Fourth Step Inventory – Step Workshop – Part 2 of 3 – Local AA Speakers

Good morning. My name's Dan. I'm an alcoholic. like. And it's a blessing and a privilege to be here. You guys definitely got the short end of the stick. You're out there, and you're stuck with this. And I'm up here, and I get all this, which is wonderful. Now, as far as the handouts go, a little disclaimer. First of all, you won't be able to follow along with what I'm doing with the hand outs. These are for people like me that when you lay out all these instructions, you get a hard time visualizing everything. The outside cover has all the charts and these again are visualizations there to help if your sponsor is anything like mine was or like Bill over there in the wheelchair, they will tell you that these forms represent check mark sobriety and it's usually suggested you use white paper and black ink and make your own columns but this allows me to see exactly how it's laid out in the book in a visual form and again I'm not going to be going through all that in a 25-minute presentation. That's about all I could do. Okay, what I'm going to be talking about are some of the observations and I'm gonna be going through in the big books certain sections between page 64 and 71. And what we've done so far is step one, we've realized we have a problem. Step two, we at least had a strong suspicion that there was some help out there. from a power greater than ourself. And then we begin with step three, the prayer that we did was a decision. And the book says, though our decision was a vital and a crucial step, it could have little permanent effect unless at once followed by a strenuous effort to face and be rid of the things in ourselves which had been blocking us. And it's the principle behind the Oxford Group and AA to understand that my inability to help other people and be happy in my own skin is because there are things blocking me from God and blocking me FROM OTHER PEOPLE. It was explained to me that in the book, most of the time when you do a prayer, it ends with an amen. It was explained to me when you begin the third step prayer, that everything up until the seventh step prayer is all one prayer. And what that means is, for me, what I come to understand is from that point on, if I really mean that third step prayer, from then on I've got a new sponsor. Besides the guy that's helping me, I've Got a New Sponsor, and that new sponsor is God. And that's where I get the power to go forward and get through this stuff because based on my own power, I can't do this inventory, this house cleaning, and make amends. It says, our liquor is but a symptom, so we had to get down to causes and conditions. So the four-step inventory is to make me aware of the causes and the conditions. And the primary cause, the root of my problem, is my selfishness. Okay? And the conditions are the harms that I do and the separation I talked about, the separationI have from myself and God, the separation between me and other people. When we were talking about, Lee was talking about the first step. He talked about being alone. And that's the causes and conditions that result in my selfishness. It says a business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke. Taking a commercial inventory is a fact-finding, fact-facing process. It is an effort to discover the truth about our stock and trade. One object is to disclose damaged and unsellable goods to get rid of them promptly and without regret. If the owner of the business is to be successful, he cannot fool himself about values. What that's telling me is I need to set aside just about everything. A lot of the fact-finding that we're going to do here are going to be uncovering the lies that I tell myself. So I pray that God would set aside the things that I think I know and help me to understand what I need to know. And a good example that was shown to me about this is there can be some things that are absolutely okay for me to know and understand. An example of that is Jesus loves me. That can be absolute fact, and it can be very helpful to me. But sometimes if I'm not in the right frame of mind, I can do the wrong thing with that, and I can go off on the right track. So I need to be willing to learn what I need to learn as I'm supposed to learn it through this process. we do exactly the same thing with our lives we took stock honestly first we searched out the flaws in our makeup which caused our failure being convinced itself is the cause like I talked about which manifested in various ways was what had defeated us we considered its common manifestations those conditions we talked about and the other common manifestation is a lack of power So when I get started on these four-step inventories and this fact-finding and fact-facing mission, one thing I need to remember is not to beat myself up. A lot of the things that some of us did, and me too, worked absolutely terrible. But what I come to realize is that in the condition that I was in, I lacked the power to do any better. So there's no reason for me to be beating myself up over what I did. It says here that resentment is the number one offender. It's explained to me that resentment is to re-feel. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stems all forms of spiritual disease. Okay, so what that tells me is that resentment is the granddaddy of spiritual diseases. It also tells me that resentment in and of itself is a spiritual disease It's the manifestation of my allergy of the body the obsession of my mind is manifesting as the spiritual disease, and resentment is at the root of it. The selfishness and the resentments are the granddaddy of spiritual diseases. Here's a promise. When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out physically and mentally. And some of you have heard my story, but I had a rather profound experience with the spiritual Malady and the mental capacities coming back immediately. But I don't have time to share my story today. Okay, we're spiritually sick. When I'm spiritually sick, a couple of things are going on. Number one, I'm not teachable. And we already talked about I'm separated from God and I'm separated from other people. The reason I do this process of house cleaning is for the freedom that it's going to provide me. It says to put the inventory on paper. In dealing with resentments, we set them on paper, white paper black ink or in a pinch black paper and white ink is okay too a couple of things happen when I put it on paper one of them is when it gets down on paper it's real it's out of my head and it's on paper it actually makes it real in most cases it was found that our self esteem our pocket books our ambitions our personal relations including sex were hurt or threatened so we restore Second thing that happens when I put them on paper. Usually, after I inspect them and I take a good look at them, what I find is most of it is very trivial. Most of the time, I overdo things in my head. To conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us got. The usual outcome was that people continued to wrong us and we stayed sore. Do I want to live like that? No. We began to see that the world and its people really dominate us. In that state, the wrongdoing of others, fancied or real, had the power to actually kill. So what's fanciED and what's real? It was explained to me that if it involves me, it's probably fancy. Okay? What I'm doing is I'm allowing people to live inside my head, and they aren't even paying rent. and the reality is that we could not wish them away any more than we could wish alcohol away I need to understand of my own power I'm stuck with the desire to drink I'm struck with the resentments and I'm stocked with my character defects the object of this thing is to get hooked up with God and get help with these issues because the desire to drink just suddenly ceases the character defects eventually just start to fall away these are why we need our new sponsor god so we're not alone okay we realize that people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick now if you're like me you want to pronounce them spiritually sick okay it says here perhaps i don't get to pronounce other people spiritually sick but i do need to observe that they might be my perceptions and my expectations of others Now, in hindsight, when I look back at what people did, most of the time what people do is absolutely predictable. No matter how bad somebody does, in hindsight, it's absolutely predictable What gives me the right to expect people to behave like I want them to behave? We ask God to help show them, help us show them the same tolerance, pity, and patience that we would cheerfully grant a sick friend. If you go into a hospital to visit somebody that's dying, what can you do? You don't walk in and say, how are you doing? It's very simple. What can I do to help? If I can take that attitude with other people, even if I disagree with what they're doing, it helps me. And we avoid retaliation an argument. It says on page, back on 84, it says we have ceased fighting anything or anyone, even alcohol, because by this time sanity will have returned. These are the promises after the housecleaning and for me sanity is quite clearly what it is, is clarity of thought. Not fighting anything nor anyone is sanity. It is plain that a life which includes deep resentments leads only to futility and unhappiness okay it talks about wasting time the insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again and with us to drink is to die now did I really hear what that says it doesn't say I drink again and I become insane it says the insanity returns first and then I drink again this inventory was ours not the other man's when we saw All our faults, we listed them. We placed them before us in black and white. We admitted our wrongs honestly, and we were willing to set these matters straight. Okay, these wrongs will go through step five and on to our eighth step list. Now we move on to fear. Fear is a short word. It somehow touches every aspect of our lives. It was an evil and corroding thread. The fabric of our existence was shot through with it. Driven by a hundred forms of fear. Back on page 62. Okay. We talked about this in the meeting Thursday night. Think about the limo that pulls out in front of the house first thing in the morning. And I walk out and one of the lim? drivers is fear. But there's more than one. There's a hundred lim? driver. They're fear, selfishness, dishonesty. All these different things that drive me to do what I do on a daily basis. to hurt other people and to block me from God and others. It sets in motion trains of circumstances which brought us to misfortune we felt we didn't deserve. Did not we ourselves set the ball rolling? Sometimes we think fear ought to be classified with stealing. It seems to cause more trouble. Now, for a lot of us, me included, when I looked at this, it really didn't make sense to me. How can you classify fear with stealing? There's two different ways to look at this. Now, remember, this book was written back in the 30s. They were coming off the Great Depression. People had very little. People were sometimes lucky to have water, to have anything to drink for food, work. They didn't have anything. When you took from other people, you were taking away their hope, okay? Classified with stealing. Another way to look at it is the reasons I have fear is because I'm not trusting God. When I have fear, I'm stealing from God his power to help me. Why do we have the fear? And this is what I'm talking about. Wasn't it because self-reliance failed us? Perhaps there's a better way and we think so. Going back to the third step prayer for now, we are on a different basis, the basis of trusting and relying upon God. We trust infinite God rather than our finite selves. We are in the world to play the role he assigns. Just to the extent that we do as we think he would have us and humbly rely on him, does he enable us to match calamity with serenity? The calamities don't go away. We just get enough serenety to deal with them. Toby and I had this discussion on a car ride about trust and faith and I kind of had it backwards. This is where this comes from. Trusting and relying on God. What's the difference? Some of you might remember being to the circus when you were little and the guy's up on the high wire and he's walking back and forth and everybody's cheering. Yay, he's doing a great job. Then he gets a wheelbarrow. He's back across there again. Everybody's cheering Everybody trusts that that guy's not going to fall down. okay but if you're willing to rely on him and get up there and get in the wheelbarrow it's a big difference who's going to volunteer to get inthe wheelbarow and trust God when I'm trusting and relying on God the fear begins to go away and I outgrow it we never apologize to anyone for depending on our creator we never apologized for God instead we let him demonstrate through us what he can do going back to what I said in the beginning God's my new sponsor, and I need to begin to recognize that what my physical sponsor does to help me, I need? recognize that it's God working through him. And I want to get to the point that I can be used in the same manner. We ask him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what he would have us be. How many times did many of us read that and think that God was going to show us what to do? it's not what it says God shows me who I'm supposed to be and at once we begin to outgrow fear if I'm focused on my mission to do for God and let God use through me and I rely on God the fear begins to fall actually begin to out grow it doesn't go away it keeps coming now I want to talk about sex It says in the book that we all have sex problems. We'd hardly be human if we didn't. What can we do about them? It also says that our sex powers are God-given, right? Anybody ever come to the point where somebody tells you that, you know, if you're wondering what you're doing is okay or not, and you ask God, God, would you go there and do this with me? And after a while you get to the point where you can hear it in the back of your head. You get to this part and you say, God, will you go with me when I do this? And you could just hear that voice in the background in a loving way saying, oh yeah. Our sex powers are God given. Probably one of the most powerful things He ever created. But a lot of this inventory is about our conduct. We reviewed our conduct over the years past. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, or inconsiderate? Who had we hurt? Did we unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion, or bitterness? Where were we at fault? What should we have done instead? We got all this down on paper and looked at it. now what we're really talking about when we're talking about sex problems or relationship problems and from my own experience uh many of you know me i've been sober since 1984 got married in 1985 and i can tell you that my ability to get along with other people in the world whether inside aa or outside aa it begins with my relationship with god it both begins with my relationship with my wife. If all that is going as planned, if I'm being who I'm supposed to be, everything else outside of me goes just as well. But this inventory kind of separates here. There's a couple of different things happening. One of the things that we're doing is we're shaping a sound. In this way, we tried to shape a sane and sound ideal for our future sex life. Whatever our ideal turns out to be we must be willing to grow toward it. To sum up about sex, we earnestly pray for the right ideal, for guidance in each questionable situation, for sanity, which I said was a clarity of thought and for the strength to do the right thing. In these handouts I've included in the very centerfold a sex ideal. You don't hold it this way, you hold it this way. Now this is a suggested ideal. A couple of things to think about when you go through this and if you use this as a guide to create your own sex ideal. One of the things that was pointed out to me is when I get done with this okay, and what I'm really writing in a sex ideal in this manner, it starts out most of us write this about the kind of person that we want to be with. Okay? We're shaping an ideal of the kind relationship and the kind partner we would like to have. But what I was told to do, when you get done with all that, to turn it all around on yourself. Because these things that I want someone else to be, these are what I have to be first. Because if I'm not, it won't work. I can't have it unless I'm willing to be it. Okay. Come back in a minute to relationships. and the second thing that we're doing with this inventory is in a conduct inventory we must be willing to make amends where we have done harm we have listed the people we have hurt by our conduct and we are willing to straighten out the past if we can and we go back to our previous resentment and fears inventory when they involved other people and we start compiling a name a list of names of people that we have heard This part of this inventory is going to be used in our eighth step when we make our men's list. We're going to put that together for our sponsor when we go through step five to compile our eight-step list. And that's how that part of the step divides off. Okay, back to the value of relationships. In the very beginning I talked about that third step prayer. I talked about getting connected to God. And the ability to communicate with other people, the ability of having a relationship with other people gets me connected, gets me outside myself, gets me focused on what my next mission will be. If we're going through this process at a rapid clip, it's not going to be long before what's going to really help me stay sober is helping somebody else. so as my relationships with other people begin to grow and I get to the point where I can help someone else then I have the ability to really do what I'm supposed to do in this program thanks Dan L did a good job, thank you so much hang on, let me see here Tri-County Central Office 38th Anniversary Dinner and Speaker Meeting I think I already did that one Saturday, February 2nd, hopefully everybody got that one, looks like a good time also afterwards the 12 Step Workshop Recover and Live by the 164 Group, the complete workshop will be a 4 CD set 20 bucks afterwards just see our recording people over here and they'll take care of you. Now, we just had a nice thing about the fourth step here to relate his own fifth step for us. Just kidding. I don't know if I want to hear that. Mr. Alex K. All right. Hey, everybody. My name is Alex and I'm an alcoholic. I hear Dan is going to be signing big books in the back. I'm not sure if that's true or not, But OK, so I'm supposed to talk about the fifth step here. And first, let me relate some mistakes I made with the fifth step. I thought I was supposed to go to my first couple of meetings and say my fifth step. That's not true. And then after that, I thought I was opposed to speak at a meeting and be the speaker and then say my first step. And I actually did that. I spoke at the meeting place. And I had already done my steps. But I just, I don't know. I was still confused. And I shared for about ten minutes. And about minute two, I was already crying and I couldn't even continue on any longer. So, you know, so hopefully I'm here to share my experience, strength, and hope. My fifth step, it's kind of funny. I got my sponsor on Christmas Eve. And I did most of my fourth step, my fifth step. My sixth step. My seventh step. and pretty much my eighth step on Valentine's Day. So there wasn't much gap in between my fourth step and fifth step, and that's because I procrastinated. My sponsor gave me a date, and he said, either we're going to do your fifth step that day or you need to get another sponsor, and that that's what I needed. You know, we went to his house. I met him there, and I thought there was going to be like � I thought Toby was goingto be there. I thought a whole bunch of other people were going tobe there, and they were goingtobe there with candles and incense, and they were going to, like, do some weird thing. And that's not how it was. You know, the fifth step is in the big book. It's in Into Action. It's the first, like four pages. We read those pages together. And when it said to do something, we did it, you know? And what I found out is my sponsor wasn't some spiritual guru. He wasn't a lawyer. He wasn'T a priest. He wasn' t a therapist. He was another alcoholic, you knoW. And that was cool. In fact, my sponsor that I went through the steps with had never heard of Fit Step before. You know, I was his first Fit Step. So, you know, the reason I mention that is to show that this program works and you don't have to be an expert. You know? And we read the book. We started talking. We said a little prayer before we started going through what I had written. And basically what we did is, you now, I had the columns listed like Dan was talking about. and we read them across. And on some of them, he just said, what's the next resentment? You know, and we didn't even really talk about it because I could see my part in other parts. You know we had to really dig into it. Some parts, you know, he told me some experience that he had similar. And it was just two drunks talking together that happened to be sober. You know and that was really a relief. Specifically on the resentment section, um you know i felt some freedom because for the first time um i told somebody like how much i felt like a victim and how much I felt like other people had victimized me and um for the first time I could see my part in it you know and that that was freeing and and another thing is when I was telling him that stuff he didn't like disappear and run you know I had already kind of like over our time him him sponsoring me I kind of like let him know a couple things to see his reaction. You know, it's kind of testing the waters. But, you know, he was hearing it all in one place at one time and I didn't melt and he didn't meld, you know, and I don't have to drink during it. You know, that was that was amazing. You know, during the fear parts, I just read my fears out, you know, and I learned that a lot of them. I learned some funny stuff. I learned that, yeah, I'm afraid of dying, but I'm even more afraid of living. You You know, I'm afraid of girls, but I'm even more afraid of living without them. You know? I'm a friend of drinking, but even, you know, I'm not afraid of not drinking. And the reason that was is because, like it's been said over and over again, I was relying on self. When I have fears on both ends, you know, and I'm holding on to both of those, there's no place for me to hold on to God. You know. And I had never seen that before. And I'd heard, I probably had heard people say that exact thing in meetings, but I never, like, I never felt it. And for the first time, I felt that, that, you know, that I need God and that I'm safe and protected. You know, and then on the, yeah, I'm going to talk about sex. You know in the sex section, when I did my first fifth step, that was not about relationships, that section for me. That was about sex, that's just my experience. It's later on. Yeah, it becomes about relationships. But I had to get some of that other trash out of the way first. And, you know, I used to have a real problem with dishonesty. Sometimes I still do. But, you Know, I went through the stuff I had written and I after we after I read it to him, I had To go back to my sponsor that at that same time and be like, well, this and this isn't true. and this and this is true, you know, because, you know, a lot of it was complete lies. A lot of it was embellishing the parts that I wanted to look cool and the other parts where I'm not going to tell it because I felt horrible. And, you know, and I'm glad I did it that day, you know. And the step ends in this hour long, you know, period of like thinking, am I, you know, going back through the steps that I've already done thinking, is there anything missing? You know, the book talks about, you know, are the blocks in place or whatever. We're building this spiritual arch and, you know, I was sitting at his apartment. He was in the other room and and I was just searching myself and, you know. Asking God, like, is there anything else? And I was as honest as I could be at that moment. Yeah, there were some things that later on I would get more honest about, but it It was it was my first beginning. And and, you know, that that that honesty that I'd never experienced before. All right. I want to switch gears now a little bit. And, you Know, that was my experience saying my fifth step. But then I've had the experiences hearing fifth steps. And I don't always hear a lot of talk about that. And I think it's I think its really important, you Now, because I was I was frightened. I didn't even though I knew my experience, I still thought I had to like save the guys that I heard their fifth step. I thought I Had to say everything right I thought like if I missed something like they were going to go drink and it was going to be all my fault and you know again, I came to that realization that I'm just a drunk. I'm doing my best. You know, I try to let God in when i'm hearing a fifth step And basically I think my job when i'M hearing a first step is to be there being the moment You know, if I have experience on that type of resentment, that type of fear, that's the type of sex conduct. I can share about that. You know? If I think the guy is totally fooling himself and can't see his part, you know, I try to point that out. And if I keep it that simple, it's really cool. You know as far as like a fifth step, not telling anybody what I've heard is big because I know that was important for me. You know I didn't want to. So I always mention that, you know. It's like I want to do this in complete confidence. I'm not going to tell my sponsor. I'm n�o vou dizer para nenhum dos meus amigos. Voc� sabe, eu n�o vou... Isso � muito importante porque isso � um momento em que temos que chegar � verdade e �s vezes a verdade � assustadora ao in�cio, voc� sabe? Voc� sabe e quanto a... Eu adoro quando os sponsors come�am a ler o 5� passo da primeira coluna e est�o falando sobre o que aconteceu e eles v�o querer continuar por 10 minutos sobre uma resentia And I'm like, what did you write on the paper? You know, read that to me. Because usually the truth is pretty simple, you know. And usually it can be expressed in a couple sentences. And if it can't be, then there's still some resentment there. That's just my experience. You know the fifth step, it says omitted. You know omitted to God, to ourselves, to another human being, the exact nature of wrongs. And it's that omitted very, you Know, basically like in the first step that Lee was talking about, I have to admit to myself, my innermost self, that I have these defects, so they can be released. But if I'm still blaming what I did on other people, I'm not going to have a clear admission. And it's going to be hazy and it's going to mean I did this because they did that and back and forth. And when I hear a fist up, I try to make sure it's clear. And as I'm listening to the resentments, I'm listening for fears because the next section is fears. And I try to relate the fears that I hear and the resentments to the fears that are just written out. And usually those fears come up in the sex conduct too, you know. After I did my fist up, it took, I don't know, like three hours, four hours, something like that. It was on Valentine's Day. I went home and I took a nap because I was always taking naps, like my first year of sobriety, year and a half, like always. um and uh you know i thought i was going to be like emotionally beat down i thought i was gonna have to like you know just like sleep for days and eat ice cream and just whatever you know um and i wasn't i went to a i went to a an na valentine's dance and had a blast you know i was i was free you know and it really brings to my mind like this the spiritual dance that we all do with each other and with god But, you know, it's just the fifth step is amazing. I felt like I was finally part of this fellowship because I had heard in meetings, whenever I was working on steps in the beginning, every meeting I went to was about that step. You know, if I was doing step one, every meaning was about step one. When I was dealing with step five and four, like every step, every meetingI went to is about those steps. And it doesn't take many meetings to hear the people that don't do step five, and are sitting on that step four, or people that do step five but they're not honest. And I did my best to learn from their experiences. And then I heard the people that had done the step and felt free. They were going through the other steps, and they had positive experiences. And that's what I tried to hold on to because I didn't want to do step 5. If it was up to me, I wouldn't have done it. You know, I would have held on to that stuff, hid, gone to meetings late and, you know, like left early and all that stuff that I'd done and kept drinking. And I didn't want that anymore. You know. So if anybody hasn't done step five, I suggest get a sponsor and do it. And if anybody's sitting on a step four, at least sat on my step four for like 20 minutes. It was like as long as it took me to drive to my sponsor's house because and that worked for me, you now. Um, I really have no idea how long I've been up here. OK, um, I don't know how much else I have to say. You know, I love hearing fifth steps because like if there's a favorite step I have doing with sponsees, it's a fifth step because I love the like the mix of like, you know, the happy emotions, the sad emotions and to see the growth. You know, it's so cool to like. To take a guy through the steps that when you first started working with him, all he did was talk about his problems and how everything was everyone else's fault and go on and go on until I'm like, all right, whatever by, you know, and then hear them express in words, you know not just on paper but expressing words how they can actually like see that they were causing the chaos in our life, because I had never been able to see that before. You know, and I don't know. It's just amazing. I'm not going to talk anymore, because if I do, I'll just be rambling. So thank you. We now have gone through the first five steps, and we like to culminate with what we've gone through with someone who has gone through The Steps and actually is going to tell their story. We call it a testimonial. This young man, he's actually spoken at the 164 Group Speaks on Thursday nights. So I've had the opportunity to hear his story. It is a wonderful story of hope, of miracles, and as we all are. And our own stories shed that God's grace in all of us. And it's a pleasure for me to introduce this young man, Mr. Tim H. I'm Tim. I'm an alcoholic. I want to start off by thanking Alex for giving me an extra 15 minutes. Thank you. My name is Tim. I'm an alcoholic. My sobriety date is September 10, 2011. I have a sponsor, and I'm available to sponsor others. So basically, I mean, this is my first time doing, I guess, a testimonial, but from what he said, it's basically just a shorter, condensed version of my story. So I guess like every other time I've spoken, I guess I'll just start from the beginning. I was born in Buffalo, New York, December 7th, 1991. I grew up in a very normal family. Like I grewup with very good morals, knew the difference between right and wrong. To kind of tell my parents' history, I mean, my mom, from like 1986 to about 91, She was the Deputy Attorney General of New York State from the time I was born up until basically the time we moved to Florida in 2000. She was on deputy attorney general of the Western District of New York and my dad was the chief chief deputy investigator of the Buffalo Police Department. So, I mean, like law enforcement is a big part of my family. Yeah. I grew up with very good morals they always told me the difference between right and wrong and everything was happy I have two younger brothers actually I forgot to mention, I am adopted that has a big part to do with my Aunt Kathleen on my mother's side she was basically kind of like the chief nurse in charge of giving birth to me and everything so she played a big hand into putting me into the family I'm a part of today um but yeah like uh childhood was very normal um played sports um hockey was a big thing especially living up in new york um i played soccer in the off season baseball um but yeah i mean everything was very normally very happy i can't think of a bad moment um in my in my early life um and i mean my younger brothers can attest to that also i mean we just had a very great life there in new york um like every year when we got old enough like once my brothers kind of reached like four or five we'd always make trips down to florida go to disney world make we'd have family trips every year um once we actually moved down to florida um because um dennis vacca who was uh actually the attorney general at the time lost his job lost the election and therefore like my parents lost their jobs also so that's why we moved down here um my dad stuck with law enforcement my mom um wanted to spend more time with us like her kids so she actually became um an english teacher at a technical institute um teaching uh foreign foreigners who came to the country how to speak english um so like basically she kind of forfeited like, a lot of her income just to spend time with us. So, I mean, she also worked at a school, like I said, and so she had the same schedule as us. So basically whenever we were off school, she was off. And, I means, she wasn't always there for us. She was, I'm mean, just a wonderful mother. And, like, once we moved down to Florida, we had always, like every year we'd make trips, family trips every summer. We'd always drive all up and down the eastern seaboard go to different parks like Daniel Boone or kind of drawing a blank on a bunch of other names. But we'd go from, like, north to South Carolina all the way up to, like? Virginia, Michigan. And we'd always end up back in Buffalo, New York, to see family for about a week or so. And then we'd drive all theway back, stopping at other campsites. Camping was a big thing in our family. I mean, I can actually thank my mother for that. It wasn't necessarily my dad who was real big on it. My mom was the one who really loved the outdoors and stuff. I mean it was her idea when we were young to go buy like a pop-up camper and go camping and just make a three-week trip out of it. Um, and, uh, kind of fast forwarding a little bit to, um, in 2001. Um, like, I don't know if this plays any role in like how I became an alcoholic or not. But, uh. In early 2001, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. Um. At first. Like, I was really naive to the situation. I mean, at the time, I think I was about eight years old when she was diagnosed. I didn't really know the seriousness of the situation. For the first couple years, from what I've talked to my dad about and everything, it never really got all that serious. I mean she did go through chemotherapy and stuff. She went through the whole losing her hair and that. But me being, like, eight, nine years old, like I didn't understand, like the whole gravity of the situation. And after about two, two and a half years after going through chemotherapy and everything, she went into remission. And, I mean, at that point, I was starting to kind of get exactly like what cancer was and like how serious it was. But, I means, by that point it had already gone into remissions so like I really didn't think anything of it. And also around this time, kind of going back to me and my brothers, back in Bradenton, too, that's where we were living, Bradent??, Florida. I mean, we were still heavily involved in, like, sports and baseball, football, soccer, basically everything. And, like both my parents were heavily involved. in that like i was uh i was big in boy scouts also um uh my my brothers at the time were big in cub scouts um and one thing on my mom was very proud of was the fact that all of us were in because she'd help plan camping trips and stuff because like i said earlier she's really big on that um but yeah she had her like both my parents had their hands in everything we did My dad would help coach our soccer and baseball teams. My mom would help run, like, concession stands and everything while we were out in the field. I mean, like I said, she helped run, like, the Boy Scout troop I was in. I mean everything was, I mean just great. Like I really can't come up with any complaints from my earlier childhood like that. But by the time, let me see one second. Like fast-forwarding to like late 2003, early 2004, the cancer did come back. This time it spread rapidly. Like, it started back in her breast again. Within, I think, probably about six, seven months, it spread to her lung and then to her brain. And on January 15, 2005, that's when my mother passed away from cancer. And, I mean, one thing that was a really tough part to deal with, especially in the months leading up to it, And this was kind of like the big, like, awakening for me that this really was a serious situation. When she was going through the chemotherapy and she started to lose her hair and everything, I remember there was one morning I was just kind of sitting in our living room and all of a sudden she comes out with, like a shaver and she comes and asks me to follow her out to the back porch And at that point, she asked � like, she was just sick of, like, kind of shedding hair everywhere and just asked me to shave the rest of her hair off. And basically, like the second I turned on the razor, I just started bawling, crying. And, I mean, I couldn't do it. That's when I realized � like finally realized how serious this was. And, like � I mean to this point, it kind of still baffles me that it took me, like almost four years to finally realize the gravity of the situation. Um, but I mean, once I realized that it was probably, um, I mean it was only like a few months until she passed away. Um, to note on this, uh, my mom was probably one of the, she was the most spiritual person in the family. Um, we grew up in the Catholic church. Um, went to church every Sunday, every Christmas, Easter. um we went to ccd classes um all the way up until i want to say it's like eighth grade um she actually i think taught the fourth or third or fourth grade class for about two years and um yeah i mean my dad um i mean honestly i mean after all that happened i'm not so I'm not really sure how spiritual he is now, but, um, he, I mean, I know he was spiritual back then. Um, but my mom was the really the kind of foundation of the family for going to church and everything. Um. So, I'm after death. I mean I had, I mean I definitely had the conception of a higher powers is it was more of a like a Santa Claus type thing. Like, uh, kind of growing up, like I was told like if you pray for things like it'll happen. Like God's just kind of like this genie or something like that. I didn't like I just kindof had a false sense of faith and basically like once my mom passed away that's really when I started kind of blaming things around me especially God. Um, and I mean, uh, from that point on, I mean things just, I mean, as you probably tell, things just kind of went downhill from there. Um, I means even to this point it was like I was 13 when she died and it was still about three years until I actually tried drinking for the first time. But, uh from that point on, um, I became totally self-sufficient. Um, I tried to, I just, I definitely distanced myself from my family. Um. I tried any way possible to, um. Kind of stay away from my dad because at this point, um after like the initial first couple months after passing away, um we had like a lot of family around and everyone was trying to help us in any way they could. We had family friends that lived around us that would cook food and bring it over basically on a nightly basis. And I mean, we just had a lot great friends. My mom had a lot of great friends that really did love her. And, I mean after kind of the those first couple months ended um that's when things really kind of started to get real around the house that we finally realized that like my mom had passed away and that life really has to change right now um and for probably like the first year or so my dad really had a hard time handling it because i mean he had been married to my mom for uh 20 plus years um he they raised me raised my two younger brothers and even my uh older half-brother that my um that's uh my dad's son before he actually married my mom um like she helped raised him also um so basically like he had never really been alone when it came to raising kids i mean let alone four of them um so um i mean needless to say, it was very stressful on my dad, very stressful on me and my brothers. And I mean, looking back on it, like, I used to blame my dad for a lot of things, but I mean considering the circumstances I mean I don't know how I would have handled that situation either. But I mean during this time my dad was very temperamental, very short-winded, like It didn't really take much to kind of get him angry or whatever. I mean, he was never really the type to lay a hand on any of us, but like verbally and stuff, I mean it got kind of stressful around the house. So, I mean that kind of leads me back to how I was trying to be self-sufficient to the best of my ability. From the time I was 14, I got a job working almost 40 hours a week. At this time, I was very involved in Boy Scouts. And I mean, even up to this day, that's probably the busiest I've ever been. I was working basically every weeknight on weekends. Probably once a month I'd go on a weekend camping trip with the Boy Scouts. I was involved in school. I was going to clubs. I was part of the National Junior Honor Society. And that's one thing I should mention too. Like, I've always been the one in the family who did very well in school and didn't really even have to put that much effort into it. And I can definitely attribute that to my mom. She was the one who had a lot of background in school, going to college, being a lawyer and all that. My dad never went to college back when he � I mean, he's been in law enforcement for almost 40 years now. And back when he started, like, he didn't have to have a college degree or anything. And he started when he was 18. But, I mean, at this point, like � I mean yeah, like I was the busiest I had ever been. And at the same time, like this is kind of where my brothers kind of started to � I wouldn't necessarily say fall apart, but they needed a lot more help in school. So like now it was like more my responsibility to help them the best of my ability. So basically, like from the age of 13, I basically had to be the other parent, at least in my eyes, that's how it was. And like I had to take on a lot of responsibility and like, I mean, people even tell me this today. Like generally, I mean, from the time like I went to high school, I was hanging out with kids and stuff that were four or five years older than I am. And I mean even today, like I'm 21 right now. And when people ask me, I means for some reason they always think I'm 24 and like no other number. It always comes to 24 for some reasons. But I mean that's true. Like, I mean, from my experience, like, I'd always � I'd have to act more mature to, I mean, basically prove myself to the others around me that, like I could handle what was going on in my life. All right, and then � okay, so I don't waste a little bit more time. I'll just kind of get to the whole drinking part. All right, so after about three years, or about two years, my dad started dating again. Her name is Kelly. She's actually my stepmom right now. They dated for about a year, and they ended up getting married. I think it was September 1st in 2008. Basically, my whole view on the situation was she was just there to replace my mom. And, I mean, in some aspects that's true, but not in the way I was thinking about it. Like, my dad did need companionship, but by no means was he there just to replace My Mom. But, I meantime, that's the way that I thought about it and the night of their wedding, Like I said, September 1st, 2008. That was the first time I got drunk. They went off on their honeymoon for a couple nights. My older brother, Brendan, my half-brother, was there to watch us. So it was basically me, my older cousin, and my neighbor. And I remember the first thing I drank was actually a big concoction of different things. But, like, I remember, like there was gin, vodka, whiskey and stuff like that. But I remember specifically that all we had to chase it was milk. So, I mean, according to, like Bill's story, I guess I'm heading down the right path already. But, I meantime, I'm going to have a drink. And from that point on, I drank to get drunk. There was really no in between. because once I felt that first feeling, there was really nothing that could compare to it. And, I mean, at this time, I was, I think, late 16. So after that, I tried to find out whenever possible. I mean at the time for me being 16, um it was definitely hard to find alcohol whenever i wanted it um so i mean weekend parties definitely became a must um very very quickly after that i think within a month i was introduced to pot um for me like the big thing was i mean convenience like if i could do it all the time, that's absolutely great. If not, I just kind of feel screwed. But weed at the beginning became basically an everyday thing, but I honestly just could not wait to get drunk at parties because there's really nothing that really compared to that. At the beginning, like i didn't really see any consequences um i mean from the very beginning i drove drunk i didn't see anything wrong with that and i didn'y really see another option like i had to get somewhere to sleep i wasn't about to sleep in a bush or on some random person's couch that i didn't know um but i mean as like as time progressed and like i mean i'll mention this now like being 16 like um for me drugs play almost as big of a role as alcohol did um I mean, I wouldn't take anything back, but being 16, they ID for alcohol. Drug dealers don't ID to sell you drugs. So for me, like I said earlier, it was just based on absolute convenience. and going back to the whole self-sufficient thing, trying to stay away from the house as much as possible, being able to, being intoxicated while at the house opened up a whole new door because that way I can actually stand being around my family and not have to go to other places to kind of get away from them and myself. so um so i mean i was talking earlier about how i was an honor roll student national junior honor society and everything and that i mean that considering you basically all throughout high school um but from the first time i took a drink like it was basically the beginning of my junior year. Um, by the time my senior year started actually halfway through junior year, um, my grades dropped, dropped tremendously. Um I mean probably like the first half I probably of my junior year I had probably like a 3.5, 3.6, 3 .7 grade point average. Um by the end of that year, it dropped down to a 3.0, and by the end of my senior year, it was still a 3 . 0, but all my motivation had lost. I had lost, and I switched from all honors classes to basically like the minimum requirements that were allowed in high school. I was taking four shop classes, going from pre-calculus dual enrollment um college credit class to math i was doing in second grade um uh i forgot to mention this earlier like one of my biggest passions at that time and one thing i've actually gained back in sobriety is um from the time i was in sixth grade i started playing the violin and that was one thing my mother was very proud of my dad basically my whole family And my senior year, after excelling in that, being like first chair all throughout high school, I dropped it. I really had no motivation to stick with it. I ended up replacing that with one of the shop classes because shop was very easy. It didn't really require anything and allowed me to skip because adding that one extra class made it exactly half my day. So I think I was probably absent for probably the second half of the day for about half the school year. So after that, I mean, by that time there were other substances that came into the mix, still drinking whenever possible, getting loaded on weekends, blacking out. I can't really remember much of my senior year, to be honest. And by the end of the senior year everyone was starting to apply for colleges going off and really the only reason I did it was because everyone else was doing it. I really had no motivation to go to college whatsoever. My plan was just to kind of maybe stick to a community college there in Bradenton. But for whatever reason I applied to USF and got in and from hearing other people's stories I was about to say not to compare myself to them but that's exactly what I'm going to do my whole first year at USF let's start off with the summer semester that was the only two classes I actually completed I got a C in one and a D in the other I did the absolute bare minimum actually I probably did less than the minimum but somehow I still passed it but once the rest of the year started the fall semester I think it took less than a month before I just quit going to my classes all together and like I mean I tell people like yeah I went to USF I was a business major but like in reality like I went well actually I didn't even go to classes I was just enrolled in them. And, I mean, I wasn't even, like, smart. Like, I hear people tell their stories about their college experience and stuff, and, like I hear them talking about how they withdraw from classes so that way they get the money back, but I had no idea about that, so it kind of made me mad about that for a little while. But, yeah, like the fall semester, it took me probably a month to just quit going to classes altogether. And I think for the spring semester, it's maybe two weeks. That was my motivation level. I mean, needless to say, I didn't do any of the assignments. Basically, like the last few months, like I ended up going to rehab about a month before the year ended. The last semester, I mean that's where I was hitting my bottom. Um, I could not get out of bed in the morning unless I knew there was even the slightest chance of me getting drunk or finding a party or getting a fix one way or another. And I mean, that's, that'S how my days went. Um, I'd sleep in till four in the afternoon. Um if I couldn't find what I wanted, And I'd just sit, like, in the dorm lobby just watching TV until I went to bed. And I would wake up the next day doing the same thing. I mean, at this time, like I was stealing stuff from everyone and everything around me. One of, like the bigger financial amends I have to make is to, I mean like Best Buy. Like I've stolen thousands of dollars worth of merchandise from them. I've stolen thousands of dollars from my parents, different roommates and stuff in the dorms. Like, I just had no compassion for anyone around me. Oh, there was something I was going to say. Well, anyways, on April 420 of 2010, And my brother actually found some supplies in my car that aren't very good. And he brought it to my parents. And that's the � actually, this wasn't the first time my dad realized I had an addiction problem. And back � this was a little bit before I actually went to college. Like he actually took me to like a family therapist or actually at this time, like he didn't realize I was actually had a drug problem. But like he noticed like how much I was stealing from him and stuff and he just wanted to get to the bottom of it. So he took me till a family therapists and that's actually the first time I came clean and honest about what I was doing, like how Much I was drinking, how much i was using drugs and stuff like that. Okay. But he took me to a family therapist, and they didn't teach me anything about AA or anything. Basically, they told me about geographical cures, changed the people I hang out with and everything, and really it didn't really do anything. So coming into rehab and recovery for the first time, I mean, it was definitely a big change. I went to my first meeting I believe it was a men's meeting that's on Friday nights and honestly I liked what I saw I saw all these people that I could relate to and they were happy and they weren't drinking, doing drugs or anything like that but for some reason this is important to me this is actually one part I wanted to read out of the book um we are unable at certain times to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago and that that's exactly where i was like i went through 90 days of day treatment and went to like a three-quarter halfway house for another month um and in that time like i convinced myself i didn't have a problem like because i mean And before, like my definition of sobriety was just switching to something else and staying away from what was giving me consequences. So actually staying away from everything for roughly four months made me think, like, I just don't belong here. And I mean, not to mention at the time, like I was the youngest person in the rehab by probably five, six years. And they didn't really take us to any of the young people's groups that you see around here. So, I mean, I felt alone. So I ended up going back out and I quickly realized that really nothing changed. I mean if anything it got worse right away. I mean I probably went back out for about two weeks and the amount of like mental torture and everything I put myself through was back to where it was from the last day. I was out to, I mean, to like probably tenfold. Like having that like hope and everything that I had learned in AA in my head while I was back out I mean it seriously ruined everything. I mean not to say that it was good to begin with but I mean it ruined like the little bit of hope that I have for it. So I still had the same sponsor I was with um but I mean this time like I just had I had that fear and desperation that the book talks about and I worked diligently on the steps I think we finished them within a couple few weeks um and uh I mean step one I mean admitted we were powerless over alcohol in our lives become manageable I mean that's I feel that's probably one of the that was definitely the biggest turning point in my sobriety just being able to finally admit that I'm no different from any other alcoholic in these rooms and that basically alcohol is my master and um there's no way i can manage it if that's a part of my life um so i mean uh moving on to step two um i never lost faith in my heart like well i did lose faith in the higher power but i never lost the concept of a higher power. I consider myself agnostic when I came into these rooms. One of the biggest hurdles though was actually putting faith into that higher power because I had no idea how to do that. My definition of faith was the whole Santa Claus genie type thing. And I quickly realized that everything that I pray for is not going to come true um so and uh one thing um i had to um going on the step three especially the over to the care of god as we understood him i at the beginning i had a hard time um dealing with that like i tried going back to the christian faith it didn't quite work for me um for me like i was just kind of reading it way too black and white like the whole uh jesus being able to turn water and the wine thing just didn't work for me so that's really the biggest reason i just kind of cut that whole thing all together um i tried different methods like my uh my sponsor is a buddhist i tried doing that didn't worked for me um i tryed the other like little things like making the rooms of a higher power and stuff um but eventually it just got to the point where where I just started praying to basically nothing. Well, not nothing, but I believe there's something out there, but I just didn't know what I was praying to. And over time, over the next few months, up until probably my six months, where I woke up one morning and I just kind of looked back on the past six months and realized I had not had the thought, obsession, or anything like that to drink in five months ever since I finished the steps. And that's really when things started to change for me. I started to pray on a fairly regular basis, but my prayers actually had meaning behind them now and I felt I was actually praying to something. and kind of just to tell you exactly where i'm at today um i mean over like i've been sober for about a year and four months now and i mean ever since that uh spiritual awakening spiritual experience i had um i've Been able to allow god into my life basically in all aspects It's pretty much the best of my ability most of the time. I've been able to hold a job down since my first month of sobriety, which has never happened before. I've never been able TO hold a JOB for more than maybe a few months. I've gotten promoted in that job. I'm getting another promotion again once a new store opens. I have a beautiful relationship with my family. They trust me, which is a big deal. and I have better friends today than I ever thought would be possible even before I started drinking and screwing up relationships in my life the friends I had back then don't even compare to the people that are in my left today there was one more thing I wanted to read before I ended I don't know if I can find it. Wait for it. Okay, and actually, I know Toby can relate to this because he likes this passage also. It comes from almost the end of There is a Solution. And it is, The great fact is just this and nothing less, that we have had deep and effective spiritual experiences which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life, toward our fellows and toward God's universe. The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. He has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we can never do by ourselves. Thank you. Thanks for listening.