Charlie P. on the Hunger of the Ego and the Trap of Mental Obsession

thanks so much Ross I appreciate that and thank you all for uh for asking me to speak and to be here my name is Charlie I'm a recovered alcoholic um man what a cool deal I that that was a really nice introduction um it was a nice conversation we had and uh and it's a gift to be able to go and be with family who um you know didn't like the the person that I used to be didn't like the person that I thought I was. To be free of that is just, I don't have words for it sometimes. It just hits me like a ton of bricks. Anyway, I live up here in Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. I got sober here. My home group here is A Design for Living. We meet Thursday nights. If you're ever in town, please come by 8 p.m. over at 21 Buell. We read the big book, doctor's opinion through the first 164, the fourth edition. Uh, we just read that, you know, year round. Um, and, and for me, I, I I've really become accustomed to that. I love that. I love, I love the text. Um it's changed my life in so many ways and, and really the current experience I'm having in that group is, is profound. Um you know we we're a lively group there's lots of young people of all different backgrounds um it is a thriving fellowship in that room people share about the solution uh to alcoholism the current experiences they're having within the 12 steps and uh and i get fired up to be there i get firing up just on thursday afternoon getting out of work and doing the things i need to do to then go and be a service at this group um you know he went from you know having a few people show up every night. So all of a sudden we've got young people getting and staying sober, working the 12 steps, sponsoring other people. We have cookies, coffee. Now we got more big books than we know what to do with. Uh, we keep trying to buy more and give them away. Um, it is just a profound new experience I'm having with Alcoholics Anonymous and, and, uh, and it's all due to the program of recovery. So, um, I'm really grateful for that group. Um... A little bit about me. I grew up in Western Massachusetts, where Ross mentioned I was headed down to to see family. I was born in Seattle, Washington, and then we moved to Northampton, Massachusetts when I was about seven years old, and I was pretty heartbroken. Nobody liked the Seattle Mariners. Nobody liked Seattle Seahawks. I, I was that guy from Seattle. Nobody from Western Massachusetts really knew anybody from the Northwest, and that kind of became my identity when I think back, and I was just actually talking to my family about, about this. I still have this like small Joey Cora t-shirt that I used to wear all the time when I was seven, eight years old to school and you know, this, this, this Seattle Mariners shirt and, and no kids didn't want to hear it. You know, they were, it was Patriots land, Red Sox land. You know? That's to me, the first, the first thing I can remember in my life where I felt separate from, from others, from other kids. It was the sports, it wasn't, the new move it was the new school um so quickly i kind of went and found a group of kids who like to laugh in class act out um you know i didn't grow up with any kind of religious background or religious leanings neither my parents practiced religion at least as far as i was aware they had just kind of given up catholicism and their protestantism back when they were you know younger in the 60s and 70s and i went to a lot of bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvas uh way more than church services um but i definitely did not feel connected to a power there um i just was fascinated by the hebrew and uh and the community that people seem to have i can remember that you know everyone knew each other the food was really good it was a fun time but i still wasn't you know i wasn't part of that i just wasn't raised jewish so i wasn t part of that group and i always kind of you know i i drifted as i got older toward community um i didn't have a big family growing up like i mentioned we weren't religious at all but um you know I wanted to be around kids I wanted be around people um and and the first way I figured out how to do that was to just get attention you know and and I was I was i heard this on a a speaker one time say that he was he was hitting the crack pipe of approval before you ever took a drink that's me I wanted approval from you I wanted approval from other kids I wanted the teachers to look at me I needed my parents to notice me and I had a younger brother we had very different childhood experiences growing up you know I think we both felt very separate and a part of you know away from from other children but by the time I was 12 years old I smoked weed and drank first time I drank it was you know, naturalized 40 ounce, ounce malt liquor. And I just remember getting really wasted and running around and don't have many memories of it. The second time though, or the third time, something like that, we stole, stole some alcohol from my family, my friend's family's cabinets. And that was when it clicked. You know, this, this friend of mine, quote, friend of mind who I, you know, I had, I wanted to fit in with, you know, the reason I was acting out and getting into trouble anyway, it was, I just wanted to fit in and be cool and be, be accepted. You know, th the friend of mine, it Was like all of a sudden, like we were just laughing and getting along in a way we never had before. You know, instead of being the, being the older brother playing the video games, I was sitting watching someone else play video games. Like my world felt like it had, it had just solved itself in a way. I woke up the next day and, you know, I didn't go a week or even a few days for the next however many years without thinking about alcohol. That was it until I came into the rooms this time and had a new experience. And the experience I had was my parents divorced when I was 14 years old. And that didn't seem to bother me. It didn't faze me. I had my solution. It was to go and drink and get high with my friends after school, not do my homework and just laugh with them. And, you know, despite all the bad grades I got and the trouble we got into, you Know, the laughter and the fellowship and the connection that I felt when I drank with them or, you know, it was something that I couldn't get anywhere else or I didn't feel like I could get anywhere else. And there is no thought of the consequences, you know, to me, my world already at that age, 14, 15, you Know, I had traded in one set of ideals for another, I'd had an experience with alcohol that felt spiritual at times, I felt like I was making conscious contact with other humans, other teenage kids, I feel free. My views on authority changed rapidly. I didn't want to listen to other people. And I thought I knew more than anybody. Um, and the fear I had growing up melted away every time I drank. So for me, it was, um, it solved everything. Um, when I used to look back on my teenage years, I mean, I thought i had a great time middle school was pretty fun. And, you know, puberty or the awkward years of whatever like I felt that I just got through it because of booze. Like, you know, I thought about it all day at school. I got a job dishwashing when I was 15 so that I could be around people who drank and partied and they could get me alcohol. I wanted to make money to get a car so I could drive and go buy it in the town over where they'd sell it to me. I could get to the packy, you know, quick. He could run in and get it for me. Like everything just kind of centered around partying and being the center of the kind of the center of the party, but really the center of how I was going to drink with other people. Like we were going to be this fun thing. It became just kind of like the identity that I had with someone who drank. And along with that though you know, I had friends who did drugs and drank and we got into trouble, but pretty quickly on you know they were asking me to drink less and I wasn't the one asking them to drink glass. They were asking Me to drink last, you know like hey maybe you shouldn't be you know this drunk if you're going to drive your car um you know we're supposed to go hang out with these kids like you know you should drink less like last time you got a little bit out of hand and in my view at that time when I think back like now I didn't see anything wrong with it um but I deep down knew that I that it affected me differently than them you know I was always talking about I always wanted to go get more of it um I wanted to drink before class um I wanted to just always have it around, always have it on me in my car at home. Um, I love talking about it. Um, and so even when, you know, we, we were growing up and I'd be with my friends, like I would always be thinking about where's that next, you know, 40 ounce going to come from? Where's the next, whatever Rubinoff vodka pint or how are we going to get it later? Like I'm thinking about Saturday and it's Monday afternoon, um, and I'm, you know, falling asleep in my chemistry class. And, you know, at that point, my parents, I think, you know, they wanted the best for me, but they kind of just I don't know, they may have resigned or they were dealing with their own stuff and felt bad about the divorce. But I just kind of had free reign to kind of run around and get in a lot of trouble. And I caused a lot of harm doing that. I was relying on me, myself, the only thing in life that I'd relied on up to that point, really. And alcohol, which I worshipped at that time, I really looked at it as like, you know, everything that mattered in the world came from that. And all the experiences I had the firsts, you Know, the first, whatever kiss first drive first anything first, it all happened because of a booze, like it all happened because Of, you know, my effort to go and get liquor to make things happen. And so the delusion that I fell under through those years was that I was running the show, I was in control. And that my reality was something that wasn't real. Like I lived in a delusion. And I had friends who had, you know, suffered the consequences more than I, I decided I needed to get out of Western Mass and go to the Pacific Northwest. Because my dad was living out there at the time, and I wanted to go to school out there, I saw friends of mine getting into all sorts of harder drugs than that I was, you know, going to get into. And despite being completely out of control, abusing whatever came in front of me, you know, alcohol was number one always was. And so I felt I was really just going to crash and burn. So I tried to use my my first big geographic cure and went out there and, you know to basically no one's surprise. I just was I drank every day all day I became my the progression of my alcoholism became so strong that, you Know, I was getting arrested and making a fool of myself and really harming others and just sticking out like a sore thumb on this very small kind of hippie Northwest campus up in Olympia, Washington. So much so that the Thurston County courts and the school said you need to go to outpatient if you want to stay and you got to go to Alcoholics Anonymous. And so I did. I felt at that point at 18, I was pretty much done. I knew that this thing that I thought was my life really was hurting me and hurting other people around me um and so i went to alcoholics anonymous and i remember i did get a sponsor um but the things that stuck out to me the most at the time was just how you know how much older everyone seemed and how many more consequences they'd face because of their alcoholism um i remember getting in the car with a guy you know he gets he puts me in his big f-350 and we're driving away and it's like a brand new truck and i'm like damn you know this guy's an alcoholic but he has you know, all this money and he's driving away and we're both talking to each other. We both have probably 30 days, 40 days. And he's saying, did you hear that guy in there? He said he never blacks out when he drinks. Um, and he, and then he's looking at me, he's like, I could never stop once I started. So am I not an alcoholic? And I said, yeah, I don't know. You have a nice truck. Like, you know? You probably aren't. And she's like boy, you know, I keep driving and blacking out and picking my kids up. You know, I, I feel like, you know I need to figure this out I was like yeah you probably do but we both kind of agree that like you know what we were hearing in these meetings didn't really apply to us like we you know I whether I heard good qualification about what it means to be an alcoholic or not um I was not resigned to this idea that I was lacking choice in in the matter of of drinking I still thought that even if I start and I can't control it like I will choose when I'm going to stop. I will choose when I'm going to start again. Um, and I felt that I, I lacked power in one part of it, but I had power in these other parts. And I had a sponsor and we got up and I had reservations. I couldn't honestly, um, turn my life over to the care of God. I, I couldn'T honestly see that I related to the people in the rooms. Um... You know, no matter how many Alano Club meetings I went to or, um... How many late night meetings I went to I mean it was great there was a 24-hour coffee shop in town and and we would stay up and talk and smoke cigarettes and um you know I just heard a lot of stuff that I just couldn't grasp onto um and I didn't I don't I Don't recall really ever going to a big book meeting I remember I went to one men's meeting and they kind of siphoned off people to the side who had like 50 plus years and I wondered why I couldn't go talk to the guys with 50 or 60 years you know they were in this other meeting that, that was going on at the same time, this huge other men's meeting. And why can't I go talk to the guys who seem to, you know, have it figured out? So like the book says, like Fred story exactly like Fred's story all of a sudden there was a cloudy day. It was my birthday that summer and not a cloud on the horizon, just sunny day. Sorry, I might've said cloudy day. It was this beautiful sunny day and thought crossed my mind that I'm going to drink this steel reserve to 1140 ounce at 10 in the morning. And, you know, my life hadn't grown spiritually whatsoever. And the thought crossed my mind. And from then on, for another seven years, I could not put more than a few days together at a time. And it was hell, to be totally honest, I won't go into the full details of it. Um, but it basically consisted of me, um, doing what it talks about a great passage that I always forget about writing into action in the early parts, right. When it's talking about step five, um... It talks about the actor and the demoralization coming from the drinking and the black on waking up and wondering, you know, who saw me do this? Who saw that? Um... And-and really trying to put my life together externally, patch it together in a way that looked good. You know, get through college, you know, you're going to have a car, you'll get through that, try to keep relationships, try to have friendships and just hide it from everybody. And I was dying inside those years. I tried therapy. I sat there with a counselor when I was in school and he really wanted to work with me. He picked me out of the rest of all the kids to work with. The one guy he could work with for the rest OF the semester for free. And we went at it. We went at my depression and my anxiety and, wow, it's because you're drinking so much that this isn't going to happen. You're going to stay depressed and anxious. You got to drink less. He even had a PhD guy come in and also sit in some of the sessions. And we went at it. We looked at my stuff from up and down every side of it. I did not have the power to stop. I didn't have the ability to do anything. I was like, I did have the delusion I was living in was that one day I would just wake up and have that power. um i was obsessed with beating the game it became um a complete nightmare uh and i went through various stages of trying to control it at one point i bought a bunch of yeast because i read the founder of sam adams um could drink a lot at these events and beer fest because he would eat yeast and it would absorb the alcohol and he would just so i you know i saw because i knew deep down that i couldn't control this thing um but i really had this still delusional this delusinal thought that I was going to choose when, when, and when not to do it. Um, and there was a moment there. I did get a DUI from, from the progression of this thing. And I went on a trip to Europe. I had this trip lined up. I had a scholarship for it. I'd worked hard to get good grades at this different school and they were going to get me over to Europe and I was going to go on this trip and I end up just really wrecking myself, um, spiritually, emotionally, mentally um and I get over there and I'll never forget it I went to uh St. Peter's Basilica had never been in a place like that before in my life and I didn't know what it was I just thought it was going to be kind of this beautiful place like you know there's going to Beard painting or two um and i walked in and i immediately felt the presence of something greater than me immediately um but without having any tools to tap into that power i remember going to this side room um i think it was the church of the holy sacrament something like that this beautiful ornate just powerful room um and I got quiet and I was sober and it was um you know it was one of the only times I was able to really do something like this and all I could do was sob I just started crying um I didn't know why but all that I could do was just feel just complete and utter defeat um and you know that feeling didn't last I went back to my old ways. And, and I'm, I had to just I had to move again, I had to change relationships, I did, I had to lose the car to lose the license, I had to move and try different things out with it with the drinking. And what happened was, I moved to Vermont to live with my brother, I moved into his downstairs basement apartment. He was in college, I moved into this onto this futon and this basement with silverfish and spiders and with a suitcase, you know, my delusion was that I was killing it at life I was crushing it I was I was gonna I was going to beat this thing I was back in New England you know it was the climate it was The Grey Skies it was uh it was whatever the old relationships the old haunts um just the awful places that I would go to drink you know I was away from that I'd figure this thing out and um and and alcohol really brought me to my knees and and I'm grateful for that because it gave me a very powerful step one experience where I had nowhere else to go. And, and what happened was I don't have a story of fireworks and anything crazy. I mean, it did happen on the 4th of July. That was the last time I drank and I got sober July 5th and I haven't had a drink since then. Thank, thanks to my higher power God. What happened was, I humiliated someone who loved me. I was that person again, that out of control Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde character who took things beyond comprehension. People couldn't understand why I became the person I did when I drank. I couldn't stand it. They would ask me why I did it again. I would look them in the eyes and I wouldn't have a single good answer. And I tried going to AA meetings here and there over the years and I went to one and I had a moment of clarity. Another window of opportunity that happened to me, I went into a meeting where There were four or five people that Friday night after going to work and suffering through work. And I went to this meeting, and I left. And I tried to go to another meeting, but it wasn't happening. It was 10 p.m. I was standing downtown right there in Burlington, the strip of bars 100 feet away, the center where I tried with a meeting right in front of me, and then the little deli with the malt liquor and the cheap stuff that I love to drink right there next to me. Um, and I felt this powerful intuition that said, you just walk home. And I lived like an hour or some walk away. And I had never thought that in my life before, just walk home. Um, I believe it was again, some of the first true guidance I I've received in this life. And, uh, I followed it. Um, i went to a detox the next day to sit at a meeting in case I needed it. Uh, I needed to go to the center and, um, thank God I did not have to this time. Um, I've had experiences with trying to quit on my own that have led me to places where I needed medical attention. But, um, but this time God had a different plan for me, I guess. I, uh, I remember going to a meeting the next day and, um. I thought I just need to make it a week. If I could just make it A week, you know, I know what to do. I know What to say. If I go to these meetings, I just Need to make It A week. Um, we read the nine step promises at this meeting and I never heard them before. Despite all the meetings I'd gone to, we Read the big book, um of Alcoholics Anonymous And I heard the nine step promises and they asked at the end, do any newcomers have any questions? Please see somebody after. And I pretty much shaking just raised my hand and said, please, is there somebody here who can show me how to get this? And I asked for it. And a guy who was celebrating one year sober that day came over to me and shook my hand and gave me his phone number and told me which means to go to help me get to a meeting where I was led to to ask another guy to be a sponsor of mine. Um, and he had a guy who sponsored me instead. And, uh, to me, like, this is another way God was working in my life. The person I wanted to sponsor me, I, you know, he has 10 years, he goes to lots of meetings, you Know, I'm going to ask him to sponsor me and it's going to be perfect. I'm gonna have this perfect sobriety, or at least I'll stay sober long enough to get everybody off my back. And he had A guy with a year sponsor me. Um, And the power of the steps were, it was so profound because we did not go through it perfectly, we did not do it. We did not use worksheets, we did not go through perfectly. But when I would go to meet up with him, and we would pray, we would say the set aside prayer, he had me write the circle in the triangle in the beginning of the book and, and broke down exactly where the steps are in the book, exactly how we're going to go through this work. And he just asked, you need to carry this to other people. You know, once once you get it, and, uh, and I would feel the presence of something in the room with him. And I would get that sense when I was sitting with him. And I wouldn't always get in meetings, you know, I would sometimes get in means, but I wouldn'T always feel that way. And when I sat down with him, though, it felt like we were reading stuff that just, it blew my mind, like there is nothing in the world that makes more sense to me, and made more sense for me and still does, than the idea of the phenomenon of craving and, and what they might call an allergy or not the phenomenon craving nothing in my life has described what happens when i drink more than dr silkworth's opinion i mean the power of those words i you know and that's why today as i sponsor people i um i i try not to spin it because my experience was that it made too much sense for me to ignore Um, I was hopeless and he, that my sponsor at the time just laid out the second piece of this, as we've worked through the steps that you weren't choosing dude, like you were not choosing. Um, you lost that choice a long time ago and we looked at it and we look at the examples in my, in my life where, you know, whether it was that day where the sun was shining and there wasn't a cloud on the horizon um or they were the times when i swore i was never going to do it again i'm not going to this again there's no way i'm going to drink again i cannot lose the girl or the friend like and i would find myself there at the safeway you know with the bottle whether i was going to pay for it or not put in my pants whatever um like the choice had been gone for a very long time. And I was living under the delusion that I had choice. And he explained that he had come to the realization that what he lacked in this was, was power, um, was the power, not just the power to control, not just The Power to Choose, but the power essentially to just live, um, the power To Live Sober. And, uh, and so the experience I had through the steps were profound. Um, doing the third step prayer with him was, was like opening a door to the possibility that, you know, there's someone, there're something or someone here with us, you know, all the time. Um, there'S something always here and, and despite that left to my own devices left to self, I go and do the most insane thing over and over again. And I used to think the most than same thing I did was, you You know, the thing I you know, this one thing I did when I was 17 at this party or or the time I said this to that person or I hurt this person like those are really insane things I did. When I was drunk. No, no. The most insane thing I didn't was drink. Take that first drink. Take this first sip. And when I started to see that, like that, that I really lacked complete power in this and and and not only that, but but that I wasn't going to somehow come up with this power myself. I wasn't somehow going to wake up one day or think hard enough about my alcoholism that I would then, you know, control it. And and I'm very grateful for him because, like I said, it was not a perfect process. But the power of the steps was that even though there were the words there, it was the actions that we took. It was the action that we did. The actions that took around the steps is the actions we took in between the steps within the words, within the text was the options we took together. I had nowhere else to go. i had no no other outs i i conceded to my to my innermost self that there's nothing in this world in this material world really that's going to fix this thing um i have to be open-minded and i i'm grateful i guess because about the fact that i didn't grow up with religion i didn'T come here with a bit of prejudice i i came here as an agnostic who just didn'T know and i had been seeking for a long time um i think i've been seeking a really a really in a really really dark and and deep way um you know i saw more in alcohol and i i see more i see more in the steps um it's why my my home group we read the big book it's why i i sponsor as many um people as i possibly can it's why i try to get deep into this stuff because there's just more. There was always more in my delusional thinking in alcohol. Um, I was always seeking out some kind of experience that would change the way that I felt that would changed me. Um, and I was all digging, digging, um, and i've been able to transfer that i won't call it enthusiasm. Um mad dog nature whatever you want to call it into um into this program into the the program of recovery as it's outlined and uh he had me writing that inventory and and identifying all the things that were blocking me um from the power that was right there inside me with with him in that room at that moment um we went rapidly through that um there was no time to to waste we made haste and got right through um the inventory and you know i i felt that all i you know, I really felt that I wanted to just tell him all my problems and write down all these things about my life. But he helped me to see that the first thing written step four is to admit to God, you know to and then to ourselves and then hit to him sitting there as a witness to what I was expressing outwardly through my voice to God. And then to do that and to sit there. The fifth step promises started to happen for me. And I, I sometimes would kind of get lost in this idea that, you know, well, you know, is the obsession gone? Is it not like am I going to have this white light experience? Is it going to be like the acid trip? I remember thinking this and you know in the first few months there and he would always direct me back to like no like look like is this happening for you? You know, are you feeling like you can look the world in the eyes? Do you feel like you are sitting here with your creator right now? Like do you feel you can go to meetings and you feel a part of this the meetings in a way you hadn't before and he helped me to see that the selfishness and self-centeredness the real root of the problem here was that, that was where I was putting my power. I was putting mypower in self and it was leading me to ruin over and over and over again. Whether it was my relationships, my finances, just my overall emotional state, I was just always led to ruin with the things that blocked me from God, the forms of self that manifested in so many different ways. And he helped me identify all of those, to look at the fears and And especially to look at the harms caused around sex and relationships. And that was something I, you know, I heard stuff. We're going to, oh, I'm going to write the old sex book. I'm gonna write all this stuff down. I'm just, that was not my experience. What was currently my experience at the time? I got that on paper and we got together and I read it to him. And we moved on to getting into, to me, one of the most powerful pieces of the program at that time. And I'm currently having experience with these steps as well today, making amends and righting the wrongs in my life. And God has guided me to these, continues to guide me toward amends. I just remember thinking, you know, there's just so many people I need to go and apologize to. And my ego was still convinced that I knew how to make these amends right. And he guided me toward the truth. You know, some people are going to be harmed if you contact them. Some of them are goingto be, you know, they're not gonna be happy to hear from you. And I had to look at those and I hadto go and make amends. The ones I didn't want to make that I needed to. I went and did those. I looked people in the eye and I did my best to clean up that side of the street. And the obsession to drink lifted. I stopped thinking about drinking along that route. Um, but it wasn't a perfect ride by any means. Um, you know, I built a relationship with God at that time. Um, But there are good relationships. There are bad relationships. There are one sided relationships. There's still relationships technically. Um, and my relationship with god at the time was very one sided. I mean, I, I felt that my prayers needed to be answered. Um, And if they weren't, I just needed to pray more. Um, Not anyone's fault. I was not guided at that time into deep inventory to really look at how I'm meditating and contemplating and taking the actions and disciplines in the morning and the night. And there was a lot of talk where I am and in the rooms about, you know, waiting to sponsor till, you have a year. And I remember getting to that point where the obsession to drink had lifted. I was doing tons of service. I'd had a home group and a service position in a home room the entire time I'd been sober. that was another area where I started to practice the principles of action and act in ways that I was not capable of doing on my own. I started feeling God working through me, not just in prayer, but when I would go to those meetings and help set up and talk to people and look them in the eye and be the greeter. But I hit a place of semi-despair at about a year. Something was missing something was missing um and some people shared oh you know it's you know if you're feeling squirrely you know at a year you know that's just normal and um you know i remember at a year when i received the medallion for it it was like okay everybody with you know a year more responses wave your hand it was this moment where i got to raise my hand and um now looking back um, I see the hole. I mean, it was there clear as day. Um, I was doing everything in my life and I lived on a lot of grace, um, by not actively sponsoring, uh, other men or other people in the rooms. Um. And when I think about that, it is, it ist emotional to think about that God gave me that much grace to work the steps, not drink, protect me from that without me really having to get onto that firing line of sitting down with an alcoholic and sharing my experience. And my life completely changed once I started doing that. And, and that's another reason why I got very into the group, you know, we're one of a few big book meetings here, you knows, there's a few of us, but where we, where we read the text and we talk about the solution and um you know the experience i've had has just been an incredible ride since then um getting into the history of what it was like back then i i'm i love reading about history in the archives and stuff and i i just i'm just fascinated by the oxford group and the way things started and and and what those guys and men and women um got by and lived on and the bread of life that they ate and the way that they connected to God. The early morning times, the quiet time that I think Ann Smith was so adamant about and so powerful in making sure happened. I mean, my life is, I mean every, when I look back at a year and I remember being like, okay, now what? You know, this must get better. I had no idea how much better it would get. Sponsoring other men and being free of the bondage of self for not just minutes or hours, but days at a time, it's just an unreal experience. It is something that and it has exponentially grown on itself. And the more that I get, the more than I receive from God, the more that want to seek out ways to continue to stay connected so that I can continue to transmit God's power to other people. And in turn, I receive more. And so the current experience I'm having has just been a very powerful one with with the group where it's at now, you know, reading, I read lots of stuff. I read lots of grapevine books. I really read the history books and I just try to absorb but at the end of the day it's the actions. It's the disciplines of 10-11 that have really changed my life. When I worked with a new sponsor and he got me really, he really asked me one day this was a little over a year you know where what does your inventory look like on this because I called him with just crap you know just all sorts of self and world declamer I love that term and um so I wrote some at the time and I wrote it for him and um he was just you know not appalled but in a very loving way just said that's none of that makes any sense and he guided me to to write in a way that cleared me off from being disconnected from God um and and that changed my life and it changed the relationships and the experience I was having at that time dramatically changed. Um, my experience with 11 and the things I do at night in the morning and the meditation and the contemplation and the, and the visions that are there for us to grasp and to, to use and to experiment with and to live and breathe. Like they have absolutely altered the reality that, that I couldn't get from all the alcohol in the world. I couldn't get it from that. I just couldn't, I tried, I tried and there was nothing left for me after a while. But with this stuff, there's a power in my life that, that has just continued to guide me throughout everything I do. And, and so the past few years have just, they've opened my mind and a lot of what I mean, you know, in ways I couldn'T even imagine. And, you Know, there'S things I'Ve discovered in, in Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, that have helped me, whether it be something like therapy or Buddhism, um, things outside the realm of my own selfish thinking. Um, God has brought those things into my life as tools that are there for me if I need to use them or if I seek them out. Um, I have a beautiful relationship with someone right now who, uh, works the 12 steps is in the program and um it is shocking to be to be in in a relationship with someone where you know god does come first um it's a shocking way it's shocking because i i could not have conceived of this um even once the obsession to drink lifted um my life just still felt so small it still felt so, um, unimportant still felt. So I still felt useless at times. Um, those bedevilments that it talks about, they haven't been bothering me recently, but certainly early on before I was, um, fully immersed in, in, In the, in these 12 steps daily, you know, there are, there were days where, you Know, I did not feel useful. I did Not feel connected to, to other people. I Did not feel that, that I had something to offer. And now, you know, and I try to share this with people I sponsor the, the med, the amount of the measure of, of okayness and serenity in my life, I can, I can directly measure by how much I want to go and give this thing away. You know, the smaller my world feels, the less I want do, the last I want be a service, less I want to do, less I want to sponsor the less, you know, it's a it's directly related to my spiritual condition, being off the beam. And when I'm when I am on that beam, you know, sell in a lot of self seeking ways, I don't want to be too much for people. You know, how am I going to relate to the guys new if I'm just blah, blah, blah, you know, I'm just on fire with this stuff. But you know what, I've let go of that because when I came in this time, I needed to see that people were okay, and they were happy. And I know today that if I feel like my house is in order, I've got a clean side of the street. I'm doing the disciplines in a way where I'm not overloading myself, I'm connected to that power, I tapped into it. And i'm making conscious contact by listening, listening, and obeying, obeying and going out and trying to be service to my fellow human. Like there's, there's just nothing but love left. There's nothing but love to want to connect and to give this to somebody because I know exactly how that person felt. And I know Exactly what it feels like to not have that hope. And to be able to touch that experience of like, wow, you know, the powerlessness that engulfed my life can come back. You know, it can come back if I'm not doing this thing. It can come back if I'm just completely thrown to the wind. I've heard before, I can't remember where, but the great trap is like the things that I get will lead me away. The external material things, the worldly possessions, the beautiful gifts that other people can see with their eyes the tangible things that a will give me can lead me away um and that is a trap that i i try to actively not fall into um you know my life today my perception has changed i've been rocking into a fourth dimension um where i can breathe and sit and be calm and at peace and i don't think about how the car i have is the same car i had four years ago when i came in the same kind of beater car. I don't weigh my housing situation, my financial situation against others. I do not compete with other people in my workplace. I am not going out like a tornado just spinning around harming people in My life. I'm able to sit with God and try to align My will with whatever God's will is for me that day. One of the greatest things I've ever heard, or excuse me, I read was in Chuck C's new pair of glasses. He finds this plaque and it's somewhere toward the end of the book. He find this plaque or he talks to a guy who has this plaque. And it says, if you are not as close to God as you once were, or as you would like to be, make no mistake, you are the one that moved. And that has been the absolute truth of this program and my life living in the 12 steps and the other two sides of the triangle with the fellowship and of service. But, you know, I've felt God, you know, doing service, I felt God in rooms of other people, but I know God through the steps. And when I don't feel that power, like I know today that I am the one that's moved, you know? Despite God being there with me no matter what, despite having experienced have been various forms of prayer and meditation seeing people's eyes light up when they get this thing and they stay sober and they feel the power in their life like i know it's there um and i know it's it's always going to be there and for that i'm eternally grateful so thank you so much for having me and allowing me to share my experience with you all awesome thank you