Defective Personal Relationships – Bb Workshop – Part 6 of 10 – Local AA Speakers

Afternoon, everybody. I've got a question. Does anybody in here remember how many times somebody has come up to you and said, what's wrong with you? Okay? You know, I'm not even just talking about when you were drinking, but sometimes afterward, what's going on with you. Sometimes we really can confuse people out there, And they don't really understand what our motivations are or where we're coming from. I think because alcoholism is born and bred from a spiritual malady, a selfish and self-centered worldview, that it can be very, very difficult for people to understand exactly what's going on, where we'RE coming from? we talked a lot about some of the causes and conditions of our failure at life we talked about some OF OUR CAUSES AND CONDITIONS OF OUR ALCOHOLISM again I think there is a great line in the 12 and 12 that says personal relationships were almost always the cause of our immediate woes including our alcoholism now think about that statement for a second defective personal relationships were almost always the cause of our immediate woes, including our alcoholism. Now what if that's really true? What if that statement is really true It's because we haven't learned how to get along. It's porque we don't play well with others that has caused you know, the causes and conditions of our alcoholismo and our failure at life. now I knew I was an alcoholic before I came into AA the first meeting I ever went to was about 1983 a friend of mine had been living in Texas and he had moved back to New Jersey and he shows up at my house I haven't seen him in five or six years and he didn't have any place to say so I moved him in you know and uh and we were hanging out and and he saw that you know I was drinking really really heavily and he was concerned and I and had a talk with me about it he knew how to kind of do this without you know getting my feathers up and I you know admitted to him you know III do think I do drink a lot and you know II kind of wish I wasn't drinking every day but that's just kind of what's happening and I said I said you know how about if we go to an AA meeting, and I asked this guy to take me up to an AA meeting. This is like 1983. Well, what happens is, I ain't going to no AA meeting without a couple of drinks. It just wouldn't make sense at all to me. I mean, to go into any kind of crowd, I've got to get some ballast. It was like to go shopping, I needed to drink a pint. To go out and get the mail, I at least have to have one drink. So I got a nice little load on and I went up and I went to this AA meeting. Now again, I'm coming from it like I've got a drinking problem. Let's figure out this drinking problem A drinking problem means it's something that you can solve problem connotes we know from school that we're given problems in algebra and problems on tests to solve so if I've got a drinking problem that just means I've just got to figure it out and solve it so this is the misconception that I'm coming to this whole thing with and we go uptown I don't remember a whole lot about this I had a good buzz on but I do remember sitting down you know and people like looking at me and uh what are they looking at me for you know i was a live one it's really great when a live wood comes in there's a live one over there you know you know and i'm feeling uncomfortable because people are looking at me and but anyway i'm sitting there and this was like 1983 they went around the room and they shared and you can imagine the type of sharing that might have happened i don't remember much of it but what i do remember of remember of it it made no sense and it didn't relate to me i'm certain they weren't talking about the problem or the solution about alcoholism it was a sharing me and i remember you know people talking about things that were going on in their lives and oh you know aunt fanny's coming over and if anybody was here last week you know how i feel about aunt fanny and you know i'm gonna have to you know who knows what what they're talking about and and i'm just thinking this is no i don't i don'T GET THIS i DON'T KNOW WHAT'S GOING ON and uh and the basket gets passed and i'M THINKING WOW THAT YOU KNOW YOU KNOW THAT THAT'S BRINGING ME BACK TO AN UNCOMFORTABLE UH RELIGIOUS TYPE OF UH TYPE of ATMOSPHERE AND WE ARE IN A CHURCH BASE AND THEN THEN WE GET UP AT THE END AND WE ALL HOLD HANDS AND SAY THE LORD'S prayer. And that near wigged me out. I'm not a big, I'm not a hand holder of guys, you know, when I, you know, back in my drinking days, you know what I mean? Oh, can I hold your head? I mean, you know what, you know, so, so they're grabbing my hand and, you know, I, I I'm like paranoid about that. And I don't remember much of the Lord's prayer, so I just kind of mouth it. And then I'm trying to get out of there. You know what I mean. I am heading for the door and this guy stops me and he starts to what's your name my name is and he starts uh starts saying you know i'm available for sponsorship you know like to sponsor guys he was you know he was doing probably the right thing i mean he was trying to engage the newcomer now i had i i didn't know a jargon this is my first meeting i had raced motorcycles in the 70s and i was sponsored by Suzuki. And, and, and what Suzuki, what Suzuki would do is they would give up, give me gas money to get to the race if I wore their shirt. So I'm thinking, I don't need gas money. I don'T even have a license. You know, and I ain't wearing your shirt. I DON'T need a sponsor. I mean, it sounds crazy, but this is what I thought. Now, because I had to hold your hand and say the Lord's Prayer, this is like 1983, I don't come back to AA for seven years. You know? Because number one, it didn't make sense to me. And number two, you know, I'm not, I Don't want to, you know I don' t want this touchy-feely let's say prayers and hold hands and be in a big circle. I just, you know, that was alien to me and very uncomfortable. So I'm gone for six or seven years. By the time I come back in, I'm willing to hold your hand and say the Lord's Prayer. I knew that was coming. You know what I mean? And I'd learned a little bit more about AA. And I came in to try to solve my drinking problem. now I want to talk just a bit more about that statement in the 12 and 12 because it seems to me that it really requires a lot of deep thought whether or not that statement could possibly be true I've seen over and over from my own experience that the statements in our literature become true whether they're true now or not you know they become my experience that's the genius of these, these spiritual texts. They'll hit you where you are, wherever you are right now is where it will meet you. And, you know, when you've grown spiritually advanced by 20 years, this spiritual material is still going to be able to hit you. It's still goingto be able to engage you. So if most of the problems that I have in my life are because of defective relationships, then maybe my drinking problem isn't the big thing. Maybe the big things is what are the causes and conditions of my defective relationships in my life? Now, the fourth step is a great place to open this up. Until I became experienced writing inventory, I was trapped by the way I felt about you. you had power over me I would get a resentment I would get mad at you I would wake up in the morning and the first thing that I would think of as soon as I came to consciousness laying in bed, the first thing I would think is, bastard you know and this is how I would start the day now You know, you can't expect a really good day when you've got to figure out how to get those bastards. So I think that's right. I think allowing people to have that emotional attachment, that emotional power over me, I think it's something that I need to look at. I've heard it said that a resentment is like drinking poison and then expecting somebody else to die. Okay, now that's, it's really true. I mean, you know, and that anger that I've got to challenge you and you're wrong and I'm right. All of that is from a deep spiritual sickness. You know, that expression. And I've only learned that from doing this work a lot of times. Now, I've got defective relationships with people. In my family, I really believe that we didn't have a very close family because I just didn't think we had a very close family. I get sober and I realize that my family, my mother, brothers, sisters, all these people, they go on vacation a lot. They just don't take me. You know what I mean? You know, I've got a close family. They just, they just don'T allow me close. And I realized this, I realized This in sobriety. And there's good reason for it. There's good Reason for it My ego is shining so brightly that I make anything about me. You know what I mean? I make everything about me There's been some great talk about how that happens story stealing you'll be going to a funeral and you'll die on me you make somebody else's funeral about you or you're going to go to some family gathering and you've got to start figuring out all the problems with the people that you're going to be with, well she's going to be there and she's gonna be doing this and he's gonna be doing that, I'm not putting up with this and all of this is a manifestation, an ego manifestation that comes from a deep, deep level of illness it's a spiritual illness you get to a point with a lot of this stuff that you see that they're really not doing it to you they're just doing it and you're there and so then you start to think like well what well maybe it's my reaction now that's a real shift in perception that's huge shift in perception all of a sudden I have to start dealing now with my reaction how am I reacting to this because I've got a lot of emotional turmoil going on there's a lot of emotional turmoil going on. My ego is saying that, you know, I'm right and I've got to make a stand. These people are this and this. The problem is that emotional disturbance. That's the problem. Whether you're right or wrong or whatever, that's besides the point. The program is that turbulence, that emotional turbulence, you're allowing that to happen in your life. you're not in control of it it says in the bedevilments we're not in control of our emotional nature you know that's from a place of non-recovery that's from a place of untreated alcoholism now intimate relationships Charlie and Katie are probably going to touch on some of this as they move into six and seven because there wasn't time before but I want to talk about how I showed up in intimate relationships. Boy, I was a butte. You know what I mean? If you were a woman who was unlucky enough to show me the slightest bit of attention and allow me to think you might be interested in me, I would pounce. I would engage you in my life and it would be a hostage situation. It's not about unconditional love. It's about my expectations and what I'm going to do for you and how great it is for you to be with me. Who are you talking to just now on the phone? What are you doing? You're moving in, aren't you? Let's move in. Usually it was like most women are like, oh, my God. You know, what is wrong with you? But every once in a while, you know, I would get somebody with some codependency who would go, A work in progress! I'm on it! You know? And, you Know, we'd be together. And, You know I remember my first wife, you Now, the relationship worked really, really well. she thought about me as much as I did and it was it worked for me you know the dynamics were good and uh and she came from a really alcoholic family really mother father alcoholic brothers all you know all die to alcoholism just insane you know and and this Chris guy you know looks like home you know, and you know she's she's on me and uh, and we start this we start this, uh, this dance of death. Now, you know, it was, you know, when I would drink the drinking would exaggerate and kind of bastardize whatever feelings or thoughts I had at that period of time. So let's say I was a little bit jealous or a little Bit, you Know, a little BIT put off because I saw you hug a guy that I didn't know, you know, at the dance. Okay? I could kind of let that go when I was sober. I'd get really drunk and I'd take a crowbar and put about 70 holes in your car and you would be like, what was that all about? And I'd be like you hugged some guy. Now, that's unbelievably insane. But it made sense to me because I was, you know, I was made to feel small. And, you know, only coming from an unbelievable state of selfishness and self-centeredness could you do something like this. But, you know you talk to anybody that deals uh any any of the the police or anybody that deals with domestic violence or anything like that you know this type of stuff is rampant this type of abuse and you know a tragedy is ramping and when you look at you know you look at how many times are you know substance abuse and alcoholism involved it's like almost always so you know i know i'm not alone in that I can Jekyll and Hyde now you know with with with my friendships you know how I show up with my friends is I really really would try to put on a good front I would try to make you like me and I you know anybody ever see the movie Zellig you know the Woody Allen movie it was about the human chameleon you know he he would be with the Nazis and you know if you turn into a Nazi and he'd be with the Hittitic Jews, and he'd grow a long beard. You know, he was a human chameleon, and whatever people he was with, that's who he became, you know? And I had a bit of zealot in me, and if I was with a certain type of people, then I tried to project what I thought you might think would be admirable. And by not really projecting myself, I was lost. You know, I didn't know, you know, really who I was. And this became a real struggle. And I would always shoot myself in the foot with my personal relationships. You didn't really stay friends with me for very, very long. The only friends I have from childhood are people that I lost track of, you know, in the mid-70s and have come into my life in my recovery. Nobody else wants anything to do with me. You know, anybody that's seen the active alcoholism is, you Know, just stay away from me. You know? I don't need your kind of problems in my life. you know um with employers you know what is wrong with me with employers why am i having just a whole series of problems with jobs why do i always think my boss is an idiot and that you know if only my boss would listen to me things would run a little bit smoother you know, in between my projectile vomiting and crashing my cars I could give them some business advice the manifestation of alcoholism I said earlier this is an illness of minimization it certainly, certainly is we it's inconvenient for us to see a certain aspect of our behavior as a manifestation of untreated alcoholism we don't want that to be true because it makes us feel wrong or else we've got more work to do but the fact of the matter is if our defects of character if the causes and conditions of our failure at life, if our shortcomings are the things that they ask us to really pay attention to in the step work. I think there's a good reason. You know, if our relationships are something that they want us to analyze at a really deep level in the steps work, I think that there's reason for it. Now, I believe strongly that my character defects most of the time are bigger than I am. I have many, many times decided to change my ways and found out that they didn't stay changed for very long. Has anybody had that experience? I mean, in all different aspects of your life. You know, well, you know, I've been pretty selfish lately. You know from now on, I'm not going to be selfish anymore. You know how long does that last? About a minute and a half. One of the things that I found out about myself was that I was really, really selfish. I was economically selfish. has been many, many times in the relationships that I've been in and the family situations I've been in, that I have spent money very, very selfishly. Rather than look at the good of the whole family unit or everybody involved that is dependent upon my particular finances, I'll decide to go to the record store and buy $200 worth of CDs because I think that they will make me feel good or something. It's almost like an addictive spending reaction. There's been many times in my life that I picked or I went after a particular woman because of the way she looked or the way I thought she would make me feel, almost like it's as if I'm going after a certain drug. You know what I mean? Like, you know, okay, that one and, you know, knowing nothing about the woman. If you're anything like me, you've suffered from real guilt and real remorse and real shame over some of your behaviors in the past. If you don't, you're probably a psychopath. You know what I mean? And there's help for that too. It's just not here. But we, you know, I don't know about any of you, but some of the things I did, I was like horrified when I found out about it, you know, horrified. I did what? Oh my God. I can't believe it. The worst thing that would happen to me was somebody would come up to me the next day and laugh and just laugh at me. I'd be like, you know, you remember what you did last night? I'd Be like, look, it got to the point where I just started saying, just don't tell me. All right. I'm going to get really mad if you tell me, I didn't want you to tell me what I did the night before. You know, I played grab ass with the boss's wife at the Christmas party or something. You know? Like, oh! You know. Just something like really horrible. You know ? I didn't want to be burdened with that information. And, you know, alcoholism as a manifestation of self. It's a very, very unorthodox illness, alcoholism. And I'll even say drug addiction. They're unorthodocked. They're misunderstood across the board. I'll tell you this, and I mean it. Alcoholism is misunderstood in AA. It's misunderstood by your family members. It's understood by the people who treat you for it, for the most part. It's misunderstood by everyone. Everyone has usually a very, very incorrect assessment of what alcoholism or drug addiction is. You know, one of the things that I actually do for a living today is I go around to different treatment centers and different clinical professionals and the people who write the textbooks on alcoholism and, you know, the people were doing the cutting edge genetic studies And, you know, one after another I go around to these people and I interview them and, you know, I study what they're doing and I see what this treatment center is and what's really successful over here and what'S going on over there. And I'm all over the place doing this as part of my job. And there's a percentage of people out there that are really doing a great job and that really get it. and then there's a percentage of people who don't and then there's an average of people who get it but don't have the ability to do it to be able to do the right thing for you because there's just so many problems with actually getting people the help that they need there's alot of stigma involving alcoholism and drug addiction there's alotta stigma that we even buy into And I'll give you an example of that, okay? Now we're supposed to be thinking about newcomers. The constant thought of how we can help other people must go with us all the time. It's more important to think about how to help other than to help ourselves. I don't know how it's a selfish program ever got started. That's not in the book. What's in the books is you must think of other people's welfare before your own to be able to stay sober. Now, think about this. I said earlier that alcoholism and drug addiction are labeled by the American Medical Associations as a chronically relapsing condition. People have gotten really, really upset with treatment centers and almost, I'd say a majority of people do not believe treatment works the insurance company certainly backed away from it you know they're not real happy about about uh financing somebody's 15th rehab because sometimes sometimes you know the treatment is inadequate but there's something there's there's nothing that's happened with the stigma for aids there's something that's happened with the stigma for mental illness that has changed people's perceptions. And it has not happened yet in alcoholism and has not yet happened yet in drug addiction. When Marty Mann started the National Association of NCADD, one of her main objectives was to eliminate the stigma of alcoholism. Eliminate the stigma of alcohol. That was one of their main things. and they started working on it back in like 1945 or something? Do you know that we really haven't made much progress? One of the main reasons, it's our fault. It's our fall. The people who make a lot of decisions about insurance, the people that make a lots of decisions about laws. What they see is they see alcoholism at its worst. They see you in the emergency rooms and they see you time after time. They See you in front of the judge and they See you time after time, they see the ugliest face of alcoholism, but they don't see the face of recovery. You want to know why because we we make the mistake of believing anonymity means secrecy and once we're sober we're ducking our head we're not going to tell anybody that we're an alcoholic for god's sake that'll be horrible so the people who recover from this illness back out of it and they don't advocate for, most of them, don't advocate for insurance parity. They don't advocate for keeping the people from going to prison and offering treatment instead of prison. And we're contributing to the problem overall because we're just, you know, as a fellowship most of us just don't want to stand up. Now that's changing there are a lot of people who are who are becoming willing to stand up and say i am you know i'm a recovering or i'ma recovered alcoholic they don't necessarily admit to membership in any specific 12-step fellowship which would be a break in tradition but it's no break in traditional all to say that you're in recovery and you've got 22 years without a drink or whatever you can do that wherever whenever you want to do it and there there really needs to be more of us to do that to help with it you know if addictive illness is the number one health problem in america today and i truly believe it is we you know we don't get any of them the insurance money i mean we don'T you know no one wants to pay for this it's the biggest health problem in the country and nobody wants to pay for it right now right now the people who get funding for treatment are the people with a lot of money and can self-pay or the people on welfare who can get a welfare initiative the people that are in the middle of that spectrum have an awful hard time trying to get into treatment and you know what that's not fair That should be illegal. That should mean discrimination. And there's not enough of us standing up and saying, hey, you've got to stop this. You've gotto stop this." Fine. I got off on a little tangent there, but I feel very strongly about that. I think it does kind of tie into what's wrong with me. What's wrong with me, you know, I need to be saying the things that I need to be staying and I need standing up where I need to be standing up. And I need helping the people that I can help. What's what's wrong with me? Here's one of the great lessons my first sponsor taught me. He said, Chris, I want you at the picnic on Saturday. It's for the treatment center that we both went to, and you're going to help me cook. We're going be the food crew. Now I'm sober three months, and I show up at this thing. And he puts me behind the grill, and I'm flipping lobsters and flipping crabs on this barbecue grill. And the wind is blowing the smoke right at me. I mean, I am getting smoked. and this is all day long, my eyes are watering I smell like a burnt crab and I'm looking over in the field and I am watching all of my buddies playing volleyball and drinking soda under the umbrellas and I look at my sponsors like you horses ass you now he would make me do things like this and he was very very considerate of my sensitive alcoholic feelings, he could have said to me this, because this would have been very true. Chris, I'm making you stand behind the barbecue grill and get smoked because you've never done anything for anybody ever without expecting something back in return. And that you come from such a selfish, self-centered platform that what I'm going to do is I'm going to tell you to do something that you're seemingly not going to get anything back from just because I've got to break you of this habit of always doing things that are good for you. And he didn't say that to me, he just asked me to do it and I respected him enough to do it. And I started to get involved in some levels of service. I started to do things for the AA meetings and the AA people and drive people here and drive people there. And I started to develop a service ethic. And through the service ethic, that really taught me just how bad I was, just how much trouble I was in with this selfishness and this self-centeredness because I never did do anything for anybody without experience. expecting it, but I didn't think that. I thought I was generous and like a really loyal friend and that's just not the case. I may lend you money to bail you out of jail or something, but you know, I'd want you to pay it back by Friday or I'm taking your guitars, you know? I mean, you know I'd be nuts. So it's through this service ethic that I started to really start to heal from some of this selfishness certainly the step work played a big part in it but by giving back and by helping others that's probably the single most important thing in in my life today was that shift in perception from it's all about me too i need to at least include you in this too because we really are all in this together every single spiritual leader every single religious or spiritual genius comes up with basic truths that roll all the way through all religions and all philosophies and all spiritual traditions. And the really, really enlightened mystics all come to the same conclusion that our perception of being separate from one another is really a misconception you know they all say the same thing that that we're all part of um of a whole and when we stop thinking we are this separate thing and you know we got to really only deal with our acre over here and not worry about the whole field uh that we that we get into trouble when we start to see the whole feel and try to take care of the whole feeling not necessarily just our acre you know we uh we we blossom and uh we start to really achieve some of the spiritual gifts that are available um we have next here okay we are bringing charlie and katie up at four o'clock okay for step six through nine thank you