Coming to Believe and the Big Book – 164 Group 12 Step Study – Part 2 of 2 – Sandy B.

I'm Travis Prater. I'm an alcoholic. I'm very grateful for the program Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, saved my tail. You know, I'm not a very educated person, not a very intelligent person. You start handing handouts, I get nervous, you knows. It takes me back to middle school. You know my experience was I drank entirely too much for entirely too long alcohol had become a solution when i started drinking intentionally i think that's that might be where i crossed that imaginary line that those old-timers talked about doctor's opinion you know it's his opinion but this is a guy who's been dealing with alcoholics and drug addicts for a long time he was uh one of the uh one of the main guys I guess it was Towns Hospital I'm not a big history guru I got a buddy of mine that is and I learned a lot from him you know I've been reading some stuff that Silkworth wrote over the last couple of weeks and Silkworth said we've got a 50-50 chance either we're going to do this or we're not And he says along the same lines of if he's got a tuberculosis patient or he's Got a cardiovascular patient, when they come to see him for treatment, he'll treat them and then he'll give them some clear-cut direction, send them home, say follow that clear- cut direction, and you will not have another relapse. For the tuberculosis patients, don't smoke cigarettes. Drink some milk. Some simple clear-cut direction. And that's what I needed. I needed a job scope. Tell me exactly what you want me to do. Do you want to do this? Do you need me to strip the wax on the floor? Do you mean to put new wax down? Do you paint the walls? What are you asking me to be? And then I'll tell you yes or no, simply. And that is what I found today that the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous has taught me how to simply lay out the groundwork for somebody else. you know it simply tells me how to live my life one day at a time you know and uh and i'm grateful for the time that i got to come to uh st petersburg florida i'm grateful for people that were put in my life you know uh to show me what this program was about i didn't get it i didn'T get it for the first three and a half years you know i'm kind of like like bob talked about i didnT i didn'T just get over that craving immediately you know but i know when i started learning to apply the 12 steps of alcoholics anonymous the clear-cut direction from the big book of alcoholic synonymous that's when my life started to change for the better that's what i felt a part of you know that's why i felt like you and i were on the same level playing field you know and uh and i began to see the unity of Alcoholics Anonymous. The service manual in the first paragraph talks about the most basic service that we can offer AA is to show somebody how to work the 12 steps of Alcoholic Anonymous It says if I don't do that, I'll wither and that new person may die if I won't give them the truth Silkworth says we're just human beings afflicted with human nature There's nothing so unique or so special yes we have a phenomenon of craving you know uh you do anything for a long period of time and your body's going to crave it i'm sure you know cheetos you know like cheetos it's a very simple program you know for for mentally and physically deteriorated people you know and that's what i was when i got here um powerlessness unmanageability i knew it several years before i ever got here you know the first time i came in the rooms i think i was 19 years old you know to get people off of my back you know i sat in a meeting you know and uh And I heard all the drunk-a-log, drug-a log, and that's all I could hear. Because I didn't want to be there in the first place. Dying inside. Knew I had a problem. You don't live in a raggedy run-down trailer with all the windows knocked out, holes in the floor in the middle of the winter when it's 15, 16 degrees, and you've got a 100-foot extension cord run to your neighbor's house so you can run a damn electric blanket. I understand powerlessness I understand unmanageability how do I change that's what I need to know how do I have this spiritual experience that you people are talking about what are you asking me to do and the doctor just simply lays out some stuff he's talking about Bill Bill's third treatment He says he acquired certain ideas, just simple ideas, as a possible means of recovery. Well, I can understand simple ideas. I'm a simple man. I can understanding simple ideas and we also said as part of the rehabilitation, he commenced to present his conceptions to other alcoholics, impressing upon them they must do likewise would steal others you know sharing his ideas the way he conceives things you know the way he understands things you knows when he went to Bob and you know we can go off of the movies or whatever you know I don't know what in history is right you know but I know what makes sense to me today you know when Bill went to bob, bob says you're probably not going to be able to do anything for me i've been to the to the best doctors to the best you know religious heads you know he says i don't know that you're going to help and bill says i'm doing this to help me if i don' t talk to you right now i'm probably going to go into that bar and that was my experience i had lost the power of choice i was going to drink i had started drinking intentionally a long time ago to change my mindset you know to change the way I feel typically I didn't feel normal unless I had a lot of that stuff in me you know I'm not going to tell you that I felt different or any of that stuck when I grew up that was me I did you know i had a normal childhood but my mama had nine brothers and sisters and I could get a hold of whatever I wanted a very early age and I liked it and I knew they you know I knew it was wrong but I love the effect and I continue to do that for me that was my spiritual experience today this is my spiritual experiencing I continue to do this for the effect it's just the maintenance and growth of that spiritual experience I just had the wrong spirit for a long I was willing to do whatever it took to make it grow and I have to be willing to do the same thing in alcoholic synonyms. The doctor basically says, you people are hopeless. There's nothing I can do for you. He'd been working with people for a long time. He said, I don't know what to do with you. There's no hope. He even told Bill, quit telling these people about your spiritual experience. dwell in the hopeless feature of the malady and you know I grew up a southern baptist man I needed to know I was going to hell I needed to know that if I didn't know that I wasn't going to change it's just me you know I needed to know something had to change for me to grow and to not die you know and to not end up in prison silkworth gives you some of his background he says i say this after many years experience as medical director of one of the oldest hospitals in the country treating alcoholic and drug addiction um there was therefore a sense of real satisfaction when i i was asked to contribute a few words on a subject which is covered in such masterly detail in these pages. I know who my master is today. God is my master today. And I see godly detail. I see masterly details in this book. He talks about no further authentication will be necessary. And I found that true. For me, the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous is like putting the engine in the car. The 12 and 12 is we're going to get the gas mixtures right. We're going make the engine run smoothly. We're gonna do all the little necessary stuff. Many years ago, one of the leading contributors to this book came under our care in this hospital and while here he acquired some ideas which he put into practical application at once. These ideas, what's the idea? You're powerless. Well, if I want to know how I'm powerless over alcohol, then I should probably read more about alcoholism. They refer to it several times throughout the book. Read more about alcoholicism. You know, I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard, read the first three words on page 112. Everybody knows it, right? What does it say? What's the rest of the sentence say? Don't look now, don't look. Don't Look. or the chapter on alcoholism. More time than once does it tell me to read more about alcoholism? If you want to know if you're a damn alcoholic, read more About Alcoholism. It puts what the doctor's trying to tell me in layman's terms. In layman'S terms. I can understand. I can understanding Fred. I can understading Jim. You know, I get it. I get that. That's that masterly detail. You know how it works. it tells me our description of the alcoholic chapter three chapter to the agnostic chapter four and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas a b and c being convinced of what a b c well how do i get convinced of a b n c chapter three chapter four in your story you know you talked to me for an hour last night outside the meeting didn't you know i could tell your department shout you're a man with a solution or a woman with a solution you're on with the facts about yourself you got my attention what do you want me to do now you know read more about alcoholism I've heard a speaker here not too long ago say the biggest disservice we can do in Alcoholics Anonymous is give somebody a book and say here go read this you know we talked about unselfish constructive action unselfished constructive action Do I have enough time in my day? Yeah. Do I have enough time in my day to set aside time for you, which you tell me is the foundation stone of my recovery. And I'm sorry, I'll try to stick the doctor with me in the first step. And I'll do the 30-minute deal, 20-minute deal, whatever. You know, that's what that first old timer did for me he sat there with me on a regular basis he told me to read the black shit on the pages you know i needed that he was a 67 year old black man i was a 27 year old white kid and i just didn't think he could teach me anything you know I was a know-it-all and that's what he told me he said i like you boy i said what do you like about me old man you know he said you just like me so what's that he said your damn flip mouth you think you know everything you don't no shit. I was like, this guy's telling me the truth. First time. My mom had lied to me. My dad lied on a regular basis. Hell still does. But this guy was telling me the truth He was doing what that first paragraph in the service manual says If he didn't give me the proof he was going to wither and I was going to die He cared enough about me to tell me the truth. I think that's rigorous honesty I think it's tough love You're not going to bash me into sobriety I was 142 pounds sucking wet when I got here, and I was mad at the world. We can go in the parking lot and scrap if you want to, but I'm dying inside. Please teach me. Re-educate my mind. I quit doing that stuff middle school, re-educating my mind, I'm skipping school in fourth grade. It's not normal, man, not normal. we all know powerlessness and we all know unmanageability this is the doctor's opinion but he's got credentials, these men did their work they studied religion they studied medicine they studied all this stuff, they put a lot of effort into it we're not doing anything that profound today all we've got to do is get on the path that they've already blazed it's that simple I hear people say the part in the book says we realize we only know a little when are we going to learn the little they know when am I going to take time out of my busy day to learn the little bit that they know and learn to apply these simple ideas into my life I think the first step prayer is writing how it works, we ask his protection and care with complete abandon it's through reading chapter 3 we're talking about the mental thinking that precedes a relapse that's the stuff I need to learn why is it my thinking why is that my thinking that mental obsession I remember old Jimmy down there asked me one day I was walking on a blind pass and he said hey tell me about that double edged sword And I'm like, yeah, yeah. It's good stuff, isn't it? I have no clue what the hell I'm talking about. He knows it. He says, no. Go find it. And I get it. I get to that. I thought I had a black cloud following me. My dad will tell you I had a black crowd follow me. He said, you can be in the car headed to Atlanta and there'll be 200 cars on the road with you in a line. He said, and they'd pick your ass out of the middle every time. Every time. The tyrant alcohol wielded a double-edged sword over us. First we were smitten by an insane urge that condemned us to go on drinking. And then by an allergy to the body that ensured we'd die in the process. And I believe that today. What does that say? Three what minutes? All right, cool. Educational variety. Burning bush variety. I get it. I get that. And I've been able to see it. It's through self-sacrifice. Unselfish destructive action. Yeah, and it starts out sometimes with sweeping the floor, you know, emptying the ashtrays, washing the ashrays. There aren't too many smoking meetings nowadays. I don't know if I could have got sober without smoking. I probably wouldn't have come back. I'm grateful for the old-timers. They cared enough about me to tell me the truth. I'm not powerless today. I'm now powerless today, and we're going to talk more about how we go to God. We're going to talk more about what does it mean to make a decision to turn my will and my life over to God. I didn't even know what my will in my life was. I was three and a half years sober and ended up in Gainesville, and this guy says, you're thinking, you're actions. I'm like, wow. Perfection. Perfection? We know powerlessness, and we know unmanageability. I lived that most of my life. Most of my live. In and out of jail, in and out of jail I know that stuff and ultimately I had an idea that there might be God he probably didn't want anything to do with me because I was a worthless person you know and it's not so and that old man told me I have a kind loving and forgiving God I have kind loving and forgiving and I couldn't buy that I couldn' make that connection wow it sounds great what do I do got a guy I'm working with right now he's like what do i do do this that's it already getting results little things that's enough out of me I'm grateful to be here you know I thank you people of the 164 group that take the time to allow me to get involved. That means a lot. You know, that means a life. The unity of this program comes from the 12-step work. Sitting down, fully disclosing ourselves and our problems. That is the cement which will bind us. That's the stuff that's lasting. Not that we're just alcoholics. Sitting out, fully disclosing our selves and our problems and that's what we try to do today you know we do it in group settings you know and we do one-on-one that's for me is the gift of this program you guys have taught me how to be unselfish you told me what my problem was but i'm done thanks everybody step in the second step of Alcoholics Anonymous reads something like this came to believe in a power greater than ourselves that could restore us to sanity and this girl believes come on up Megan Hi. I'm nervous, but my name's Megan. I'm an alcoholic. I'm sure you all are not going to be shocked that I'm going to tell you a little bit about how I came to believe. So, yeah. I have been in and out of AA since I was 18 years old. And when I first came to AA, I really could not wrap my brain around this God thing. I knew I needed to quit drinking, but I really didn't want to. And y'all told me that I had to get a higher power. And it, you know, that one was really hard for me. So for a long time, you know, while I was drinking in high school, which I did a lot, I would talk about, you know, the Bible's the greatest fiction novel of all times. If there is a God, I don't want anything to do with him. You know, what has he done for me? look at all this bad stuff in the world and I pretty much had a resentment list about as long as my mother's against God um and so you told me I had to like trust him and that he's going restore me to sanity and I didn't like that idea and you know I prided myself in the fact that I'd studied science and I'd studies math and I knew a little bit about something and You know, I would use my intellect to argue that, you know, God doesn't exist. And I was sitting down in Atlanta, and this is quite a while back, and I was going through the big book with someone, and we got two ennui agnostics when it talks about visual proof and the massive electrons just floating around. And they asked me, what do you know about bumblebees? I'm like, they're black and yellow and they fly? And she laughed and was like, well, did you know they're not supposed to? Like, what do you mean? Well, based off of scientific evidence or basic laws of aerodynamics, bumblebees aren't supposed to fly based off their body size, their wingspan, and how many times it flaps per second. So do you make bumblebee's fly? I'm, like, no. You think the bumble bee makes itself fly? I'm like, well, no, it can't. All right. And that was my first conception that there was something bigger working in the world. And I held on to that. And, you know, for a long time I sat and I It's a catch-22. I can sit here and tell you that you know I tried to understand a God and tried to get this concept you know come to believe that a power greater than myself but I have found for me when I fully accepted the first step, which Travis just spoke about. Like taking the second step was easy because I came in this last time after getting my butt whooped like absolutely faint. And somebody said that I was at a speaker meeting Thursday. You know, I didn't have this hope coming into the program that I wasn't going to quit drinking. I didn'T have this hopE that I still wanted to live, even though it was there a little, but I was exhausted. you know I tried to run the show in and out of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous for a long time I tried to tell you what God was and what God wasn't and how you know I honestly believed for a while that God didn't care what we did and for me that turned out to be very wrong so just to give you a little bit of a brief history I relapsed and went out for 16 months after having a couple years sober and there was a moment and I'm um I'm a big animal person I know that's going to sound silly but I find spirituality in animals they show up and for me my bum my bumblebee story reminds me you know hey I have a tattoo of a bumble bee it reminds me like dude is a bumglebee my higher power by no means my higherpower who I choose to call God is way bigger than a bumBLEbee way bigger than us sitting here way bigger than anything because my higher power had to be bigger than alcohol. It had to be bigger that a man, it had to bigger than money, it had to been bigger than all these things. But when I see animals sometimes it reminds me of God. You know I'm sitting here and it's one of my last few days drinking and I'm in a car and this deer jumps out in front of the cart and for the I jumped was like oh gosh I'm gonna die because we were going really fast and it was a back country road in eastern Kentucky. And to me, that was my first little aha of I didn't want to die. So, I don't know. I didn's take notes and I didn bring note cards because I'm like, I prayed and I believe that if I do that, then I'm supposed to say what I'm suppose to say. So fast forward, I ended up in treatment down here in Tampa at a place that a lot of you all probably know. and I was not a very easy person to deal with. I was miserable, I was hateful. There was a lot of things going on, and I got a sponsor because they told me I needed to get one. I picked her based off her name and what type of dog she had. Made sense at the time. And I started doing step work, and if I sat here and told you I did step work for me, I half brought it like you know I half got honest I half it I half did everything and I finally got out of that treatment center and when I got out of treatment center I'd made a mess and they told me not to come back for a minute they didn't want to see me um and ended up in a halfway house and I'd heard about the 164 group and long story short I was mad that I couldn't go all this in treatment because the boys got to go and we weren't allowed to go where the boys went And I was, you know, I had always found a sense of comfort in the big book. You know, back whenever I was sober before, one of my home group, my home groups had a big book study and I always found comfort in it. So much comfort that when I was drinking I would give it to people and tell them they need to read it and change their life and would quote it on them. So I showed up to the 164 the first Tuesday that I was eligible to because once I got out of the halfway house or out of treatment center then I could go. so and there was a difference in the way that people spoke about the big book and they spoke about it not in a quoting way but as in they were living it and they got me on fire again for this program and I kind of skated around for a minute and Brett kind of reached his hand out and he kind of said a few things that really struck me and I just kept watching and I kept showing up and a lot of my friends they went to another 12 step fellowship and so I went to a lot o those meetings and I was finally like ok maybe AA didn't work for me and I don't need AA I need to go to this other one and that'll work and so i went and got a sponsor over there and within two weeks probably about two weeks I was ready to pull my hair out I called Brett and you know I started acting out in some behaviors which I don't know, I found whenever I kept sleeping around and I kept doing some stupid things I wanted to drink like whenever I acted the way I did when I was drunk I wanted a drink that being said I called Brett it was early for me probably like 10 o'clock but it was earlier for me at the time crying my eyes out like I don t know what to do I m miserable I don d want to drink but pretty much I want to die I can t keep doing this and as I'm sitting here and getting honest and talking about where I'm at and what I need, and Fred had approached me before with the knowledge of this big book, and I was too scared of it. And I came up with all these reasons why a guy can't take a girl through the steps or through the book because blah, blah, like it was silly at the time, but I got to a point in sobriety where I was willing. I didn't care. And I had this magical thought of, okay, if you've taken so many women through the book. Why don't you give me one of their numbers? They can help me because I don't trust men. I do now, but at that point I didn't because of my own stuff. And while I'm sitting here, and the reason I'm telling you this story, while I'M sitting here crying my eyes out, freaking out, a bumblebee starts flying around me. And I'M like, ha-ha. Funny. But there was a sense of comfort. there was a sense of I'm gonna be okay and that whole damn conversation excuse my language but while I'm talking to Brett this bumblebees just flying around and so that was my came to believe like um I knew I was insane like certifiably like I've taken tests like I got some diagnosis better like yeah I'm certifiable but more than that you know you talked Brett mentioned it I I couldn't stop drinking. I couldn' stop putting other things in my body and I didn't want to, but I didn' wanna live the way I was living, so it was... If I came in and said that drinking and drugging no longer was fun, it wasn't, but I still liked it. It is what it is. I had the gift of desperation that in sobriety, I found that I felt the way I'd always felt and that nothing was changing and that I couldn't run the show completely anymore. There's this one girl, and she's my friend in Atlanta. She's got eight years sober. And she was one of the first people I 12-stepped back a long time ago. And she's got 8 years sober now. And I'm like, how does that happen? Like, I've been going to AA since I was 18 and I can't put together more than a little bit of time. like what the hell and like that seeing people that i'd known watch them come in and seeing people in the 164 group that were doing the deal and seeing people in aa like that was my idea of okay they've got some sanity i'm insane because i can't quit drinking like i'm either gonna blow my brains out or do something stupid or i'm gonna drink um so at that point like it's not really that complicated. And I am going to actually jerk out the big book and it's not on one of the first 164 pages. And it's from page 186 and it is when for you history buffs sorry if I mess it up a little bit but from when Dr. Bob and Bill W go meet with Bill Dotson and they go to him in the hospital they asked him a few simple questions and they said they wanted to know if I thought I could quit drinking on my own accord. I knew I couldn't. We covered that in the first step. For me, if I'm having a problem with the second step, I need to go back to the first steps. If I'm have a problem with three, I need to back to two. It's a building process. So okay, I knew that one. We've covered that. And then the next thing they want to know was if I believed in a higher power and you know it also talks about in the book do I believe or am I even willing to believe so to me it only takes just a little grain of sand of worth of belief it doesn't I don't have to come in like a theology major I don'T HAVE TO COME IN LIKE COMPLETELY ENLIGHTENED YOU KNOW MEDITATING FOR 10 HOURS A DAY UNTIL I LIKE LEVITATE THAT'S NOT WHAT THIS STEP IS ABOUT The step is about saying, okay, I believe just this much that if I do this, it'll work for me because I see it work for you. And sometimes it's that simple. And to sit here and tell you that a year after I took that step with someone that step two doesn't mean something totally different to me, I'd be lying. It's a lot more deep and it's a little more intense than that today. But to keep it real simple, it's do I believe that my life can get better if I work the rest of these steps and go to these meetings and get honest with people and just do some simple things. And that was an easy answer because I knew it wasn't working for me, period. If I drank again, I was going to prison, and I was not liking that idea because I don't know if you can tell, but I don' t think prison would suit me too well because I got a big mouth and I run it a lot whenever I'm scared, so it wouldn't have been good. I will tell you that after the fact I learned that bumblebees actually technically can fly because that was a myth but that still doesn't shake the connection that I have with them and it doesn't shape the fact that it reminds me of God it doesn'T take any of that away because as I said my God is bigger than a bumblebee it's bigger than alcohol it's better than most things well all things hopefully I don't know I don't really know what else to say other than, because to me it's that by the time alcohol had beaten me into a point of willingness where I knew I didn't have any other choice and AA was the last stop on the block like there wasn't any other, you know, if I want to stay out of treatment I've got to not drink. How do I not drink? I have no friggin' clue. If I don'T want to go to prison I've gotta not drink, how do I NOT drink?I have no clue. But you all are doing it and I don' t know if anybody experienced this but the first few times I went to speaker meetings and I heard people that would pick up like 20 plus years, I'd be like, there's no way you drink the way I did because if you drank the way i did, you could not get to stay sober for that long. It's not possible. But then they started talking about that peculiar mental twist and they talked about the same kind of insanity that I had. The insanity of living alone and hiding alcohol in my own house. The insanity of saying I'm only going to drink this much and end up overshooting the mark every time or Or, you know, I'm going to use wine coolers to detox myself from alcohol and other stuff. Like if you told a normal person that, they'd be like, that's insane. But you tell an alcoholic and they giggle because they get it. You know, my mom came to town when I was living in Atlanta. All my family is from Kentucky. And I couldn't go long enough without alcohol that I figured out a way that I could freeze vodka because they say it doesn't freeze. But if you add enough sugar to it, it will. I made ice pops like with the little so that I could sit there and eat popsicle vodka and get into my system and my mom wouldn't know what was going on like that's insane it's clever but it's insane so how do I not do that and you know what these people are getting ready to tell you today of how they experience their step to me that's how we do it the biggest gift today And for me, it's helping another girl come to be-leave. And I actually, you know, there's a few terms, and I use it sometimes, but the word pigeon for a sponsee absolutely irks me sometimes, and I used it myself, but it does irk me. Sponsee is actually not a real word. I've come to find out it's a made-up word. I like to call them my little bumblebees. Like, I know that's so silly, and if you're my Facebook friend, I'm always posting stuff about bees, but yesterday I'm chopping lemons at work, and the company that grew the lemons and shipped the lemons to us is Bee Sweet. I see bumblebees everywhere. I see bees everywhere, and to me that's just my God's little, you know, my higher power's way of going, hey, I'm still here. I'm Still Here. And it's funny. It's usually whenever I'm doing something and I'm usually like wrapped up in the moment and not thinking about it for example me and some of my girls that i was in treatment with got together and had lunch and bumblebees start flying around so i mean it's just whenever i'm doing the next right thing or doing things but i don't know i noticed them so all that being said thank you so much for the 164 group period you all saved my life and thank god for this program and the divinely inspired moment in the hospital room from the belladonna treatment so i don't know anyway thank you all and enjoy the afternoon for step three also um what are we doing here we're turning our will in our lives over to the care of god as we understand him and i i've got to admit that at this point, I was extremely confused. And I didn't know how confused I was at this point until I met this guy. Come on up, Ryan. All right. Hello. My name is Ryan and I'm an alcoholic. All right. In my previous life, as dysfunctional as it was, I was a teacher, a history teacher. I love books. So you have to bear with me if I keep going back to this book. But as it says on page 28, we in our own turn sought the same escape with all the desperation of drowning men, which seemed at first as a flimsy read, has proved to be the loving and powerful hand of God. A new life has been given us, or if you prefer, a design for living that really works. I carry this book everywhere. It's in my bag that I take to work. It drives around with me in the car. I never know when I'm going to need to refer back to my new design for life. So bear with me if you think, oh, this guy keeps going back to the book. is just how my brain operates and it's what's worked for me. So, step three. We made the decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him. Steps one and two are decisions or conclusions that we came to. For some of us it was easy. For some it was very difficult. Especially step one. I think we probably all knew we were powerless over alcohol. It was the second part of step one that's so hard, at least it was so hard for me to get, that my life is unmanageable. Well, what was causing my life to be so unmanable? As it turns out, as it says in the book, our troubles are of our own making. It was my will, it was me trying to run the show that was making my life so un manageable. So step three is a decision too, but it's a decision that requires action. And as I've come to find out, it's an action that requires It's a position that you have to continue to make day after day after way over and over and again because as difficult as it is for a control freak an egomaniac like myself to give my life over to something else it is so easy for me to want to take it back. so it's definitely something that requires work and that's going to get into step 11 stuff but we just need to know that it requires continual action on page 53 when we became alcoholics crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade we had to fearlessly that we could not postpone or evade. We had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is or isn't. What was our choice to be? I think that brings us up to this moment where we have to turn our life and our will over to God. This is a self-imposed crisis whether you want to see it or not. It's a self imposed crisis that we've all found ourselves into. we have to make that decision either we're going to continue to do things the way we've been doing them and as I've heard and I chuckle every time I hear it none of us got here on a winning streak we know how that's going to end or you know we can give this God thing we can gives it a shot step three suggests turning our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him not a piece not some not even most but our entire will and our entire life that was terrifying to me you know can i just give my alcoholic problem over to god and then i'm going to manage everything else uh i thought it could work like that dennett was pointing out to me as i was going through the steps uh you know my problem is not alcohol my problem is me the alcohol is just a symptom of it so we have to turn our our whole lives over our whole will over to god or uh it's just not gonna work uh we talk about it and how it works half measures will avail us none turn yourself over with complete abandon they didn't say like you know, give some of yourself over. It's give yourself completely over. That's the only way step three is going to work. Now I was scared. I have to give my whole life and my will over to something who I basically don't even understand. You know, that was terrifying to me. But then if you go back and you read it, it's to the care. It's not to the punishment. It's Not to the servitude. It's NOT to the bondage. it's to the care of a God as you understood it. Alright? That sounds pretty good. This is going to be a caring God. This isn't going to punish me for everything I'm going to do. This is gonna be a God that I've come to understand that is gonna help me out. Step three also gives us some freedom. We're turning it over to a God of our own understanding. I think that was the hang up for me for the longest time. I kept trying to figure out the God that everyone else was telling me about. You don't have to do that. That's one of my favorite parts about step three. It's of a God of my own understanding. I don't need to be able to explain Him to anybody. It doesn't have the same God that is of your own understanding it just has to be a God of my understanding that I believe is going to care for me that I can turn my life and my will over to. Softens it up a lot for this power hungry control freak egomaniac All right. I was on my way. My experience with Step 3. I grew up in a Catholic household. I've had all my Catholic sacraments. The last time I was in church was when I got married. I think all I need is my dying rights to be read to me, and as far as the Catholic religion goes, I'm good. I'm in. I grew up going to church. I remember my first communion. I remember going to CCD classes. I remember getting confirmed. I remember going through all the motions and nodding my head and not believing a word of it. I was hedging my bet. I don't really believe in any of this stuff. But everybody, my whole family, everyone I'm around says this is what's going to keep me out of hell. So long as I believe in the hell, I'm going to continue to believe and keep doing this and nodding my head even though I didn't believe a word of it. I didn' t. Get to be a teenager, you know, in your late teens, your early twenties, start to come into your own. And I finally had the balls enough to say, you know what? I don't believe any of this stuff. There is no God. There is nothing. This world is out of control. This world is reckless. This world is nothing but coincidence and bad luck. Those people that had good luck, you know, I couldn't figure out how they got it. Couldn't figure out how these people could walk around happy. I just knew that I didn't believe any of this. A few things happened in my life, some really Not necessarily horrible things happened to me, but some really, really horrible things happened to people that I care about. And again, it just reinforced that feeling that no, there is no God. God wouldn't do that. You know, God wouldn'T let those things happen to my little sister. You know? God wouldn'T let those thing happen to me. To my family. Why are we kicked out of this house again? Why are We homeless again? If there really was a God, where's He at? And if there was a God, I didn't want to have anything to do with Him. Because I couldn't see that He was doing anything for me. So, you know, page 45 and 46, it talks about how the calamity of the world, how everything is awful, all the war that's going on, all these horrible things that are happening. and I used to feed off of that. You know, I'm a history teacher. I used sit there and break down for kids like all the horrible things that have happened in this world and they have to memorize it. So it was really easy for me to memorize it and I could sit there and give you, you know, a thousand different situations where there is no way that there was a God because if there was a God that wouldn't let this happen. And so I had a hard time. Around this same time, drugs and alcohol come into my life and I had already made the decision that there's no God, that people are just, you know... It was funny in high school. Carpe Diem was introduced to me. Live for today. Well, I did that but I did it in my own selfish way of well, I'm going to see how much fun I can have today. Then you add drugs and alcohol into that mix and how much more fun and how fun am I going to have with drugs and alcool? And I thought, alright, I've got life figured out. It's just all about, you now, how wasted, how out of control I can get every day. The self-will really ran right. I mean, one thing after another. I thought it was bad luck, but in hindsight now, all the fog cleared up. I realized that every single bad thing that happened was because I was trying to run the show, because I Was trying to do it my way. I'm fairly new in the AA program. My first month in the program, you guys might have seen me sitting in the back, just sitting there quiet, not saying a thing. If anybody ever looked at me, I'd smile and wave and say, hey, I'm doing great. I wasn't. But I just knew that, hey, I've been faking my life all up to this point. I'll just fake it a little bit longer. Then they kept talking about this God thing. And every time I heard God, it just made my skin crawl because, you know, I was an atheist. You know, I wasn't agnostic. I mean, I'm not an atheist I mean I was atheist. I believed that there was nothing that this world just happened out of happenstance and it was just out of control and raging. And every time I heard, you know the God thing it just freaked me out. Somebody the first person I met in the program was checking in on me a couple of weeks into it and he's like hey how's it coming? I'm like good lying of course I keep looking up at the steps and I think I really understand this program I think i got it the only problem is I'm having a hard time with the God part and he's like well the steps are in order alright well if you're having a hard time at the God parts because you know you gotta go to the step before that and get it look back at the poster and I'm like step one our life is unmanageable we're powerless over alcohol step two oh there's the God thing What do you mean? I'm only on step one. And, you know, it's like, yeah, I'm already on step two. I'm really on step 1, obviously. And I had to really get that my life was unmanageable and that I had no business running the show. Luckily, I picked a great sponsor. He spent some time with me. He melted my icy intellectual mountain that I was living in the shadow of real quickly. he asked me what are your thoughts on god i was like i don't believe in any of that stuff man i'm gonna finally be honest with you i'm going to be straight up i don'T BELIEVE IN ANY OF IT he's like all right and we're sitting there standing outside and points up at some trees said uh you see those leaves on the tree yeah i see those can you make those no how about those rocks on the ground man can you makes those no I had like a thousand different arguments in my head why there wasn't a God I could sit there and give all these reasons and then he breaks it down that simple for me can you make any of that no well something can something did and that something is bigger than you alright so I've come to believe that there is something greater than myself but how can I believe that it's going to restore me to my sanity on page 13. He knew I was really prejudiced against the whole religious thing. I was prejudiced against the whole word God. Page 13, he points out a spot in the book where it has friend with a capital F. And he's like, look, you don't want to call it God? Fine. How about calling it your friend? And I was like, alright. And then this third step really starts to make sense. I'm going to be turning my life and my will which I have no business controlling over to the care of my friends with a capital F and for me that's what it took I was like alright he softened it up enough he's put it in a way that I can understand it, he's made it, put it rephrased it in ways that's practical to me that I an apply it to my life and he left me that night said of course you know start reading this book and we're going to talk later but i want you to start talking to your friend i was like well what should i say say whatever you want man he's your friend talk to him you're having problems with something you're having problems với something say hey friend help me out here you know just check in with them throughout the day you don't even need a phone We don't need cell phones to do that. It's dialed right in up here. Just talk to your friend. All right, why step three is necessary? I wanted to read something real quick, page 44. To one who feels he is atheist or agnostic, such an experience seems impossible. but to continue as uh he is means disaster especially if he is an alcoholic of the hopeless variety to be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face it was scary i was like i think i can do this but i don't know how but i knew my alternative was that that alcoholic death either i was going to finally get drunk enough and decide one day all right i'm going to do this i'm gonna kill myself i've got enough you know moxie in me now or uh even worse i was just going to live this miserable existence of continuing on the way that i was killing the relationships around me, drinking myself to death and possibly wind up like one of my grandparents. Old, drunk, miserable and now dead. Luckily for me, faced with alcoholic destruction, we soon became open-minded on spiritual matters as we had tried to be on other questions in this respect alcohol was the great persuader it finally beat us into a state of reasonableness i needed it i needed my i needed to realize my life was unmanageable i needed that i was powerless over alcohol all of this helped me finally realize that I needed to become open on spiritual matters. Why is step three necessary? Well, to put it bluntly, to put like how I hear it in all the meetings every week, because we suck at running our own lives. Plain and simple. I think we've all tried to do it and then we've always failed. We've all gotten the same results. the first requirement is that we had to be, this is page 60, the first requirements that we have to be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success. And then it goes on to talk about how we all try to be the director, how we are all trying to arrange the pieces. Sometimes it goes our way, but most of the time what happens, talks about the show, it doesn't come off our way. And then we get mad. And then build up resentments, we get scared and I don't know about you guys but that's what kept me drunk for a really long time fear and resentment skipping over a little bit, page 62 and I know my sponsor is going to chuckle a little bit but this is the how and the why of it he tells me all the time I think he keeps me around certain new people on purpose and he says it loud enough and makes sure I'm listening. What's a good idea? And I know anybody that's had him as a sponsor is chuckling around this point. What's the answer? A simple idea is a good idea. Well, what's a simple idea? Well, we've got to quit playing God. It's just as simple as that. Page 14, it talks about It's simple, but it's not easy. A price has to be paid. What is that price? It's the destruction of self-centeredness. I got to quit running the show. I have no business. I've already proved myself in step one that my life is unmanageable. So why do we have to buy into this simple idea? Why do we need to buy it? Why do you think we have to quit playing God? It doesn't work. That's right. And that's always the answer I'm supposed to give in that situation. And I used to chuckle about it, but now I say it with 100% conviction because it doesn't work. You've got to quit playing God. Next, we decided that herein in this drama of life, God was going to be our director. He is the principal. We are His agents. He is The Father. And we are His children. Most good ideas are simple. And this concept was the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we pass to freedom. There's some handouts on your tables. I don't know if you've seen them. There's a little diagram. It's an arch at the very top of the key stone. Can't have an arch, can't complete your arch without this important step. It is the key zone. It is what links everything together. i have found when my life is not going right it's probably because i have tried to take some part of self-will back you have to completely turn your will and your life over to the care of a god as you understand them well how do i do it well on page 63 it tells us how many of us said to our maker as we understood them god i offer myself to thee to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of 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 of Thy power, Thy love, and Thy way of life. May I do Thy Will always. We thought well before taking this step making sure we were ready that we could at last abandon ourselves utterly to Him. now it was also explained to me you don't have to memorize it like that you don' t have to think about it like that just think of it as hey God you're running the show now help me out with this problem that I'm having help me out with this problem that I am having so that I can bear witness so that I can show everybody else that this God thing really does work thy will not mine be done Always. Thy will, not mine. Now step 11 is going to help you with trying to determine what that part is. But this is the start. You just have to make that contact. You have to makes that relationship. You have decide that you're going to do this. And it is scary. I was scared to death. I thought I was going to do it wrong. As it turns out, as long as you fully give it to them, you can't really do it wrong. You don't have to get it right overnight. I'm a Virgo. I am a perfectionist. I like everything to be perfect right off the first get-go. I've thrown that idea out the window. I've got a whole lifetime to build my relationship with my higher power. It's just nice to know now that I have a higher power that is looking out for me. I chuckle now I've made it this far in life without his help and now in the last few months here I've tried to establish a relationship and I've realized that I was going through life without my best friend that I was trying to make it through life without my best friend. I was trying to fight the battle of life with my right hand tied behind my back. With my strongest asset, with my strongest weapon tied behind me. Tied behind my neck. And now it's good to know. It gives me a lot of peace. It givesme a lotof serenity to know that I do have a higher power watching my back, that I have turned everything over to Him. And when things don't go well, I just, you know, smile thy will not mine be done I guess this is the way it's supposed to be all I know is I'm showing up I'm turning my life, my will over to him and that's going to be good enough at the top of 63 and I'll close it with this there's a promise when we sincerely took such a position all sorts of remarkable things followed we had a new employer being all powerful he provided what we needed if we kept him close and performed His work well. Established on such a footing, we became less and less interested in ourselves, our little plans and designs. More and more, we became interested in seeing what we could contribute to life. As we felt new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind, and as we discovered we could face life successfully, as we become conscious of His presence, we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow, or the hereafter we were reborn I could not say that before this step and I can now thanks for letting me share hope you got something out of that