Bret M. – Steps 6-7 Defects – Walking Backwards Down The Steps – 2013

important yes I believe this program can work for me too and with that I've asked Luke to come up and introduce bloodhound I'm Luke I'm an alcoholic and like I said before introducing friends you know it's an honor and a privilege to be able to introduce your friends because that is a byproduct that we get from this program you know I know when I came in nobody wanted to be around me and I hated everybody because I hated myself you know today that's not the case and you know a funny story about Brett you know I was you know in three quarters when he got tomorrow and you knows like so what's your deal man you know and he's like well you know I just got kicked out of another treatment center and I was like for what he was like duster you know but you know what that shut that's just the desk the desperation that we have and the desperate need to change the way we felt you know and it's been an honor to be along his journey you know he's one of my closest and best friends I had today and you guys are definitely in for a treat for blood My name's Brett. Excuse me? Oh, we won't worry about that name at all. Different fellowship. My name is Brett. I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is September 1st, 2011. and that what you heard is my home group 12-step Titans Monday night means meeting it is the place to be on Monday night and oh god I'm freaking out right now it's okay then so this is an honor and privilege I'm glad to be up here my My objective tonight is to talk to y'all about God and how I built a relationship with Him and how He helps keep me sober today. So, I remember not that long ago, I was doing a book sale with my sponsor and a couple guys at his house, and we were talking one night about being in grade school and high school and thinking how cool we were and how we always looked at the God squad at school. Do y'all remember those guys? People that were walking around and all about going to church and carrying their Bibles with them and all that stuff, and they were just losers, right? That's what I thought it was. So what I would like y'ALL to understand is that was actually, now that I think about it, people that I hated on them because I wanted what they had. And so coming into this program, I had to find somebody who had something that I wanted and just strive for that to overcome this disease called alcoholism. So I grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, and I have a great family. My parents are still together. They're very young. and so with them being young it was a lot easier for them to like pick up on things when i was doing like bad stuff and coming home smelling like cigarettes and they'd be like brett you've been smoking no ma'am i have not are you sure yes ma'al all right go to bed you know just all these stupid little things i try and get away with all these little lies but I had a great childhood growing up went to private school first through 12th grade and I remember this is weird I haven't really talked to too many people about this before but I remember when I was about 13 before I ever took my first drink or drug I remember coming home one day and just feeling like all crazy in the head, and I think I'd been getting picked on at school or something, which happened a lot. I think it was just like an easy target or something. I'm not really sure, but I hated myself. I was not comfortable in my own skin. I came home and was crying in my room, and took a knife and put it to my chest and was wanting to kill myself when I was 14. And I didn't, by the grace of God. and something started changing from then on. I was like, well, I'm just going to push through this, get over it, go back to school tomorrow, say F you to those guys that were picking on me, try and stand up for myself or something. But then when I was 14, first drunk I ever had, I was at the beach with some of my buddies from school and it was spring break, like seventh grade. And I went over to my friend's house and his older brother was passed out upstairs from the night before. He was, like, a junior in high school. And one of his friends came over to get him up, and he wouldn't wake up, and he grabbed, like me and all my friends, and they were – he was like, hey, kids, we're taking shots. Come on. It was,like, 2 o'clock in the afternoon. I was like – okay, sure. So, like we went down, grabbed his parents' bottle of wild turkey, and he, like grabbed these Solo cups, and I was like, filled him up like this far. And he was like if you don't drink this whole thing in one go, you're a fucking pussy. And I was Like, that's like a lot. Da da da. It's like my mouth's not that big. And so I ended up tilting it back and like half of it went over my face and up my nose and it just burned and it was bad and I loved it. and I was like, oh, damn. Especially the friends that I was with, I was kind of not the cool kid that was hanging out with them, trying to hang out with the cool crowd at the beach, and I felt so a part of immediately. I was Like, I can hang with these guys. So we kept drinking, rode our bikes around the beach because we couldn't drive yet, and just wasted doing stupid stuff, and that was where it all started from there. from that point on that was when I decided whenever I have a chance if I have alcohol or cigarettes or whatever it might be just to change the way I feel, I'm going to do it make me feel better make me feeling more comfortable and so throughout high school I started drinking a lot more on weekends and after football games and smoking pot before soccer games because I played so much better when I was hot. I could focus or something, some bullshit. Didn't really have too many consequences through high school. Sure, I got caught drinking a couple times with my parents coming home. They really liked to blind themselves. They were very delusional up until the point i went to my first treatment um they just didn't want to know their kid was doing all this bad stuff and uh so i got away with a lot um first time i got in like actually i really didn't get in too much trouble then um i kind of i just kind of breezed through a lot of things like the night i graduated from high school um i went i was like wasted and came home with this guy that i was going to live with when i wentto clemson and we were like staying at my parents house we got wasted and we took the golf cart around the neighborhood and went to the pool the clubhouse or whatever and like threw every object we could find in the pool and it got caught on camera and president of the neighborhood called me the next day and was like hey Brett um we have this video these kids that we I think you might know how's like oh really yeah I can probably come down and look at the video and help you figure out who it is and uh hi what happened i started freaked out you know i didn't know what to do i knew i was gonna get in trouble i knew i was going to get caught um so i called my dad and i was like dad so-and-so just called me um i gotta tell you what i did last night and then he ended up calling him and talking to him and he was like well just clean the neighborhood on the weekends throughout the rest of the summer while you're here and I didn't clean up any trash the rest of summer you know so I just breezed through all these different consequences and one of the last okay well so alcohol played a huge role all the way through my whole story I went to Clemson for like two months got kicked out for drinking too much kept getting in trouble they kept finding it my apartment and stuff and so I came back home my parents had me on like this crazy lockdown no phone no car no nothing and I finally started doing everything I could to regain their trust everything that we do you know when whenever I got in trouble I was like begging mom and dad let me do this and I'll start doing things better you know and I'd go on these sprees like a wave and I go up and down up and down, then I do start doing really well. And then I'd fuck shit up and I go back down the bottom, I have to do it all over again, all the time. Very inconsistent, or consistently inconsistent. And so eventually, I came back home, I started getting a lot of privileges back got my truck back, started working was working for my dad. And Then I started going out a lot going the bars and at a football game, a Carolina football game. We were like pre-gaming at my house and my buddy brought like had this big bag of Adderall and I was like cool I guess I don't know I've never really taken it. I took it one time when I was in eighth grade and I got sick trying to cram for a test or something so he was like dude you can like break it down like this and get snort it and it like you know it's like doing coke but not as like intense or whatever i was like oh okay try it um so i snorted some adderall for the first time um and immediately i was like well if i can do this i can duke cocaine um oh i am a drug addict by the way i never talked about that um and i try and stick to the basis of alcoholics anonymous respect alcoholics anonymous because this program did save my life but um cocaine was a huge part in what was brought me to my knees before i went to treatment um so when i figured that out i i think that night was downtown at the bars and asked some guy named dread or something like that i don't know some crazy like homeless guy to like give me some cocaine and ended up taking it back to my friend's house snorted like half of it and i was like i'm not feeling anything my buddy tasted it and he was like dude this is like baking powder or something like that so immediately I went right back to the bars and tried to get the real shit um because I wanted that relief um I felt very I mean that was embarrassing you know I was like fuck now I look like an idiot um I need to go do the real stuff so I can be cool um yeah i'm just holding this thank you lucian um so started doing cocaine a lot um i i quit i started doing it while i was working for my dad and i started working at this bar in Columbia and one day I was just hung over and I was late to work and my dad was like bitching at me and I'm like fuck you I quit you know I was like this I'll show you so I quit my dad's job and I started working at the bar full-time which in my head was perfect not in college doing whatever I want partying all night every night drinking doing as much cocaine as it possibly could stand up five six days at a time crashing for two days and it got old really fast it worked definitely worked for a little while start spending a lot of money I started getting in real dangerous situations with other drug dealers and putting a lot of other people's lives in danger I remember one day one of my old roommates came into town for a night and we hung out and it was like six or seven o'clock in the morning we were getting back from the bars and he was like dude I need to drive back to Charleston I have a exam or something tomorrow and I was like here dude do this coke to keep you up on way home he was like okay cool he had never done it before and he ended up getting 20 miles outside of Charleston wrecking his truck on the highway spent like four nights in the ICU thank God he didn't die not that long ago but uh so a a lot of just crazy stuff going on. Towards the end, I was spending all my money on drugs. I wasn't really eating, and I quit paying my bills, started running out of electricity and water and all that stuff, and was living in this nasty house. It wasn't nasty. It was a nice house but I had made it nasty. I guess that's how you say that. Sat in my apartment one night, all my roommates had kept moving in and moving out. By myself had been asked to leave the apartment or the duplex or whatever and sat there by myself, did my last gram of cocaine and put a gun to my head and did not have the balls to pull the trigger myself it was shotgun too so I wasn't like putting the handgun in my head so I was like trying to bounce the shotgun on the floor and make it go off in my face setting I knew that could pull that trigger and off myself that easily but I guess I didn't want to actually do it myself is what I thought I was gonna know what I though I was doing and again by the grace of God saved my life and gun didn't go off and went home the next day talked to my parents moved like all my shit into their garage so hey I need to put this here for a little bit so finding a place to live and they're like or you could go this hospital place. You know, you can think about it, take your time. So I like called some friends and I was like, hey guys, I'm leaving, going to some hospital somewhere in Georgia. I don't know what's going on. And called my friends. Didn't really happen to me at the time, but I had those friends that you know were similar to who I was acting the way I was and went back inside and I was like all right fine I'll go to my parents and they're like alright let's go pack it back yeah went straight into the car drove straight to Statesboro Georgia and got down to this place did about 45 days an impatient would not admit that I was an alcoholic I did not have a drinking problem at all even though that's all I was doing all night every night all day I was just a cocaine addict and those little phase and just needed to like stop doing that and I could go back to school and get my shit together and work for my dad again and get families trust back and do all this stuff but that was not in the plans about I can't remember how long I was there for my parents came down out of nowhere one of the counselors came in was like Brett you got visitors I was like hell yes and my friends are here to get me out this mother walk into this conference room my parents were sitting there and I was like hey counselor asked my parents or he asked me what I would like to do after the inpatient. And I told him exactly what I just said about going back home, going to school, working for my dad again. And then he asked my parents and they were like oh no we think you should stay here for like a little bit longer and go to this halfway house that they have down the street. And i was like oh the place that's a year-long program that you stay here and like ride bicycles and stuff that i see. And they werelike yeah. I freaked out. I left and went back into my room broke a bunch of stuff and like had my episode and didn't really have any other options you know I was I was living on whatever my parents would provide for me because I had nothing you know so I ended up going to this place and I, this place has saved a lot of people's lives. It's a very known hospital and treatment center and I was not willing to do what was asked of me. Today I still might disagree with a couple things the way they did certain things and stuff like that but um i do believe that if i would have done what they asked and tried to do things their way um then i could i probably would have stayed sober from when i got there um but that was not the case um about 30 days into being at the halfway house me and my four roommates all of us in the same house we all went to the grocery store and bought like a ton the four locos and um got plastered played poker all night had a great time um because that was my first feeling of relief you know i felt good i was ready to get back at it and uh i had no solution at that time they talked me talked to me um in the hospital about all this stuff they took us to a speaker meeting twice a week but I had not gotten a sponsor, I had not started working the steps and I you know I just needed to feel better anything I could do to feel so I picked up the four locos. I drank two of them. I threw up orange all in the toilets and just acting like an idiot nobody found out and so when nobody found out I realized well I could probably keep doing this every now and then nobody will know so that started I drank another time like two weeks later but then after that I realized like I heard somebody say something about they can test for alcohol in your urine during our drug screens and stuff so I stopped drinking and I went with a couple guys to Walmart and bought like a couple cans of duster and uh for about six months i was huffing a can i mean who knows i mean whenever i had the opportunity whenever i wasn't in group whenever i went at a meeting picking up chips because everybody had to think i was still sober going to meetings picking up 60 days picking up 90 days chairing chair chairing meetings and sharing in meetings and just like throwing out the most bullshit of bullshit I mean I would like study like my book real quick and go to a meeting and be like oh so I read this and this is how I feel about it and I was basically just like copying what Bill Wilson was saying, you know. It was dumb and it got worse and it got heavy. Knowing about AA and knowing about the program and getting fucked up does not work very well if you're not taking action in the book. So a couple other things happened while I was there they ended up finding out obviously and I got kicked out call my parents and they were like well like had no idea what to do and they had always told me when I was down there that like this is your only chance to get sober if you fuck up and you're on your own figure it out so I called them crying freaking out asking for help and oh I forgot something. I had stopped before I got kicked out. I stopped using on September 1st 2011 when I was down there and started trying to do the right thing you know but I had a friend of mine that wanted to get some Roxy's from this guy that I worked with when I wasn't treatment down there, and the treatment center found out that I was trying to buy these Roxy and that's when all hell broke loose and they found out about everything. I got I kicked out, stayed in Statesboro for a week, living on a buddy's couch, trying to figure out what to do. My parents came down and picked me up, and that car ride from Statesboro to Atlanta was my bottom, emotionally, spiritually. I did not know what to expect. I knew that I could not keep living the life that I was living. Something had to change, and I knew that I Could Not Do It. I cried the whole four hours here in the backseat of my parents' car. My mom started crying. My dad was just pissed, I guess. I mean, I know he was upset and torn up about it, but stayed in a hotel that night, checked in tomorrow, the next morning. And then that's when miracles started happening. I found a competent sponsor. I started going to meetings. I started getting into this book, which this is the program. I... Damn, I just got sidetracked. I need to not... um got a competent sponsor and he met with me and i was willing because i knew i couldn't do things my way so i was like all right dude just tell me what to do um he got me in the book he gotme reading he gotmepraying he gotmedoingwhatwesposedtodoto keepourself sober through this program But we went through the entire 164. We went through The Steps one by one on page 18. This is what, to me, is what my sponsor should. I mean, let me just read it. but the ex-problem drinker who has found this solution who is properly armed with facts about himself can generally win the entire confidence of another alcoholic in a few hours and such an understanding until such an understanding is reached little or nothing can be accomplished so my sponsor had recovered was a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous and practiced these principles and all of his affairs and taught me how to work this program. And I'm so grateful for that, and the only way that that was possible was through God. He was patient. He was loving. He was kind, and I was not used to that. You know, I was so used to living in these crazy places, being at the bars, and everybody's fighting and drinking and doing all this crazy stuff. And it wasn't just my sponsor, but I had these friends who started coming around that were doing the deal. I looked up to these guys and they were getting on their knees. I'd walk in their room like not thinking about it and they Were like on their Knees praying at night. They were meeting with their sponsors. I'd see them at Starbucks in the book. But I'd see them on the couch right in their fourth step, and it got me motivated. And I saw already how they were changing just so early, still being in a halfway house, you know. And the biggest thing of what changed for me at this point when I got to Mar was my willingness. I had to be willing or else I would have, you know, gone to another Walmart and gotten more duster and done other dumb shit when I was at Mar. And so I read this when I Was Going Through the Book with my sponsor, and there's a solution. If you are seriously alcoholic as we were, we believe there is no middle-of-the-road solution. We were in a position where life was becoming impossible, and if we had passed into the region from which there is no return through human aid, we had but two alternatives. One was to go on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we could, and the other to accept spiritual help. This we did because we honestly wanted to and were willing to make the effort. Right there is where I knew I had to take this path because the other path was going to kill me because it was very, very close to happening last time. So I got into it and I got excited. I started seeing like a lot of guys. It was just – we moved over to three quarters and like a Lot of Us from Halfway at the same time, like eight of us I think. And like we all got really serious and we all Got into it and we were super excited about life and living and being free. and it was crazy. It was so cool. And I did everything my sponsor, well, I did as much as my sponsor told me to do as I could. I'm not perfect and I started getting in the book and going through the steps and reading and praying and getting on my knees and this consciousness of God that it talks about in the book started flowing into my heart and I could see it. You know, I'd go into these meetings and I'd hear these people share and I Could feel the power coming through their words and I knew it wasn't them talking. It was God coming straight through them into my ears, into my mind. Into my heart. And it was awesome and I started feeling it and I finished the steps and I got, I started getting comfortable and I was in three quarters still and I started getting comfortable and I was kind of wanting to start doing things my way because things were getting good you know I got a badass job you know um people at the treatment center they're like that's the highest paying job anybody's ever gotten here and I'm like hell yeah yay for me this is awesome um and I started doing I started not living on my spiritual principles that I had been taught um I started being dishonest I started lying I started sneaking down at night, started being just completely irresponsible and acting out in these old sick behaviors and treating women like shit again. And started just not being the person that I wanted to be. I got kicked out of three quarters started moved into this condo, this apartment that with a friend of mine who had gotten kicked out the same day as me, which was a great idea. And, you know, we're still on that. Oh, now we're out of treatment. You know, We're free, we can go we can stay out as way as we want, we can do this, we knew that. And I started I started spiraled downward really quickly. And I called the sponsor that I had in Statesboro, who definitely was is one still today like one of these motivators in my life. He's a badass. He and I had gotten to like my eighth step in the last like month or two that I was in Statesborough before I came up to Atlanta. Even though you know, so wasn't I was still acting out at that point? Because I had not fully recovered. And I called him and he was like Brett, what are you doing? I was like, man, I'm just having fun. Like things are good, but I feel like shit. And he was like, well, do you want to start feeling better? I was like yeah, I mean, but can I still like kind of keep doing things I'm doing and he was like not really you can't can't really do that you need to go to a meeting tomorrow and find a new sponsor because when's the last time you talked to him oh two months ago that's right you probably need to get back into it so I did I went to a meeting pretty sure the next night got a new sponsor who I still work with today and we got back into the book and so I was actually talking to Johnny about this the other night it was really cool thinking about this about the steps being actual steps you know so you're going up the steps 1 through 12 where you're going down steps 12 to 1 so what had happened when I was in three quarters I'd gotten to the twelfth step but what had happened was is I started getting comfortable and I started taking steps backwards coming down and down and the closer you get at one and two more of a chance you have to go back out and start getting fucked up again and I guess I had stopped somewhere around two or three I guess because thank God I didn't take a drink but I was really close I talked about it sat on the couch and talked about for about an hour did not get up out of that chair for some reason and so got with my sponsor and we started going back to the steps And this guy, he's in that God squad. You know, he was a badass. And I was like, all right, I can dig it, I guess. Oh, God. I'm sorry. So we got back into the book. We started getting through this. and he got me really good about a consistent basis of praying and getting on my knees and trying to meditate and spend time with God. Going back through the steps again was what I needed. I am an alcoholic, and I am powerless over drugs and alcohol and people and places and things, and I'm not in control. I have to give everything to God or else it's going to get fucked up. I can't give it to anybody in here. I can'T give it my parents. I can' t give it to my grandparents or anything like that. It's got to go to God. So he started showing me how these things work and things started changing and getting better. pretty quickly actually um so i started getting involved you know coming getting well i had a home group i went got went to titans made that my home group and started getting evolved and um started making these friends and going going out to these places and like having fun and uh if you're not having fun while you're sober then you're doing something wrong you You've got to get out there. I would be miserable. I wouldn't be standing up here. I'd be out trying to get fucked up still if I wasn't having any fun. We have a blast, my friends. We do some crazy shit, but we have a good time. It's totally different today. i spend my time a lot well right recently i've been spending a lot of time working i was super busy um but when i was when i Was still working just one job i had a lot Of time and i was working with a lot Of sponsees and getting into the book and reviewing steps and showing them My experience and how i went through them um and uh it's been that's been That's been the coolest thing ever. I can't even really explain it, but there's God there consistently through the whole thing. And getting back into the steps and staying with it is what keeps me here and connected and in the program. I'm going to backtrack like a good ways. when i was in statesboro um and i worked those first few steps with my sponsor before i came to atlanta um i remember getting it getting back into the book and uh writing my fourth step which he had to like lock me in my room and was like you're not leaving here and like till you write this and um i went to his house when i Was finished and he was like working on his car, and I was reading my four-step to him. And like eight hours later, some crazy shit, we got done, and we were sitting down at Jimmy John's eating. And he was like, Brett, I've worked with a lot of alcoholics in the last four or five years that he had been sober, and you are by far the most selfish and self-centered asshole I've ever heard And I was like, I mean, it hurt, you know. I was upset and I was terrified. I was, like, damn, dude, like this is not cool at all. Like, I'm not that bad, am I? I'm pretty nice sometimes. And that was a big kick in the ass that I needed. A lot of times I have a very hard time hearing and seeing things that I need to hear and see. And I need those kind of people around to call me out on my shit and put me in my place because my head and my ego will go sky high a lot of time still today. and so when i kept doing these these four steps with my first sponsor in atlanta with my sponsor now they were a little less harsh on me i guess you would say they were very available they listened and that was what i needed at that time so it was really cool that i had different experiences going through the steps um with these guys um so i have um i feel like a couple ways to offer it due to certain people when they come and ask me to sponsor them. And reading my fourth step and doing fifth, five, six, seven was very freeing, it was very cool. Sitting in my room for an hour was like a headache, it is really hard but I did it because i was willing to um i like probably shouldn't have done this but i smoked a cigarette in my room and i was like trying to like blow it out the windows but i was in there for an hour you know and i Was trying to stay with god as long as i could um it was really cool though it was it was definitely an experience that uh i needed um so the book talks about um the spiritual experience and what I think of a spiritual experience is like this whole change of my thinking because that's what I had in the beginning from the get-go. I have a thinking problem, another drinking problem. And so when I have this change of thinking, I can start practicing these principles that the steps have laid out for me. I can hear what somebody says and not immediately judge them. I can feel something and not immediately act out in the way that I would typically act out. You know, I can be there for people. I can listen. I can drive to like halfway to Kennesaw at 2 in the morning to pick my friends up with their broken down car. I can, you know, be there. I can help them, which is not what I'm used to doing. it's very cool it's totally different, it's not me typically I would have been like I was just called to cab or something y'all can figure it out I'll see y'al later and so practicing these principles and bringing God and these principles into my life today has provided me with more than I ever could have imagined I have the best friends ever who means so much to me. They're there for me for everything, you know? We go outside and we pray in a little circle before I come in here and I'm like shaking and shit and we spend time together. We go to meetings. We talk about God. We talk abut relationships. We talk bout everything, whatever it is that might be going on with us and they can be there for m and I can be their for them and that's never happened before. You know, I still have those couple of friends back in Columbia that I talk to on a pretty regular basis but those relationships are nothing like the ones I have today and here because of God and because of this program. Oh God, 15 more minutes. I ooh okay I wasn't I tried to avoid this but I'm going to talk about it anyways so something for me that's been going on recently that's a that's that's been a struggle that I've been freaking out about is my men's I have not done all of them I have not done many of them and it's, I'm very embarrassed to say that because that's my own selfishness and self-centeredness getting in the way but I know that if I don't complete these soon then I'm going to lose my fucking mind and I'm gonna go crazy and I'M GONNA GO BACK OUT THERE and it scares the shit out of me so what I'm sharing is what I what I need to do which I haven't done yet is call my sponsor and let him know hey bro this is what's going on can we get to work on this you know we haven't talked about it in a while and that's I say that because now every single one of y'all in here can hold me accountable to it. It's not something I can do myself, you know? Yeah, I can probably call them, but am I going to meet up with them? I don't know. Hopefully Luke and Johnny will be like, hey bro, did you meet with Brett today? Oh, my sponsor's name is Brett, which is really cool. I don'T know how y'All think about that, but I think it's pretty cool. And, you know that's what i need i need this fellowship i need this whole i need everything that's in this book to keep me sober and keep me free um it's uh it's not he it's not easy um but it's better you know um i have a hard time you know going through my days and staying focused on god and doing his will I know that his path is the right path and I know that my path will get me crazy and get me drunk so when I start seeing myself sliding off the edge and going into a ditch that's what I have these guys here for you know to call me out of my shit and put me back on the right way and get on the right path which is God speaking through them which is fucking awesome you know when I'm sitting in a room and I'm sitting in a meeting or at my house just like laying in bed and my roommate's talking to me about God knows what with anything I happen to be struggling with, and I hear a message and you know that it's God that's like one of the coolest things ever and I need that all the time, constantly and that shows me that God's always there because he's right there And there's, oh, oh God. All right, I have to keep, oh yeah. All right. I'm back on track. So another thing that's happened, that happens all the time in these rooms, which not only can my friends and meetings help me remember that God's there and that I have this disease and that i'm crazy um is there's people that die in these rooms all the time every day and it is not i'm grateful for those people that have passed away because it's god showing me that this shit will kill you um and so about or 27 days after I picked up my first year my cousin overdosed on heroin passed away he was 19 and putting this suit on for the first time in recovery was the hardest fucking thing I've ever had to do in my life. He and I did a lot of drugs together and got real fucked up together a lot of times before I started getting sober. And when I left and started going to treatment and stuff, he kept going and didn't stop, and we tried. I didn't really try and get too involved, but my family got pretty involved and tried to do everything they could. His parents asked him why he was doing this, you know, why he kept doing all these drugs and getting fucked up, and he said because I like the way it makes me feel. And this, oh God, this monster inside of us does not he wants that to happen you know he wants all of us fucking dead and to prevent that from happening we have to come in these rooms get a sponsor and go through the steps and get into this book and do what God wants us to do or else we're all going to die every single one of us, and that's not what I want, and that' not what y'all want. I had a sponsee pass away not that long ago. Same thing. That fucking heroin, y'ALL are crazy. I didn't do that shit, but... It's, I mean, not just that, though, you know, the cocaine, the alcohol, it's, I mean it's killing us one by one every day, and this shit is real and it is serious and I don't want to see anybody in here leave. I wish we could all stay sober from here on out but a lot of us, the truth is a lot if us won't. You never know. Just one step backwards will take you back out. So that's why it's very important for me today to have these reminders of God speaking through my friends and friends dying staying with God praying, staying on that path is the only thing that's going to keep me alive and sober today there was page 93 my sponsor had me copy his whole big book into my big book which is kind of cool but I have all these notes all over the place which are very helpful and I oh here it is there was a couple things in here this isn't in the book but he had me write this down this is what I kind of wanted to close with faith without works is dead for God to live in us he must live through us wisdom is being willing to put knowledge into our lives and application of principles allows our faith to carry our lives and that is something I need to write down and put on my wall and read every day I gotta have faith in God I gotta follow his will I gotta put in the work that this program asks of me to do like my amends because this shit's gonna kill me like it has many thousands of other people and I don't want that to happen and I wanna stay in this book and help other alcoholics and help be one of God's children to help carry this message and help save others' lives because that's what He wants me to do. And with that, thank you for having me. Thank you. Thank you.