Bondage of Self Is Trying to Manage What Was Never Mine to Manage – Nick S.

Let's have an AA meeting. My name is Megan, and I'm an alcoholic. Welcome to the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the Napa Club, where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells his or her story. This reading is based on a passage from page 29 of the big book Alcoholics Anonymous. Each individual in our personal story is described in their own language and from their own point of view the way they establish their relationship with God. These give a fair cross-section of our membership and clear-cut idea of what has happened in their lives. We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste. Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women in our room tonight will be listening later on aabluchipspeakers.org. Desperately in need, we'll hear our speaker, and we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that any of us shall be persuaded to say, yes, I am one of them too, I must have this thing. Tonight's speaker. Our speaker is Nick S. from the Fun of It group of the Serenity House of Beaufort. Hey guys. I'm Nick, I'm an alcoholic. This is a real honor. Thank you for this. I usually start my day off like this or anything like this, so I'm going to open this thing up with a prayer. One that's important to me and one that changed me a lot. God, I offer myself to thee to build with me and do with me as thou wilt. Relieve me from the bondage of self that I may better do thy will. Take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help with my power, thy love, and thy way of life. May I do thy will always. Man, did I not know what that prayer meant when I first said it. My God. I'll start off. I'll start off. I was born in 1986. I have a home group. I'm an alcoholic, and I have a sponsor. My sponsor has a sponsor. I sponsor them in the program. And I have a service position in my home group. My sobriety date is September 5th, 2016. Yeah, 2016. I went by pretty fast. But I'll start off. So I was born to an alcoholic mother. I don't think, I don't know if that has anything to do with me being an alcoholic. I don't. I'll tell you why I'm an alcoholic. It's because when I drink, I want another drink. More than I wanted that first one. That's it. It's not because of my mother. It's not because of anything else. It's because when I drink, I have an allergic reaction that normal people don't have. And for me, it's the only normal thing. The other part, it seems to be everything, every thought that I have when I'm doing my own thoughts, and I'm controlling my own life, will lead me to a drink. There's two parts to it. But that's it. You know? That's it. That's why I'm an alcoholic. I do a lot of things alcoholically. I don't know if, I don't know if my past had anything to do with it, but my mother was an alcoholic. We partied a lot. We're from Doraville, right outside of Liberty Heights. I don't know if y'all know where that is, but it's a pretty fun neighborhood. It's a pretty fun neighborhood to live in, and that's where I come from, and that's what we did. So Christmases were fun, until the guns and the liquor and the violence started. I mean, it was a good old redneck party. That's just where I come from, right off the Buford Highway. My mother saw something wrong with that, and she decided to move us out of there. When we were two, she met my stepdad, and he adopted both of us. Good man. Really good man. Country boy. Didn't know anything about this. Completely got hoodwinked, and for the next seven years of his life, a couple of bankruptcies later, and things like that, he finally divorced her, but childhood was, I thought it was good, until I talked to my psychiatrist a little bit, but I thought my childhood was good. It was the only one that I knew. It was normal. There was a lot of love, a lot of gifts, a couple of late night rambunctiousness. I do remember that I wasn't, they didn't spare the rod, and sometimes the rod made it to my face and my head, but that's okay. You know, that's okay. It didn't teach me the lesson that I needed to learn, I guess, apparently. Growing up, I made it through school, but I remember, there's one thought that I remember having, and I don't remember when I had this, but I looked out, maybe I was seven or eight or something, and I looked out, and I said, I didn't like them. Simultaneously, at the same time, I realized the universe revolves around me, because from my perspective, everything revolves around me. Like, this is everything, like, what I do, and what I, so I'm different, but unique, but everything kind of revolves around me, so I better watch what people, that people can see what I'm thinking, people can do, you know, a lot of insecurities started to happen, but that, that I think is, is, in my opinion, a form of alcoholism, but what I, what I had was, what I had was the beginnings of selfishness and self-centeredness. My life surrounded by manipulative. Mom got sober, and I was like, I'm going to go to school, and I'm going to go to school, and I'm going to go to school, and I'm going to go to school, and I'm going to go to school, at some point in time. I started acting up. She, she got sober. She found her way into Alcoholics Anonymous. I knew that something changed. You know, she, she went from weekends being passed out to mommy has a headache, not really being there, to suddenly she was a mommy again, and things went, things would go pretty well, and then it wouldn't go well, and then it would go well, and then it wouldn't go well, and then suddenly it was like well again, and that, that was kind of like my childhood. That was my experience with Alcoholics Anonymous, but by that time, I was, And I'll be honest with you, alcoholism is a dirty thing. People suffer, people that, the children, parents, the brothers, the sisters, anybody close to me or anybody with the alcoholic disease suffers much more than the alcoholics. We have a solution, we can drink. The children can't, and I couldn't drink. So I tried to find any other excuse, but the only thing that I could resort to was anger. Rage. And that's where I went, and depression. And so I started missing school, I started, I wasn't really the best child in school, I wasn't the smartest one I made it to about sixth grade before I was kicked out. And that's about as far as I made it. But by that time, the state of Georgia says that you can choose the parent that you live with, so I moved in with my stepdad at the age of about 12 years old. And that's about the time I found my first drink. That's about the time I found my first anything that could change the way I felt. I'll tell you, it wasn't, my first drink, it wasn't like I thought it would be. It wasn't like no walls fell. I, you know, it wasn't like the end of the world. It was actually okay. But I didn't have that. Very shortly thereafter, with my mother being an alcoholic and about two years sober in the program, Alcoholics Anonymous recognized some signs and swept me up and put me into a children's place very quickly. Let's call it Lenin's, I don't know that. It doesn't ring any bells, but it was for kids and, you know, it was fun. The first thing they did was took me out of public school. Second thing they did was told my parents they should buy me cigarettes because if I can smoke cigarettes, I won't do outside issues and I won't drink. So I just ran around the city of Atlanta for a couple of years and met some really cool people. But I still had this thing and I didn't, I don't know if you can really treat, I didn't know what alcoholism was, but I knew I wasn't my mother, you know. I knew I wasn't. So, about 15 years old, not in school, I left that weird group and then I decided that I was just going to start my career. So I started with the easiest things that you can find when you're a teenager, which definitely isn't alcohol because you need an ID for that. So I tried a couple of things and then one day I asked my brother, Joey, I said, Hey man, I really feel like crap, what should I do? He said, go get you some Old English 800 and drink it. And I said, okay. So I did that. And again, it didn't, it was a solution for all the things I was going for. But one thing I realized is, I'm going to tell you exactly what drinking did for me. It's right here in the book. When I started drinking, I knew a new freedom and I knew a new habit. I did not regret the past nor to shut the door on it. I comprehended the word serenity. I knew peace. No matter how far down the scale I had gone, I could see how my experience could benefit others. I'd sit there in the bar and I could tell you everything there was to know about everything there was to know. When I was on alcohol, it was a good solution. So all these things that drinking is bad, didn't make any sense to me. It was good. It was a very good thing for me. And I still think that. If it still worked for me, if it still did those things for me, guys, I'd still be drinking right now. Problem is, it doesn't. It doesn't. It took more and more. It doesn't. Drinking, it takes. More and more. More to achieve less and less. So there in the very beginning, a lot. And I had minimal consequences from it. And it was a lot less dangerous than some of the other stuff I was doing. So emotionally, I thought it would be a good idea to join a gang at some point in time. So that's what I did. And I started running around with some guys that were doing some things in the streets that were pretty crazy. And I'm hopping in and out of there. My parents didn't really know what was going on. By this time, my mother was sick with cancer. She had terminal cancer at this time. And she was dying somewhere. And I didn't care. I didn't care. I did. I would go there and see her. But there was no room for me to care about anything other than getting another one. By the time I was 16, 17 years old, I was using things that I shouldn't have been. And I was drinking daily. And I was a, you couldn't tell me anything. I was running around the streets. I started to get arrested. I got my first arrest when I was 17. About a week in jail. July. And then the next arrest was shoplifting and started my career off with the Gwinnett County Police, I guess you could say. And I started, you know, I started going to jail. I'd go in and out of jail. And the pattern was I'd get out. I'd go in for Christmases. I'd go in for birthdays. And I'd be out there in the summertime. And I'd go in and go out and go in and go out. And everybody was trying to help me. Everybody had something to help me. They all knew, the judges knew about where I should go. And it was here. And they would send me to a halfway house or they'd send me here. And they always knew where I was supposed to go. But as soon as I would get there, I'll tell you a story. I went into, I went to jail and I ended up going into prison. I ended up, no, to not go to prison, I went to a halfway house down in South Lapland. I didn't do anything anymore. I really didn't. I was not going to. So I went there and about a month in, I decided to sneak out the window and go across the gas station, get a drink, come back, and then go back to prison. That's what I decided. That's the way it was. Because there was no, there was nothing in my mind that told me, there was nothing in my experience that told me I was going to be okay without taking something from outside of myself and putting it to myself. It wasn't. I was not somebody who could do that. I saw y'all do that. I would come to meetings. I'd see all of you guys just happy, joyous, laughing, stuff like that. I'm like, ah, that ain't me. I have to have something inside me. So I tried medications. I went to some psychiatrist. I went to the doctor. I went to the doctor. I went to the doctor. I went to the doctor. I went to the doctor. I went to the doctor. I went to the doctor. I went to some psychiatrist, and I let him pump me full of pills and things like that because I was convinced, from my perspective, I could not survive without something, without taking something. So for a short time, medication would help, and then eventually I'd drink again. And this is the pattern. This is my pattern. I've been through the drug courts. I've been through the DUI courts. I've been through everything. And finally, finally I just gave up. I just, I just gave up and said no. I'm going to quit trying to quit. That was probably the best decision I ever made, I think, because that was the beginning of it. I lived with my dad, my stepdad, who adopted me from my mother, and I lived with him. Go to jail from his house. He would have to pick me up off the floor. I had all kinds of other people at the house that were very dangerous people. We got robbed several times, the house empty several times. There's a couple of times I messed up. I messed up with a vehicle, and a couple of Russian guys came over and waited for me to come home, but of course I couldn't come home because I was stuck in some house somewhere in Atlanta, and I didn't know where I was at. And luckily my dad stayed safe, you know, and I put my family in danger, but that was it. I loved my dad. I thought I loved my dad. If I really loved my dad, I don't think I would have put him through these things. But I didn't have a choice. The first step says we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, and our lives had become unmanageable. I think my life was unmanageable, completely unmanageable. I was unemployable. I was unhelpful. And inside, because of the things I was doing, I didn't hurt because of that. I hurt because if I didn't have a drink, it would be so intense, there's such an intense feeling inside me that I either had to relieve it, or I wanted to die. And that's where I was at, and I didn't even realize that drinking was the problem. I thought it was all these other things. I thought it was the crimes. I thought it was this. But I drank throughout it all, so I guess you could say I kind of caught alcoholism. So I'm going to fast forward. I'm going to fast forward a little bit to, um, the last time I'm, uh, I'm on the, um, I'm on bond. 32 burglaries, felts in prison, and battery forgery, uh, and, uh, a few other charges, misdemeanors. I'm on bond for a lot of stuff. I'm about to do a lot of time. And I called a buddy of mine who lives in Mexico, and I said, hey, I'm going to come out to Mexico. And he's like, okay, come out to Mexico. Come on in. I'm going to do that with my, I'm just going to, I don't know how I'm going to get to Mexico. I don't know how I'm going to get there. I don't know how I'm going to get there. I don't know how I'm going to get there. But I'm going to go on the run. I made it to, uh, I made it from Lawrenceville, Suwanee Road to about satellite before I don't remember anything. And, uh, I, I, I remember what I had bought. I remember what I had in my pocket. And when I woke up in the hospital a few days later, I didn't have any of it. So whatever happened, I just took it all alcoholically. And I remember the last thing I remember is losing a $5 bet on a shot of pool. And then I wake up in the, uh, I wake up in the jail's hospital infirmary and they said, you've been non-responsive for a week. They asked me what date it was. And I told them what date it was. And I was like, yeah, it's a week later. They asked me my name and I realized I couldn't really talk right. I'd been out for a little while, showed up non-responsive and, um, nobody would tell me why I was there. I had no idea when I was there. Uh, but I do know this, I do know that, um, I died for a little while and they brought me back. But, uh, something inside me died and I think that, um, living like that, it beat me into submission for good. I had to be humbled for just long enough. It humbled me enough. I had to be humbled by alcohol. I had to be humbled long enough for some sort of message to come in any message. And so when I'm there, they had me under some sort of observatory thing where they like to observe you just to make sure you don't, they don't really know what happened. Just when I figure out who you are. And I, I said, I need a book. Read me a book. And they brought me a book. They brought me a Star Trek book. And then they brought me another book, just happened to be somebody's testimony that suffered from the same thing that we, I've had suffer from, and I couldn't read the Star Trek book, but I read this guy's book and it just fell in line with everything that I've been doing. He had, um, he had found a, he found a way of life that involved God. And he said, if you want this way of life, we'll do some certain things. So before I even knew I was doing, I got on my knees and I prayed and I prayed and I asked God to, I just asked God to do it because if I can't die properly, then let's do something, okay. You know what I mean? Like, come on, let's do something. So I got on my knees and it was a very, very cool experience because, um, you know, I hear people have their white light experiences and things like that. Mine was a little different. I, uh, experienced, I was everybody that I had hurt and I was in pain and I was emotionally just in turmoil for days and I was like, Oh God, this is it. This sucks. So, and then finally that broke as well. And the first thing is the first thing is my first recollection of thoughts. I was like, I need to go to an AA meeting and the Bible. That was it. That was it. And I'm in jail. So how am I going to get that? So it turns out that you guys actually bring AA meetings into the jail. Who would have thought, right? So as soon as I got to a point, I put in a little request and as soon as I got to a point, I found an AA meeting and I went there and I started listening to these guys speak and I was, I was feeling good at this time because something happens for me. I get away from the drink for a little while and I really forget where I was. So I really, I can't remember. I got my forgetter is great. And all of a sudden, like I got my judgment back and I'm judging you and you don't know what to tell me. And I'm just a, I'm just a smart addict. So my sponsor, he used to say, you know, you were bulletproof. That's, that's the word that he uses. I was bulletproof. So I came into these, uh, GLA AA meetings. I'd sit there and I'd listen and I'd do that. And they started talking about these things called sponsors. Right. And I'd heard of, I've heard of a sponsor, but no way in hell was I ever going to tell somebody what I've done and sit there and actually do that. But they talked about these sponsors. And I was like, Oh my God. I've heard of a sponsor. I've heard of a sponsor. I've heard of a sponsor. And I was like, Oh my God. I've heard of a sponsor. And I was like, Oh my God. I've heard of a sponsor. And I was like, Oh my God. I've heard of a sponsor. But no way in hell was I ever going to tell somebody what I've done and sit there and actually do that. But they talked about these sponsors and they talked about the program. And my idea was also sort of sit in these meetings and through osmosis, you guys were just going to feed me and I was going to suck in the way of life and then suddenly be okay. Right. It doesn't really work that way. But, um, I remember, uh, I remember a guy telling a story about some, some, some, some crazy stuff that he had done behind the pulpit. And I was like, that's my kind of guy. I mean, just, just twisted, twisted, like students, I can't even say that's his story. But I found my sponsor that day. I said, yeah, I need a guy like that. I need a guy who really understands, who really understands what it's like to be. So I got with him and I, um, I was staying up at night. I had done some things, uh, I'd done some things before I got locked up. I'd stolen a pistol from my dad and I promise I'd never steal anything. And it was one of those things. I was never going to do. But I stole a pistol from my dad. And the plan was to take it to somebody and stuff and sell it and then come back and get it back. And it turns out the whole stuff was fake. And I just got ripped off. And it was terrible. And that was part of, that was part of the whole thing. But, um, he always asked me, he's like, did you take that gun? And he would come to visit me and he was putting money on my books and was loving me and I didn't deserve it. And I would look at him and I'd say, dad, no, I didn't. And I sat down with the guy and I said, I got, I got to tell my dad about it. He said, well, I think you should probably wait until you work some steps. Before you get to the immense part. That's what he told me. But I followed most of my suggestions for my sponsor, but this one I didn't. And I'm actually glad I wrote my dad a letter and said, Hey, look, I'm about to go away for a long time. Here's who I actually am. Here's what I've done to you. If you want to still love me after this, then great. I got to make amends to him. And then a couple of weeks later, I got a call. He had a friend. So I'm glad I did that, but that's one of the few times I don't suggest not taking your sponsorships. That's one of the few times I'm actually grateful that I did because I didn't get to make amends to my mother when she passed. I live with that every day, but I did get to, for the most part, make amends to him. But there I said, I thought that I had hit a bottom and it just got lower for me. When I got sober, it started getting worse, started getting worse. The alcoholism was catching up. The life was catching up to me. So I felt the smallest that you looked at me the wrong way. I wanted to cry. Man. You know what I mean? You had anything wrong with something I did, I was obsessing about it every day. I didn't know what obsession was, but I know where it is now and I still have that. But then you say one thing to me and I'm just like, ugh. And I had no insulation. All I had was a cell to stare at and books. So I started reading this big book and I went there and I went to this AA meeting. I went to this AA meeting in the jail and I sat down and I shared and I just started crying. I said, my dad died. I need y'all. I'm sold. What is this thing that y'all have? And the man who still sponsors me today pulled me aside and he took me through the first three steps and then he said, I want you to go back to your dorm and write an inventory and be very careful about the inventory that you write because you don't want to say anything blatantly but write an inventory and I'll be here next week and we'll do that. So it went something like this. He said, do you think you're powerless over alcohol? I said, yeah. No. Do you think your life is unmanageable? Yeah. Do you believe that a power greater than yourself could restore you to sanity? Well, I didn't have a choice. I didn't believe it. I didn't believe or not believe. I had no choice but to believe something out there other than me because I tried everything. Then he held out his hands and he got on his knees, which I thought was curious, you know, to get on your knees with a man, but we said a prayer and we said that same prayer, that third step prayer. And he didn't warn me. He didn't warn me before we said that third step prayer. He says, God, I offer myself to you to build with me and do with me as you will. That's great because all I see is the end picture, but in building and construction or anything. Everybody with logical sense or a mind understands this knows that there's a reconstruction period. You got to rip some things out first. So we said that prayer and I was in the midst of getting my whole life ripped out. Everything, which was pretty much everything that I had was just family love. God doesn't give us the blueprint. That's just the bottom line. He doesn't. I'm glad he does. He says, relieve me of my difficulties. Well, maybe that happened. Maybe it didn't. I, I, uh, I know that I know that when I went to court, they said, Nick, you're a career man. I said, no. They said, Nick, you're a career criminal. We're not going to let you off this. You're going to do your time. And I said, well, maybe, okay, I'll do my time. And they're like, what? And I was like, yeah, I'll do whatever. I said, I said, I, I, um, want to pay my debt to society, whatever it is, just give me something where I can get help. Because if I don't get help, I'm going to be back before you over and over and over again until I don't leave. And they were, I think that made, I don't know if the court system, that threw him back or not. I'd already been through every program they could put up with. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I obtained another report that did the things that I wereера, and I had an order recorded for the next three weeks of testing at the courthouse. And they said, okay, we'll work with that simultaneously at the same time. I went and did this fourth step with, um, my sponsor who is now my sponsor. They wasn't sponsoring me in jail, but it's my sponsor. Now I went and did this fourth step and I, it was the first and fourth step. It was just stuff I did that. without thousands of... evenえる... it was a third step. And I, and I, he gave his response. that I couldn't not think about, and I just listed these things, and I just told them to somebody. It was the first time I'd ever told anybody all these things in a row. Like, if you were involved with something with me, yeah, you knew some things. Or if you were over here, yeah, you may have known some things. But the way I did it, I was like, I might tell this person, this person, this person. But there was stuff I was taking to the grave, never telling anybody. And I told them this stuff, and it was a pretty cool experience. I went home, and I slept like a baby. Or I went back to my cell, and I slept like a baby. So, pretty cool experiences. Ended up going to court. They gave me a plea, and I said the same thing to the judge, and he said, okay, we'll give you rehab. So, 20-year sentence turned into 18 months. I said, I did this. I'm responsible. My co-defendants don't have anything to do with it. They don't even, they were just a group of guys that were compiled together, and I led this, and they didn't have anything to do with it. And, and, everybody, everybody got off, so it turned into 18 months in a rehab. And I remember a prayer that I said, a very scary prayer. I got on my knees, and I said, God, if you get me out of this, and you give me a little bit of success, I will turn around, and I will give it all back to you. That was a scary prayer. That was a scary thing to say. So, I went up, got out, and I said, hey, man, I've been sober for like two years now, like 18 months, almost two years now, and everything. I'm sober, right? And he's like, yeah, you're sober, but not quite. It's time to really start working the steps, and really get down. But, I need a girlfriend. So, I got out, and I went to this serenity house up here, and I was riding around, and I made it a couple weeks, and then I found me a little girlfriend, and that was really cool. And just like drinking, nothing happened. Nothing bad happened, immediately. Found me a little girlfriend. But inside, I said, me too. Okay? And so then, here I am, trying to juggle one girl from probation, and another girl from the gym that I was working at, and then, I was like, well, you know, let's just throw another one in the next year. So, here I am, trying to juggle, three girls, work the steps with my sponsor, I'm out of prison for three months, literally like, living a miracle life. I'm a manager of a gym, I don't know how this is happening. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to do this. Suddenly, out of nowhere, out of nowhere, the desire to drink. I drank. I drank. This is 90 days out, and I'm telling you, this is just how I do things. 90 days out, I drank, as soon as I drank, I was homeless again, it was terrible, and then, boom, I'm back on my way to prison. They weren't putting up with that. They were not playing with me. I was on my way back to prison. They gave me as much time as they could possibly give me. Oh, funny thing, I had an outside issue that I was playing with at the time, and I took it to the probation office with me, because if I left it anywhere, somebody might take it, and I didn't want anyone to take it, because I needed it. Right? And I, that's just, yeah, that's just the way I was. So that's how I ended up going back to prison. And I, you know, took my outside issue up there, and they found it. Somehow, these guys are good. I'm good at what they do. So, I, I sat down, and that was, that was a little bit different. I remember, I remember experiencing God in a way, at that time, which was just desperation. So, I hit another bottom, and the funny thing is, remember, I don't have any family to speak of. I mean, I've got friends. I've got y'all. You guys is who I have. I'm getting letters from members of Alcoholics Anonymous. I can call a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I can, people that visit me are members of Alcoholics Anonymous. I have no family to speak of. They've all, they're all gone. And most of them are sitting right, here, and I realized, I was like, wow, I really am in the right place. And, I talked to my sponsor. I said, you still gonna work with me? He's like, yeah. Yeah, I mean, are you gonna do that again? I was like, no. He's like, let's book. So, he wrote me, and that was, 2016, September 5th, 2016. That was my last night, my last sobriety, it was my last arrest date. And I promise you, I'm not sober, because I got arrested. I got arrested 24 times previously. If it was the consequences, I would have done it in a long time. Now, this time was different. This time, I had a big book. This is the big book, I carry with me through prison. It's got the same zone, and everything. what's funny is, I've read through this a few times now. I go through it with my sponsor, and I still have this one, because every time I read this big book, there's new words in it. Every single time. I'll do it with other guys. Every single time, there's new words in it. But I know it's not, because this went through prison with me. And I still have it. This is it. What I heard, the first time that I worked the first step, was, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, and because I'm powerless over alcohol, my life is unmanageable. That's what I heard. That's not what it says. What it says, is I admitted I'm powerless over alcohol, dash, my life had become unmanageable. I now understand that my life is unmanageable, because I try to manage it. I try to manage my alcoholism. I try to manage my life. I try to manage my relationships. I try to manage my preferences. I try to manage everything. It's unmanageable because of me. And I'm also powerless over alcoholism. That just happens to be a side note. But if this thing was about not drinking, then I would have been better a long time ago. Second part, we came to believe that if our greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Sanity, I didn't know that I didn't have sanity. It was the only normal way of life for me. Matter of fact, the only way that I don't know I have, the only way that I know that I'm acting insane is if one of y'all, from your perspective, says, hey dude, it's pretty insane that you're, you know, kind of like, leave your job and go to work. Go to Guatemala for a couple of months. You know what I mean? It's insane. Like, your thinking is insane. So I like to bounce my thinking off of you guys. I like to bounce my thinking off other people. And making that decision to turn our will and our lives over to God as we understood Him, I still don't understand God. I think that's a trick. Bill W. is crazy. We don't, I misunderstand God. I don't understand God. And I never, I never ever will. It's just not even on the right plane. But I did make a decision, out of desperation, to turn my will and my life over to God. When I, in 2018, I started doing a fourth step, and we did it with columns. We did it with columns this time. I went left. I, I did a five column inventory, and I did the people. And I did the reasons, and I did the bottom line, or the instinct, and then I did my part, which I don't really like my part. And then I did, and then I did the defect, the defects, which, who would have thought? It was connected, right? So now there's defects associated with this thing. And I remember, I was, I was out again, and it almost happened again, y'all. I was in the middle of my inventory, and I got busy, I got busy with work. I got busy with life, and things like that. And I'm in the middle of having an inventory, and I, I saw that I'm going crazy, and I'm going crazy. And I remember, I had a friend that was doing an inventory with me, and that's cool, because we can do things like that. And I had a friend who was doing an inventory with me, and he said, let's go talk to Todd. Todd's big. Todd's rough. Todd's like, hey man, I'm Todd. And I'm like, Todd, I'm going crazy. He's like, what are you doing? He's like, I'm in the middle of my inventory. He's like, well, why don't you finish with it? And I said, you're going to give me $200. If you don't finish your inventory, I was like, yeah, yeah, I'm going to do that. So he motivated me to finish it. Didn't relapse. You know, Todd has my back, man. And then I come to Todd, I said, Todd, man, I got my inventory. All the people I have a resistance with are on paper. He's like, what about the other three inventories? And conveniently forgot about that part. I don't know if y'all have ever written an inventory before. There's four of them. You guys are crazy. Why don't y'all do that to us? That's what I was thinking, but surely I did the sex inventory, which was not as spectacular as I thought it would be. I did the, you know, harm, harms to others inventory. And I did, you know, I did a fear inventory, which I'm still curious as to how that works. But we did that. And I did the inventory with my sponsor. And that's the first time I really experienced freedom. I got from that what I wanted out of drinking. Reading this to my sponsor, I got free. That's the first time I'd ever felt free. That's the first time I'd ever felt free. That's the first time I'd ever felt free. That's the first time that thing in my gut had ever been released without taking a drink. That's it. And that's what I did. So, then we got to learn about defects. And defects are a fun thing because it turns out that, yeah, I mean, sponsors get to beat us up for a little while, but it turns out that there's an opposite part to the defect. There's an antinode. So, if I'm acting on a defect, it's just the positive part of me that I'm selfishly doing. And I get to pray that stuff in. And I get to actually learn that I'm actually a good person, a child of God, and people love me, and all these, these beautiful things, and I'm actually in a place where the static is gone, where I can believe it. And then I started making some amends. And the amends, the amends is where the magic really started to happen. I remember, I never really understood what the financial part of those promises was until I made a financial amend, and it took every cent that I had. I had about $2,000, and I said, well, that's a lot of money. And I just started investing, and I took, you know, I made a financial amend to a creditor, and I called my sponsor. I said, can you believe this is BS? These guys, this is a hospital bill from 10 years ago, and I took an amends. He's like, my records were in the past. And I was like, okay. So I took, I got some money orders. I took it down there. I handed them the money orders and said, this is all I got. They said, we'll take it. Of course they would, because it was their money. Who would have thought that they just wanted their money? But I walked out of there feeling pleased as a bird. I made some other amends to family members. Some didn't work out too well. Some went, some went really well, and I just continued on the steps. And then, I'll tell you, there's a couple of things that, uh, that happened that I could really harp on, but, um, after I finished working the steps, it really just wasn't that hard. It wasn't what I thought it would be. I met a girl, I met a girl in AA. The type of girl that fell as the type of girl that you say, I'm going to become the type of man a woman like that is looking for. What I was going to do, I was going to, I was going to be the type of man she was looking for, and it turns out she was, um, an alcoholic as well, so, and maybe a little bit of hell in her. So, I married her, and we're now married, and we have one child. The child was tough. So, things went really smooth for a while. I had some sponsees, we're working the steps, I'm doing good in career, and then, we got pregnant. Things started going wrong in the pregnancy. This was scary. I've made a jumping career, I'm a commission-based salesman. And, what I'm doing now is, I'm going, and I'm, I'm going to make sales to support my family, because I might not win. There's nobody saying, oh, you're going to get this paycheck no matter what. If I don't, if I don't progress, I don't, I don't eat. So, Cassidy, um, we, we got, uh, we got pregnant, and the child stopped growing, and they put my wife in the hospital, and I'm out here in my first year trying to sell this service that I just really care about, and I'm telling you, this brought me to my knees. And again, I was surrounded by Alcoholics Anonymous. I was loved through this. I was held, I was cared through this. And I thought, I felt so alone. I felt so crazy. You know, we were, we were pretty sure we were going to lose the baby. We didn't know what was going on. But, um, one day, uh, somehow I stayed positive. I, I had peace. This, I had never prayed this hard. I had never done this. And this is, this is how, when I say I don't understand God, He gave me this to develop a relationship with Him that was beyond anything that I could possibly think. Because I prayed harder, I, I had more experiences, and I, I stayed on my knees until I couldn't get up again. And I went out there and somehow, I was successful. And I went out there and I was somehow able to be a husband and, and, and I was able to take care of my wife and I was able to do all this. I would, I would cry on the way to my sales meetings. I would cry on the way back. But I did it, man. And I did it without drinking. And, that was impossible. And so, she's in the hospital, my wife is in the hospital and then suddenly, um, suddenly I get a phone call and she's like, hey, everything's good. And I relay, no, no, no, it's coming. Emergency cesarean. I take off and it's the only, only time in my life on this road that two cars are driving the speed limit side by side because I live on a speedy road. And I'm like getting there like, ah, I get in the hospital like, look, there's dad, it's in the middle of COVID and here we are. I go running in there and they're like, hey, there's dad, they throw me some scrubs, I take the foot cover, I put it on my head and I put everything wrong but I'm, I'm here, man. I'm showing up, I'm showing up for life. This is my family, man. And I'm like, let's do this. Like, we're gonna make it, she's here. And we get in there and they're laughing at me because I have all the stuff and they help me get my scrubs right and it's in the middle of COVID and I thank God for this because there's nobody in the operation room. Nobody. No guests, no nothing. And I remember sitting down and just, it was silence. And everything slowed down and I said, all right, God, let me be your best. And it was silence and I felt this peace experience. I felt this peace come over me and I sat there for the 30 minutes which should have been nerve-wracking but I made a few texts, called a few people, and just sat there in silence. And I went in there and we had a baby. They cut her on out. We had a baby and the baby cried. She went, bah! So I was like, cool, she's alive. Good. Thank you. So we had a baby and she spent a little bit of time in the NICU which was a huge relief because that way we knew that she was taken care of and we got her home. She was on oxygen for a while. She was on a feeding tube for a while and we got her off the feeding tube and she took her first steps each or something. So, yeah. We got through that. And she's my little heart, my little joy. And we're just a normal little family here. Then, this is going on. My second year as a commission salesman for this company, I get a phone call. I get a text from somebody and it's, remember my mother was an alcoholic and I hated my mother. And I get a call from one of her best friends that was in the program with her. Her name's Linda. And Linda calls and she says, hey, I'm looking for the type of service that you provide. And I was like, wait, are you Linda? And she's like, yeah, are you Nick? Oh my God, I thought you were dead. Oh, ha, ha, ha. Cool stuff. she was her mom. Like when, you know, when we get sober sometimes we make a friend and sometimes that friend stays with us and we all stay together. It's like our bestie and like we do life together in this program and that's like what happens in this program. Like we have friends and it's like a closer relationship than a brother or sister. This was like to my mom. I grew up with this lady. I grew up with her son. Like we were family, right? 20 years later, like last year, she gets in touch with us and she says, and she says, hey, yeah, I'd like to like meet you and talk to you and see what's going on. So I went to meet her. Well, my mother was dying. She was dying and she, my perspective was she was just into religion and cool, good for her, but she decided, she asked me to make a video, a movie with her before she passed and she wanted me to show it to her family and wanted me to have something to remember her by. She just made a video and she put it on her CD and then died a few months later and the one video was her talking and the other video was us talking and her telling me that she wasn't, the chemo wasn't working and she was going to, she wasn't going to make it. It was a video of that and I was 17. I couldn't really understand it. Well, it turns out this Linda had kept this video all these years. I hadn't heard my mother's voice in 17 years and so I went over to visit her and I asked her if she had it. She said, yeah, I'll find it and she found it. She gave it to me and, you know, this is how powerful my perception of the past was at the time. I looked at it and I couldn't bring myself to watch it. I couldn't bring myself to watch it so I went to this men's retreat at Rock Eagle and I sat there and I did the work. I did the work that was necessary and I sat with my sponsor. I don't know what work we did but whatever it was, it worked. I don't know, it worked and I cried and I was like, I can't do this and I found out this and this and this and I found out that, I found out that I had a sense of my past and, I hated my mother for being exactly what I was. When I came right back, they had a get together and it was all these members of this program. I thought I was trudging the road all by myself, all alone. It was all these members of the program talking to me about women that my mother had sponsored. Women who had had experiences because of this. I mean, I'm talking like, I would not have been able to handle this at one or two or three years of work. You know, I was barely able to handle that day. I'm just in awe because I'm talking to all these people and they're telling me who my mother was and it's completely contradictory to who I thought she was and who I saw and who I felt and who I hated. And it broke. It broke that day. So, because of this program, I was completely able to rewrite my past. Completely able to rewrite my relationship with my mother and I can look back at a woman I'm proud of. You know, they told me stories about how like, and I know, I know it's probably nothing but she, this one lady, she was telling me a story, she was like, yeah, I was getting a divorce and your mom would drive by to God's house and I was like, I would take the pictures of the fits and he wasn't paying child support. I'm like, that's my mom. That's my mom, man. Yeah, she would do something like that. I had no idea she had touched these people and these people are still touched by her. And so, so I found out by God that I don't understand. I'm just walking in her footsteps. I'm just following her lead. She trudged around. I just showed up. And so I went home and I got to watch the movie and I got to hear my mother's voice for the first time and I got to hear it in 17 years. And man, I'll tell you what, she is country. I had no idea. Mom was a country bumpy, I'm telling you. But a beautiful woman and I wish I could play it for you guys. If you heard her just grace and what she was saying, she's dying and she's like, I'm not scared of death. I'm scared of what's going to happen to my children. You could hear it. Like some people say I'm not scared of death. Like, I'm not scared. That was me. I'm not scared. I'm not scared. I'm terrified. Don't shoot me, please. She was like, I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid. I'm not afraid because of my relationship with God. And it started with a cross on. She's not afraid of where she's going. She's just not. She wasn't going to live like that. She was completely accepted. If there ever was such a thing as a miracle, that by making this decision to hold this dude's hands in a jail cell and say, which I thought was super awkward, and say the third step prayer would lead me to hear my mother's voice again because there's only one CD 17 years later that's a God that I don't understand. You know? And throughout all this, do not need a drink at all. Think about it. I'm like, eh, I take it later. I'm the dude who goes and spends six or eight days in the war and they say, you can never drink again. Your livers are shutting down and your kidneys are shutting down because you take all this weird mental health medication and drink on top of it and you're going to die if you do it anymore. I'm like, yeah, I'm never going to drink again. I'm never going to do it. And then as soon as I get home, I go to the store to get me some more alcohol. I'm that guy. I'm that guy because it makes sense to me. I've got to drink. And I no longer have the desire to drink. My desire today is to surrender. My desire today is to do this. And when I took those first three steps, something happened. I didn't do this. Those first three steps, believing that my life is unmanageable and that I need a power greater than myself to manage it and actually taking the decision and taking action to put my life in the hands of something that's other than myself was the transformative power. That is all I got. Guys, thank you so much. Thank you, Nick. That was excellent. My name is Gary. I'm an alcoholic. We have a chip system here for the high cost of low living. We have a white chip. Would anyone like to join our way of life or come back for making your story more legendary than it already was? We've got 30 days that anybody is proud of. We've got 60 days. We've got a red chip that used to be the color of my eyes. Nobody? Okay, no takers there. We've got the sunshine chip for six months. We've got the kudzu chip. The vines of the program are growing on you after nine months. No takers there and then so let me see. Do we have any birthdays? We have a birthday over here. Hey, I'm Adam. I'm an alcoholic. And I have the pleasure of giving my sponsor a chip. Tim has been my sponsor for the last 20 months. He taught me how to pray. He taught me how to work the steps. Every time I call he has answered. He's helped me learn how to do this thing and I think most recently I've had the blessing of working with my first sponsor and that's given me because I'm working step one with him that's given me a newfound appreciation for the example that Tim set for me is I'm kind of a you know reviewing old lists and that sort of thing and Tim's helping me do that you know like everything else and so I'm so grateful to be able to give Tim his chip tonight. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Tim. I'm an alcoholic who's 16 years. My sponsor Tim Moore. I owe it all to him. Of course he always says the exact same thing about me. It's worked out for us. You know this sponsor sponsorship relationship. The way it happened is my sister Pam who's sitting right there with the blonde hair beautiful lady here. She had come by I was living in her house up in Gainesville hiding out on the lake. She comes by and says how you doing? I said not good. She goes what's wrong? I said I can't stop drinking. They would have been an intervention the year before and I was a worse drinker than the person in the family that went to Richie. I figured they were coming after me so I just white knuckled it. I didn't drink for like 14 months. But then when I gave myself permission I don't really want to drink so maybe I can take a drink. I started romancing it and I put a date out there and I went and treated myself to a dinner and a glass of wine and drank like a gentleman. Next week I'm all I thought about was when was the next time I'm going to have a drink and I did the same thing and boy I felt terrible after that second one and I just went to the liquor store in like three days and it was on and it was like four months of drinking and hiding and sneaking and blacking out everywhere and she just showed up at the perfect time and asked me how I was doing and I just was honest. And so for some reason I had a desire to stop drinking. I'd never gone to AA and she said I know exactly what we're going to do and I discovered that I had a desire to go to AA. Somewhere along that long ride from Gainesville to here and we show up to a speaker meeting and this guy is telling his story I recognize him after he says if you don't drink you're going to die and he went to Sandy Springs High School I went to Sandy Springs High School he went to the tree house I was his bootlegger and dope dealer and his big sister was my girlfriend and he and his little buddies financed my romance in high school and he's standing here sober I couldn't believe it I could not believe it when they offered the white chip said this is God putting me right here right now I better pick up that chip and I picked it up and I felt something powerful and then Tim Moore gives a big book for us he said when you get home get on your knees and ask your higher power for a straight night to drink tonight I think I said something like well I've been trying to pray man I've been praying it just don't work he said just try keep it simple with a higher power and so I did and then I crawled in bed with that that big book and I read a couple of sentences and for the first time in months I fell asleep and I slept all that night I didn't have cotton mouth when I woke up I was sober I wasn't sober but I hadn't had a drink that day and that was my first I was working on my first 24 hours thank God this was my spiritual kindergarten they said just concentrate on the meetings just go to the meetings and I did that for as long as I possibly could they gave me enough rope they said now it's time to get a job start paying some bills kicking in and all that stuff and it's been working out but Tim took me to see my great great grand sponsor Papa Bill up at 8111 and I show up and there's this real saintly guy sitting there he just was a glow and he meets me and he says well your name's Tim his name's Tim maybe it'll work out for you are you happy joyous and free and I said not yet but I want to be and he said I bet you you keep working with this guy and you will and when I left I had a desire to work the steps and I really wanted to work the steps I think that was the turning point because this Papa Bill I thought I was 53 I thought I was I was 53 I thought my life was over and then I hear that Papa Bill gets his first white chip when he was 63 and he lived till he was over 90 and sponsored hundreds of guys I was fortunate to be part of that lineage and so I wanted to work the steps and today thanks to people like Adam who used to do the deal and my friend Tinsley who was telling his story with the first month I was here and I knew this program was for me if he could do it I could do it happy joys and free and thank you Nate what a great story man I got God bumps while you were talking it was a spiritual experience thank you first dreams to me under town can't put the box something to take the edge