Excellent, Articulate Speaker! – Astrid H.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen. And now it is truly my privilege to introduce to you tonight, all the way from Granada Hills, Los Angeles, Astrid. Hi, I'm Astrid and I'm an alcoholic. Hi, I want to thank the whole group for asking me to come and especially Carla and for her ongoing service here. It's really good to be here. I think this is my second or maybe even third time here. Welcome to all the newcomers and out-of-counters and happy birthday to the birthday people. It's very nice to see you It's always really beautiful to see Alcoholics Anonymous and people that have trudged the road and really walked through the steps and had a a psychic change. And if those people weren't there when I came in, I'd have no place to go either. So it's a privilege. It really is. I'm a retread. That means this is my second time getting sober. And the first time I got sober, I did the steps as a homework assignment and I didn't listen and I didn't apply things and I didn't really have a God and I just thought, you know, get a sponsor and get through the steps and clean some ashtrays and suit up and show up and I didn't understand what a psychic change was. I didn' t understand what really letting go was or prayer and meditation or the restraint of pen and tongue or a spiritual principle or live and let live or staying in my lane or keeping my side of the the street clean or any of those things. And if I heard them, they all sounded good. But I never really put that into a full practice. I was sort of a hit or a miss. And what I didn't realize is that I was actually in untreated alcoholism. And there are so many people that have the same path that I do and we wind up in AA and we don't do the steps and we don't have a psychic change and we loiter with the intent to recover. And then what what happens is someday down the line, it becomes me and the bottle, and the model always wins. And you know, there's only 2% of alcoholics that ever stay sober for five years. So we have a 98% chance of relapsing if you have under five years, this isn't a joke. It's a life and death situation, it's a real disease, the American Medical Association has stamped and bona fide that it's a disease, now your health insurance will even cover you to spin dry in Camp Snoopy and get yourself up a $40,000 big book and round and around and around. And a lot of people are actually making a lot money off of our disease which can really irritate me sometimes because back in the day-day it was all for fun and for free, you know and Bill and Lois put a lot of wet ones on their couches and you often in the beginning of Alcoholics Anonymous, it wouldn't be uncommon for some screaming, snot flinging drunk guy to be in the back of the room where they even give him a beer to shut him up and my how things have changed in 76 years or 80 years, not that long. Alcoholics Anonymous hasn't even been here for a hundred years. We in this room are the pioneers for Alcoholics Anonymous. We're forging the path. You know Bill and Bob they started this whole thing but they didn't know what they were up against. They had no idea that 75, 78 years later you know half of the children in the United States of America would be on psych med. They didn't know that meth would come in and heroin would come come in and crack cocaine would come in, and all of these other drugs and these dual diagnosis and all this stuff that makes things really like this. What are we doing? And what's going on? And what is what? And can you help me at least have an understanding of what we're doing here, what we are trying to treat, who we're trying to help, and what Alcoholics Anonymous is all about. So I'll get to that in a few minutes but I'll give you a little history. that first time that I got sober I remained restless, irritable and discontent and the big book says that if I don't do these steps and I don' have a psychic change I will remain restless, irritated and discondent and that there's a very big chance that I will die he uses the word doom that I'm doomed to an alcoholic death and so I'd scream and yell at my daughter and I'd screaming and yelling at people on the freeway and I couldn't manage my money properly and I could not get along with people and I would wake up in a panic attack and I was always in fear and I constantly future surfing about what was going to happen and I always worried about people's approval and what they were thinking about me and I still had huge resentments of the past my parents and my family and all of this stuff really made me mad and if only things had been different maybe I wouldn't be in this boat you know, and maybe I should do a geographical. Maybe I need bigger tits. Maybe I need a bigger house. Maybe if I could just find a guy. Maybe if I can get the right poodle. Maybe, if I live somewhere else. You know, I don't know my mind was just hijacking me all the time and I had no idea that that had anything to do with untreated alcoholism but you see in the print it says things like constantly reminding myself I'm no longer running the show. It says things like, you know my creator I'm now willing that you should have all of me. It would think that that would be my thought life also. So when we look at the doctor's opinion, it says the main part of the illness actually centers in the alcoholic's mind rather than her body. And I had to really, really come to grips with what does that mean? But you see, I'm not going to concede to my innermost self that I'm really, really, really an alcoholic unless I've had a true, true experience. So the print will always tell you why all this insistence that every AA must hit bottom first. Well, I'll tell you if you didn't hit bottom here and you're just here on a court card because because your mom told you, or because your wife's going to leave here, or whatever. Good luck. You know what? If you don't want to be here, don't worry. You won't. Because there's not enough self-will inside of you to get here every week. It's not going to happen. Something really has to shift inside. And the gift of desperation is called the gift of desperation, because it's a gift. So as time went on with my ten years of dry, so dry I could spontaneously combust or start a forest fire, Things went from bad to worse, to worse to worse. And I mean, really, I was just a bitch. I really was. I treated people really poorly. And I was depressed one minute and then I was happy the next and, you know, I would say, I'm not going to do it again. I was sideways this way and that way and I was speaking my mind all over the place. And if you don't like who I am, well, then you're not for me and get the hell out of my life. And I was a nut. I was a nut! I was an untreated nut. nuts. So I dated this guy. You guys laugh because you can relate. So, I dated this guy and if you'd be a real alcoholic, you know what? Getting into a relationship is like pouring Miracle-Gro on your character defects. Out they're going to come, you know? And so I got into a relationship because I thought that would fix me. Now I'm in love, you know? And I never ever worked on my social skills. I never worked on processing my my anger. I'd never worked on like the idea that when I get mad, cuss words just come out and I shut the door. You know, I never worked On backing down or working things out or having a healthy discussion or apologizing or practicing the restraint of pen and tongue or just don't even say it at all or don't go near it or let it go. Those were ideas, but I never did that. And so I still was the same exact character without the liquor. I didn't need alcohol to ignite my my untreated alcoholism, I needed finance and romance was plenty for me. You know, just add that to the bonfire that was already burning in my basement and I'm a lunatic. So I get into this relationship and of course, how do you think it's going to go? How many weeks or months do you think we're going to have good sex and be in love? And then all of a sudden everything's going to start going to hell in the handbasket. Not very long. So we start fighting, we start start fighting, and we start fighting. And we just start fighting and fighting and fighting and the fighting escalates, you know? And like at this time, you know, my daughter's like nine or ten years old, you know? It's not funny. It's no joke. And she's seen me sober her whole life and she just can't believe this is going on. And at one point we broke up and I started going to therapy and I would just cry all the time. And I didn't know what was wrong with me. I'd never looked at untreated alcoholism. I've never never looked at the disease. I'd never looked at the main part of the disease centers in my mind. I never really conceded to my innermost self that I'm selfish and self-centered in the extreme, to the extreme. It's about me. I may not be much but I'm all I think about and that's it, period, across the board. I don't have time to think about you because I am completely self absorbed and self obsessed. I'm in survival mode all the time. It is kill or be killed. There is not enough. There is no enough of anything for me. So what do I do? I go home one day and I just make a decision to pick up a drink. And I had completely forgotten all about the phenomenon of craving. You know, it's an interesting thing when you've forgotten about the phenomenonof craving and you pick up the first drink. The first thing that happened for me is that, you know, the clouds just parted, angels trumpeted, God came down and I felt that huge relief of like, oh my God, my mind is shutting off for a minute. Thank you. Thank you. But within 24 hours, I remember that here comes the phenomenon of craving. And I remember thinking this very clear thought like, oh my god, I forgot about that. My mind's being hijacked. And i'm like trying to perform my work during the day. I'm a very hard worker. I would consider myself still to this day a workaholic. I get a lot done. I can be a very, very, Very productive person and I like that. Today that actually treats my disease. In those days there was more of a frenzy and a frenetic energy around it. But anyway, I could feel that I wasn't able to focus on my work. I could see that I kept getting distracted. What time should I drink? Can I have a drink? Can I wait for a week? Should I wait for a weekend? How about Friday? How about Saturday? When, when, when? And there's just like whole planning committee that comes out of the basement and just hijacks my freaking plane all the way to Cuba. And I have no control over it because because because because because obsession is stronger than self-will. That's why there's no way to stop this thing. Obsession is so powerful there's not amount of self- will. There's There's only one thing in the whole wide world that's stronger than obsession, and that's God. And I'm not using a power in my life. I'm going to a power. I'm turning my will and my life over to a Power. I'm running on self, and I'm making decisions based on self. And I am lighting my whole freaking house on fire. I don't even know, but I have basically just taken an entire can of gasoline and blown everything up, and it is about to explode. And if you ask me if I thought my life was about to explode, of course, denial being that coming enemy, me, I would say, no, come on now, me. Look it, I got it all together. I own a home. I've got money. I got my kid in a private school. All that. You know, I've got some leather boots and some freaking cool clothes. I have some jewelry. And my mind tells me that success has something to do with outside stuff. See, I never knew that success is success in prayer. I never new that success being humble with God. I never know that success means having is having peace in my day, staying in my lane, not being bothered by what you're saying and doing, not getting on my hamster wheel and running, running, and running this insane rat race. I ran that rat race so long that alcohol was the only thing that could treat it. You know, and I'll tell you real quick, I'll put five minutes into like the whole pathology of, I have to look at my childhood at some point. And I do feel that that is something that is not spoken about enough in Alcoholics Anonymous. There's this weird Weird thing, sometimes with old timers where they're like, but your parents never tied you to a chair and poured liquor down your throat. Well, let me tell you something. For me, I was spanked and I was hit and I Was yelled at and I WAS beaten as a child. And you know what? I was never allowed to process that pain. And I felt so ugly and so full of shame everywhere I went. I felt dirty. I felt ugly. I felt unloved. I felt less than. and I could never go to my mom or my dad and say, I'm really sad or I'm so upset and my feelings are going to be like, I didn't even know how to process. I didn' t even know how to go to somebody and say I'm upset. You know what I would do? I would stuff and I would stuffed and I was stuffed and I stuffed and I stuff that stuff down into a basement like a Raggedy Ann doll is just bursting at the seams. I would just stuff and stuff and stuff and eventually someday guess what starts happening to this kid? You would probably call her frustrated, angry, violent, you know, disturbed, disturbing, restless. I mean, that was me. It was coming out all over the place. I've studied enough about alcoholism to tell you that there can be three or four children in the same house with the same type of abuse going on. And it depends on how the child processes it in order for him to turn into an alcoholic. So some kids kids stuff it and they shut down. And they go into the back room and they start eating chocolate cake and they pretend none of it happens and they're like blah, blah, and they really stuff so hard that they don't even remember their childhood. It's vanished. They've erased it. They put it so far out of their memory that they're shut down, not the alcoholic. Oh no, guess what we do? I'm climbing out of windows. My middle fingers are waving. I'm in my parents' face with it. Yeah, that didn't hurt. I am so rebellious. I am so insane. I am constantly in trouble. Let me tell you what the psychological and the psychiatric community says about those children though. In the end, we're the most treatable ones because we're still in touch with our feelings. We are so hurt and we are so sad and we are so full of shame and we are so angry and we are so wounded. And if If you ask an alcoholic for 30 minutes about their childhood, they will go on and on and on. So in some way, the alcohol and the alcoholic and the way our pathology and our disease grew is a blessing because our liability really does turn out to be our greatest asset. And thank God for Alcoholics Anonymous that it's here when we're ready to do something different instead of repeating the same cycle over and over and again. again. So I take that frustrated, angry child. And like I said, I didn't have social skills. I was so inappropriate and I still can be in this day. You know, I can speak over people or mock them or talk out the side of my neck or character assassinate. But I didn' t know how inappropriate that was because I didn''t have a reference point. I didn '' t know. Rules really weren' t for me. I came from pain and I came Came from hurt. And at a very early age, I had that inferiority superiority thing where I'm entitled and don't you know. And I'm mad and I'm going to tell you. And what's really inside of all of that is this weeping, crying, terrified child. I'm so hurt and I am so wounded. I just want someone to hug me and tell me it's okay. The world is so scary and my parents can't be there for me and my siblings can't been there for for me. And nobody ever, ever sat with me through any of this. So I'm this walking time bomb and what happens is by the time I'm 11 years old and somebody hands me a Budweiser, the same thing that happened for me happened for you. I pop that first beer and it's like, oh my God, I can't believe the relief. I'm not mad at my parents right now. I can even look you in the eye. We can talk, we can laugh. Oh my God, let's sing some songs. I like you so much. I feel so good right now. I feel good. This is good. And I like jump out, you know, and I let my freak flag fly and alcohol does for me what I can't do for myself. And the Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde scenario begins to build. Now I don't cross over the invisible line that first night. For me, I'm talking about my own life. It takes a while. It's a process for me to turn into to a full-blown alcoholic, but I like the results I'm getting. And I start to drink and I start to drink. And then what happens is I wake up in the morning and I've said and done pitiful and incomprehensible things. And so then I'm like on top of all the childhood pathology that And I've stepped down. I'm like, oh my God, what did I say? Oh my God. That guy. Oh my god. Where did I park? Oh my gosh. Oh my goodness. Oh my gawd. Oh my Gawd! Now, I have all the childhood trauma. Now I start putting more trauma in there. Now I got all the drinking trauma. This is so embarrassing. I can't believe who I am. Blah blah blah blah. Well that won't happen again. I'll drink tomorrow and it won't happened. But it starts to happen and happen and eventually I cross over the invisible line and I'm just one of those people that's like, ooh God don't invite her. She's so toxic. Keep her away. Keep her out of here. here. People are calling security on me. I'm getting kicked out of bars. I am getting kicked out of places. You know, I can't get along with people. I can keep a boyfriend. I can't keep a job. I m hungover every day. I hate my life. By the way, alcohol is a huge depressant so every morning I wake up and want to kill myself and swear I m never going to drink again and by 5 in the afternoon I change my mind because alcohol definitely sounds a lot better than blowing my brains out. And around and around and And around I go in this terrible cycle. So if I don't treat, A, that child that's all screwed up, B, the teenager that drank all those years that's all screwed upped, and I just sit around with 10 years of untreated alcoholism, dry, so dry I could start a forest fire in Alcoholics Anonymous, you're damn straight I'm going to drink again. I don' t have anything else to go to. I have nothing else to do. Meetings are not going to treat this disease. It's a spiritual plan of action. My sponsor isn't going to save me. The book isn't gonna save me if I don't roll up my sleeves and get down to causes and conditions and get really, really self-honest and start really looking inward and owning mine, not yours, mine, even my whole pathology with my childhood. At some point, I have to see that this is how I was molded. I don' t have to blame my parents. It can just be the truth. I came from a screaming, spanking house. Do you think that my parents thought every time they spanked their kids that they were going to make an alcoholic that was going to live in the street and wind up in jail? They didn't think that. They just thought, the kid's bad. Shut her up, you know. You need to listen. What's the matter with you? Come on, sit down. You need a freaking eat all the food on your plate. You didn't make your bed. What do you think this is? They don't know what they're doing. They really don't knows what they are doing. They don' t. You know, I'll tell you something. I don't want to go way off. I don' T want to say it. One of my favorite pathologies is Jeffrey Dahmer. Jeffrey Dahmar, in the end, cut people up and ate them and drilled holes in their head, and he dissected animals and so on and so forth. You know, his dad was a butcher for a while when he was a kid. And when Jeffrey was naughty, running around in the streets doing something bad, his dad would bring him down in the basement, sit him on top of a freezer while his dad was chopping up a cow or a pig, and he'd say, you're not listening to me, and you didn't do it right, and what next time are you going to put your bike inside and I'll leave it in the street? And he's chopping up an animal and wrapping it in butcher paper while he's disciplining his child. Do you think for a minute that that butcher thought that he was creating a cannibalistic monster out of his kid? He didn't know. It's interesting. It's like, who do we blame? So information is really the key to this whole thing. I need information, and I need it every day about this disease, about how it's passed down, about what makes people tick. I don't want to just run around hating everyone. And when that one's too sick for me, I want to have a deep understanding of how we got this way. Why did we turn to liquor? Why did мы do this to our lives? You know, and what is the treatment for it? So the second time around where I wind up really blowing my life up, I drink, and within a year, I am just wasted out of my mind, and now I'm mixing pills with it, and I've got heroin, andI've got coke, and I'v egot this, and ive got that. And you know, I want to touch on that too because there's a lot of controversy these days with should alcoholics anonymous remain Alcoholics anonymous strictly liquor. What do we do here? Everything's like this My belief system is that and I work with a lot people the kids that are coming in these days None of them are real alcoholic There's no such thing anymore real alcoholics are like 40 years old and up children don't come in here real alcoholic alcoholics they're like freaking snorting psych meds and drinking cold medication and you know shooting up antifreeze and so for me personally personally for me i'm not going to speak for all of aa i want a safe place for these people to come and their mind is still killing them the main part of their disease centers in their mind but whatever is only a symptom and i think that anyone that can incorporate the 12 steps in their life has a chance of being the sun in the sunlight of the spirit of being a divine expression, of being an attraction rather than a promotion. And if you look at neuroscience, you'll see that all of these, whether it's gambling, whether it'S drinking, whether IT's coke, whether It's masturbating to porn, whether It's chocolate, all of them run on the same neural pathway, which is called the reward system. And what happens is I have a problem and I gamble and I don't feel so bad. I have A problem. I drink a beer and I Don't feel So Bad. I haveA problem. I eat a chocolate cake. I Don'T feel So bad. I havea problem. them. I masturbate to porn and I don't feel so bad. There's a reward at the end of it. The reward winds up being the biggest monster because I use it and use it until the whole body and psyche becomes addicted to it. And the original relief that I got from it is nowhere to be found. So when I see that that's the structure of untreated alcoholism, it's so much easier for me to tell a kid that's snorting his funky psych meds and taking injections of antifreeze up his is ask that, hey, you know what? You got untreated alcoholism. Take the cotton out of your ears, put it in your mouth, sit here in a chair and always identify as an untreated alcoholic because that's what we do in AA. Now some people might have a real problem with this and I am not here to water down a message or a change of tradition or anything like that. I just want to help people. I really, really do. And the world is sick if Bill and Bob had ever known in their wildest dreams what was going to happen in Alcoholics Anonymous it's 80 years later. So as I go along in my untreated psycho, blah, blah blah, and I drink, my whole life just blows up. Within nine months I'm drinking around the clock. I'm mixing drugs with it. And these people come over and they want to take my daughter. They're like, you're skinny. You're sick. We see what's going on. Your kid's crying all the time. Youre a hot freaking mess. Why don't you get some help and we'll move your daughter into our house while you clean your life up. So I give away my kid. Why do I giveaway my kid? Why doI giveawaymykid? Whydoigiveawaymy kid? because the obsession for alcohol is stronger than my maternal instinct to care for my child. I'm not a bad mother. I'm suffering from untreated alcoholism. I'm in the disease. I'm that a sociopath. This isn't about Ted Bundy's. It's not that. I'm an alcoholic, and I will drink to the bitter end. You give me a deadline to show up, and when I'm into disease, I'm going to be drunk. wrong. That's just the nature of the beast. I have to understand how the thing operates. But the shame is so big in the end. I hate myself. I'm just one big walking shame bomb. And that's what the steps are there for, is to lift this stuff and to be a new character with no reference to the old. So as time goes on, I give my daughter away. I pack my house up. I move into the street and I just start turning tricks. And I live in the street for all of 2000, 2001, 2001-2002, a good portion of 2003. You know, I started to write a book and the other day I went to the police station because I wanted to get my mug shots and my records and the lady pulled everything out and I was thinking I had like nine or ten charges. Really that's what I thought because I've been in jail so many times but I couldn't remember. And she pulls everything up. I have 23 prostitution cases and 18 drug and alcohol related cases is in the street. Like, this ain't a joke. This is not a joke! I am a miracle standing here. I really am. Alcoholics Anonymous did this. I didn't go to therapy to get this. My mom didn't all of a sudden apologize to me for me to get it. I don't like going to the gym to get that. I can go to Anthony Robbins to get. I came to AA, you know, linoleum floors and fold up metal chairs and toothless wonders and psych meds and crazy horrible coffee with with powdered creamer, and a whole nine yards. It's too hot, it's too cold, the freaking lights are blowing out, the walls about to explode, Jesus Christ, duck for cover, go smoke your shit in the fucking elementary, kindergarten class, whatever! Welcome, keep coming back, you know? It's a desperate situation. But I kept coming back. I kept going back, and I kept doing it. I kept on coming back and more importantly, what happened when I was completely finished and in the street was that I went to rehab after rehab after rehab after rehab after rehab and there was this one trick in the street that was just like Mr. Captain Save-A-Hole, he was sure he was going to save me, he's going to turn me into his wife he was gonna, I don't know, sprinkle some pixie dust every time I go into jail you know, there he was, Hal you have a visitor, you know and he'd just be sitting on the other side of that glass, why are you doing this you should really get clean, you daughter really needs you, blah blah blah and I had gone three years without even even seeing my kid. Like, I lived in the street. When you live in the street for that long, you lose almost all your social skills, for real. Like, even talking to someone or having any linear thought. I can remember thinking things like, I don't know how old I am anymore. I remember really thinking it and trying to count. I remember thinking, what month is it? What day is it What does it matter? I wonder how old my daughter is. Do you think she's reached puberty? like my life was just gone and the whole idea of any bridge to safety you know or ever ever ever getting sober again you know every time i'd go in front of the judge he'd say miss how don't you want prop 36 and i'd be like yes before detox i'm not doing you know okay alcohol is anonymous i hate that shit for pussies and idiots you know because i thought i tried it but i didn't try anything i just showed up loitering around i don't know what i was doing judging everybody is what I was doing, I never really tried AA, I didn't, I didn't try it or I would have stayed to pray, I just scoffed, you know so eventually, I got rested so many times and I was so sick of it, like a deer in headlights, just living in the streets, you know, and I Was sick, I had a hepatitis C, I still have it, you know, And I was just, I was weak and I Was tired and I decided to start going into detox and rehabs again And, you know, I think I've been into like eight or nine rehabs. You know, I know some people I sponsored a girl just a couple of months ago, 17 rehabs, I mean this is unbelievable what's going on out there. This is just crazy. It is crazy, crazy, crazy out there, it is crazy out here. Every time I went, come out, couple days later, drunk again, drunk again ,drunk again, drunk again. Does it work? Does it Work? Does it works? Does it Works? Does it worked? You know that's all I kept saying is shit doesn't work, it's not going to work. Somebody handed me a tape of this guy named Bob Anderson from this group called Primetime down in Sherman Oaks. I would never say that my groups, the be-all, end-all I don't care where you go Black Print, Pacific Group, Atlantic Group it doesn't matter. I just happen to hear the message from these tapes. This guy Bob Anderson with 46 years and Alcoholics Anonymous said the main part of the disease centers in my mind rather than my body and untreated alcoholism isn't in the liquid it's in my brain. It's in the mind. And if I don' t turn my will and my thought life over to the care of a higher power every minute of every day i'm doomed an alcoholic death and i was like oh my god why the hell didn't anybody ever tell me that before because if they did tell it to me i never heard it i didn't hear it like that and he started to say on these tapes watch your thoughts check your own track record if the shoe fits wear it it's not in the liquid it's not in the pipe, it's not in a cake, it is not in the porn. It's in my inability to process all my pain. It is in my shame. It is in my guilt. It is in my dirty, dirty, dirty prostituting story. It is in my failure. It is in that I'll never be anyone. It is that I dropped or left my daughter. It is that I failed my parents. It is that I never made it through college. It is that I'm a loser. And all the stories that I tell myself and And it creates this cycle where I get the buckets over and over and over and again because I feel so useless that I don't even feel like I have any entitlement to even be in the same room with you. The self-loathing and the self-deprecation is so big that I build an ego that will keep you away and what I do is I look and I just go, I hate you and I hate your and I hate you maybe like you, hate you, like you you. Well, kind of like you. And I hate most everybody. And I hate you because it's the only tool I have to keep you away. That's all I've got. I don't want to be raw. I don't wanna be vulnerable. I shut that shit off when I was six years old and my parents started screaming and yelling and spanking. There was no one to go to and say, I'm hurt. My kneelings are hurt. Mom, I feel like you hate me. Do you hate Me? I was never able to do that. Every time you hit Me, I feel like You hate Me. Is that true? Oh, my God. I wouldn't even know how to do That. But those are the kinds of things that I have to face with the steps. Those are the kinds of things that I had to uncover, discover and discard in the process of going through these steps. So I look at the second half of step one and it says that my life is unmanageable. How much time do I have? Five minutes? Who knows? I promise I promised I'd stop. Okay, I'm going to do five more minutes. I think ten after. Fifteen after? Oh, twenty-five after? Oh, good. Twenty-five after. Sorry about that. Okay, so let me think. Hold on. Where was I? Second half of step one. That my life is unmanageable. I had to come to the realization that it's my thought life that's unmanangeable. That I had had to start to look at every single solitary thought that surfs the waves of my brain. And as I started to wake up and I started To look at these thoughts and how they affected my emotional state, I could see that it was a real soul sickness, that alcoholism didn't need liquor. The liquor was but a symptom that I would wake up in the morning and I would just want to die. I would Wake up in the morning, and I was sure that you hated me. I Would wake up In the morning. And I would tell myself the loser story. I I would wake up in the morning and feel so ugly or so dirty or so unlovable or so whatever. So this second half of step one, that my life is unmanageable, I used to think it was like, oh, you know, I lost my purse or I got a parking ticket or I burned a hole in the couch with a cigarette. It's not that. It all is an inside job. It starts inside of me. It has nothing to do with the outside, nothing to doing at all with the outsides. The outside is all going to change when I change on the inside. My relationships will get better. My relationship with my parents will get better. I will be able to love. I will being able to be raw and vulnerable and be like a five-year-old and cry and tell you that my feelings were hurt. I WILL be able to say, I'm sorry. I WILL be able to communicate and say, hey, can we talk about something? I think there was a misunderstanding. I WILL BE ABLE TO DO ALL OF THOSE THINGS. And so what I need to do is I need really, really, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY see that the calls are coming coming from inside the house. It has nothing to do with third dimensional stuff, it has nothing to with the car, the yard, the house, the bathroom scale, anything. It had to do with my perception. My eyes are broken. The camera and the lens that I look through the world with and then put back on me is broken, it's damaged, it doesn't work. It's got a glitch in it, it sick, it warped, it bent. And I'm full flight from reality. I'm a downright mental defect, you know. It says that in the book. And so I look at step two and it says that I need to come to believe that there is some kind of a power that can restore me. It's not a church, it's not an religion, we don't name anything, Muhammad, Buddha, Jesus, all that crazy stuff. We call it power, we call it God. That's how we roll in AA. They actually really take offense to people that name their God anything else from the podium him because that's really so against what we're trying to do in AA. What we're trying to doing here and what I'm continuing to try to do is build a relationship with a personal God as I understand Him, and as I understand Him every moment of every day through my experiences of turning my will and my thought life over to the care of this God. And look at the demonstration in step 11 where it says that I seek through conscious contact that I speak to improve my conscious contact with this power. Well if if I'm seeking to improve my conscious contact with this power through prayer and meditation, then I would think that way down in step two, how am I going to come to believe? What? It's like some homework intellectual assignment. You know, I'm going to sit there at Denny's with my sponsor that I've met like two days ago. Do you believe in God? Yes, I believe in god. Okay, you're going to be saved. We're going on to step three. It can't work that way. See, the steps for me, they are not a race. It's not like hurry, hurry, hurray. What step are you in? I'm in two. Oh man, I mean six. Ha ha ha. We both went to rehab at the same time. it's not about that you know that's all ego it's it's really if it's a process it's not a race it'snot a hurry hurry get there kind of a thing it'sa living application for my life so I look at this step two that I have to come to believe that there's a power that can restore me and then I have the question what would a restoration look like what would would sound-mindedness look like? Well, for me, what I heard through many other people is that a sound mind is a mind that's not occupied by self. A sound mind is an open mind. A sound mind is a mind with no preconceived ideas. A sound mind is a mind that's not attached to all my stories and all my biographies so that everywhere I go I'm leading with my wound want to hear my story want to hear my story I'm so sick I'm so twisted I lost everything they all hate me I'm a fucking fucking loser, I'm a fat ass. You know, that, what is that? That's not going to do any good for anyone. A sound mind is an open mind. An open mind that maybe, just maybe, just maybe I don't know anything. Maybe, just, maybe, just maybe every single solitary thought that surfs the waves of my brain is bullshit. Maybe, maybe. Maybe every single thought that's coming from my subconscious mind into my conscious mind is skewed, is bent, and it is not accurate. Maybe I'm full of crap. Maybe I'm not even so smart. I used to think I was so smart, maybe I'm not all that smart because I look at most people and I don't even give them a chance. They're all idiots, they're dummies, they are monkeys, they are primates with car keys. I got names for all kinds of people. I've got names for them all and there are people struggling in this world to get along long and to get by just like me. I get on the freeway, I don't see cars, I see idiots in front of me. Move, you idiots! Move, all of you idiots. I would not take into consideration that maybe somebody even has a cancer or maybe they have eight kids at home and they can barely feed them. I don' t think about their life. I think about morons on the Freeway. Move idiots, move! You know, and that causes so much pain and conflict inside of me to live like that, to live like that for the rest of my life, who would want to be around me? Who would want to have a relationship with me? Who wouldn't want to hire me? I wouldn't wanna be around. I become my own worst enemy when I'm in untreated alcoholism and to see the disease still doesn't mean that it's gonna now vanish. You see if I don't let this power in my my life, I can keep what I got forever and ever and ever and ever. So I have to really get down to the application of step two and step three. And if I'm going to come to believe, I have interact with this God and I have allow God into where the disease is. I have ask this God to be in my mind and in my heart. So, I say things like power, can you please protect protect me from my mind, because I'm a hater. I'm frustrated. I want to get in people's faces. I'm judgmental bitch. I can't stand myself. I don't want to be here. And I have all these opinions and they're killing me. I am in a continuous state of conflict. Power, can you be with me? And I ask with my heart and I ask for the intention like I'm standing in front of a judge doing a plea bargain. Please, please, please give me one last time. Give me one One last chance. I ask with all the feelings that I can muster up power if you're there. Can you help me? And when I pray with intention, I get relief. Something starts to happen. The most common word for God is something. Something starts zuhappen. The creative intelligence of the universe enters me for the first time because I allow it to. I ask God to come in. I ask Him to help me. He's very smart. God knows everything. everything it's a very very very wide energy and it's inside of all of us and if we can bump self out of the way there's a genius that's been sitting there all the time you know and we've all had inklings and moments where like this brilliant line or a poem or a piece of art or something loving happened or came out of us then we were like god where did that come from we know that it's in there but we don't know how to tap into it it's the untapped resource we don'T know know how to tap into it until we start to learn the application in Alcoholics Anonymous that we have to improve this conscious contact with God as we understood him. So I can never completely understand God, but it's understood that this miraculous power is the power for my life and I bring this power in and I start pleading and begging and talking to this power. And if I have have an issue coming up, I say, God, help me not think about this person this way. Help me go to work tomorrow and not whatever blow my life up. You know, help me not hate my mom anymore. Help me not harbor resentment. Help me not have so much fear of the future that I think I'm never going to make it, that I'm going to push a shopping cart, that I'm gonna, you know, have to blow my brains out or drink again. And I ask God to be with me, not just in the morning at the foot of my bed. I can get into so much trouble. I I can leave the foot of my bed, and by the time I've got a toothbrush in my mouth, I'm hating on somebody. For me, I'm a major hater. Some people are depressive. I'm just a hater, I am such a hator in untreated alcoholism, a hader. I'm going to argue, I'M GOING TO GET IN YOUR FACE, I'M GONNA GET ALL SARCASTIC, I'LL GET ALL BIT-BIT-DIT-DI-DEE, AND IT'S NO FUN, IT'S A PAINFUL PLACE TO BE. I WANT TO LOVE, BUT I DON'T KNOW HOW. GOD MAKES IT POSSIBLE. So as I start to get a real relationship with this power, and I start to really have an interaction with this power, it pushes me naturally into step three where I make a decision every moment of every day to either go to self or turn my will and my thought life over to the care of this power. In the beginning, it's like playing a bad, bad video game. It is so exhausting to turn my Will and my Thought Life over to The Care of This Power 24 hours a day, especially if I'm really spinning or tripping on something and something's really bothering me. It's continuous. It's a continuous plan of action. Just please, God, be with me. Protect me from my mind. Protect me for my mind, but as time goes on, I start to live in the sunlight of the Spirit. I start you have lots of fourth-dimensional aha moments. I have fourth-dimensional aha minutes. Minutes turn into hours. The hours turn into days. I see drama. I hear drama. I see problems. I hear problems. I'm like, oh, no, turbo. We're not going there. I'm not touching it, and I naturally recoil. oil as from a hot flame. I don't want to infect myself with your infected, untreated alcoholism and I know how to keep my side of the street clean. I do not need to have a big opinion on what you are supposed to be doing in your life or what is supposed to happen or how it is all supposed to go down. I can remain centered with this God because I have built a real living relationship with this god. I believe that the fourth step and the whole inventory process shouldn't be taken on until i do have a conscious contact with god because how am i going to do a fearless and thorough moral inventory if i'm terrified out of my mind of peeking into the future of looking at the past of writing all this stuff down of making amends these people there's no way god makes it possible so again for me it's really not a race it really really is, it's a right now thing over and over and over. And as I get centered with this power, it becomes so much easier for me to go into step four because even my grudge list is going to be sliced in half by the time I've built a relationship with God. I realize three quarters of the people I'm mad at, oh my God, I did it. I did and I'm harboring resentment and I don't even want to look at my side. You know, I remember some stuff that was on my resentment list like, my boyfriend stole my my jewelry. That boyfriend stole my jewelry too. Hey, I got three different boyfriends that stole my freaking jewelry. Well, what's the common denominator? I'm hanging out with junkies. I mean, come on, man. And I'm going to sit there and write for 45 minutes about three different Boyfriends that stole My Jewelry. You know, give me a break. It's insanity. It really, really, Really is. So the steps are not erased. It is a spiritual plan of action and I'm so blessed to be a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous you know, I could go on and on and on and it's a beautiful program and it's the way of life and God is there for everyone to have it's an equal opportunity and you know even if you're new you're a retread, you're starting over even if we've got years and years and years in AlcoholicsAnonymous, none of that matters. What matters is my conscious contact with this power in the moment that I'm in, even if I had a bad day all day long, I can brush that aside and I can say, that's right. Power, me and you, mostly you, you be the manager for my life today. Don't let me blow up my life anymore. Not my will, but thine be done. My creator, I'm now willing. You should have all of me removed from me, all the blocks, you know, like victory over my bullshit, bear witness to everybody so that they could see that on the demonstration demonstration of somebody that's overcome some crap in AA. It is such a painful life when we wind up in here. AA, are you kidding? I got to go to AA? Oh my God. I thought I was supposed to be somebody. People were going to touch the hem of my garment. I'm supposed to get rich. I was supposed to famous. I wasn't supposed to do a lot of things. It didn't work out that way. And now in my life today, I'm so grateful to be a sober member of Alcoholics Anonymous. there's no place I'd rather be because I feel like I really found so many answers to the questions that just riddled me you know, the blame and the shame and the trauma and the drama I really need a living loving God as He expresses Himself and in the end that's the authority for my life it's not my sponsor it'snot an old timer or a newcomer or this or that it really truly is a loving God as He expressions Himself through me You know, I have a great relationship with my daughter. She's 25. We have walked through all of it. We're transparent. We're open. My relationship with mom and dad is better than it ever was. I have real friends today. People that I can really talk to stuff about. I can be open. I can free. I don't have to hold back. I can speak my mind and I can say I'm sorry. I can love people. I have life beyond my wildest dreams. I have successful private practice. this you know and God made that possible he really did he gave me great clients that come back over and over and over again because through the principles embodied in the 12 steps I'm a new character I walk hand in hand with God what you see when you look at me and you see that I'm with God it's not self it's the spiritual principles that are applied to my life to allow me to have a new experience to be a new person to have a renewal of my mind and my heart and that's really what Alcoholics Anonymous is all about thank you so much for letting me