Fourth Step Inventory and Resentments – 12 Step Workshop – Part 1 of 3 – Bob

I'm Bob, I'm an alcoholic. Hey, Bob. So we're moving through this inventory, and oddly, you know, there's a lot of people in AA that approach this cleaning house as if it's self-awareness or self-knowledge, and it's really not. As a matter of fact, the book's very clear that self-acknowledge availed us nothing. I don't suffer from a lack of information. I suffer from a lack of actions and a condition of separation. And so the end game in cleaning house is immense. And this may be startling to some of you, but it's every person on your resentment list, your fear list, and your sex list, even the ones that you suspect you've done nothing and they owe you an amends, they go on your eight-step list. Because if they're on your inventory, it's symptomatic of separation between you and them. Now, as Adrian talked about it earlier, maybe the amends is not direct. Maybe it's just that you have to forgive them and accept them as is. But something must be mended in this separation between you and them. And I'll give you a little example. When I was, thank God that I'd done a lot of work and I'd sponsored a ton of guys my first 10 years of sobriety, listened to a lot Of Fifth Steps. I'd probably, the story I'm about to tell you would have turned out really badly and I probably would be dead. But when I was in my 11th year of sobrietty I went through a divorce that I didn't understand why I was getting this divorce. I even tried to talk her out of it, went to some marriage counseling and but I really didn't want to get the divorce. I had a two-year-old daughter who I just adored. The whole idea of the divorce was just frightening to me. Anyway, the counseling didn't work and we ended up getting a divorce in Vegas. You can get divorced quick I mean quick and we got a divorce was final Thursday afternoon and Friday morning I discovered that my two-year-old daughter an ex-wife of about 12 hours had moved in with my sponsee and best friend and that they'd been sleeping together the whole last year in my marriage and it seemed like the whole world knew about it except me well I'm over ten years sober and you guys have been telling me for over ten years there's no such thing as a justifiable resentment well I got one now I mean the problem is there no matter how seemingly justifiable a resentment is it will kill you and it'll make you sick inside and it made me sick inside as I ran that as I couldn't sleep and it just had the conversations in my head with them over and over again I did some horrible things during that period of time I was sponsoring a guy who owned a casino and I threw him I hired a hitman at one point Jesus thank God it got interfered intervened on that one or I'd be I'd be skyping my talk from a prison cell somewhere. Yeah, true story. And there's a lot of guys here I sponsor who know the guy I'm talking about because he's one of my best friends and I sponsor him, right? Which sounds bizarre but it's not. So what did I do? How does this worked? Is this just, you know, getting free of these things that seem unmovable and unshakable. Is AA big enough to do this? Because you can't pretend. People in AA will act like you should pretend. I had people just say crazy things to me. I'd go to meetings, I'd be just like a nutcase. I'm just all crazy over this stuff. They'd say, well just don't think about it. how do you do that you know one guy one guy said to me he said do you believe in god i said yes i do he said that it shouldn't be a problem i'm not going to say the words i said back to him they were it's too crude for this room but i believed in god but it was a problem so what i did is i had to put her name and his name on a resentment list column number one on the left column number two, the bullet points the lies the infidelity, the cheating, etc column number three everything that had been hurt threatened, injured, interfered with, affected you know, everything, pride was bad pride was terrible pocketbook, divorces are expensive in a community property state there was hundreds and hundreds and thousands of dollars at stake My relationships. I was so afraid I was going to lose my daughter. So afraid. Because they moved in together, right? And it was just horrible. So I had to put in the third column everything was affected and threatened, hurt, injured, interfered with. And then the book proposes sort of a question. It's actually a statement. We're prepared to look at this from an entirely different angle? Am I? Yeah, I am. And God had done some nice things in my life in the couple months after that. He put a friend of mine that I hadn't seen since college who resurfaced, who had a similar experience. And as he's telling me about how our mutual friend Burton ran off with his wife he's showing me pictures of him and burton that winter on vacation together in hawaii and i'm looking at this pictures and i said to him i want to do that because i saw that this guy was free and i was like the rat i don't want any more cheese i just went out of this damn trap i didn't want to be right about them anymore i didn' t want to b i didn i just i was worn out I was worn out, I was tired of hating them and it was making me sick inside. And so we're prepared to look at this from an entirely different angle which means I had to put myself in their place and look at it through their eyes and when I did that with my ex-wife, I didn't really like what I saw. Here's a gal who turned out, after 25 years of not drinking around AA the first 10 years, everybody discovered she never was an alcoholic. And she could drink if she wanted to, but she didn't like to. And once in a while, she could have one. She wasn't an alcoholic! There's more of those in AA than you suspect, I think. She wasn'T an alcoholic, but She had been the adult child of an alcoholic And because of that, when I was married to her, she had an emotional inability to face confrontation. She was passive-aggressive. So if she was dissatisfied, she couldn't say anything. So she finds herself falling in love with this guy who's like Mr. AA. And she says, oh, he's the guy I want to be with. I'll spend the rest of my life with him and it's wonderful. well six eight months ten months into the marriage she finds herself married to a guy who's just not there very much he has this unusual opportunity to build this business that would make him a tremendous amount of money and set him up for life and so he had to work 70 80 hours a week sometimes more sometimes I'd go in 8 o'clock in the morning and I worked till midnight with if I was lucky I got to take an hour and a half off and go to a meeting for lunch when I come home I was worn out she found herself in no time at all putting all her eggs in the basket of the intimacy in a relationship that really didn't exist so a guy who has just gone all the time now for legitimate reasons and looking back if I had to do it over again would worked that much yeah i probably would because it was an amazing opportunity i got you know i got to i got put in a position where i was making deep seven figures a year i got to retire very young and never have to worry about money yeah it was i'm glad i did that but i did it without any consideration of her here's how self-centered i am here's how selfish I am. I never once even wondered if she was okay with all that and she couldn't tell me and I figured since she didn't say anything, if I'm okay the world must be okay. That's how self-centered I am, I am the center of the universe, if i'm okay then you should be okay too and if you're not get over it, shape up right? And she never could tell me and And what happened, of course, is that she started to feel very lonely and very desolate and she couldn't tell me. And we hadn't had any intimacy for a while because I'm gone all the time, I'm worn out, I'm working so hard. And my best friend was there all the times. What happened is what has happened for thousands of years, right? And when I was able to get that and put myself in her place, and as the book says, see how the person who harmed you is perhaps like you, I thought to myself, my God, if I put all my eggs in one basket of a relationship and had no sponsees, no business. See, my holes were all filled. I had sponsored 30 guys. They were calling me all the time at work. I'm getting other-centered. I got God. I got the steps. I got this business that's exciting. It's a lot of work, but it's exciting? My life's great. Hers? No, not so much. I started to understand the loneliness and the desolation that she lived in. And when I really got it, I understood exactly what had happened. Of course, of course she opened that door with him. Of course she did. Because I got it. And I thought to myself, my God, I don't know how she waited as long as she did Could I see how I would have done the same thing? Or do I still need to feel smugly superior? I'd never do that. You know, all that ego crap And I started to get honest enough with myself and say, you know I could see how maybe I could have done that too if I really had everything going on in me that was going on her and then then I saw it a little further I saw what she reaped from those actions because it would be the same thing I read if I would have cheated on her right and I started to really feel bad about my I was so selfish and self-centered I just wasn't paying attention you know the day we got married if I the day before we got married if i would have gone into a boardroom and i would have brought in that room the greatest minds in the country in in the from the greatest universities in sociology and psychology and ii would have given them psychometric dossiers on her where she took the pf-16 the mmpi and she really and they until they had complete understanding of her psyche and i said to them listen this is a pretty principled loyal gal i need you you brilliant men to give me a game plan that i could initiate over the next two years that would make her cheat on me can you give me something they couldn't have come up with anything more effective than what i did and yet i don't even know i'm doing it because i'm asleep in my own life you know the word the word ignorance comes from the word ignore right i'm so busy staring at my stuff i don't see this it's like i create these blind spots in my life and it's not it's out of malice it's i'm not dissing you because i don t like you I'm dissing you because I can't see you because i'm staring so much at my stuff my problems my agendas my little plans and designs it's the seemingly in consideration of the overly self-focused right I got it I got it did the same thing for him and he was actually easier because he's he's a guy guys at times can be dogs i mean we don't need to be jesus but we are sometimes if a guy learns anything in his spiritual way of life he learns to protect himself from himself you know you don't want a haircut don't hang out in the barber shop for god's sakes you know and he hung out he hung out of the barbershop all the time right of course eventually got some trim i mean of course he said to me in early sobriety he was kind of he was kind of i'm not going to say pathetic he was a good guy he was a funny guy but he he couldn't hook up with anybody and he said to me one time he said gee bob if i just someday could have what you have with Karen they didn't know he meant specifically I thought he meant like in a generalized way right so when she out of frustration resentment loneliness when she opened that door and started making like physical sexual moves towards him he did what a million guys have done over thousands of years he caved of course he did of course he did and i get it i didn't and i started and i it was his forgiving him and forgiving her once i understood was easy when i went i made what made the amends to her and amends is really the end game here to clear up the separation between you and those people and i went made amends for her and i never forget it i was telling her how i don't remember the words i used but in essence i was telling her how sorry i was that i i was so self-centered and wrapped up in myself that i never i never understood how lonely she must have felt in that marriage and i said i know you're not a you're not that kind of person you're not that kinda gal she isn't she's very ethical she's real involved in church you're not that kind of gal. I'm sorry that I was so inconsiderate that I just left you lonely enough that you eventually did something you didn't like yourself for. And she didn't. She struggled with that. She struggled mit that. And she started to cry at one point. I think all she ever wanted me to do was just to get it. You know? Just to get him. And I was too wrapped up in me to get them. when he went to make amends with him it freaked him out like he he's like looking to see if I might have a gun on me or something he's liking and it took him a while too he was like go gun shy like why are you being nice to me you know cuz yeah it almost destroyed him of course it almost did what would have done to me if I had slept with my sponsors wife behind his back right and they got then they ended up getting married not because they needed to be married they wanted to be married they it was a desperate ploy for redemption to legitimize what they did because if they got married made it work maybe it wasn't so bad they could they could say well maybe it was God's will but it's hard to it's hard to start and maintain a relationship started on that footing and I started sponsoring him again after I made amends to him now by this time they're married and the marriage is going on the rocks and it's a true story i spent a lot of time and effort working with him trying to help him to save his marriage to my ex-wife square business and and i and it was legit it was not so i could brag about that in the aa meeting i remember we started becoming like a family unit her and him and i and my daughter and we'd go to these ball games when my daughter was i was playing softball and volleyball she played a lot of different sports and we go and we be sitting together as a family in the audience cheering my daughter on like a bunch of crazy people like you know just cray all just enthusiastic you know like almost like eagles fans said we didn't punch anybody I grew up here so I can say that and I remember driving home one time from a game and I was talking to God and I'm free of the resentment I was talking to God and I was saying, God thank you that he's in her life that if you gave me an opportunity to pick a stepdad for her from anybody on the planet, I'd pick him because he was good to her he's still good to him. Their marriage didn't last, he's divorced, he'S been married a couple times since then and he's moved on but he still goes over and fixes stuff with my daughter when she was 21, she bought her own house She's almost too mentally well to be a child of mine, I'll tell you. She's a wonderful gal. She really is. She's said things and done things that made me want to ask her to sponsor me. I mean she's just amazing. Then I got free of it. There were people in AA that years after we're all friends again and really close, they still hate them for what they did to me. And they don't understand why I've forgiven them. Because if you love someone, and this might be true for some of you with your mothers and fathers and siblings. If you love someone, once the resentment is really and truly put to rest, the restoration of love follows almost automatically. Because you loved them before they did column number two. Once there's no more column number three, column number four, why wouldn't you love them again? Right? and I'll see him him and I are doing a big book workshop together Tuesday nights he'll be up at my house Tuesday and I will see him at my other home group meeting Monday night we just came back him and another couple guys I sponsor went to the Middle East to the kingdom of Bahrain and we had the best of times we never stopped laughing the whole time we were there because we're free. That's nice. So really the end result of all this is to mend that separation. You know, alcohol did that to some degree, but it was an illusion. Do you remember the experience of just walking into a bar and you're just uptight and you've got little cases built against about four or five people that are just idiots and you're just you're you're running those those vengeance scenarios through your head where you you do and say things that break them and bring them to their knees you know i love those kind of thoughts i just oh just sit in my head and think about that and feel powerful and i'd walk into a bar and just all day i've been grinding away in my head about these stupid people after about five drinks it's like who cares? I mean, what's the big deal? What was I upset about? I can even see one of them, the people I hate in the bar, and I start to think, I kind of like him. He's a nice guy. You know, it would just shift. It would shift my perception. Maybe I was wrong all along. Sandy Beach said something. When he said it, It floored me because it was exactly my experience. He said, they say you can't change the past. Work the steps, you're going to end up with a different life and a different childhood than you thought you had. That's really true. If you're willing to consider the possibility that your perception might have been self-serving and wrong, if you need to be right, you're gonna have a tough time here because we grow by our willingness to be wrong, our willingness to get right-sized, our willingness to shrink ourselves, our willingness to grow and surrender to God. And what is surrender? You kind of know, don't you? You've watched it in war movies since you were growing up. People are faced with annihilation in a war movie. So what do they do? They lay down all their means of defending themselves. their knives, their pistols their rifles, their hand grenades they walk away from their tanks their jeeps, whatever they could use to defend themselves and they sit on the side of the road vulnerable and defense less and they wait for somebody to tell them what to do isn't that what we do in AA we render ourselves because you can't be surrendered and defended at the same time it's impossible it would be like a prisoner of war who smuggled a pistol under his shirt he's going to get a whooping, it's going to be bad right you can't be surrendered and defended at the same time so that's the choice God's either everything or else he's nothing he either is or he isn't if God is everything then maybe I'm nothing if I'm everything then maybe God's nothing It's almost like a push and a pull. And the book says, what's our choice to be? I like this smaller position with God's everything and I'm really nothing here. My first sponsor, he had a great saying. He said, God runs the universe and I get to get dressed in the morning. Or another friend of mine says, you know, God's been very generous to me he likes he lets me make all the big decisions and he makes the small ones he said there there hasn't been a big decision yet but I'm ready I'm ready when it went one needs to be made I'm ready and I let God run my life because I have a track record 38 year track record with him now it's easier than it was at 20 years sober and at 20 you're sober, it was a little better than it was at 10 years. Because trusting God, trust is like an atrophied, unused muscle. The more you take the actions of trust, the more you exercise that muscle and the stronger it gets. But it's not easy in the beginning. One of the first amends I ever had to make, and I hadn't even done a fourth step yet, but it was coming at me. Sometimes when you get sober. You've got crap coming at you. And I had two years in the state penitentiary coming at me. I'd been actually sentenced to two years, and this judge, he stayed the commitment, put me in this place called the Ark House. I was supposed to stay a year. And if I stayed a year in there and got good UAs and good PO reports and made the restitution, it would be misdemeanor time served. If not, it was two years felony, and I'm done. So So I split out of there. I'm on the run. And I don't even have any idea how many state lines I've crossed to avoid incarceration. But I'm in Nevada. I started out in Pennsylvania. And I come to, and you know the old saying, the fog lifts, then the planes start landing. Oh my god. One of the planes is 747 that's coming in those warrants and I know we're out for my arrest now because I've missed a session with my PO and I don't know what to do and I'm scared and the guy in A talked me into making the amends. I wasn't even at step 8 and 9 yet. He said kid you have to you have contact your PO and offer to go back there and do the two years at your own expense and anything else they want you to do. I thought this is the most insane direction I've ever heard of. What are talking about I don't jail well I don' want to do that and he said you have two years you're never gonna stay sober looking over your shoulder the anxiety will always drive you back to drink drinking something or taking something you know when I hear the truth I know it I don t always like it but I know it when I here it and that was the truth so he walked me through the process he He told me to write a letter to my PO. He said, in the letter, he said, give them the address of the halfway house, which I thought was a very bad idea. I said, well, they could pick me up. He said well, if they want to, they need to find you. God, I thought, why do I get sponsors like this? Jesus. I wrote the letter. Showed it to him. He said in the later, give him 10 days. Okay. Said everything he told me say basically took the letter to the mailbox and dropped it in the mailbox and was so it was such a knee-jerk reaction I immediately am trying to shove my arm in there to get the letter back right it's like the minute I dropped it I panicked it was like a tough ten days and I called on the tenth day at the time and day I said I would call and this woman answers the phone And she said, he's expecting your call. And a man who I didn't know very well, really. I'd sat in his office a couple times. He had no reason to stand up for me or help me. I'm just another bum that never did what he said he was going to do. I'm another loser on his case file, you know? But he read your letter. Not my letter. I wouldn't have wrote that letter. He read your letters. and he got on the phone he said I talked to my supervisor we talked to the courts you don't have to come back here we're not going to jack it back up to a felony and if you can we're transferring your case to a place called CRS Court Referral Services and if You do what they say and it will involve I'm sure classes and it'll probably involve urinalysis every week etc and you're going to have to send us money until it's all clear He said if you do all that you're free misdemeanor time served and you're done but kid there's no more chances Nevada will put you away if you don't do this and everything they asked me to do was I was able to do it seven years probably later I stood before the Nevada Gaming Control Board and they gave me the most prestigious license in the world a license to be an owner-operator of gaming establishments in the state of Nevada I stood there and they're granting me this license I almost started to cry because I knew where it came from it didn't come from me it came form the power that works through Alcoholics Anonymous it came by if I did anything I was just willing to be Sponsorable, that's all I was willing to do What you people told me to do And my life was It was an amazing Amazing opportunity You never know Where an amends is going to take you You never Know I sponsor guys that are sober A long time And they struggle With problems with relationships and fights with people. They can't hold a job very long. They have to work for themselves. And they make a lot of money, and the more money they make, the broker they are, the more in debt they become. And they come to me because I live a huge lifestyle. They think I'm going to teach them some kind of financial tricks or something. And it's not that. We start getting into the solution and we invariably find that they had unmade amends that they thought they got away with because nobody knew that they owed it. Except one person knew and it was the one person that could sabotage their life. They knew. That's the worst person that could know because that's the person that can shift your position and your angle of approach to life to reap what you deep within your innermost self know you deserve, which is crap. And I've watched guys go and it takes two years sometimes to start making some of this stuff right and then you watch like a water skier coming up out of the water as their life starts to turn around. I think amends are often like sandbags on a hot air balloon. Every time you make an amends It's like cutting one loose. You get a little more lift, right? Get a little bit of lift. But it's tough. This is really where we get to find out what trusting God is about, is in the amends process. Because if you got the head I got, oh my God. I used to, my sponsor had me paying all these little payments to people out of every paycheck, and there's nothing left for me. Nothing. I don't have enough money left over after I pay my rent to keep myself in cigarettes, for God's sakes, for the week. It's horrible. I said to him one time, I said, God, how come I have to pay? Because there's people in AA that don't make amends. They think, let bygones be bygnes. How come I've got to pay all this stuff? Why do I not have anything left for me? these guys are buying new cars because they don't buy and make amends how come I have to make amens he'd get tired of it one day so they don' want your money oh good they want their money back is what they want and yet this is where we get to change our karma in step 8 and 9 you know if you were to take a literal translation of the word karma out of the hindi into the english it would translate as the word doing when something is your karma it's unconsciously you're doing that means you hurt some people over here and you have a whole lot of bad luck over here then you think no I'm not doing this I'm really I'm not sabotaging myself you can't see it but it is you're doing you know how you know that when you make it right you stop your life your bad luck shifts right it's your doing and so i make this stuff right so that i can so i can be a receiver of god's grace you know i really believe this with everything in me that my father loves me and wants me to have it all He wants me to be happy, joyous and free. He would like me to have everything that my heart desires providing that it doesn't hurt others or myself in receiving it. The problem is I've got a broken receiver. I've gotten too much guilt and I'm haunted by too much stuff out of my past. I have a compromised receiver and Alcoholics Anonymous is designed to repair the receiver so I can receive basically my inheritance as a child of God. God's idea of Bob's life is spectacular. Bob's idea, Bob's wife, not so much. God's ideal Bob life is wonderful. I'll take his. And isn't that what we do in step 10 and 11? It's aligning our will with God's. The book says, both books say it's the proper use of the will. To align my will with God's. And what is God's will for me? Take a rocket scientist to read this book. It's to claim my primary number one purpose. And it's not me. Most of us come in here, our primary purpose is ourselves. And our gratification and our feelings and our relief. I'm given a new primary purpose. and that primary purpose is to use everything about me even my failures even my defects in order to fulfill this purpose of helping someone just like me another alcoholic i can't even describe the rightness that occurs in my life when i'm doing what i've been divinely crafted by god to do it's like an aligning up of the planets it's like there's a perfection in it but i'm doing exactly and i noticed that in the years throughout the 70s in the years i was in and out there were always these old timers there were some old-timers that looked there were several times looked like they needed a drink but there were subtle timers that looked they really looked like they just everything was perfect in their life like they knew exactly who they were i had no idea who i was and they knew exactly what their life was about it wasn't a mystery to them i was so confused i don't know where i should work i don t even know what i don' t even what kind of music I m supposed to like i don t know who I don't what I'm supposed to date I don t know what I m supposed to do I m spinning in my head what am I supposed to be when I grow up these people in AA they didn't have that that confusion there was just this divine rightness about them because they knew who they were they knew that they were blessed with what possibly could be god's greatest blessing a sickness a soul sickness called alcoholism the reason i believe it's a blessing is a blessing is anything that pushes you shoves you or drags you screaming into being more than what you were and alcoholism is a great blessing do you think guys like me would pay the money back or spend my life helping others if it wasn't for it wasn t under the gun of alcoholism and I know exactly what my life s about I was saved from an alcoholic death not to have money or not to to have a big house, and not to travel around. And I do quite a bit of that. I have quite a lot of that, but I don't know how to do it. I have got quite a good at that. It's not about that. I was given a purpose. To some of us, much is given, but much is expected. The purpose is not me. If you were to come to Las Vegas and you were going to hang out for a week, I hope what you would see is a guy who's in the center of AA a guy who lives the primary purpose a guy whose this is not talk that you'd come with me to the three detox meetings I go to every week and you'd comes to me where I have commitments in my home group and get there an hour, hour and a half early I put a tie on, I hate ties and I do it because there's not much I can do to demonstrate honor and respect for AA so I put it on, it's a stupid little gesture I do it because I love Alcoholics Anonymous. And so, it's really in our feet. It's really in our actions. I have an ongoing ode living amends to AA because I came here, I was a selfish taker for the first few years. I know what I was. I didn't know any better. Wasn't out of malice, but I am responsible to try to be the example, the good example of the bad example I was. So I try to do that. AA is amazing. I love Alcoholics Anonymous. My daughter doesn't even understand alcoholism and she loves AA because of the dad that it's brought her. There's a lot of people glad I'm sober. I'm sure they don't realize it but the police should be very glad I am sober. My mother and father loved AA because they saw what you did with me. They died being grateful. They died, and they'd had years of being able to sleep at night because they knew that I was okay. To live a life where you worry about your son 24-7 and all of a sudden to be free? See, I'm not the only one that got free when I joined AA. a lot of other people got free too my sister got free my mother and father got free it never was just about me I've got guys I sponsor that I've helped get free that's the highlight of my life is watching guys and I like the more pathetic they are the better I like them My home group, we fight over the real sick ones, you know, because we get to watch the transformation. Thanks, Bob. My name's Adrian. I'm an alcoholic. Adrian. As you can see, we're not going to give you a lot of the really great stuff like 10, 11, and 12. And, you now, Bob done a powerful job on a mens there. and i don't even see the point going back to six and seven uh i mean like i can't top that you know uh when i you know i've heard some really powerful amends in alcoholics anonymous and to the point where i thought you know if they can do that i can i can go fix my bag of nonsense you know that the bag of nonsens that i've made such a big deal out of in my head you know You want to get rid of all those voices in your head? Go make your amends. Go make you're amends, because you can't live in the present until you bring up your past. And if you really want to be free in Alcoholics Anonymous, make all your amens. At least try to, and you'll get really free for a while, just for a little while. a while you know i'll be honest with you it's just for a while like like a minute you know and then it doesn't matter if i'm lying in a hospital bed or i've just made an amends the ego rebuilds itself right away again it's the last thing to go and the first thing to return and off it goes again. It does with the drinking situations, it does the same thing with the amends and everything else in my life and that's the way it is and I've come to accept that good part of the time. And you know the thing about not doing a really thorough inventory is your in step list probably won't be that thorough either. And again you know I had a really powerful experience with the steps in around five years where I've done a really powerful inventory and a part of my part of My fear inventory was a lot of unfinished demands that I thought that I kind of done or didn't have to do I mean I mean it was a lotta stuff I mean it was like a volcano waiting to erupt actually and you know God's good I got this day so we're sitting on a whole bunch of unresolved stuff and I you know you're sick when you're doing I know for me I'm sick you know i'm acting out there's stuff lying in the depths of my soul my psyche that's not finished it's not cleaned up i'm not good with the universe i'm that good with people around me and i had to clean it up and hanging around in good circles and alcoholics anonymous for good sobriety where people sharing stories like bob just made there you know I'm sure someone's thinking right now after this damn i gotta go make that amends you know after hearing what bob just said my advice to you is speak to someone before you do it just don't get up and leave here and run out because you know you might get locked up for a while you know I think guys you know if I look over my I mean I was just a person that didn't consider anybody at all that's the kind of self-centeredness I had I just want to I became a certain point in my life where I went on a rampage and it didn't matter who got in my way parents anybody it didn't matter and I think if I was to look at my amends list the two people I hurt most in the world was my mom and dad you know i mean i go out for a night's drinking in belfast and they're already worried sick as it is i don't come back for sometimes a couple of weeks you know when i'm living in their house and that's not right it's not right when you live in a society where you watch the news every day and there's someone else dead there's a body been found there's that's why you hear about even find a body have been found about even fun And I never even stopped to think for one minute in my so-called party and what my mom and dad were thinking of when I was out there doing that. And normally around Tuesday morning, I mean, the cops would show up at my mom's house accompanied by the British Army because they were afraid to come into my estate by themselves because then I'd get pelted with everything. And now we've got like the British army, we've Got the Cops at the Door and my mom standing in her nightdress facing them by herself. I mean, she didn't deserve it. And then they'd come back again at suppertime because I wasn't there. Well, my dad would just be home from work and he'd have to stand and face them too. And that happened many times. And I didn't realize all that stuff. I don't think there was a week when passed in our house when I would see my mom standing crying, coming into my bedroom and I'm lying probably four hours too late to go to the hospital with geish wounds on me, with blood stuck to the bed. I never stopped to think for one minute that I was her baby and she had to watch that. You know, one of the dirtiest, most selfish things I've ever done was to my dad. I think there's many things that bring us here. But I think a look that I seen on his face one day was what pushed me over the edge to come to Alcoholics Anonymous and find help. He stood in front of me and he cried when I was walking out of his house again. and he said, you know, I'll never forget the words he said. I can't believe what you've done to me and this family after everything that I've done for you. And I was just like, wow. And he was crying and he says something to me I'll never forget. He said, You know where you've left me? I want to die today. I want a die. I don't care what you're shooting into your arm putting up your nose or drinking man. If you're any way a human being at all, that's going affect you and i remember walking away that day thinking man how can i put this right can't put this red i i made my father sick my father would drive around the clubs in the bars in belfast in his car coming in looking for me is he here did you see him has anybody seen him you know he could see me out on the road walking down and he'd stop meet sons i just want to talk to you for a minute can i talk to your for one minute you know i'm not here to check up on you or anything but can you tell me when you're done here and i'll come and pick you up and i'll bring you home because he knew what i was like and i done nothing you know um i stole my father's life savings from him he worked hard his whole life and he had an account and i got access to it and cleaned it out on him over a period of years and that's what it was that i'd done to him when he found out i had done that see when i came the alcoholics anonymous guys see if there was one thing one wish you had to give me the day that i walked in the aa it would have been to put things right with my dad it would've been to push things right with him and i didn't know how to do that i didn t think it was possible i thought i'd missed the boat on it my father was kind to me he was a good man he really was and he done his best for me he tried sending the best girls done everything to keep me out of the troubles of belfast got me interested in football moved this he had nice part of it i mean he done everything for me showed up and And, you know, he done a lot for me. But by the time I came to the AA, he didn't care. I'd broken him, you now. I break people because I'm broken. I mean, I don't mean to do it like, but, you know, that's just the way it is. And I'll tell you, I moved to the first hit step list that I had. There had to be hit people on it, 13 at the most. You know,that was a good weekend for me, you know? you know really like that was a good weekend for me you know they'll be more you know there'll be a lot more and you know I said something earlier that I really meant you can make the steps a really magical experience and this is where I really started to see the magic happen when I started to revisit this stuff and start to take responsibility for it there was a guy on that list that He was a bartender in New York, and I just downright stroked him, ripped him off. And I remember saying to my sponsor back in Ireland, I'm never going to see this guy again because I never had intentions of coming back to New York. Well, I'd had a different plan. And he says, don't you worry. You don't know who you're going to meet. Let's just start here, and let's start taking these off, and we'll start doing them. And see, when I came back to new york, I lived in new yorke, and I've had a real bad bottom through my alcoholism. Returned back to belfast the way i always returned there were two bags of dirty laundry for my mom to wash and not a dollar in my pocket you know not a word said just allowed to come back and mom and dad take care of your drain again and there was a bartender on this list and for some reason it really bothered me what i'd done to this guy he was a good guy and he really helped me out a lot and he would lend me money and stuff in fact he lent me a lot of money and i you know i had a tab at the bar and you know I'd go in and he'd take care of me and that tab had run up pretty high you know and then i knew i was kind of leaving i started putting the champagne and everything on it and you know partying it up a little bit and he's get the picture I remember coming back to New York and looking for a job I mean I was still young guy and you know my brother got me a job in construction he said here's your phone number call that guy on Monday morning went to the city and you'll he'll take care of you so I called the number but they says yeah I'm right here in the corner I'll meet you and I walked right in the corner it's the bartender and he goes dude it's you isn't it? And I'm like what are you talking about. He goes we back in a story in New York man you know the Gibney's bar and I'm like I don't know what you're talking about oh you must have a brother I go I do and he looks just like me now and then I realized what I was doing and I went and I wrapped his door and you know I owned up to it and I made amends but what started to happen guys I I started to make a lot of money in New York. Started to do well in my life as a result of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I started the city that I started to accumulate money in my union funds and stuff. And I start to realize that, you know what? This money's not even mine. I mean, I owed the government for embezzlement and fraud. Oh my God, I mean thousands. Thousands. I owed my dad thousands. I mean everybody I owed was thousands. You know? and I knew that I had to fly back to the eye of the storm where I started to cause all the damage back in Belfast. And I used to go back there with pockets full of cash that I made through working first time in my life. I made it through working an honest job where I knew that I was actually making this money in an honest way started to do taxes and stuff for the first time out of my life and it's amazing see when it's time to go to work to go talk to people to clean stuff up you kind of know where to go. and i'd start going back into bars back in belfast that i hadn't been in 15 20 years were guys that i'd ripped off guys that i'd worked for stole tools from them stole all kinds and i walked back into the bar and i started giving them their money back and it'd be there was this one guy that i went back and done that too and i said you know what man i stole machinery and equipment and stuff on you and he goes listen i knew it was you man but you know just forget about it i said i'd like to pay you back and he says well take the money you know when i paid him back the next day I was going to Scotland where my father on the ferry from Belfast to Scotland in the crossing and I walked out the back of the boat to smoke a cigarette I'm still smoking back then and the guy that I've made amends to in the bar the day before was standing there and he was still impressed from what I'd done he says wow I never thought a guy like you'd be able to stop drinking dude and all these little magical synchronistic experiences started to happen years guys man five years in my recovery I'm starting to question whether there's a God or not this is God revealing himself to me this is the universe opening up and showing me here we go here and I started Pam my father back my mom was cool she just you know we just want you to be happy son and I wanted to come home and you know I've come home twice a year and you know my dad was I could see that things still weren't right for me and him and And I'd started to pay him his money and stuff back. And, you know, my sponsor would say things to me like, well, what does your father like to do? I said, he likes boxing. Is there any boxing memorabilia or anything you can get him? And I met Joe Fraser one day and got him to send gloves for me. Give them to him, he liked them. Hung them up on his wall. You know, our football team was the way that me and my father connected. Most in our lives got a big European final. The tickets were like gold dust. I got on one of them. he liked that I got him a hotel got him a week in Spain got him and my mom a week in Spain started to put the gold and the jewelry back in my mom's jewelry box that had been stolen from her through my craziness and he started to respect me so he did and he started to say things to me like you know what son I'm glad you're home and one of the things that my father insisted on every time I came back the island was that he would come and get me at the airport and he'd be standing there and I'd come off the plane and I go down to his house and we'd connect and stuff and we started to get closer and our relationship started to be restored and started to develop between us and the innocence kind of started coming back into the relationship and stuff again until one time I was driving back and I was going back to New York and my dad was driving me up the house on Hill in Belfast and you know I see him well enough and seeing the tears coming down I don't like the whole crime thing and stuff you know. I really don't and I think my parents were the two hardest demands that I had to make because I was afraid of them telling me they loved me. Part of me still doesn't believe that I deserve it. It's alright come back to the guy that you had a fight with the road money and stuff too that's easy but your parents for some reason they're my two hardest demands and i remember my dad getting out of the car that day taking my suitcase up putting it down and the tears were just trickling down the side of his face and he said you know what i'm really proud of you and i love you and he kissed me right in the face so we did and i'll tell you what guys i got on that plane that day come back to new york i knew that my next step amends was made or my dad the part of the next step is unbelievable and the timing is always perfect it's always perfect one of the closest people to me in my whole life was my grandmother she lived with me my whole her husband had died really young me and my granny were through thick and thin together i mean you couldn't have a better granny i'd be out in the street fighting and stuff and she'd be punching people and stuff i mean that's the kind of granny she was you know she she was giving all the other kids candy she was i'm sitting smoking cigarettes and stuff with her she's giving me little glasses of gin and stuff you know i mean she was an amazing woman we'd watch the boxing and stuff together in the football and stuff and me and her were really close i was the youngest grandkid we were really close and i done to her what i've done to everybody else i stole from her i stole it from everybody damn i wouldn't have stolen so much if i knew i was gonna have to make a mess you know and i got a phone call i got I got a phone call, and I'm gonna wrap it up on this because I think Ron's giving me signals over there. No? Okay, all right, I'll take another R, you know? You know, this was in Amman, is it? I got phone call from my sister. My grandmother was 90 and she took that. She'd slipped into the coma and oh my God, blasted me right in the chest. I'll tell you, that was like the sorest thing ever. You know, I was here in New York and, you know, she said, Adrienne, you better come home. And I thought, okay. And I remember telling my boss, I said, I've got to go home, my grandmother's sick. And I didn't care what anybody said. I was going home to see my grandmother, you know. And I flew home. And I went into the room that she was in and my sister was sitting by the side of the bed and she was in a coma. And she was like really frail and stuff. and my sister said granny Adrian's home from New York to see you and her whole face lit up and she smiled in a coma from a coma and you know my sister she left the room and left me with my granny and I hadn't amends to make here and I held her hand and I told her that I loved her and I was really sorry for the things that I'd done on her for stealing all their medicine and pills on her and taking them and lying down to die in the bedroom when I tried to take my own life. She finally, so she did the next morning, all blue and white, just dying, you know? And she ran in her 80s down the stairs and up the street and got my sister and my brother-in-law and they came and got me and they got the paramedics and stuff in time and she got me to the hospital and they got my stomach pumped and everything. She saved my life, so she did, you know? She'd just done so much for me and I had to apologize for everything that I'd ever done on her and I'll tell you, it was like a soul cleanse and so it was. And I sat at the bottom of her bed and I cried for an hour and then I went home. I fell asleep and my sister came into my bedroom the next morning and said, Granny passed away last night. See, the timing's always perfect. See, when I'm willing to make the effort and I show up, God's going to open all kinds of doors for me. He really is. I've got to make so many amends in here. I really have. And the freedom that's came from it, it's unbelievable. It really is and it's the thing that I don't want to do. It's the things that my mind won't let me do. Don't do it. Don't you? Don't it. You know, and I've had the kind of amends where I've said to my sponsor, I can't go back there. It'll kill me. And he said, ah, I think you'll be all right. And I've went back and I've done it. And I'm a guy in Alcoholics Anonymous that has been well received in nearly every amends that I've gone back to make except some ex-girlfriends and stuff. I mean, I had to take it on the chin with a few of them which is understandable. You know, and I can take it. The book talks about that that I'm big enough and I'm man enough to take that but I think I really started getting connected to the power that they're talking about in the second step here when I started to make my amends You know, it's like Amends are like the ghost of the Christmas past It's like the body that just keeps Coming up to the surface Intending to do something about it It's not going to go away It's just not going away I've got to clean it up There's universal laws Even if people don't see me I had a bunch of amends that people didn't see Burglaries Breaking into people's cars Stealing car stereos Wedding rings out of people's houses that's a big one right there because no one seen me doesn't mean to say you know someone got the blame for doing it someone may have been blamed and me going back there may just change the whole dynamic of a family thank God I've had great sponsorship in here people you know they didn't really care what I thought you know that just give me direction and told me to go do it take it or leave it and I went and done it you know I've got through my list so I think that's all like that thanks for letting me share thank you all for sitting through today want to indulge me in an odd way to close the meeting let's just stand quietly don't hold hands or anything and let's whisper the Lord's prayer ending with the word amen Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and glory, forever and ever. Amen. I think he heard us. Thank you.