered if I'd make it a day. And I heard that at midnight, you know, the end of that 24 hours, I was amazed I had made it 24 hours. And I'm still amazed today. I'm going to go to bed tonight thanking God and this program if I can make it another day because people like me don't stay sober. Some of you all may have heard me two years ago you might have the CD of Leslie's better introduction. No, I'm going to try to give y'all something a little bit different if you've heard me before and focus a little bit more on what it's like today, what it is like now. But I'll give you a brief kind of idea of where I came from and how I ended up here. I was really, really fortunate. I I got some really, really good genetics in a lot of ways. My parents were some pretty amazing people. But then also my dad was an alcoholic, and my uncle was an alcoholic, and my brothers were alcoholics. My grandfather was an alcoholic, so I got the alcoholic gene too. But just quickly kind of to kind of set up where I came from, my dad would literally dirt poor. When he was a kid, he slept on a dirt floor in this old army tent. He didn't even have a floor. And they had their little garden kind of actually on the side of the road. They didn't Even own the land. They just kind of lived on the Side of the highway in a tent. And he joined the Navy, and he worked really hard, and He was a smart guy. And he did really well in the Navy and got about a dozen or so medals. And they were impressed enough with him, they wanted him to do some covert work. so they sent him up as an oil company employee and sent him over to the Middle East to do some looking around and whatever. And he worked really hard at both jobs there, in the oil company and the intelligence. And he was a smart guy and just worked his ass off and he ended up being the vice president of that oil company. And 35 years after he was sleeping in the dirt, him and his sons and his wife were jetting around in a private jet. pretty good genetics a pretty good example I think the best thing he ever did was he met this lady while he was in college this lady who could do calculus on her head and he was smart enough to marry her and she was a really good lady and just grainy act crazy smart so I got those genetics along with the alcoholic genes every man in my family has been an alcoholic And that worked out pretty well for me until I was about 13, 12. 12 or 13. And that's when I discovered alcohol. I'd seen my dad drink. I'd see my brother drink and puke and get arrested. And so I wasn't sure if I wanted any part of that. But then I did want it. I wanted it because I wanted to be part of his crowd. He had these friends around him who were laughing and having a good time. And I'd never had that. I remember from my earliest memories, kindergarten, of that feeling of being separate that we all have, right? We're all different. I think a lot of us listened to what he was talking a couple weeks ago about. Every speaker comes up here and says, I didn't fit in! I was different! Yeah, we're all separate. But I don't know if that's true for everybody, but it's absolutely true for me. And those are my earliest memory of being apart from and separate, and every other kid in the kindergarten had the moon boots and I had the cheesy generic things and whatever. And for a long time I thought that being separate and being a geek was one of the main driving forces in my life. I've recently found out that that's not true. The truth is a big driving force is not that I was different or apart from but that's what focused on i had an opportunity to go meet and talk with some people that i knew from kindergarten and um they explained to me that my life growing up was totally different than i thought it was you know i thought i was totally picked on by everybody and all this and this is just not true but that's what i like to focus on um so anyway yeah i i decided by by seventh grade um i was going to become a stoner but we had back in those days you know my brother and his friends you know get together and drink and smoke this and that and listen to heavy metal music and cause your relatives into the rescue and you know if i hung out with them i did those things you know i wouldn't be alone and uh at the same time i had this thing going of these genetics where i had people um college professors and and who are visiting school kept going dude you don't belong here you belong to you here here's what you need to do you need to get the hell out of here and and that kind of made sense to me because when i knew that i was separate and different apart from y'all i had two choices either i was worse than y' all and they all were all better than me or i was better than all of you and i decided i was better than all of you um or tried to believe that but couldn't really convince myself um so about 12 or 13 i start drinking uh started drinking really heavy uh really getting into it just because i got into high school and uh it was pretty sad actually you know you've got a guy who has these you know i come from a real good home and all that and i'm failing out of high school because i just don't do the work because i'm too busy drinking you know and i don't have the story a lot of people have of like stealing cop cars and living in the oleander bushes um because you know i got to see my older brother do that he actually stole the the white top of a cop car and he would do those things and the cops would beat the out of him and then arrest him you know so i pretty much stayed home and i drank And I sold some things and, you know, sitting in my garage and really I didn't do much. I sat there and the entertainment for my day was there was a thumbtack on the wall. If you drank the right stuff and you smoked the right, that was a hilarious thumbtacks. Until we all heard about the world's funniest thumbtacks. I won't go into that too much because that's on the friggin' CD. in cd but um you know that was my life and uh my the plan was that these uh some of these college people uh some people from the school they told me dropped out of high school go to community college for a year get great good grades we'll get you into cu and then i had some other colleges that wanted me and all that kind of stuff so i'm like okay that sounds good so i dropped out started drinking, started smoking real heavy but I was really excited to start college because my mom had told me you know once you get to college it doesn't feel like so much in the woods and all this and you'll fit in better. And I was sitting in this college I was 16 years old and I was stunned out of my mind wearing this Metallica t-shirt and these big skull rings with spice sticking out and I didn't fit in and my mom lied to me. I didn''t fit in anymore in college and so i said that and you know i'm just gonna drink and and that's just that's what i did for the next several years and you know I guess I was seeing my dad and everybody you'd think that I would know the path I was going down you know my dad my brothers my uncles um but I was able to convince myself I wasn't an alcoholic too I'm looking at them they're going you know say my dad's been divorced a couple of times because he's an alcoholic he's read some cards he's done this stuff i haven't done any of that i haven've been divorced hadn't had a girlfriend either you know um haven't wrecked any cars i had one you know for about a month at that point um it was right when i bought it but uh you know i hadn't got to jail five or six times like my brother did because again i didn't leave the house i didn' t live to grow up so i uh And it became pretty obvious though, pretty quick, that there was something wrong when I can't go to sleep without drinking or doing drugs. It became pretty obviously that something was wrong when everything I believe in, everything that I thought was important went right out the frame of my death when it came to drinking and drugging. you know, that I should be a good older brother to my older brother and guide and protect him and teach him out the window. I send him to go get the stuff. He gets beat up in the hospital and I come with no problem. I'll do it again next week. And he's back in the hostel again next year. And I keep sending him to do it again. And, I came in here to Alcoholics Anonymous just really not sure, but I figured if I wasn't a real alcoholic I'd still go and I'd see what the real pros, you guys who steal cop cars. How do you quit drinking? And if it works for you, it'll be easy for me. You know? And so I showed up here and I listened and I tried to kind of do what y'all did. And it didn't... You know, the first couple of weeks, I totally didn't feel like a fit in. Y'all are talking about getting out of prison, killing people and, you know, you've been divorced six times. you know like we were talking about on the walk-in today I couldn't relate to that I was 20 years old and I had one girlfriend at that point who liked my weed and then they sat around it was this old people's meeting basically and they sat down and played dominoes and I was like, shit, I don't fit in here and I don' t want to you know, I d'nt want to sit around and talk to these old farmers and play domino But y'all, they laughed. They talked about somebody who had divorced six times and people would laugh. And that was a good time! You know? I hadn't laughed for a long time. That thumbtack just wasn't doing it anymore. So I stuck around, I guess. I don't know why. I guess because I knew I was going to die. really underneath. I knew, you know, this disease killed my dad. It was well on the way of killing my brother, my older brother. And I knew he was going to kill me too, I guess. But I couldn't admit that. And they talked about how to tell if you're an alcoholic. If you drink more than you intended to. I intended to drink all of it. Doesn't apply. You know, if you get drunk when you don't plan on it if i'm awake if i don't get fucked up so you know that didn't apply and i just wasn't sure until this old guy explained i made the mistake of getting honest in a meeting y'all told me oh honest open-minded and willing and i made a mistake of doing the honest thing i said i wasn't serious i was an alcoholic and this old guy explained a real simple one way that made sense to me so there's normal people who order a margarita with their dinner and they might drink half of it. They might drink all of it if they don't care. And then there's those alcoholics who call that alcoholism. I know exactly what he was talking about. My mom was one of those that she'd take three sips off the margarida and leave it on the friggin' table. I don't get that. Maybe some of y'all understand that. Of course not. Right? And he said, there's just alcoholics. And you're either an alcoholic or you're not. And, you know, I'm one of y'all. That made sense to me, you Know. I'm going to drink whatever there is to drink. And I'm gonna get drunk and I'm gonna do something stupid. And that's all I'm gonna do. Unlike my dad who managed to do both. That's crazy. So I came looking at my dad. My dad killed himself. basically out of this disease, the guilt of the shit that he had done. And I told you, my brothers were in all kinds of trouble and all that, and I knew this shit was serious. So somehow, or I don't know, maybe it was something that somebody said in a meeting, I'm not sure what it was, but there was something that caused me to get curious about this shit. To come in off the porch, get a book, talk about the steps, to talk about what was really going on in the meeting, get a sponsor, and actually do this deal. You know, it talks in here about we beg you to be fearless and thorough, and for some reason I did that. And I worked the first step as thoroughly as I could, and I had a problem a little bit with the idea of my life being unmanageable. I said, dude, it's unmanaged. It might be manageable, and my sponsor said, dude, shut the fuck up. Your life's fucked up, right? I was trying not to cuss this time because I cussed more than enough last time I screwed up two years ago. But my life was totally screwed up, right? Yes. Okay. On to step two. Look at us. Does our life look better than yours? Yes. We all tell you it's because of this God guy. This higher power guy. Do you believe us? Okay. Yeah. I believe that. It works for you. Okay. Step three. Your life is screwed up. Our life is better because of this higher power. Are you willing to give the higher power a try? Are you wiling to do whatever is His will so that you can have the life that you want to have? Kind of like you see us anyway. Hell yeah! Okay, I'll do that. And it took about that long for me to work those steps 2 and 3. Step 1 was kind of hard. It took about three weeks. As soon as I had step one figured out, and I'm one of y'all, my sponsor wasn't wasting time. He was one of those guys that had read not just the first part of the book up to here, but he read all this part ofthe book where it talks about we went over to Dr. Bob's house for a few hours and worked the steps. This part in the back of thebook where it says, he talked about the guy being 8 days sober going on 12-step calls. So that's what he had me doing. I said okay go home tonight hit your knees pray tomorrow we're going to get started on the fourth step and I told him oh there's a problem about the praying thing I don't know if I believe in God or Allah or Buddha or what I didn't tell you to figure that out I said go hit your friggin knees well I don' t know what to say okay say that if you don't want to say That's all. If you don't believe in God, hit your knees and say that. Okay. He said it'll work. It'll work, don't worry about it. And I hit my knees, and that's what I said. If anybody here has any problems with the higher power deal, like I did, it worked for me just to hit my needs and say, God, Buddha, Allah, whatever your name is, I don't know, but I'd like to know. I don' t know if you exist or not, but Id like to kow. I don't know if you care about me, and I don' t know if you want to be in my life, but I'd like you to. And I came to him the next day, and actually, I told him the last day it didn't work. My life didn't get any better. He told me to keep doing it. He told him to do it in the morning and at night, and I've heard people say that in the meetings, and for some reason, I was stupid enough to follow the instructions. Nowadays, I'm smarter. I come in here, I hear you guys say stuff like put your shoes under the bed, that whole deal, you know, praying in the morning and night, and I'm smarter than you, and I know better than you so I don't follow the instructions." And I ended up going crazy. But back then, I was stupid enough to actually follow the instruction, so that's what I did. And Josh started the first step the next day. He said, why the list of failures are pissed off at? I said okay. Then I went home and a few hours later I called him back and I said, dude, I'm not...well at first he had me read the 12 in 12 and the big book talking about that And I read that stuff, and I sat down for a minute with a pencil, and I called him. I said, I don't have any resentment. I'm not a resentful person. I don' t know if any of y'all are like that, with that first step. I'm doing that recently. I'm looking at the paper. Actually, it's right here. This 10-step slash 4-step, whatever you want to call it, going, I do not really feel resentful. He told me to write down people I could be pissed off at if I wanted to be. Now I have a list. okay it didn't take long to come up with about 15 people if I wanted you I could really go and you know I did that the best I could and it wasn't very good I had some stupid stuff on there I still have stupid stuff under today but I did the best i could because he had had me my sponsor ryan had pointed out to to me the stuff that we read at the beginning of every meeting stuff like half measure is available with nothing we stayed at the turning point uh here are the steps we took which are suggested there was a program of recovery he pointed out that there's those people out there smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and half of them aren't going to be back next week or at least not next year and then there's two people in the room working steps which is the program and recovering and see i don't want to die i'm a boy and i don' t want to suffer i don''t want to have six horses i'm too rushy for that my dad can handle that he was a military guy i can't hang with that so i did that the very very very best that i can and i went and i did my fifth step and um you know i think it was a week later he told me And you know, you're not going to take a month or a year on your friggin' first shift. You're going to do a fifth shift in a week. And if you don't have some good shit, well, then you're just going to look like an idiot. So, you know. Get started. And you knows, that was embarrassing and humbling. Because that whole idea that I had of I'm better than all of you. Got totally destroyed in a couple of different ways. It showed me that I'm self-centered, I'm fearful, basically I'm a wussie, but mainly it said exactly what it says in the book. Selfishness, self-centredness, that is what we think of when we're in trouble. Above all else, we must be rid of our selfishness. I was a completely selfish bastard and I did not know that until I did that first step. And the other thing where it totally humbled me was that I didn't have any, like, really good shit on there. I didn' t kill anybody. Damn it! This other guy that sobered up with it, he was a pimp, right? So he had to make amends to all the hoes. And I want you to have something on there like that, you know? But no, I was just like, I wasn' t even a good alcoholic. I was such a pretty lame alcoholic. And then at the end of the fifth step, he asked me, he said, okay, what did you leave off? What's the good shit? Damn it. How do you know? Well, okay. He's one of us. So I even, I had to tell him that one thing I didn't want to ever tell anybody about that night with the crack war down on 11th Street in Austin. that was eating my lunch. I hadn't been in the A long enough to know that my most embarrassing, horrible stuff is just really lame. You know? Here it is. I mean, and I've got my course tip out in the car. Now y'all can read it if you want an example of a lame-ass course tip. And then I've Got the Current one here. You know, anybody who wants to look at it, come up after the meeting and let your name down there. Okay, no, nobody in here whose name is on it. No? Yeah. I'll add you later. No, two or three of your boyfriends are on there. Anyway, I got that relief from that guilt and that shame. I didn't have a burning bush, but that's what I had. And more importantly, my sponsor told me that, you know, all these people that take a month or a year to work the third step to turn their real life over to God, he told me I'd just done that. He said, you didn't want to come in here and do this, did you? No. Why'd you do this then? because that was God's will. And that's what I have to do today is I've got to quit worrying about me, I've Got to get out of that selfishness that the book talks about and do what this program suggests because this is God's Will for me. I'm trying to kind of... You'll see me kind of flipping through the book here because there's a couple of things I underlined that I wanted to mention because I'm kind of scared. I'm kinda scared for AA today because I come in here and, you know, of course anything I say up here I don't speak for AA. I share my experience, strength, and hope, right? Unless someone is sharing this out of a book. If I'm telling you what's in the book this is Alcoholics Anonymous. It says that right here. Alcoholics Aonimous. I come into here a lot and I hear people talking about all kinds of shit that, I mean they have their opinions and that's great and I love to get different people's opinions I love To argue with different people opinions but I hear people say shit like this is a selfish program. The book says 53 times we have to be unselfish. It says selfishness will kill us and I want to be real careful then I'll come up here and tell you something that will kill you. I want give you all alcoholic anonymous and I don't want to just vent out all the shit i was i've been you know guilty about or whatever or just being funny um because that's fun to do outside of fire but this is supposed to be alcoholic anonymous and that's what the book is it's all color synonymous anyway um fifth and sixth step wasn't all that friggin hard for me because life sucked like i said and my sponsor pointed out to me that even the first several steps. We're going to suck. The book says it. The book says who wants to admit powerlessness? Practically no one, right? Who wants to do this inventory? Nobody likes to do that shit. But then later it tells us, it gives us the 12 promises and we used to read the 12 promises at the group I covered up in but it talks about how our fears will go away. It talks about how fear of economic insecurity will leave us. Fear of people will leave. We'll understand the word serenity and no peace. And he told me these first steps are going to suck, and the good shit's going to come at the end. So it wasn't that hard for me, although I have a couple of characters reading effects that I like. I like my arrogance. I like thinking I'm better than you, and smarter than you. And beat you in every argument. And I like being lazy. Because if I'm not lazy, then I have to put forth effort, and I don't like to do effort, I guess because I'm lazy. I don't know. But, you know, I have a hard time letting go of that stuff but most, a lot of the other stuff, you know it wasn't that hard and I took about two days to kind of try to give those things over to God. And I did have, if any of y'all have read this, it gives us an escape clause that I love. It talks in here about asking God to remove from us the defective character what is the phrase, anyway. The things that are not useful to him. And I'm getting right back on my two years ago speech, but eh, screw it. So that's kind of my escape is I can say, God, take away my arrogance if you want. But if you don't, if you don't want me to stay arrogant, that's okay. Take away my laziness if you like. But if You want me stay lazy, I'm all for it. And, you know, I still have some of that stuff and that's okay. You know, I hit my knees every morning and I ask God what he wants me to do. And if he wants me to be lazy, I'll be lazy. If he wants me to get up and do the damn dishes like he did this morning, I'll get up and do it. Mainly, what I have to pray for today is covered on page 69 some of y'all who know me know how crazy that I get with women relationships some of you all have video but no not really no not really and you know the area of relationships people talk about well the book doesn't say this it doesn't says that it doesn'y really say anything about relationships there's a whole chapter on them then there's a real specific test that I have to apply today on page 69. It says, we subjected each relationship to this test, whether it's selfish or not. See, because going back earlier in the book, selfishness kills me and selfishness kills others. And I've done some really selfish stuff in relationships in this program and really, really hurt some people. And i've hurt myself repeated with the same selfish actions with some of the same people. And some of you all have gotten to witness that insanity. But that's what I'm trying to do today, and I'm in a much, much better relationship today asking my higher power to help me not to be selfish. And I have this little card that I give every night when I remember it. I have to ask certain questions about what I did that day did I, where was I selfish, dishonest, inconsiderate? No matter how hurt, did I unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion, bitterness? I have to do that because well, that's all college anonymous. It's right there in that book. I've read it. And life's getting a lot better today. I'm a little bit lost here. I don't know quite where I'm going. I should skip back to the prayer thing and the whole higher power deal. You know, I mentioned that I didn't believe in God. I didn' t know, maybe. And I prayed just the way that my sponsor told me to. And I did exactly what my sponsor said. That's what she told me you'd do. And he told me the answer to the phone. No. And it was about six weeks later, I was doing some 12-step work at this treatment center. where my little brother had gone to treatment for a little while and uh i was going down there i was riding my bike down there every monday from round rock down to west lake and uh because i was willing to get any links if we all know around walking the west lake it's like i don't know 40 miles on a bike but it says here after we're going to go even though i'm lazy so anyway i was coming down there and i was trying to do some 12 step work with some of the kids down there And one of the parents walked up to me, about six weeks after I'd really started this test, and said, Ray, how do I find God? I tell you, have a God in your life. You walk in here, and God is obvious in your lives. How do I do that? And that's, that was the first like God thing. I hit my knees and said, God, I don't know if I believe in you. And then she's asking me this and I had to look at my life and six weeks of working the steps, my life had turned around so much. My attitude, my outlook. I couldn't go to sleep without getting screwed up before. Now, man, I was going to sleep every night just ecstatic to be alive and do 12-step work and try to save lives. You know? And I don't know how that works. I cannot explain these steps after 12 years. I can't explain how getting on my knees instead of praying in the car, how that's different. But that was my experience was that absolutely after six weeks of that there was no doubt that God was right here guiding me every day. You know, if you're struggling with that, try it. Hit your knees. It sucks. It's humbling. Some of us in our area don't want to hit our knees. We don't wanna be humble even before the creator of the whole universe because we wanna be eye-to-eye with the creator of the universe, right? Am I alone in that? I don't know. But see, I wanted to be eye to eye with the creative universe and I'm not, okay? He's 10 billion to a trillion times more powerful and smarter and older and everything else than I am so I can hit my knees and I can humble myself with the creator of the universe. And I still don't know if the Catholics are right or the Buddhists are right or whatever, but I know that God works in my life. Actually, I know they're all wrong, but anyway, that's a topic for something else. No, they're alright. They're all long. They're just different perspectives. so I had God going in my life I was doing the steps the way my sponsor told me riding my bike as far as necessary whatever told me to do the ninth step and you know told me to read it out of the book read it in the 12 and 12 and just follow the instructions and not do it my way I like to do things my way but I tried to follow those instructions And some of those are kind of hard. It's really easy. I don't know if anybody else does this, but there's a lot of them where I'd like to say, yeah, I can't make amends to that person. I can' t make that up. Now, if I just have so much money, I could pay it. I'm doing that right now. I pay $320 a month and I only have like $14,000 left to pay, but you know, it's clear how you do that. But hell it is, like you know I said some rude things to this person and made them feel worthless. And a sponsor along the way pointed out to me a real good way to do that was to work with this lady Andrea because it also says that we made amends wherever possible. Direct amends! See cause I want to do a lot of these excuses, I want do a lof of these things like well donate some money to charity. It says direct amends. See, if I screw you over and I go donate to the United Way, I'm pushing out. Unless I have absolutely no other choice, it takes direct amends. So along the way a sponsor pointed out to me that one way that I can figure out how to do those amends is I can work their force steps. See, I screwed you over so I sit down and look at it like I'm you. And I go, Ray did this to me and here's what it affected. My security, sex relations, personal, you know, right out of the book. The list is in the book, and if I do that and I figure out that I took away your security, then I've got to give you back some security, you Know? And I did that with my ex-wife after we divorced. When she left me for the second time, you Now, I had to make, kind of do a ten step, four-step whatever the heck you want to call it look at my part look at resentment look at what i've done wrong you know be willing to uh you know have those character defects removed be willing to make amends and make a man's killer and then one of the biggest things that i did was i was financially totally irresponsible and she didn't know if the rent was going to be paid she didn'T know when the gas was going TO get cut off the electric was going To get cut off and she was trying to raise her two daughters and they come home from school and she'd go to cook lunch for him and there is the stove didn't work um we got evicted from our house of course she definitely played a part in the eviction um because she like took her money and spent it like garbage but um i was financially irresponsible and i had to say okay how do i make that up to somebody you know i can't turn the gas back on from two years ago uh but i had to do my little four steps and I said ah I took away her security I need to give her back some security she's left me once before she took out my shit so I only had half as much shit as I used to because she got rid of the shit but when she left I was like I gotta I gotta get I took away financial security I gotta give it back so I paid a bill for six months you you know, and I brought her this little trailer delivery. But whatever it was, you know I could look at that and I could go how did it affect them? What did I take from them? Security sex relations, personal relations, whatever it would. My tenth step a lot of people I don't know I try to do that right out of the book there's a list in the book like I say, I've got it written on a piece of paper, and I hate that because I don't like looking at where I'm selfish and inconsiderate and where I cause resentment. But my girlfriends love it because, like, my last girlfriend before this one, she just loved to tell me, you know, I don' t have to worry about him lying to me. I know he will every now and again because he'll go to bed at night and he'll look at the list and it says, Where was I dishonest? You know, and she'd get a phone call about once a week, you kno, bedtime. Hey, doing my dance step. I was dishonest about my motives, but I said what's true. But really, I was just trying to get in your pants. You know, whatever. You know. But I'm, I say it, but actually it's really, really, really, real good for me. Because rarely do I get myself in a situation that I see other people getting into and the situations that I used to get into. You know, you hear in here a lot because we're alcoholics, we're insane. It says that on the wall. Step two, we're sane. And so you hear about people, you know, cheating on their girlfriend with their twin sister and, you know... Springer's principle, stop! If y'all aren't familiar with the Springer principle, it's important to me. It's not on the law like these principles like patience, perseverance, love. I think it should be. I might make a really big put, Springer for instance. If y'all aren't familiar with that, what it is, it works really well for me. If I'm thinking about doing something, especially around sex and women, is I say to myself, could I see this being discussed on Jerry Springer? If it's something that might get discussed on Jerry Stranger, I don't want to do that. I just, I don'T want to go there. I know this is a small town and y'ALL like to do THAT, but, So, I try to do my 10-step every night. And, you know, my little piece of paper got buried under a lot of stuff. And I didn't do my ten-step for a long time. And y'all witnessed the results. And y'll tell me crying up here. And I left messages on some of your answering machines talking about killing myself. Not that long ago. You know, 11 years sober. But I'm trying to get back in it today. Because I don't want to go there. I don'T want to have a shotgun in my mouth. I DON'T WANT TO DIE. I don't want to be in prison I'm actually I know me I don' t think I would die because I do have a little bit of smarts on how to stay alive but I'd end up in prison and that's where I would died because it was scrawny you know and I wouldn't make it so I don''t want to do that so I'm trying to get back into that 10th step today I'm not trying to get into the 11th step because I know what it tells me to do in the book is to enlarge my spiritual life it says that there's the world's library of spiritual books, so I've been ordering some of those reading some different books I don't like to talk too much about non-AA approved literature in the meeting but love to talk to people after the meeting if you've read anything recently something spiritually uplifting my sponsor told me I was asking him how do I do this he said well you think the Catholics are wrong about everything right No, not everything. Just 95%. Okay, go get a book by a Catholic and read it. And you know, I did that and now it really gets to me. I found out they're not really wrong about 95%. It's only 90%. You know, I'm reading some other books there, some classic books about different religions and things. I just started going to church a couple of weeks ago trying trying to enlarge that spiritual life because I've been told that what's the phrase? That it's about seeking God. It's not about finding God because I don't think I'm ever going to find Him. But what's the phrase at the end of how it works? Somebody help me out here. A, B, and C? What the heck? Here we go. Oh yes. Last thing in how it works is that God could and would if he were soft I still don't know if the Buddhists are right or the Muslims are right, or the Catholics are right but I know that if I keep seeking it's going to keep working and life is really good today. Like I say I'm lazy so it just happened that I accidentally stumbled upon a job where I worked three and a half hours a day and working three and I'm lost so I can choose which three and a half hours those are you know and and three and a half hour day you know make pays enough money that I have cool toys like these and we keep the players and motorcycles and get speed and about house will over a year ago I'm arrogant and so I love being in charge and you You know, I have a job where I'm the boss and people call me up for advice. They say, Ray, what should we do? I go up, you know, every year in my life, my relationships, I have some really good close friends today. You know people, I told you I never fit in. Even in AA, knowing all these speakers, I never fitted until I got to AA. I didn't fit in in AA either. you know, I'm more of a wuss than y'all. I couldn't take it to the point that y'alls did. But that first sponsor in my line said we had to fit into AA and it's by making the coffee and then seeing the estates. You know? If you make the coffee or if you sweep the floor or if your print the schedules somebody I bet she feels like she fits in. I did when I was printing the schedules, you know. When I'm doing the work of the fellowship, I feel like I'm part of it. And I have some really close friends today that I've known for many, many years. And I've had some really good friends today that I hardly know in very long at all. But you guys get me, you now. And you're close enough friends that you can walk up to me and say, how's the insanity today? And we both know exactly what we're talking about. And we both know, you know, my relationship with God today is just ever-expanding and it's awesome. And, you now, I have a lot of things that... I literally have nothing to worry about today because all my worries belong to God. I'm about $3500 short of where I need to be by the end of the month. I ain't too worried about it, you know. If I do His will, I take care of God's work, He'll take care on my life, you now. Got an awesome girlfriend today that's just sweet as can be and talking about getting married and all that. I haven't been together this time around for very long, but yeah. We pretty much have the wedding place figured out and all the good stuff. You know, just an awesome, awesome life today where i pretty much have everything i want somewhere along the way i learned that or somebody told me i guess it's how to get everything you want if you just want what you have and uh and it's an awesome awesome life to live but the best part about my life today is what i discovered back at that treatment center in westlake right that mic down there is the 12th scepter. He's trying to carry this message to the person who still suffers. If y'all haven't done real 12th Scepter, like it talks about in the book, the chapter written by another or like it talked about in The Last 350 Pages of the Book he's a bunch of 12th Skeptics. Oh, you're missing out. That is a high. Like, going to some drunk guy or, you know, somebody just miserable in the hospital, just wrecked his car the night before and talking to him and going through these first few steps and doing that third step with him, the fourth step, the fifth step a couple of weeks later and watching the guy really take off. So much better than any drug I ever tried and I try to feel. besides alcohol I tried to do the kind of auxiliary 12-step work like going in and doing the integrated stuff you know if you call some new junk called the energy applying only my phone who are you know going down to the convention this weekend y'all missed it there was a thousand AAA at the hotel I have to be there all weekend doing that the anti group table with some other people who are better than me so they actually set up on time but just being able to be there and talk to a thousand people like us it's awesome awesome awesome awesome stuff but don't be fooled you hear in these rooms sometimes people say cleaning out ashtrays is 12 step work 12 step is to carry the message to another alcoholic unless that ashtray is an alcoholic it's not 12 step work It's service work. It's great, it's awesome because it makes you a part of it. And if you're like me, being a part is almost the holy grail. But until you've answered the phone at 2 o'clock in the morning and gone out and talked to an alcoholic who's halfway suicidal, friggin' nothing. Getting up here is awesome. Hearing a little bit of a message. Not a very good one this time because I couldn't think of my theme or follow anything, but it's good shit. But that's not 12-step work. If you read how it works, you're working with others. It doesn't talk about standing up in a meeting. But it's awesome, it's awesome stuff. And I'm trying to do more and more of that because, like I said, I'm a wuss. I don't want to go back out. I know. And the other thing that I'm trying to be today is I get up here or I sit in meetings and I whine. I whines because I hear I talk or I talk to somebody after the meeting about selfishness and somebody comes up to me after, you know, after the meeting or while I'm talking to the meet guy and they go that's not in the book about stay out of a relationship for a year and I get pissed stop telling me what's in the books are you going to read it because the last time I'll say what is Dr. Alcoholic Addicts about they're still coming up you don't talk about drugs that's in my book Dr. Alkoholic Addict is a chapter in the box but see I like to do that but I'm a little hypocritical well not really That's not what the word hypocritical means. But I don't do what I say because there's still some, a couple of new stories in here I haven't read. So I'm trying to get back into the literature, back into The Twelve Skep-Words, back into praying every night, the same stuff that worked 12 years ago that got me here. Because if it can take me from here and get me somewhere even better, this is awesome right here. and I can't imagine what's around the next bend. I don't always get what I want, but I normally get something better. You know, I thought I wanted this crazy little girl some of y'all know, and that wasn't so big. It's become a lot better in store. God's got just some awesome stuff in store for all of us to do this. Not all of you want it, not all of it should read it, not all if you talk about it, for all of us who do it and uh see y'all around the next bend and see what uh next other amazing things amazing things that there are i should also i'm just going to plug real fast if you all like speakers or especially if you want to hear a speaker who's better than me who has a better message than me who's been sober longer than me and has a better sponsor than me um i've got some speakers cds from some of our other speakers uh debbie clifton uh some of my favorite speakers over there catch me after the meeting if you want to hear a good speech on the way home thanks