Astrid H. on the Disease of Alcoholism, the Infantile Ego, and the Daily Reprieve

Hi, I'm Astrid and I'm an alcoholic. Thank you Dawn so much for everything you've done really I so appreciate it and I just can't even imagine the amount of work that it must have taken to put this on and so many people and so much planning and I too are very involved in AA and I know what it's like to just get a meeting once a week going with a coffee pot and a cake commitment so this This is a really, really big deal. And I'm honored to be here. You know, I speak around at other places, but this one in my home in San Fernando, like this is the biggest deal for me ever, ever, ever across the board because this is where it all happened. This is where I got sober and my whole history is here and a tremendous amount of people that I know are here. So just to be hier is very near and dear to my heart. I don't take it for granted at all. It's an unbelievable honor to stand before you, and I really hope that I can transmit something that can help somebody in this room tonight. I am a real alcoholic, and I suffer from the disease of alcoholism, and the American Medical Association tells us that 6% of the population have this disease, this illness, and what I needed to do was I really needed to see what is wrong with me. How did I get this? How do I treat this? How does the thing manifest? How does it manifest drunk? How does het manifest sober? And I had to pick a lot of things apart, you know. And the American Medical Association still hasn't found the gene for alcoholism. So as far as I know, medically, nobody's born with the phenomenon of craving with alcoholism and I speak from my own experience and not from anybody else's and people can argue all day long, is it the chicken or the egg? Let's get into the debating society. But I look at my own life, and I look at my biography, and they look at my own past. And I can see that I came from a tremendous amount of chaos. There was arguing, there was fighting. I believe that there was a lot of over-disciplining, and i wasn't heard, and I wasn't able to process my feelings. And I got really angry and really frustrated at a very early age. Now what does that have to do with alcoholism? What has that had to do the drink? Well, what I've learned over time is that that. You can take three children that are in the exact same household and the parents are fighting and there's chaos and, you know, and these children need to somehow figure out how to process their pain or how to stuff it. And three children in the same household, and one will, you know, grow into a 400-pound quiet overeater. The next child will be a massive overachiever trying to get everything done, stray days, got to get to school on time, maybe to the bordering or right into obsessive compulsive disorder washing hands you know over and over and trying to over managing control and then there's us the real alcoholic and what I do is I'm loud I'm restless I'm irritable I'm discontent I'm gonna get in your face I'm going to buck up against my parents I'm bring it on I'm Gonna egg you on I'M gonna climb out of windows you say no and I'm GONNA do it twice as much I'm the class clown. I'm going to get in trouble in school. You know, I'm the one that my parents are spanking twice as much. I'm difficult. I'm the problem child, you know. My mother, she's German and she's a war survivor and I'm basically described as I don't know what's wrong with this one came out no good. This one is not so good. This one's pretty good but this one no good from always from when she's born no good. And that's basically, when I hear that enough, I'm going to grow into those shoes and I'm gonna wear that garment and I'm gunna wear it well. I'm gonnna show you how no good I am. So as time goes on, I continue to break the rules, I continued to get in trouble, I continue stuff my feelings and I remember just being so angry as a child, so angry, so, so angry. I wanted to kick the crap out of somebody. I would break things. I would smash things. I would bang on things. I would throw enormous fits. I would lay on the floor and I would scream and I would yell. There was something really wrong with this child way before a drink. There was something really clearly wrong with this kid. So as time goes on, guess what happens? Somewhere around 11 or 12 or 13 I go to a party, somebody pops open a Budweiser and hands it to me and alcohol does for me what I can't do for myself. And for the first time in my life, I feel a little freedom. I feel like I'm I feel okay. I kind of like everybody. Hey, what sign are you? This is pretty good. I think I like you. Oh my god this is so fun. And I begin to drop my guard and my ego and my pain and my frustration goes away and I'm enjoying myself for the first time in my life. And there's such a huge sense of relief in that drink. I can talk to people, I can look people in the eye, I Can sit up all night long and have conversations and I couldn't even get along with anybody just a minute ago. And so then what happened for me is I liked it. So I kept doing it. And I did it because I enjoyed it because I liked the effects of alcohol. But I didn't know that at some point what was going to happen was I was going cross over an invisible line. Nobody knows when they cross over the invisible line because it's called the invisible line, but somewhere, someday down the road, I cross over and invisible line and I lose the freedom of choice. And I'm the last one to know it. I don't know what's happening. Nobody's ever described alcoholism to me. I know that it's a disease I don't know that I'm about to cross over an invisible line and alcohol is going to be my master for the rest of my life but I remember wanting to stay up later you know and it's like it's 20 minutes to two you know when it's beer 30 who's gonna go to 7-eleven hurry hurry hurry pass the hat let's go and people are like whoa slow down turbo it's okay you know. And I can see that at the end of the weekend everybody's hungover on Sunday and I'm like come on one more run. And people in high school are saying, well, I got to go to school Monday morning and I can see there's something wrong, but I don't know what's wrong. I don'T KNOW WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME. And how do I get so drunk that I can't remember? What happens? Why do I say and do all those pitiful and incomprehensible things? And then as I lose my virginity later on in the process, I start having sex with people I DON'T EVEN KNOW. And I wake up in the morning and i have real moral fiber. I'm not a sociopath, I'm horrified. I'm absolutely horrified at what I've done. What happened? Where's my clothes? Where's My ring? Where is my freaking underwear? How did that dent in my car happen? What happened and over and over for weeks and months and years of my life I kind of live in a coma just bumbling around all over the place so not only do I have the pain and the pathology from of the original wound of my childhood but now starting at 12 and 13 and 14 and 15 I pile up all these other pains that I'm going to have to inventory someday and I make a complete mess of my life you know and I go into high school and people are like applying to colleges and they want to go on in life and I'm on the back of a Harley with middle fingers waving everywhere and screaming at my mother you know. And just getting in arguments and you know getting into trouble and in bar rooms with jukeboxes throwing darts and chugging pitchers you know, and shooters and shots and crazy and out of my mind, telling dirty jokes, thinking I'm so damn clever. And really, I'm vibrating at a very low frequency, and I'm deep, deep, deeply deep into the disease, but I still don't know it. I don't Know It. I do know that my self-esteem is shot. I do Know That My Picker's Broken, you know? I do Now That I Can't Get Along With People, That I Cannot Maintain Relationships. I Do Know That I Mean Well, But I Can'T Do Well. I Do Now ThatI Often Start Things, ButI Don'T Complete Them. But I still haven't connected all the dots. I'm really not sure, you know? And then people go off and they go to college and then they graduate and they get bachelors and masters and PhDs and they, they get married. They have white picket fences. They have husbands. They stay with them. They don't cheat. They don'T over spend on their bank accounts and they had these normal lives and I can see as time goes on, I'M A LOSER. That's what my mind keeps telling me. I'M a loser. I'Ma loser. It's not telling me you are captured by the disease of alcoholism. You're deeply in your disease. If you could get sober and you could have a spiritual way of life and apply the steps as a way of Life, you could be that and even more. It doesn't say that. It just says that I'm a loser. So somewhere down the line, what happens is it gets so bad that I start to go into rehab after rehab after recap after rehab. And the first time I got sober, I just, I didn't have a psychic change. Nothing really happened for me. I did AA as a homework assignment. You know, I just like went out and got a sponsor and I did a fourth step and a fifth step. I Did 90 meetings in 90 days. And then I stayed so dry, I could spontaneously combust. And in that time, I had a child in early sobriety. I got pregnant. I had a child. I put myself through college. I Got a teaching credential. I moved from Massachusetts to Granada Hills you know my baby was two years old and you know I put her in a Waldorf school and I did the Waldorf teacher training and I was like I didn't really need to go to AA I'd pop in and out of the valley club and I'd hear all those people over there you know up one side and down the other and this place is interesting but it's not for me you know and I didn'T pull out the book and I DIDN'T get a sponsor and I just sort of did a drive-by and you KNOW it says that the disease It waits at every man or woman's elbow to resume its destruction, and it waits patiently for years. For years, it really does wait. And what I know now is that I had never treated my insides, that I was restless, I was irritable, and I was discontent. You know, I'd wake up in the morning in constant financial fear, and I'd tell myself I'm not doing it right. I'd telling myself my parenting was poor. Sometimes I'd just throw a fit, and I'd scream and I'd yell in the house. I'd have a boyfriend here and another one there. I'd get in arguments, we're breaking up, I think we need a restraining order, I don't like this black eye, I need an ice pack. You know, and this is sober. So what's going to happen is at some point, guess what? Alcohol and me are going to have a little date and my mind's goingto tell me that maybe a drink would be a good idea. Maybe, just maybe, maybe a drunk would fix all of this. See, my mind told me that a drink might. It really might. I know today that a million drinks couldn't have fixed that problem. There's no amount of liquor in the world that could have fixed my life but I didn't know that because alcoholism is cunning and baffling and powerful and it speaks to me with great authority and the main part of the illness centers in my mind rather than my body and it's a self-talking disease. It's a disease of deception. It'S a disease of lies. It hijacks me. It Hijacks my plane all the way to Cuba and I'm the last one to know. It uses my thoughts. It uses my words. It uses my story. It uses my past. It uses the fear of the future. It'll attach itself to anything and start playing Astrid's greatest hits. Here comes Doomsday. We gotta get drunk. We gotta do something. And so I pick up a drink forgetting all about that I'm gonna trigger the phenomenon of craving. So here I am now, you know, ten years dry. I've got a child in my life. I have a nine-year-old, you know at home. I own a home. I have a private practice. I have two car garage four bedroom three bath you know i've got a mortgage i got a lot of stuff going on and i'm crazy now i start drinking now i started pouring liquor on this and within six months like really like the book says you can almost go beyond recognition and i started coupling it with drugs and this is not to ever water down the message of alcoholics anonymous but i can tell you that the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, they've changed so much. The landscape is so different today than it was in the beginning that if I don't at least touch on the subject of addiction because it's not in the liquid. It's in me. It is any kind of addiction. I can switch addictions in a minute. I can start eating cake and turn into a 500-pound person. I can all of a sudden want $300 worth of scratch cards at a time, you know? I can start gambling. I don't know. People get into porn. They get into yard sales. They get into matchbox cars. They get into all kinds of stuff, you know? So I start drinking and I start losing my mind and I start really, really going crazy. And I start bringing kooky people into the house and I just start really tearing my life all the way down to a nothing very quickly I start going through all the savings that I had saved you know and I am hung over every morning and my mind tells me every single morning god you should kill yourself in case you guys haven't noticed alcohol is a depressant so it wasn't that I was clinically depressed it was that the liquor told me to kill myself every day. So every morning I'd wake up and I'd go, God, you should kill yourself. You should kill herself. You really kill yourself." My poor kid, I would drag her through that too. I'd say, Mommy just wants to die. I'm so sorry. I am so sick. Mommy just wants to kill herself." I mean that poor kid. The poor kid that I dragged through this stuff. But I didn't know any better. I was doing the best I can with what I've got. I've diseased. I untreated. I'm dying and I'm the last one to know it So I wake up every morning with a hangover And I want to kill myself And I swear to God I'm never going to drink again And somewhere around 3 or 4 or 5 o'clock in the afternoon I change my mind Every single day Day in, day out I keep changing my mind And changing my mine And changing by mind I'm not changing my might I'm being thunk by the disease I'm taking over It's something bigger than me It's an ism Not a wasm it's a living entity, it lives inside of me, it needs a host, it sucks the life out of me but it's not me. It's not me, I'm a direct reflection and a manifestation of a beautiful creator that made all of this here but I don't know how to align my will and my thought life with this creator. I'm so stuck in my head, I'M so stuck IN THE ANGER, I' m SO STUCK IN THE HOSTILITY THAT I DON'T KNOW how to find a god i don't know about a life of prayer all i think is like prayer that's for religious people and they're seriously mentally ill y'all think i'm crazy you should go to a church someday those guys are really pathological you know and that's what my mind says to me so i never had a psychic change i don'T KNOW HOW TO TREAT MY DISEASE AND IF YOU BE A REAL ALCOHOLIC IT'S GOING TO GET WORSE AND WORSE WORSE and worse and worse so these people come to my house and they do this weird intervention that didn't work on me. And they're like, we really love your daughter and she seems really weepy and she seemed really upset and you seem really skinny and sick and I think you need some help and we're going to take your daughter. And I'm like, okay. So I give away my 10-year-old daughter. Like I just pack up all her stuff, you know, take her posters off the wall, all her Spice Girls CDs, you now, all of her like cool everything, her whole world. We just pack it in boxes and I just send her to these Christian people's house. And now the disease is really on because I don't even need to get up anymore. I don'T even need to do anything. All my, all my responsibilities are gone. I DON'T even need to make a frickin' toaster waffle. I Don'T need to do anything. I can just roll up shop and just get drunk around the clock morning noon and night which is exactly what I did. And eventually I lost my home and I just moved out into the street. And I lived in the street for a good part of 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003. And I lived a life of prostitution in and out of Twin Towers 23 times, 23 times. 23 prostitution charges, 18 drug and alcohol related charges. I have been in Chatsworth Court more times than I ever want to think of. I've been in Van Nuys Jail more times that I want to think of. I have been on all seven floors in Twin Towers 23 freaking times. I am the real deal. I earned my seat here, that's for sure. This isn't something I'd ever want to say anywhere else but thank God there's a place I can come to and say this is where liquor took me. It's not a joke. It really hijacked my whole life and I dragged my child along with it, my poor kid. She has no dad. She's a child of a single mom who's telling her everything's going to be okay, everything's gonna be okay and then everything's not okay. And she's a witness to this horrible wake that we drag people through, the warped lives of blameless children it says in the book, very, very tragic. And as time went on I just really lost my mind, I really lost mine mind to alcohol and to drugs in the street and I became delusional, I became paranoid, I became schizoaffective. There was microchips in my eye. The CIA and the FBI are following me. I think that there's a microchip in my eyes and my daughter has a TV somewhere with a clicker and she can turn it on and she kan see what I kan see so now I have to tie a bandana around my eye I have ta cover it so she kan't see where I am and then sometimes I go to the 99 cent store over on Sepulveda and I buy a dollar pair of tweezers and then I go to somebody, one of the street people and I say can you do me a favor there's this thing in my eye could you please get it out with these tweezers and you know it's funny but it's not it's so painful when you're in that psychosis because it really happened to me even if it didn't happen to me it happened to be it was my reality it was unbelievably painful I mean I was living dead woman walking halfway in hell halfway in God knows what you know and I remember just like my instincts got really primal it was sort of kill or be killed you know I didn't really look people in the eye anymore you just sort of smell them you sort of feel them I sort of maneuver around people every time I saw a child I felt so guilty and so sick I thought I don't have any right to even be on the same sidewalk with a woman that has a child I felt So So So dirty I'd never been a prostitute I've never even looked at porn now I'm living in the street turning tricks and drinking out of my mind and gone beyond recognition. And this cycle lasted for years and years and then I met this guy in the street, this trick and Mr. Captain Save-A-Ho and he decided he was going to rescue me with his little cape. And what he really needed was an Al-Anon meeting but whatever. And he would come in and out of jail and he'd put money on my books, and he would always talk to me about my daughter that he never met. And he'd say, don't you want to go back and see your daughter? Don't you want a good life? Don'T you want it? And I remember just that despair of like, are you kidding? It is so over for me. All the bridges to safety have been burned. Are you joking? There is no way back to anything. But I did. After about three years, two and a half years in the street, I started going into rehab, rehab after rehab. people make a lot of money off us in rehabs. I mean, it's really gotten over the top. No offense to any of y'all that are owning rehabs out there, but God, these $100,000 big books, you know, and all this hoopla out there. And I don't even know. I means, it just so unbelievable. So I'm in and out and I'm getting county beds, you now, and I stay in for a second, spin dry, go back out into of the street. And at this point, I'm just in so much pain. I suffer so deeply from shame, from guilt, from embarrassment. Like I said, my pathology isn't sociopathic. I'm not disassociated with what I did. I am horrified. How could I ever look at anyone? How am I ever going to even inventory this? I am a whore. I live in the street like how am I going to feel okay about it I gave my child away how what's gonna happen what just like go to a freaking meeting take some cotton out of my ears and shove it down my throat am I gonna be okay are you kidding me I need so much help so much health you know and when I lived in the street on top of all that there's a tremendous amount of very very traumatic experiences that can happen people pull out knives they pull out guns you see overdoses you know a couple of the stories that I always tell one of them was when I was living near Sepulveda it was pouring rain one February I went into this burnt out house and the water's just pouring through the ceiling and there are parts of the house that weren't burnt enough so you could sort of get dry but that smell of that burning wood just so nauseous and toxic and I go way in the back and there's this girl this black girl laying on a sleeping bag and she's like pregnant out to here like nine months pregnant and she'S all smoked out on drugs and I can just see the look on her face like girl don't you say anything to me. And I just sat down and I just kept chugging vodka and getting high and losing my mind. And every once in a while, she would take her hand and she would put my hand on her stomach and I could feel this baby kicking and moving. But you know what? I couldn't stop. I couldn'T get out of there. Even my instinct to be a parent, my instinct for nurture, alcohol trumped over it I couldn't stop what I was doing alcohol was so much the master I was such a meat puppet that I knew well but I couldnít get out of there I just couldnít I couldníd do it I was so hopeless I couldníve even dial 911 I donít know what to do letís just you know get wasted with this lady and her baby I mean itís crazy when I look back on it you know I remember one time I mean every day I would just think I want to die how come you know how come these prostitutes get all cut up and thrown in a dumpster and it never happens to me? I hear these stories. How come they don't slit my throat? What's going on here? But anyway, one day I got a real one, right? So I get in this guy's car and he pulls a gun out and he sticks it right in my face and he goes, take your clothes off and you're going to suck my dick right now. And I go, wait a minute, hold on, Turbo. Not only am I not going to take my clothes off, and I'm not going to do that, but I'm going to tell you something. And then I meant it. I go. I want you to look me in the eye and I'm going to count to three. And when I say three, I want you to blow my fucking brains out. And he said, girl, you're crazy. Get the hell out of my car. And I'm looking at him and I am saying, I'm crazy. You are the one pulling the gun on somebody, you know. But it's interesting because I look back at that and I look at the depth of my pathology. I meant it. I'm not kidding, like bring it on we're not doing any silence of the lamb thing you're not going to slowly snip my nipples off and shit, like let's just get this over with, I'm no going to lay in some hole in your freaking, and you're going to make a lampshade out of my stuff, like let's go now, now you know and that's how far down the scale that alcohol took me all the way down like my instinct my security instinct my instinct to be okay and to protect myself out the window, out the window, gone, gone you know and I look back at that and I can see that all the wiring was so disturbed, it was so messed up it was så screwed up inside alcohol had scrambled my egg so severely, I already had a partial scrambled egg by the environment and the ecosystem that I came out of and then drinking all those years and drugging, all those years just made it so much worse. I wanted to be a good mom. I wanted to do that. I had no idea how to create that, how to hold on to that, how to cultivate that, even have any kind of experience with that. Everything I did just turned to, you know, crap. So as time went on, went in and out of jail and in and out of bail. And this guy kept saying, you need to go into rehab, you know? And so I started going to rehab, rehab after rehab, after rehab after rehab, have to rehab. And you know that's a very painful place because like I said a minute ago, every time I got sober the pain was so unbelievable. I mean I would lay in bed and I would think of all that dirty stuff in the street, all that stolen property all those sick men all those motel rooms all that vodka all those days where I couldn't remember anything all those kooky people that I saw it's like a horror movie just running through your mind all the time I'm in I'm shell-shocked I'm for real for real post-traumatic stress absolutely without a doubt post from like I I needed a team of people I needed a spiritual solution. I needed a lot of help. Just laying in a bed in a rehab really was just a band-aid on the entire gaping wound that was oozing from my soul. I was so sick, and you know, I see people that come in, and it's hard for them to make it because I think sometimes people don't understand the nature and the depth of the pain of these people, the suffering that we've been through. I'll tell you, if you're here tonight, I know how much pain you've been through because this is no joke it destroyed our lives it took away everything we ever wanted and the shame and the incomprehensible demoralization and families and arguings and even with years of sobriety you know you're written out of the will you're not invited to Christmas anymore you know you've got these issues with your mom your sister you know and then there's just maybe this whole idea oh yeah well you just get through your fifth step and then you get to your eighth and your ninth step and we're going to do the hokey pokey and turn yourself around that's what it's all about and it doesn't go that way you know i've inventoried and i've even inventoried an inventory and some of this stuff doesn't just go away it doesn'T i really need a lot of help and i need a big god so i'm in rehab in the mountain the desert at abc club with with with danny lahey and helen over there god rest both of their souls and uh somebody hands me these tapes by this guy named Bob Anderson, who started this meeting called Prime Time over on Ventura Boulevard and Beverly Glen behind the Fat Burger. And there's a Saturday night meeting there, and there's Monday night men's stag and a Monday night women's stags, both all at that same church. And I'm not saying that my home group's the be-all end-all. You know, there's one ultimate authority, and it's a loving God. And the steps are the steps, and God is God. And it doesn't matter how you get it or where you get It but I needed so much help And I heard this particular Format where they talk about alcoholism Ego and self and steps one two And three and they bring in The Harry Tebow papers Harry Tebow was the one that got the Lasker Award for getting For getting alcohol deemed as A disease with the American Medical Association if any of your Insurances have ever paid for Your for you to get sober Harry Thiebaud had a big part in that. He also was a very good friend of Bill Wilson's and he was on the American Medical Board of Alcohol and he was also on the board of Alcoholics Anonymous in the 40s and 50s and 60s and he was a psychiatrist that worked with alcoholics drunk and sober and what they talked about in my home group was they talked about these papers that Harry Thiebault wrote, The Ego Factors and the ego factors are that sober i'm impatient i'm a queen and a baby i'm defiant i think i'm god and so i have to look at this stuff this queen and this baby you see i don't have the capacity to just be humble and be in the middle see when i don'T get my way the queen says off with your head and the baby says i'M throwing a big old fit and i swing back and forth from one to the other I am so angry, I am so incensed. Don't you know who I think I am? I have no capacity to back down, to just allow, to accept. And my mind tells me all the time that y'all are after me, that you're out to get me that this is wrong. I think that I should be treated a certain way that I shouldn't be treated with some kind of privilege. Like my ego's completely whacked out. And this is the characteristic of almost every alcoholic. This is just a characteristic it's called an infantile ego you see everybody else when we were growing up getting wasted everybody else that went on to college and then got married and got jobs and all of that stuff they learned to problem solve and work things out not me I stayed like 12 or 15 years old you know kill or be killed you're going to get in my face I'm going to take you out I'll show you a knuckle sandwich you know that's the extent of my coping skills and my solution by solution solving, you know? I mean, how am I going to get very far with that? And it doesn't look very pretty at like 40 years old in a rehab all washed out. You know, where am I going to go with this? So I needed to look inwardly. I needed to see that maybe just maybe my ego was infected with untreated alcoholism and that I actually didn't even need a drink to get mad. I'm just mad. I'm mad at everything. I don't even know why I'm mad. I'm mad because I hate myself, and I hate all you too. I hated everybody, and I couldn't remember ever not hating people. I just couldn't remember it, and the more I thought about it, I thought, God, I don't even know what love is anymore. I can't even feel a loving good thought in my heart. I was so hardened by this disease. I could see that I need to run the show, that my ideas are good, and yours aren't. Here's a counselor in a rehab trying to help me. She's got 23 years, and they'll ding, ding, ding, and whatever. She doesn't talk fast enough for me. She's not quite smart enough. Her use of the English language is a little bit skewed. She's stupid. She's so stupid. What a stupid B-I-T-C-H. That's what my mind says. Throw her away. She doesn't know anything. I don't know everything, but my mind's telling me I know something. My mind's tell me I'm smarter than this lady that's trying so hard to help me understand maybe the steps, maybe some self-discipline, maybe being kind, maybe backing down, Maybe the restraint of pen and tongue. Maybe a spiritual principle. Maybe she's trying to show me something new. I'm shut off to it. I'm godlike. I'm omnipotent. I know what's right and what's wrong, and it's about this big, and my mind can't expand. I don't have an open mind like it says in the 12 and 12 that I need to stop the debating society. It doesn't matter which came first, the chicken or the egg. All I really need is a truly open mind. You know, I look at this aspect of impatience and everything, got to go, got to go. I don't even know where I'm going to go next. You know, I'm in line. I'm waiting for something. This lady in Starbucks is an idiot. She's getting all the way to the front and then she goes, what's the difference between a venti and a grande? And I'm like, I'll show you the difference entre a venty and a grande. And I think I've gotten sober. I've gotten sober and so y'all should hurry up because it's my coffee time, you know. And I don'T have any compassion. And I can't see that there's a whole lot of other people in this world that are allowed to be in line and ask a question. My mind doesn't even know how to properly compute this, and this is how far down the scale I went. I really, my thought life is completely unmanageable. Completely, completely, completely un manageable. Now why is this so important? To me, when I look at the second half of step, first half of step one, we all know. That's the one thing we can all do perfectly. We're powerless over alcohol, don't ever have another drink. I have not had a drink in 10 and a half years, haven't even had a shot of NyQuil. Maybe once I had like a bite of tiramisu and spit the thing out. I've not had any liquor. I haven't had a Drink, but I've had a lot of thanks. A lot of them. I had thanks even this week, you know? So I look at this second half of step one dash that my life's unmanageable. it's my thought life that's unmanageable I have to see that I'm full flight from reality I have the I have to see that the calls are coming from inside the house I have to see that I am the self manufacturer of my own misery I have to see that I am the breeder of confusion not harmony that it's me it's not them that needs to change they don't need to change they don' t need to do anything my mom doesn' t even have to ever invite me to Christmas or say, I love you. She doesn't have to do anything. My daughter doesn't ever have to come back in my life. Nobody has to do everything. It's me that has to change. I have to have an understanding that my mind is warped, glass in hand, and it will never straighten out. It will never, ever, ever straighten out, so for me, the steps are not a race. They're a way of life. Theyre a way that I need to live. They re a design for living. They're a blueprint for living. You know this idea that, hey what step are you in? Oh I'm in four. Well I'm in eight. Ha ha ha. It doesn't go like that. It's not a race. There's no finishing line. There isn't a cap and a gown and now I'm done with my steps and it's all over. It says that the steps through a group of principles spiritual in their nature which you've practiced as a way of life can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole you know and bill wilson talks about working working with others and he even tells me like how to present this to whomever when i'm 12 stepping he says continue to speak of alcoholism as an illness as a fatal malady talk about the condition of the body and the mind it says it here which accompany it keep the man's attention focused mainly on my own personal experience. Explain that many are doomed who never realize their predicament. Doomed. Alcoholics Anonymous is a great idea. Who's going to do it? You know, and I have to ask myself that. Am I continuing to pray? Am I applying spiritual principles? Am i allowing the creator into my heart today? AmI expanding my spiritual life? Because if I'm not, I'm rolling backwards and maybe I'm not going to drink today, but I'll tell you, alcoholism is a subtle foe and I got a daily reprieve. And if I don't, it's contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition. And ifIi don't plug myself into a power, I'm headed for a drink. But the disease won't tell me that. It won't say I'mheaded for adrink. It'll say that person's wrong and you need to go over there and give them a piece of your mind because you're not a doormat. And it makes me sick when i feel that way it doesn't make me feel good i'm not vibrating at a high frequency i'm i'm in conflict i'm arguing with people you know the other thing that that bill says on on the next page he says um he says never talk down to the alcoholic from any moral or spiritual hilltop i'm here for my own experience. I don't know. I don'T KNOW HOW TO SAVE ANYBODY'S LIFE. I CAN'T. YOU KNOW, IT SAYS THERE'S ONE THAT HAS ALL POWER. THAT ONE IS GOD. MAY YOU FIND HIM NOW. IT SAYs THERE'S ONE ULTIMATE AUTHORITY AND IT IS A LOVING GOD. IT'S NOT IN THE SPONSOR. IT'S not in the home group. IT'S Not In Cleaning The Ashtray Or Rinsing Out The Coffee Pot. All Of Those Are Great Things. Get Involved. Get Invalved. Be a part of AA get a part of a fellowship get a part of a home group but I need to go inwardly and really look at what's wrong and learn how to seek a life of contemplation and prayer and meditation to improve my conscious contact with this power so it says simply lay out the kit of spiritual tools for his inspection show him how they worked for you offer him friendship and fellowship tell him that if he wants to it well you will do anything to help him if he does not if he's not interested in your solution if he expects you to act only as a banker for his financial difficulties or a nurse for his sprees you may have to drop him until he changes his mind this may this he may do after he gets hurt some more you see these people just like me go round and round and around and round and round I had to be so finished so completely done and I mean done I always say if you don't want to be here don't worry you won't you just won't. You know honestly I have got to find a power in my life because I lack the power to overcome these demons that live inside of my head this alcoholism that runs my life, you know, I have to become comfortable seeking out people that intimidate me. People that have something that I want. People that don't just talk a talk. People that are living a spiritual way of life. People that have really forgiven. People that have loving, adoring, healthy relationships. People that their hearts are open, their minds are open. You can tell them a crazy concept and they're willing to listen, and they don't have to interject five million opinions. I need to know what a winner is. I Need to see people that spiritually intimidate me so that I can have a reference point of what I'm even looking for, because I can't do this alone. And if church could do it alone, well, great, you know, then we'd all just go to church and be okay. So I have to understand how my disease operates. And I have to understand what the treatment is, what the application of the steps are and what they're there for. They're in a logical order form, but a spiritual principle is a spiritual principal. It's been true for a million years and it'll be true for A Million Years. And when it's applied on the inside, I'm going to view the world and feel differently about it than I did before. I'm gonna have a different reaction or response than I did before. I'm not going to be on my muscle. I'm nicht going to want to stick an ice pick through your head. I'm niet going to roll my window down and flip you off. I'm não vou ficar tudo argumentativo e louco. Então eu olho para este passo 2 e vejo que tenho de vir a acreditar que há algum tipo de poder. Você sabe, este é um programa de Deus e um programa nós, mas é um plano espiritual de ação. É realmente um programa espiritual. I gotta know what self looks like I'm so full of self and self is so dirty and infected with untreated alcoholism it says any life run on this self thing can hardly be a success we must be rid of the self or it kills us selfishness and the self centeredness we think is the root of our trouble driven by a hundred forms of fear and self delusion fear that I'm not gonna get mine that I'm not going to be treated a certain way, that I'm not going to make it. Where am I going to make it to? Like there's some red carpet or paparazzi or something. Like I got to learn how to just be still and allow the creative intelligence to work through me. You know, we talk in the prayers, my creator, I'm now willing that you should have all of me, you know, remove from me every single defective character. Or God, I offer myself, I hold self to you. Can you build with me? Could you do with me as thou will? Could you relieve me of the bondage of self so I can better serve you and Alcoholics Anonymous and be a better person in the world? We say these prayers. We say them. It says that protect me from evil, you know. Please God, be with me. Don't allow me, you know, keep me away from temptation, which means it's in my mind. It's not necessarily temptation that I want to rob a bank. It's temptation, you know, keep me away from temptation and deliver me from evil. It is all coming from inside. There is dark, dark, darkness inside of me and I need a light. I need the light of God. I needed an infinite light and an infinite intelligence that I can wire into. Everybody in this room is actually wired for enlightenment. It is an equal opportunity but we have to have a life of prayer and contemplation and meditation. So I look at step two and step three, and it says that I need to come to believe that a power can restore me. So I can't believe until I have a relationship with this power, and I start interacting with this Power. So, I ask this Power, Power, the main part of the disease centers in my mind, can you protect me from my mind? Can you help me get out of bed in the morning without a ratty head, without my mind counting the bank account or looking in the mirror and thinking I see a wrinkle or whatever, you know? Or hating on somebody that did something in 1972 and the story isn't even accurate. I've woven it so many times. And I ask this God with intention. I ask his power with my heart. I say, power, can you be with me? How much time do I have? I have no idea. Me neither. It's 10 after 9. Okay, well just wave for, I don't know, 10, 15 more minutes. Okay, so anyway, I thought we were starting at 730 and then we started at 830 or 845, whatever. It doesn't matter. So I ask this power, can you be with me? Can you help me? Can you protect me from my mind? And like Emmett Fox talks in the Sermon on the Mount, which is the book that Bill and Bob used before they compiled the big book. And Bill Wilson loved Emmett Foxt, absolutely loved him. You know, I ask his power with intention. I say, power, you've got to help me. You've gotto be withme. I ask with my heart. I'm so screwed up inside. Protect me. Give me an intuitive thought. Guide me. Let me be okay in the moment that I'm in. help me get away from the thoughts that are bombarding my mind. And because there really is a God, I start to have an interaction and I start to have experience with his power. And I get up and I'm okay. And for some reason, I'm not ashamed that I used to live in the street or that I was a prostitute or that my mother doesn't talk to me or that the world doesn't understand me. I'm Not ashamed that I missed half of my life and I think I should be somewhere else. I should have been successful or had some Oscar or I don't even know what i'm not tripping on any of that i'm okay i look outside and i'm like god i live in southern california and the weather's so unbelievable you know i love my life and for no reason at all love starts to wire up inside of me you know moral thinking what it does is it re-educates the heart and what happened to us is our hearts got so broken so so broken that i have to be around people who have morally re-educated their heart. And in the beginning, they're like, you know, let it go, live and let live. But you know what? I have got to turn into that person. I've got to be that person that says, hey man, you knows what? Let it go. Live and let live. Stay in your lane. This is not a joke, man. Stay over here and stop peeking over the fence. I used to hate that stuff. My ego would say, that's for wusses. That's for sissies. Are you kidding? This one, I got to yell at somebody. I got tell him something. All of that has to be rewired. I've got to back down. I've to at least contemplate being good. Even contemplating being good, even though I go yell at the person later, at least it was a start. It's progress, not perfection. At least I thought about it. at least i think maybe even about it afterwards and i think oh god i don't want to be this anymore i did an oopsie i did a thing again i said the wrong thing i got really mad you know and and as time goes on it gets easier and easier and eager to practice the restraint of pen and tongue to back down to allow god to be the manager for my life you know it talks about uh allowing god to speak through you with intuitive guidance. You know, what used to be a hunch or a flimsy read now turns into the working mind. And it's not the head mind, it's the heart mind. I'm trying to get away from here. This thing is infected with untreated alcoholism. It thinks it knows everything and it doesn't know anything and this didn't know nothing when it came here and now it's learning so much more and out of nowhere I feel forgiveness and I feel compassion and I don't want war and I don't want conflict you know I don't want to be right and God starts to really do for me what I couldn't do for myself look at step three and it says that I make a decision to turn my will and my thought life over to the care of this power and this decision is not just once like a third step prayer in 1973 with Huck in the Denny's parking lot, it's like my mind's hijacking me all day long. I've got to make a decision at every intersection. Here it comes again. Here it come again. Whoa, turbo, slow down, you know? Power, you've got be with me. You've got help me. And I make this decision to turn my will and my thought life over to the care of this power that I choose to call God many times throughout the day, many times backing down and allowing this God to be the manager for my life. You know, when I finally got to that place where God was a working part of my life and my mind, it was then that I actually started inventory. I didn't do a fourth step for two years. For two years, I stayed in step one, two, and three. I'm not saying this is good or bad. It doesn't matter. It's just what worked for me. It was my experience. I stayed with the format in my home group primetime, and I stayed in the foundation of steps one, two, and three, then look at the moral inventory. First of all, half the people that I would have been mad at that ripped me off and treated me bad don't even wind up on my grudge list because I can already see oh I'm the self-manufacturer of 98 percent of this and then even though I'm The Manufacturer of a lot of it it doesn't seem to go away so now the inventory process starts what the book says what really burned me up like what's still making me so mad and I start on that grudge lists and I start looking at how it affects me how it effects who I think I am and my personal relationships and people shouldn't do this and they shouldn't treat each other and families should blah, blah, bleh, blah. And all these warped ideas and on the back side of it you know what? Where am I selfish? Where am i afraid? Where am still sick and twisted? How could I be a better service? What can I do differently? You know and when I start to see that there's the new character. There's a new character that starts to really be born that I've written it down on paper and I've really looked at it And I tell it to a sponsor and to God. I say it to another human being. And I really mean, I want this stuff out of my life. My motives are pure. I want to be clean inside. That doesn't matter. That doesn'T mean I'm rendered white as snow. I look at step six and it says that I'm entirely ready to have God remove these defects of character. I wish that a fairy godmother like Glenda floated down in a bubble with a fricking wand and just went poof and I never cussed again or anything or hated. but it didn't go that way I mean being entirely ready and then having it done are two very very different things I have to pray these things out of my system over and over and again but I look at them in the inventory and I don't forget them and I know what my defects are and and I look at step seven and I humbly ask him to remove my shortcomings where I'm coming up short am I a giver? Am I patient? Am I a good listener? Am I still always interrupting people? Do I still hate? Do I still feel self-righteousness and justification? And I want God to please allow me to have the flip side of this. Help me be a lover. Help me be kind. Help me be a giver. You know, and I don't want to take up too much more of your time, but I can tell you that the steps as a way of life have changed my life. Our society puts a very big price tag on what we have on the outside and not very much of what we have on the inside, but I'm very invested in what's on the side. And I'm not very invested at all on what's on the outside, you know? And I really want to give my home group some credit because I don't take any credit. I can't take credit. I'm a not about credit. It's a we thing and it's a God thing and God gets all the credit. And the people that have been such a part of my life, you know there's so many people in my home group that are like my best friends they're you know my sponsor Valerie and and John and by the way my daughter Mackenzie she's here tonight it's 25 years old yay yeah and we've been through it all and come out the other end and thank God she doesn't have this disease and she doesn'T run around and you know drive herself crazy and you know what I don't know how she turned out so well but it's amazing that I can even stand up here and I really have no shame telling her or talking about this because I've been through it all of inventory I'm not a hooker I don'T live in the street I have a great private practice I have a beautiful job today not to brag but I take home six figures I paid for Oliver College things are okay God is good God is beyond good so so good to me you know my best friend John Sarley you know what he does so much for my home group primetime he started this website and he does all these recordings and he puts all this stuff on there it's all like for fun and for free i mean my relationship with him is so spiritually organized on so many levels i don't know how god did that i don'T KNOW HOW GOD BROUGHT SOMEBODY LIKE THAT INTO MY LIFE AND ME INTO HIS BUT I LOOK AT IT AND I JUST SEE WOW DIVINE ORDER YOU KNOW AND EVEN SPONSIES THAT REALLY AREN'T EVEN Sponsies anymore. They turn into best friends, you know? My life is rich. My life is rich and it is full because of Alcoholics Anonymous, because of AA. AA gave back to me a life beyond my wildest dreams but I suited up and I showed up and i rolled up my sleeves and i continue to go for this thing like crazy. I am not cured of alcoholism. I got a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of my spiritual condition and i gotta practice the principles in all my affairs, and if I got a bum affair that I can't practice the principles in, well, maybe I need to limit that affair. Maybe I need to back down. You know, I really hope that maybe you even stop by sometime at a primetime meeting. We've got some CDs over there. They're for fun and for free. We've got some business cards. There's a bunch of my homies over there, yay, primetime. And thank you all, and thank you, Don. Just thank you all so much for letting me come and share. Thank you. Thank you, and I don't know what to do I'm all done thank you Thank you so much, Astrid. I told her she was worth the wait. I would like to thank everyone for being here and those who have participated in this meeting. I would also like to say thank you to all of our panelists I would love to thank the Convention Committee again for the honor and privilege of leading this meeting and again for being your chair this year. And once again, a special thanks to our fantastic speaker. We'll be right back.