Everything on My Fourth Step Fear List Has Come True and I’m Still Standing – Erin G.

Let's have an AA meeting. My name is Lisa and I'm an alcoholic. Welcome to the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers meeting at the NABA Club, where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous with one year or more of sobriety tells his or her story. This reading is based on a passage from page 29 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Each individual in our personal stories describes in their own language and from their own point of view the way they established their relationship with God. These give a fair cross-section of our membership and clear-cut idea of what has happened in their lives. We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste. Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women in our room tonight and listening later on aabluchipspeakers.org desperately in need will hear our speaker and we believe that it is only by fully doing so disclosing ourselves and our problems that any of us shall be persuaded to say yes, I am one of them, I must have this thing. I've seen this lady for a couple of years at a meeting that I visit occasionally and so last week I asked her to speak tonight and I'm looking forward to hearing her story. My name is Erin Garland, I'm an alcoholic. Night and conquer. So I got this gig last week. I walked in here. I came to a meeting looking for sponsees and actually was not in a good place recently leading up to the last couple of days. And my sponsor said, you need to get some sponsees in the book. So I was like, I'm going to go to some other meetings. I'm going to find some sponsees. And I had a plan. Well, you know what God does with our plans. So I show up here, I get asked to speak. And I was like, is this lady kidding? That's not why I'm here. I'm here for something else. You know, but it's funny how God works and knows exactly what I need, right? To stop spending time thinking about myself and what I think I need. And here we are. So I was taught always to say yes. And, you know, as long as I lie or don't fall out and get taken out by ambulance like I did when I had two years sober at telling my story, I can't go wrong. The bar has set very low since that time. I mean, you really can't go wrong as long as I make it through the whole thing, right? So as you can tell, I'm not a southerner. I don't have any twang. I don't have any talk. I'm a southern draw. I'm not going to be like the new LSU coach that was faking a southern accent last week when he met his new team. I'm a New Englander. And I've been here in Atlanta for about 11 years, so I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. But the accent might come out. And let's just lay it out now. I'm a Patriots fan, Celtics, Red Sox, all that stuff. So you can do what you want with that. I, you know, I never knew when you walk in these rooms, you could be the one speaking at the front of the meeting, right? That's the last thing you want to do. But when we get sober and we find out that we found a solution that works, I don't know about you guys, when I came in here, I wanted to die, you know? I wanted to kill myself. And that's what we do. We find a solution and we share it. So that's what I'm supposed to do tonight is tell you what my life is like, how I built a relationship with a power greater than myself. And today, realizing that that is the number one relationship in my life above my marriage and everything else in my relationship with God and how I try to maintain that. Like I said, I'm a New Englander. I was born in Portland, Maine. Never going back to that snow. And gosh, I mean, I have the type of parents where my mom just texted me on the way here like, did you get your Christmas present yet? It was mailed out last week, you know? I'm 40 years old and the lady's still checking in on me about my box of present and cookies. You know, but when I got sober, I would have told you like they were horrible. They were verbally abusive. They expected perfection. Like found my first four step last week because it was time for me to write another inventory. And I found my first one. And I was reading what I wrote about my parents. And I'm like, I was so delusional. Like I literally wrote, she expected perfection, straight A's, all these things. And that's not what was going on at all. You know, so the longer I stay sober and the better my connection is with God, I can see the truth. I can see the truth of what my life is like, not only now, but also in the past, you know? So my parents are still married to this day. I have a sibling that's three years younger than me. She's one of us. But she says she only smokes pot, but she sure looks like someone dying of some other drug use, you know? And that's kind of sad to watch. But you can't really help someone, right? Until they're ready to help themselves. So that's what I learned in here. You know, I have people telling me before I got sober, don't you love this dream job? Don't you love this dream job you have? Why don't you just stop? All these people that used to hang out with you aren't hanging out with you. Why'd you drink again like that last night? You know, those are the questions, and I just didn't know the answer, you know? So luckily, people of any age just told me to keep coming, you know, keep coming back. And so that's the way I try to approach newcomers, but also with my sister, you know? She lives in my parents' basement at age 37. I, too, spent time in that basement living there. So I can't really judge her for where she's at in her journey. You know? Me and my sister were always very competitive, which my parents got us into the bands, sports, any sport, we played it, and we had competitions, and we were outside playing until streetlights came on. You know? That was the rule. I'm sure some of you in here can relate to that if you're my age or older, that you just were outside playing. And when the lights started to get dark and the streetlights came on, it was time to go home. I had Nintendo and video games, and probably just aged myself there a little bit, but, you know, but that wasn't all I did, you know? I loved to be around other kids. I was involved in all these extracurricular activities. My parents spent my whole childhood up through high school and into college paying for and supporting me to play, like, competitive soccer, basketball, up and down the East Coast, you know? And here I am thinking that, like, my parents are what I told you a minute ago, like, high expectations and just, there's no room for mistakes, and that's not what they're actually, that's not what their actions showed, right? But then I come to Alcoholics and Honest, and I find now when I look back that I just make these assumptions, and I create this set of ideas in my life of how the world works and how I think that people think, and I stick with it. I never tell anybody I'm doing that. I don't even realize I was doing it, but that's what was happening. I was creating a set of ideas and code of living, and it was skewed, you know? And I didn't know that until I got sober, and I start talking to a, to a sponsor about why I'm upset with people, why things aren't happening, and she's like, looking at me like, that's, you don't even know what they're thinking. You're saying what you think they think. You haven't even talked to them, you know? It's like when I go to an AA meeting, right, and I say something that I think was dumb, and then I go home, and that night I'm like, oh, they've got to be thinking about me still. Those people are back home now thinking about what I said at the meeting. They're not. No one even remembers what I say after they walk out the door, you know? I'm the only one thinking that, so. This is a disease, that centers in my mind, I learned when I got here, and I look back, and I can see that it was always there even before I picked up a drink, you know? I had my first drink probably when I was like, I don't know, 15, 16, the older I get, I can't remember, and I was all excited because my dad was president of the city council and on the school committee, and my mom volunteered in the schools. My dad stayed, my mom stayed home and worked until I was like 16, so they all knew everybody, and I was kind of just scared, scared to get in trouble, you know? It kind of kept me in line at school, and I didn't have any free time to do anything wrong anyway because I was always doing stuff, sports and band and chess club. That was cool. You know, I was doing all these things, and I hang out with a girl from another school where we kind of became friends. We'd always play sports against each other from the town over. I was finally invited to a party, you know? And the very first time, I drank. You know when you go to a party in high school, or maybe even when we're older, and there's like different women at the party, there's like the girl crying in the bedroom about the guy that's mad at her. There's the person puking outside over the railing, you know? There's someone wanting to fight someone, you know? And then there's the person puking in the bathroom or on the floor when you open the door, there's a person. I think that was all of them that night because I remember waking, the last thing I remembered at first was like puking, puking over the side of the, I got outside and I just vomited off the back of their deck. Never even met this girl before. I met her house doing that. Wake up on the bathroom floor and then I stumbled out and I was like, I want to drink more. Like, that was my first time, you know? When I came in AA, I really thought that my drinking didn't pick up until college. But I had like black, like spaced that out because I'd only drank probably like four or five times when I went to college, so I was just like, oh, it couldn't have been bad then. But like, the very first, first time I put alcohol in my body, the allergy that I learned about when I came to AA was that like it kicked in and my body said I want more. You know, that phenomenon of craving happened. Later I learned when I was making amends that I'd vomited all over that girl's little brother's bedroom and she had to clean it up before the parents came home the next day. I didn't talk to those girls for a long time, but I wasn't invited back. And so, you know, that's what my drinking looked like each time in high school that I drank. It was some version of that or making out with some guy in the woods because in Maine you go, you drag the keg out into the woods with the red solo cups. I'm sure you do that here in the backwoods of Georgia and you hide so you can underage drink until the cops come and then everyone's running through the woods, you know. And so that was what my drinking looked like, you know, and then it came time to go to college and how I made my choices, if you haven't heard by now, I didn't go to church. I didn't, I didn't have a process of a way of living. I didn't have a relationship where I really communicated and was close with people. There was none of that in my life. I made all decisions on my own and how I chose what college to do is the one that I had the best, most fun at on my recruiting trip for soccer. I was dancing on a bar top at the age of 17 or a table in the bar and we were dancing and it was outcast. It was Rosa Parks. Everybody moved to the back of the bus and I was like, I'm going here. Like I turned to the girl. I can, that's a very vivid memory and I was like, I'm coming. I'm coming here. Like, like she really cared, you know. They had to like go find me in some frat house later because I was making out with some guy, you know. I would make out with anything that moved, you know, especially when I got sober. You know, they say like, leave everybody alone, guys, girls. I didn't care. I like that attention, you know. Don't do that. It was just a distraction, you know. And so I start drinking the day I get to school. So I get out there and they say, I'm out there with the athletes and they're like, you just can't drink for, no drinking during preseason, even the upperclassmen that were of age and no drinking 48 hours within a game. The very first day I'm there, I befriend the girl on the team that's from the town the school's in that knew where all the parties were and I did my first keg stands. I remember puking in a trash bag in the back of some car and waking up in the other teammates' dorm room, you know. So here we are again. My drinking was kind of spaced out but here we are again. And they were already annoyed with me. I just met these people, you know, and I was already a pain in the butt and I always thought the coach didn't know about that but I found out a year and a half later that she had been told by the players and she decided to give me a chance and said, it must just be a fluke, you know. This kid just got here. I've known her since she was like 12 or 13. I'd known the coach because she was from Maine and I'd gone to upstate New York like near Canada for school and she cut me some slack. So here someone's already showing me some grace, right? But I think I've pulled a fast one on the coach. Halfway through that season I get suspended for a game because people are sick of dealing with me. I never broke the 48 hour rule so I thought it was okay. You know, I wasn't going to class. I mean, this is the first time I get to school and it was like I'm seven hours from home I can do what I want now and no one's going to know. And I just went wild. You know, I didn't go to class. I'd be showing up to class in the clothes from the night before doing the walk of shame and I don't know. I'm sure some of you know what the walk of shame is. You know, walking across campus from someone else's room to your own. You know, people looking out their windows and they're like there goes the girl. I saw her out last night because she never made it home. You know, there's only 1,800 kids in the school. It's a small school so everybody knew what was going on. And I was showing up to class in the clothes from last night. I don't know what probably reeking of booze. Again, don't think I'm fooling people. You know, and I just start drinking within those guidelines of the team but it was heavy drinking. You know, when I would drink I was going home and make it out with someone. I was still a virgin so I thought like that wasn't promiscuous. You know, and but I didn't like that I was just like at the end of the night lights flicker and it's like all right, where am I going home with? You know, I start making laps around the bar and that's what I did. You know, after the soccer season ended not long after I was out drinking and did my normal activity I'm going to check in and find someone to go home with because the last call lights flickered and I went home with a guy and you know, I was very, very drunk and I was sexually assaulted so that was, you know, kind of how I lost my virginity, you know, and after that I just started sleeping with everyone because now I'm ashamed and I feel guilty and a teacher kind of could pick up that I was acting weird and she kind of just said, you know, I'm going to have you go talk to the dean of students and she said, will you just come and talk to me once a week? We'll do therapy and we'll just, that'll be enough so they just swept it under the rug so I start learning, right, adding to my ideas of how life works is that people don't really care about you if you tell them the truth about things and no one really wants to help you. They can pretend to help you but they don't, you know. So I just keep drinking. I last the whole school year there. Somehow I'm like, I think I would fail one class so I went into like the same school year. Second year there on like academic probation, you know. But after the third semester, so to go back to the fall again, I was into drinking and smoking pot way more than like thinking about all this like time I had to give to a sport that I was like, I'm not going to play this year. I got there a week into preseason. I was just like, nah, you know, I don't feel like it, you know. And my parents had told me I could go to whatever school I wanted but I totally picked that school. My dad's like, what major are you going to do? I'm like, I'll figure it out, you know. He was so mad at me because these other schools are willing to give me money but I turned them down because they were boring, you know. So I'm drinking every day at this point and I'm sending my manipulative email back home to my parents saying, you know, I've got a plan. I'm going to stay for the winter and I'm going to make up these classes. I'm not doing so well, which is an understatement at this point, right? And I'm not telling anybody what's going on in my head that, you know, I'm scared of, what people think about me and now that I've been like in trouble with the soccer team and then I quit and like I was a starter right away and I let them down and they told me that like no one likes me but I'm not sharing these thoughts with anybody, you know. So I make my decisions based on how I feel. I'm not praying and asking God for guidance. I'm not, you know, talking to others and running things by people. I have an idea and I act on it, you know. And so, so I, my parents are like, you're done. We're done throwing our money in the toilet there. We're going to, you're coming home. So I go back to Maine and I get enrolled in the state school and I was one of those snobs that was like, I am not going to the state school, you know. I wouldn't apply to anywhere in the state of Maine and I end up going to the school that's like the next town over, you know. I start playing soccer and big surprise, I do the same thing as that team and that school that I did at the other school, right, because that's not going to fix my problem just because I go to a new place and new people, closer to my parents but I was living in the dorms and that didn't fix anything, you know. So again, the end of that season, I was, first year there, I was kicked off the team right before the playoffs started because I got caught lying, you know. You can only kill your grandparents off so many times before someone's going to know and when there's kids on your team in your class and they don't see you show up for a test and then they tell the athletic director and the athletic director comes to you and you're like, oh, I got there early and I took it down the hall. Like, what is that? Like, that's the stupidest thing I've ever said, you know. Well, she emailed the teacher and said, oh, I thought her grandmother died and, you know, that was the last straw they had for me because they had told me if I kept drinking or smoking pot or skipped class they were going to kick me off the team and so that's what happened because I don't care about you threatening my things that I care about. It doesn't, you know, the big book says, right, like frothy emotional appeal doesn't work for us. It doesn't matter if I love something my whole life or that something's on the line or a consequence. I'm going to drink anyway, you know. So, at this point, at this school, I have this thing I start doing when I'm drunk. I start, like, hooking up with girls. It's the only one I drink though so it probably doesn't mean anything, you know. But don't tell anybody that happened and if they did I would be pissed swearing at them, lying, denying it and, um, so I'm just, you know, having fun, right? And if a girl liked me, I would just stop talking to her, you know. So, because, you know, I was like the last to know that I was gay. Everybody seemed to know in AA that I was around like you. I wouldn't even tell us you're gay and I'd be like shut up. You know, I'd come to AA and one of my friends said something like, oh, I bet you played softball. I'd go, what the F does that mean? I was furious. It was like my first year and I was like so mad at him and he felt horrible and he apologized and he's one of my really good friends now. But that was what I said to him and he just was like, oh my God, who is this crazy girl, you know? Because I'm so worried what people think or who I might be, you know, especially once we get sober. I don't really even know who I am, but it's too scary to find out what my potential is, right, in any area of my life, so I'm just going to avoid it, you know? So, let's see, I'm in and out of school, in an apartment, back at the parents house, in an apartment, and now I'm not in school, so I just go to work, I work at a group home, and I'm working, at one point I was working the overnight shift, so while the kids are sleeping, I'm outside smoking weed in the driveway in the back of the house, you know? These kids have developmental disabilities and trauma issues, and God forbid if something happened, and I'm supposed to be the person that's awake, I probably wouldn't have been in good shape to help them, you know? So I can't just not do it when I'm at work anymore, you know? But I was like, well, at least I'm not drinking, you know, it's just pot, you know? But I wasn't sober, you know? And I was thinking on the way here that it's bothered me, I don't think I ever shared with anybody because it was shameful that I got fired from that job for being accused of verbally abusing a kid one day because there was like shame and guilt when it involves kids. I'm not a mom, but I've talked to a lot of moms and they would say that, you know, that's one of the hardest things for them to admit, but I quit before they could do anything about it because they said something to me about it and sent me home and I just quit before I could get in trouble. I just was like riding a kid's butt one day that can't think straight and doesn't know right from wrong and it wasn't right, you know? So I'm not even showing up as the person I want to be at work. I'm not in school. I really only go to my parents' house to use the laundry machine. I call them when I need something. I call them when something's really good. That's it. I don't call them and say, how you doing? How are you? How's your day? What's going on in your life? There's none of that, you know? It's, let me just make you feel better about me. I'll tell you something good that's going on or I'll call you when I'm in a jam, you know? Dad, car's broken down, side of the road, come get me. You have triple A, you know? That's it. That was my relationship with my parents. Yet underneath, I always wanted to have a good relationship with my parents. I want what other people have. I want to have those relationships with people where there's an intimacy. And I remember coming to AA and there's this older guy out there in the first couple meetings I went to that was saying like, oh, do you just have inadequacy issues? Do you not feel good enough? And I'm like, who is this old man creature? So talking about being inadequate, I figured it was the sex he was talking about and I was like, creeped out and I was like, what is going on here? But the truth was, like, I feel inadequate in all areas of my life. I'm not good enough. I let people down. I know they say I'm good at work, but I really can't be. Or if they really knew all of me, they wouldn't really think I was that good of an employee or friend or anything, right? And that could still creep up now because I found out all that's alcoholism. You know, I wish I could meet that guy again today and say, I know what you meant and you were right. Yes, yes, like, I do have those issues, you know? I just thought he was a weirdo, like, bugging women at a meeting, you know? So, eventually I went back to school, finished school. I dated a guy for three and a half years that was an alcoholic and during those years, his alcoholism had progressed a lot further than mine had at that point. So, I would, like, not drink or not drink as much to make sure he could, like, make it home and that is a very, that kept me going with my drinking and using because it made me think I was controlling it, you know? But I was smoking pot the whole time so I wasn't sober anyway but in my head, you know, these people in college and my friends and my teachers and professors, they had all been telling me that but here I am in a period of my life, kind of like it talks more about alcohol, as in, like, looking for that time period of, like, where we control and enjoy our drinking and I hung on to that for a while, you know? That was, like, something that I saw, like, well, it can just be like that again. I'll just smoke pot and drink occasionally, you know? Eventually, after three and a half years of, like, him, you know, calling from downtown and buy a brick building. What brick building? The one by the gas station, you know? And off Aaron goes, like, looking for gas stations near brick buildings. You know, it means small, but it was still a lot of them, you know? And just living with anxiety all the time and just kind of worried, you know? So I couldn't do that anymore because I thought I was better than him. He's a really nice guy, but after we broke up, he ended up, like, getting into heroin and going to prison and I just think, like, that's where I was headed to, you know? I used to come into AA and look at people being different at me or maybe my bottom wasn't bad because I wasn't arrested. I didn't lose a marriage. I didn't have one, you know? My kids weren't not talking to me because I didn't have kids, you know? But I would only see the differences and that kept me drinking while coming to meetings as well because I was only looking, I was like, well, these people are, like, strippers and homeless people and they don't have a life, but I'm not like them, you know? That's what I really thought, by the way. I thought, first time I came to NABBA, I thought these two girls were strippers because Pink Pony or whatever it is is around the corner and she was stumbling and I'm like, oh, that girl's drunk and she's probably from Pink Pony around the corner because those are the only types of people that are in here. That girl ended up being my sponsor at first. She wasn't a stripper and it turns out she just had, like, seizures and at that time they were bad and so, like, she would have to take some medicine that when it started, there was like a 20-minute window where it would mess with how she felt and she'd get dizzy a little bit but then she'd be fine and that's what she was experiencing. So, that's me just making assumptions of who's in this room, you know, because I thought I was better because I had my car, had a job, you know. So, I moved to Atlanta after that, moved in with my aunt Lawrenceville and I started drinking a lot right away, you know. I'm like, I'm going to enjoy this city and I brain injury rehab as a recreation therapist. I'd gone back to school and finished school of working at the Shepherd Center downtown and you know, five months after getting here I had that dream job and I got my own apartment soon after that. I got a new car and just like Bill Wilson says, I had arrived. I just remember the day opening that apartment, had a new car, my first time living alone, I had friends here and I had my dream job. I was like, life can't get any better. It proceeded to be the worst year of my life. That was the last year of my dream day. Once you live alone, anyone that's lived alone in here, you know it's on. You don't have to hide anything. You don't go searching for it the next day. Where did I leave that? Everything just stays out in the open and no one knows what I'm doing. At this point, I get this job and I start calling out and I'm not really reliable and I've created a fake medical condition. I was caught puking in the bathroom at work and I don't know why my dumb butt decided to say, oh, I was puking blood. I don't know if I wanted sympathy or what, but they were like, oh, this is a health care facility. You're going to the hospital. So now I'm going to the hospital for something that's not happening because I'm in the line now so now I've got to play it out. Okay, they say, I don't vomit anymore once I get there. You need to go to a GI specialist and get an endoscopy. So now I'm paying to have an endoscopy that I don't need and then I go to the follow-up appointment and get my results. I was fine, but I got to have something to tell my work now. All this is going on. So I tell them I have a bleeding ulcer. So I called out a lot because I had a bleeding ulcer. What's great about that job is you only have to leave a voicemail when you called out. It was always called before the front desk lady got there. So I could just call at 5, 6 a.m. and be like, my stomach's acting up, I'm not going to make it in. Then I researched what someone with a bleeding ulcer would and would not eat. And I would not eat those things at the job. And if someone offered me something that was on that list, I'd be like, no, I can't, it's too acidic, my stomach. So they all believed that, I thought. You know? They're like hinting to me, do you need to take leave for something? Do you need help? Do you, you know, I'm missing at least one, two days of work a week. There's only five days in the work week, you know? Do you need to take leave? Is there something you need to take care of? And at this point, I'm going, my therapist, because that was going to solve everything, had said something to me about Alcoholics Anonymous before, but I was like, no, I don't need that, you know? That's for really bad people. Here I am drinking every day. Near the end, I was smoking pot before I went to work. I just made sure it wasn't on days I was driving clients, so I thought that was okay. And, you know, they knew what was going on, but I think I've got them all fooled, you know? And so I go into therapy again a few months later, and she brings up AA again. So I'm crying because of something that happened. And, oh, I had walked out of my own 30th birthday party and left everybody at the club. They didn't even know. They called me, where are you? I'm like, oh, we left. We had just gotten there like 30 minutes before, but I was like, I didn't want to be there. I wanted to leave and go drink how I wanted to drink, and I didn't want to socialize, and these nice people that are throwing me a party are like, where's Aaron? You know, and I was kind of the last straw. They stopped inviting me. I was alone. My world got very small. I would go to work when I could make it, and the only people I saw was the people, either if I would make it to a bar, the guy selling the beer at the store, you know, and maybe the guy was hot off of. So I started going to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. My therapist said, just go to one before you see me next week. So I drove 20 minutes away. I used to live right down the street because I worked over here on Claremont, and I drove 20 minutes away because I don't want anyone to see me going into these meetings. I don't want because they're going to know if I'm walking in a church, I thought, like they would know. So I was like, I can't have anybody from work seeing me. So I drove like 20 minutes to South Decatur, to the Decatur group down there, one of the oldest meetings in Atlanta, walked down those stairs, probably after that creepy man asked me if I was inadequate or something, and I stayed, and I don't remember much, but I just remember they said they were going to say the Lord's Prayer, and I had never been to church or prayed, so I literally got up and jogged out the back of the door, and the spring was broken on the door, and it just swam shut. So they all said later that they turned around and was like, oh, I guess she's gone. I think you're losers, and you all have nothing going in your life, but I care what you think of me. You can't think I don't know the Lord's Prayer. It's delusional, you know? So I spent six months in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous drinking. I get that sponsor here. NABBA was the first place I said I was an alcoholic, that little room around the corner, and that was the day I met those two girls that I thought were strippers, and they told me about a group, Fifth Tradition group, so I started going over there twice a week, and I just would call my sponsor for a couple days, I'd call someone, I'd go to a meeting, and then I'd stop. After like three or four days, I was good, and then I'd drink, and then I'd cry the next morning, and I'd call out of work, and I would go around from meeting to meeting in Atlanta, I was like collecting white chips and just crying in the back, like profusely, and like interrupting the meeting with my crying, you know, and people feeling bad for me. I'm sure I liked the attention a little bit, right? And I was like, it got worse, like you'd think it can't get worse by the time you show up here, but emotionally, like, I didn't want to die yet until I started coming to AA, and I recognized I was in the right place, yet I was so scared to be openly transparent and honest with someone that emotionally I died more, you know? There's nothing worse. If anyone's in here and they're doing it, they know what I'm talking about or if you've done it. You know you're in the right place, but it doesn't seem like it's working. Somehow I'm getting worse, you know? They say come to these meetings, but I wasn't doing what the people in AA were doing. I was dating AA. I would come and take what I needed, hang out with you for a little bit, then I'd leave. I found out that's how I did all my relationships later on in my fourth and fifth step. You know? I would take only what I wanted. I would pray once or twice and be like, I don't know what I'm praying to, but whatever, keep me sober, and then I'd stop. So of course you're going to keep drinking. I'm not going to get what people in AA are getting if I'm not doing what people in AA are doing. That's what my story shows. If you're sitting in here and you think this doesn't work, it's because you're not doing probably what the people that are happy and free are doing. The people that are laughing and having a good time for real and seem like the wackiest people that probably you think are not sober in here are the most free. We've got a few people like that in our home group, but I thought, what is going on with these people? The truth is they're the most free people in the room because they're not walking around caring what people think. They're just being who they are. They actually are genuinely welcoming people to walk through that door, and they mean it. I think they're nuts because I'm so far away from where those people are that I don't see how I can change into someone like that. So after that, I check myself into treatment. I go to treatment for a couple months, and they held on to my job for me, which is a miracle. I had a hard time seeing that my life was unmanageable because the job's there, the car's there, the apartment's there. No people are really in my life. My parents are 1,100 miles away. They don't know what's going on until the night before treatment. I call them and I say, hey, are you sitting down? One of my coworkers sat with me that night at the office so I would have some support. I was like, I have a problem with alcohol. That's all I said at first. Tomorrow I'm going to treatment. Talk about scaring the crap out of your parents. Do we need to fly down? Do you need us? That was their reaction. I was like, no, I'm okay. I got someone bringing me. Someone was picking me up from work. I was going to go one more day to work and close everything out. I went out and went into sober living because I realized I'm I can't go back to that apartment. I know what living alone and no one knows if I'm calling my sponsor. I don't have anyone to help hold me accountable. I chose to go into sober living because I need someone to say, come on, let's go to the meeting when I don't feel like going to it. I need someone to say, you're off. What's going on with you? Wanting to die is a pretty good motivator. I start doing the five things every day that my sponsor told me to do. She said pray. I was like, to what? I don't even know if there's a gut. She said, it doesn't matter. You just have to be a seeker. I'm like, a seeker? I don't think Harry Potter is a seeker. What are they talking about? I'm wearing Harry Potter socks because they're my wife's. That's crazy. But anyway, so you I start doing the things. I'm praying every morning to a God I don't believe in. I'm saying, okay, God, please keep me sober. I'm doing it in the bathroom. I don't want anyone to see me praying. We're all supposed to be doing the same things. I'm so worried what they think. I don't want anyone to see me praying. I'm in there praying. I had to repeat it 86 to 88 to learn how to start my day and how to pray to God and what I'm asking for, not just to make me happy and give me money and give me a relationship. That doesn't work. I call my sponsor every day. I have a home group. She tells me to start calling three other alcoholics. I'm like, I'm not here to make friends. Literally what I said. Okay, well, cool. You're going to need people if you're going to stay sober. I'm like, whatever. I had a really bad attitude. I was very angry. I was 30 at the time. Coming up on 10 years, sober this spring. I don't think I said that earlier. It doesn't matter. It's one day at a time. The longer you stay sober, you realize how important it is. It's just one day at a time. It's not necessarily about drinking, but to stay sane so you don't want to drink is what we're offering here. I start doing those things. I'm doing them most days. If I'm not wanting to do one of them, I'm telling my sponsor, I really want to call people. How about you ask God for the willingness to do the action. Take the actions you don't feel like doing. See if you can get some willingness. On your own, you just make decisions based on how you feel. I start doing that. I set up chairs at the home group or I'm a greeter. I have a service position and I'm complaining about it. Every Saturday night we go to pizza. This is how it goes. Every Saturday, my poor sponsor, she's like, oh, you're coming to pizza? I'm like, no, I'm tired. You can only stay for 30 minutes. Or I'd say, I'm not hungry. You can still just come. You don't have to eat. I would come up with excuses. Every Saturday was like groundhog day. I would be so mad. Most of the time, once I could stay out late enough on the weekends, I would go. I'm like, fine, I'll have to go. This is stupid. It doesn't matter how I feel about things. It doesn't matter if I like it or know what I'm going to get out of it. I was told to take the actions. It's funny how all of a sudden, we'll do all this crazy stuff and all of a sudden, it's like, let me consider. All of a sudden, I become a patient person that wants to know, what does that do for me? What will I get? Will I be friends? What kind of friends? I didn't care anything before about what I was putting in my body, who I was hooking up, who I was hooking up with. None of that mattered. Now, I'm so conscientious. I started doing those things. We read the big book page by page together. That's how she was sponsored. That's how she sponsored me. That's how I sponsored women. We read the book page by page. We'd meet once a week when I wasn't lying about being sick for some reason. Finally, she said, you're wasting my time. I set this time aside for you. You keep calling or texting and saying, I'm sick. I've got a headache. She said, you have to take this serious. We start meeting once a week. We do exactly what the book says. There's no extra worksheets. There's no extra this. She's not throwing in her personal opinion. She's like, this is a textbook. This book is going to tell us exactly what to do. When it said pray, we pray. When it said write, we write. You've heard that before. She helped me see where my life was unmanageable. The day I wanted a treatment, my rent check would have bounced. At the end of that phone call with my parents, I was like, by the way, I don't have money for rent tomorrow. I'm two months behind on my car payment. Astute loans are three months behind. It was not manageable. I saw these things, so I didn't think my life was unmanageable. It was. I was about to be homeless. The car was about to be taken. It was closing in. I was like, oh, man. My job is about to get fired. It's all closing down. I knew what I was doing going to treatment. Still manipulative. She helps me see the truth of what life was really like. I'm still praying every day. I'm asking for help from something I don't even know what it is. We go through the steps. When it said we get to step four, I write an inventory. I'm so desperate at that point, but I recreated a relationship with my family. I've been praying for a few months at that point that I'm like, okay, I'm not drinking. I seem pretty angry. I'm very emotionally volatile. It's a roller coaster for the first several months, but I'm not drinking. I have to be reminded that I'm not drinking. I'm like, this isn't working. I'm mad all the time. She's like, are you sober? I'm like, well, yeah, but that's what we offer here. It's not going to be happiness all the time, but we have a way to keep you sober. I've built a relationship with my sponsor, but I've also realized that ever since I started praying this, I'm not drinking. I might want to, but every time I wanted to, if I told my sponsor what was going on, I could be told, ask God to help remove the obsession, and she told me what to do. She said, go call three other people, or go down the street. There's a 530 meeting. Go right now. You know? Me running my mouth finally became handy. That's the only reason I think I'm still sober, is because I now have the ability to be honest and not worry what my sponsor or what other people think about me, because I know that my life depends on me being honest. I thought that was pretty drastic to say that this was a life or death matter when I showed up, but I do know now that it is. It didn't sound like I was dying, besides my fake ulcer, right? But, like, I was dying. I really thought I might hurt myself. I was going to kill myself. I was a drug driver, or God knows what drugs I was going to do next that could kill me, you know? Or I was going to die a slow alcoholic death, you know, and just be miserable forever, you know? And so, I did all the things, and, you know, things got better, whether I realized it or not, you know? And I moved out of sober living after a year, and got an apartment with someone, and things were good, and then, you know, it kind of hit me. I was mad all over again about, I can't believe I have to do AA, you know? And I didn't tell anyone about that, so I'm showing up to meetings, and I'm starting to think about stuff from my childhood again, and I'm kind of like wondering what's going on, and I started getting depressed, but I'm not telling anybody, because I stopped talking to my sponsor, so now it's me and my brain, I'm not praying, so I become suicidal in sobriety, you know? There's no solution in my head when I'm alone. I don't have anyone telling me to pray or help me see the truth, I just think like no one likes me, the group doesn't notice if I'm not at the meeting anyway, no one's going to care, and so since that makes me uncomfortable and anxious, I only know two ways to get out of it, so I'm either going to kill myself or I'm going to drink or use. Well, I know what drinking and using looks like, so I'm not going to choose that, so I'll just kill myself. And for some reason I started texting with this woman and telling her what was going on, and her and this other woman, and they were like, if you're not going to use your sponsor, you need to get a sponsor, you know? So one of these ladies, Rebecca, dragged me across the meeting and was like, ask her to be your sponsor right now, we're becoming friends, and I'm thinking now, I look back, I'm like, that was not a friendship, I was just texting her, I want to die, help me, that's not a friendship, it's like a crisis hotline, you know? And she was like, this sore lady says I need to have you as a sponsor, but we're becoming friends, she goes, you can be friends with everybody else, I'm going to sponsor you, go outside and tell Catherine that you're at least working and talking with a sponsor now, so I did, and you know, after that, I got quickly into action, wrote another four step on the fears that I had and the thoughts that were in my head, you know, and shortly after that, I, you know, fell and hurt my back and lost that dream job, within a six month, eight month span, I lost my dream job, I, because I couldn't get back to work in time, my roommate told me, we've had a good run, but it seems like a flop house with all these people visiting you with your back problems, I had my appendix out, my dad had a massive heart attack, he's okay, I think that's it, but, so yeah, I was like, no place to live, my health and I'm sober, and I'm like, what is going on, you know, and that was when I learned that like, I'm either going to rely totally on God or I'm going to go insane, you know, so it was like, I'm going to need to trust God, not just have faith, not just believe, not know there's something that got me sober, I better learn to trust God real quick, because all that at once was a lot, and so I probably was the closest to God I've ever been during that worst time in sobriety where it looked like that on the outside, you know, but it was the people of Alcoholics Anonymous that showed up for me, you know, I got the call about my dad having a heart attack, you know, he was the one, I'm sorry, they were the ones that picked me up, said we're going to buy a plane ticket, we're going to get you on the train or the plane and we're going to get you there, you know, they were the ones bringing meetings to my house, you know, because I couldn't get out, it was all the people in AA that showed up for me, you know, I went and stayed with the lady that ran the sober living at her house for four months until I could get back to the workforce, you know, and, you know, in that fourth and fifth step my sponsor and I realized that there was still a lot of ways I was operating with my old beliefs and ideas, you know, and this whole thing about my sexuality came back up, you know, and I had never really trusted God enough to like, I'm going to wrap this up here, trusted God enough to see what could happen there, I thought I needed to figure it out before I could have a relationship, which is not true, but I think I need to figure out everything before I'm going to take any action, you know, so I started dating a woman and I was freaked out and no one cared, you know, nothing happened, everything on my fear inventory that I had, fear of losing my dream job, what happens if I have a girlfriend, everything has happened on my fear inventory from step four since I've got sober except for my parents dying and I'm still sober, you know, so it just shows you that none of that was real, you know, and after six months of dating, like I called my parents and tell them I have a girlfriend and my mom goes woo and my dad goes what's her name, you know, and that was their reaction, you know, and they didn't care, you know, and I started to be who I was meant to be, so not only someone that's a useful member of Alcoholics Anonymous that can show up and sponsor other women and carry the message and the solution, but there's this freedom and like I'm just going to find out who I am, you know, and it's not just about sexuality, but what do I like to do for fun, you know, what ways can I help other people, you know, and, you know, several years later I ended up getting married to that woman who's sitting over there, you know, and it was the most beautiful day ever, you know, everyone has loved me for exactly who I was scared to be, you know, and I have a relationship with God that I know no matter what happens I can stay sober, and that's not a cockiness, I just have walked through some stuff and seen people walk through stuff, you know, and, you know, being able to show up and be there for others, you know, my wife lost her mom last year, it was really painful to watch that, but to be able to show up and be like supportive and not worry about how I was going to feel uncomfortable at the hospital and that and just like walk through that and whatever the family needed, like I was having this experience, like I can't believe that I can show up here and they can rely on me, you know, and so it's just having a full active life, and feeling the sadness, the happy times, you know, that's what life's supposed to be about, you know, so from someone who wanted to die to someone who just feels free, this thing works, you know, and if you don't, can't figure out how you can get there, get a sponsor, you know, because you never have to do any of this or figure it out on your own ever again, you know, that's the most beautiful thing whether you want the help or not, so I appreciate you guys listening and thanks a lot.