George T. – Steps 8-9 Amends – The Delusion That I Only Hurt Myself – 2009

I'm a grateful alcoholic my name is George my favorite statement before every meeting that we do because this is being recorded is that I don't speak for Alcoholics Anonymous no one has that right or that authority while I was my experience through my journey my multiple journeys through the steps we're in the eighth step which was making a list of all persons we had harm and became willing to make amends to them all. The journey starting back at step one was that if you got what I got, you were in a lot of trouble and I didn't believe I had it. I didn' t understand what a principle was. I didn''t know what a step was when I got here. My life was unmanageable and if you only behaved the way I thought I would like you to, all would be well. Then I get to that second step and there's a power greater than myself That could restore me to sanity. I didn't believe I was insane. That was a pretty simple thing for me to look at that way and to get to the third step, a decision to turn my own life over to care of God. Fourth step is a moral inventory. Fifth step is sitting down with another human being, God and myself. Sixth step is having a willingness about my character defects. And seventh step is ask them humbly to remove them. And we get to this eighth step that I'm going to be talking about defective relationships. If I look at all those seven steps prior to coming here, every one of those things, starting with myself, I've had a defective relationship. You know, the eighth step, there's a lot of things. You know I got a lot going on when I get here. We talk about humility as being a guide in each one of these steps. It's an underlying factor to every step that all 12 of them. And it says, being I'm a selfish, self-centered person in step seven, it talks about a whole lifetime geared to self-centerness cannot be set in reverse all at once. Rebellion dogs are every step. At first, I'll tell you, I'm here a while. Rebellions still dogs my every step I'm still rebellious. I'm Still defiant. I still think I have a better idea and I'm so grateful for sponsorship and the eighth step to me is about lists. It's not about going out and doing a ninth step. And trying to stay on step eight tonight is going to be a lot of fun because I always want to tell you what I did in step nine. So that's one of the challenges that I always give myself when we talk about step eight. A little later on it tells me, it tells us that we enjoy moments in which sometimes we get real peace of mind in the seventh step. To those of us who are here to only known excitement, depression, anxiety. In other words, to all of us. That makes me equal with all of you at this point. Anxiety, depression. Excitement. I lived my life on those things. I was an adrenaline junkie. That's the only way I know how to say that. I did what I wanted to when I wanted it to for the result I was looking for. And that's the way I drank. I drank because I liked the effect that alcohol produced. I chased women because I liked the effect that women produced I did the things I did to get a certain result which is later on as we go through steps as I went through steps, I realized that was manipulation I realized I was being a victim or victimizing. There's a lot of things I learned about myself as I get to this point. And the eighth step by now it's not about drinking anymore. It's about how I live my life and the way I treated other people you know um it tells us uh there's a new found peace of mind which is a precious gift which i got in my seventh step that peace of mine that i got in step seven was that i knew i was okay i didn't know how i was but i was learning to live in step six and seven in my own skin i didn'T need someone else's skin to make me feel good literature says that spiritual being always preceded material, not the other way around. I had that backwards. I always thought that if I had the good car, the pretty house, the nice-looking girl, all that stuff, I'd be okay. But I was very empty when I had all that. I didn't realize that spiritual values had to come first. And I'm talking about this before I lead into that eighth step because there's a lot of things at this point when I'm doing steps, when I was doing steps with my sponsor. And he was telling me that there are three parts to the eighth step. It says, we are concerned with personal relationships. That's step eight and nine. First, we look backward and try to discover where we have been at fault. So now I'm looking at my ex-wife. It's no longer her fault. I look at the way I treated my children. It's not longer my ex wife's fault for them not seeing me. I look at the way my bosses treated me, and I treated my bosses. Was I an employer, a good employee? No, that wasn't. So I'm starting to look back because I have all this written in my fourth step, and I'm redoubling my efforts as the eighth step tells me. And here I am stuck on stupid because I'm blaming everybody else. So I am walking into this eighth step with a whole lot of stuff. That's the first part. This next thing we have to do, we are going to make a vigorous attempt to repair the damage we have done, not the damage others have done us and I had to know which was which because I'm one of those who still can't differentiate the true from the false. To me my alcoholic life seems like the only normal even when I'm here and I've done step work and I'm going to meetings and I're not drinking and I'M NOT BEHAVING IN THE MANNERS I USED TO I'M STILL NOT CLEAR ON WHAT THE NEXT RIGHT STEP IS AND THEN IT SAYS THIRD HAVING THUS CLEANED AWAY THE DEPREES OF OUR PAST we consider how a newfound knowledge of ourselves we may develop the best possible relation with every human being we know. Most of the human beings when I got here that I knew didn't want anything to do with me. You know, there was a lot of negativity when I came in here. I came into the A-step with a lot OF negativity. I'm at this point now and I'm in a new place. I've done all this work that my sponsor laid out before me and I am coming to make this list. But before I make this list. I'm walking into the A-step with a bunch of principles, negative principles. Hurt is one of the principles I walk into the A-stepp with. I was hurt by the way my wife treated me. I was hurt why my mother didn't talk to me or my sister. I had hurt that I was carrying. I Was hurt by my old job didn't want me to come back to New York. The great I am because of a selfish and self-centered human being cannot turn that around because that's what I live on. Self cannot fix self. I needed the help of God and another human being. I came in with a lot of emotionalism. I was very forgetful for the things I did. I had pain. I was defensive. I was twisted. I was broken. I was escaping still. I was resentful. I know that one. I had many defects. Everything was overwhelming me at this point because I knew I was going to face those people. You can't fool me behind the eighth step. It says step nine, we're going to go out and talk to these people. I knew that was coming. So I was overwhelmed by the A-step. I was minimizing all the stuff I was doing. I was forgetting the real damages I did. I had a lot of pride. I was full of anger. I had lots of flaws. I was still selfish. I was jealous. I was looking to retaliate and tell everybody what they did wrong to me. And I joke around when I talk about the steps a lot at times. I said, in the A step, I made a list of all the people that had harmed me. And in step nine, I was going to wait for them to come and tell me how sorry they are for what they didn't do to me." It's not like that at all when I get to step eight and nine. I'm looking at my part in things for the first time in my life. I'm standing up and being a man, or a woman in the case of the women, where I finally get to own up to my own stuff. I'm living in my own skin. I'm comfortable, but I'm still not at peace with myself. I'm Still Not Very Comfortable. I'm getting there, though. I'm Still Impatient. I still am attention-sinking. I'm STILL trying to control. I still have depression. I love to wallow, tell you the feel sorry for me thing. The self-pity still comes out of me just because I'm in step eight. It doesn't go away. I still exaggerate and I love my isolation. So now I'm at this point and I'm walking into the eighth step and it tells me if we haven't a will to go and face these people or even write the list. I knew the kind of things I did. There were certain people on that list that I didn't want to face. Family members, for example. I had a sister for my first two years that's on my list that we didn't really talk. But she had to be on my lista that I was willing to make the amend. My mom was no problem because my mom was my best enabler. I knew how to get over her real easy. All I had to do was say, I'm sorry. That's a nine. We'll talk about that next week. So I had an assistant that didn't want to talk to me. I had family members that didn'T want to know from me. I had children. For my first 14 years of my recovery, there was no contact. I had an ex-wife for 20 years we didn't talk, and this year we just started that process. You know, they were all on my list. So the eight-step list is a list. It's not going out and doing nine-step work. In the big book, it talks about if we have a willing start, then a great adventure of doing this will reveal themselves is that pain is lessened when one obstacle from another melts away. It says we redouble our efforts. We have our list really in our fourth step. I wrote all the people that I damaged, or at least all the people I thought I damaged. I found my list was bigger than that. I'm one of those, when you write an A-step list, I tell all my sponsees, please leave room on the bottom because if you don't think you're going to offend somebody while you're in recovery, and I know we're not on the 10th step where you do make amends immediately, there are certain people that I've offended in recovery that I haven't made amends to immediately. I'm not that well all the time. So there's room on the bottom of my A-step because there's going to be a time that I'm willing not to sit in that stuff, so I put their name down. There are people that tell you you don't have to do that. There are People that Tell You Do. Whatever works for you, please do it. Whatever your sponsor tells you to do, please doing. Don't always listen to me in this. It says, it tells us as I wrote this list, I made a list and I have my list. I brought it. I was joking around with it because there is a whole bunch of things. There are direct amends, there are indirect amends There are partial restitution amends There's financial amends And they're all different categories for a reason So I come with a list And my original list looked like this Everybody's name that I could think of at the time And I wrote down everybody's name Of the people that I heard Federal government, one of my friends bosses, people, places, institutions and things. And we're going to talk about harms. How do I know who goes on this list? Any problem that I've caused mental physical or spiritual or emotional harm to another human being belongs on this lista. So I just wrote a list of everybody that I harmed and I'm making this list over and over again. I like when I put on the list the lone shark that I had harmed because I ripped him off and my sponsor says you're not going to make an amend to them We'll talk about how you make that amendment at a later date. You're not going to go back to New York and say, well I ripped you off with so much money, here's your money back. You won't live very long if you did that to a loan shark. That does not work real well. There are certain people that are on that list that I had to make indirect amends. And I had somebody direct me to the type of amends I needed to make. They told me to break down my list this way. To those that I was willing to make amends to immediately, to those I might make ammends to and to those that I wasn't going to make amends to. They also told me to make a list for my family members, and they also asked me to put down, my sponsor did, the people that were no longer available because they were deceased. I had a sister that died while I was active. I didn't know how I was going to making amends. She was on the list. I had a father that when he was dying, I stole his medicine. He was dying of cancer. And back in the 60s it was, they used to call them opium cocktails. I used to steal his liquid opium. And that's something I'm proud of, but it's something I did and I didn't know how I was going to make the amends to that stuff. But I had to put them on the list. And then my sponsor suggested this and I do this with my sponsees and this is probably one of the most fun things I do with my esponsees when it comes to the A-step. He said, well, how much did you drink? How much did your drinking and your other substances cost you? I said, Well, if I figured it out, $60 a day because at the beginning it may have been $10 a weekend and at the end it was $1,000 a day so you know let's get an average and I probably minimize this and it was sixty dollars a day we figured it out and I did it for 33 years so if you break that down that's one thousand eight hundred and thirty dollars or two thousand dollars a week or twenty a month or twenty four thousand dollars year or seven hundred ninety two thousand dollars over 33 years and my sponsor said you're probably minimizing how much you really drank and drove he says but that's a good place for my what your cost you $792,000 that's not flat count in the institutions like to federal government and the jobs I stole from the people I didn't show up on work when I should have all that stuff financially that I don't know how I was ever going to strain out but that's one of the things I really enjoy doing because it gives me a real perspective of how out of control I was and I didnít have a good relationship with money when I got here I'm not saying that it's much better today but it's a lot more manageable than it was uh you know i made a lot of those amends so here i am with these lists of things that i owe and things that I did and I'm still struggling with where do i go with all this stuff it says uh talks about gross misbehaviors it says in our in our literature on page 79 which is the eighth and ninth step prayer it says reminding in itself, we decided to go to any lens for a spiritual experience. We asked that we be given, here's a prayer, we asked that we be giving the strength and direction to do the right thing no matter what the personal consequences might be. There's a lot of people on that list I didn't want to talk to. I didn' t want to talked to my sister. I didn''t want to talks to my mother. I knew I had to if I wanted to stay sober. And I also wanted to lead and tell them all the bad things they did to me. And my sponsor said, ''That's not what you're going to do. What you're gonna do is make a list, and you and I are going to sit here and role play with each one of your amends. We're going to pray, and then we're going to do what you're going say to them before you go out and pray and go and actually do it. I'm really grateful for my sponsor for that because there's a lot of things I would have said that would have caused more harm, which is nine step stuff. So here I am with a lot gross misbehaviors going into this step, and it says having carefully surveyed the whole area of human relationships And having decided exactly what personality traits in us injured and disturbed others, we now can commence to ransack memory for the people to whom we had given offense. There's a lot of people on my list that I am very well aware of, really, I haven't seen yet because opportunities have not allowed themselves. It doesn't mean I haven'Tried. My children, like I said, took 14 years before I was able to even make contact before I, and I didn't make the amends when I made contact. That was a process until I was able to make the Amends. And next week I'll talk about the Amendes with my immediate family, my children and my ex-wife, and when I had to give my children up legally, the letters I wrote and how I handled that. But that was all on the list of things that I had astray now. It says, to put a finger on the nearby and most deeply damaged ones is not too hard. Then Then year after year, we walk back through our lives as far as memory will reach. We are bound to construct a long list of people who have, to some extent or other, been affected. I affected a lot of people and I didn't realize how long that list really was. I thought it was... No, I didn�t hurt anybody but myself. I used that delusion of myself a lot, �Oh, the only one I hurt was me.� No, I hurt a lot people and didn't realized how badly I hurt them until I got to A-step. So a step was very painful for me. It was not an easy step for me to look at. It was no easy for me get honest with myself and say that I screwed over a lot of people and how am I going to straighten out that mess? I could sit there and beat myself up and I was told this is not about beating myself up, this is about writing a list. We should, of course, ponder and weigh each instance carefully. We shall want to hold ourselves on the course of admitting the things we have done, meanwhile forgiving the wrongs done us, real or fancied. This is real important when I came to doing my eight-step list. I was looking at the wrong's done me more than the wrong I have done. And, you know, we talk about forgiveness in 8 and 9, a lot about forgiveness. And part of the forgiveness process for me, I was told, for me to forgive myself, the first thing I did was not pick up a drink. That's how I started forgiving myself. And I was told to forgive everybody in the world. A lot of people I didn't want to forgive. There's a story I'll tell next week of a guy that for 11 years I sat in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous and was plotting how to sneak back to New York to get even. I prayed for him every day, I prayed für my ex-wife every day but it doesn't mean I still didn't hold a lot of pain and discomfort and resentment towards these people until God saw fit to remove it. See, I couldn't take it away. I needed God to take it away by myself I could not remove these things even though these people were on my list and I was willing to make these amends we should avoid extreme judgments both of ourselves and others involved, I don't know about you if anybody treated me the way I treated me I'd probably kill them I probably would not do well with the way they treat me I'm very hard on myself and I'm very gentle with others. I always have been. At least that's the way I perceive myself. When I wrote down this list, I wasn't so gentle with other people. I've hurt a lot of people. Now I'm even harder on myself because the one thing I didn't want to do was become a certain way and hurt people the way I hurt them. But it's what I did and I don't shy away from it. You know, like I was asked real early on what kind of custodian I was to my children and I would say all these things I did and I got Ben T. to thank for that one and I would tell him exactly what I did he said, I didn't ask you what you bought them I asked you what kind of custodian you were and then I'd say, I'd tell him well, I left the car, I did this I gave them money he said I didn' t ask what you did for them I asked what kind or custodians you are and when I found out it was I was an absentee parent and that really hurt I woke up in AA with a lot of pain over that and believe me I thought about drinking when I find out the kind of guy I was I wasn't the kind guy I thought I was And it was good sponsorship, and it was loving people that had me start doing things with those lists. One of the things I was told to do, even though I was not to give it to my children, was to write letters to myself, to my child, and send them to myself. Not to send it to them because they wanted no contact with me. And over the years, I had a 14-year collection when my daughter showed up, and we'll talk about that next week. But I had to write those. That was part of my men's process in my A-step because I wasn't able to do that with them physically because God hadn't put them in my path yet. See, God will put the people in my paths when they're ready, not because I want to do it. I searched out a lot of people, and some people said no, not yet. My sister took two years before I could sit down and talk with her, a year and a half actually. My mom was no problem. My bosses, some of them forgave me and some of dem didn't. I'll tell a story about doing the A step and 9th step in order in a minute. it. I was sober about 31 days, and there was an eighth and ninth step meeting at a group further down the road here, and they were reading out of the 12 and 12, and I decided that it was such a good meeting that I was going to go and call one of my friends and do a ninth step. I hadn't even gotten through step one yet with my sponsor, and here I am calling up this person that I stole $5,000 from, and he said, oh, as long as you stay over you don't owe me anything so this is really good let me go call somebody else I borrowed $30 a $30 camera and I lost it somewhere I was probably loaded and threw it away or whatever I did and I called him and I figured if this person forgave me for $5,000 why not call somebody for 30 that's you know this is easy so I called them and they still don't talk to me to this day so I went to my sponsor the next day and told them that story he says what are you doing he says you're not there yet when you're there I will tell you to go and those things so please don't do this on your own because you hear something good at a meeting you think you're gonna get get a relief at the you know your relief at expense of others don't do that because it'll keep you pretty messed up for a long time rely on a sponsor in this one it's very important that you have a guide through your a step you don't do it on your own it tells us a quiet objective will be our steadfast aim quite objective if you know me, that's a hard thing to do. To sit quietly and have a good objective on how I'm going to handle this. I could not do it on my own thinking because I wanted everybody to forgive me right now so I can get on with my life. It didn't work that way. I'll tell you my trudge which was to walk with purpose and that's what the A-step is all about. Me walking with a purpose to get ready to go and face these people that I didn't really want to face to start with is very important so i needed that quiet time i needed prayer i needed meditation i needed a sponsor i needed other people in the rooms that told me what they went through and how they did it without drinking some of the people on my list i could have drank over i could drink over my children when i was served with papers at six months for them to come out of my life legally i really didn't want to stay here they're the reason i came in god had other notions but they're on my list and you know that was very painful experience for me in my recovery so pain was a great motivator pain has always been a great motivating it says although these reparations take innumerable forms there are some general principles we find guiding remind yourself we decided to go to any length for a spiritual experience how do I get these in innumerables forms well part of the my a step list my sponsor said you were one of those guys that lived on the streets in New York and you were getting good money in your pocket and you can start making some of the mints for that right now and I said how do I do that he said well come Christmas time you go cough turkeys and you feed the homeless it's part of an indirect mint process talking about some of things I did in my a step they got me prepared to face people that I wasn't willing to I used to have to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and go down a Broward Boulevard and right off a 95 and on the holidays and with a bag of food and a dollar bill and I wasn't making a lot of money at the time Bob would drive me up and down he said for the grace of God go you go give him some food it's a holiday even though that's all you can afford is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich give him a peanut butter in jelly sandwich that's part of how my indirect immense process work although I wasn't make him to the people in institutions yet that I stole and robbed from, we'll talk about that next week, how I got to them directly. I was still starting the process. So some of those amends, even though it's an eight step list, my sponsor had me out and being active because this is not into thinking, this is about the actions I take. And I get some positive things that come out of my eight step. I get discovery, I discovered that I wasn't the nice guy I thought I was, discovered that I hurt a lot of people that I really loved and didn't know how to love them because I wasn't able to love people because I didn't have the ability to love at this point in my life until I got into AA. And when I realized that alcohol is not my problem, it's a symptom of my problem. My problem is defective relationships with other human beings has nearly always been the immediate cause of my woes, including my alcoholism. No field of investigation proved me more rewarding than this one. Calm, thoughtful reflection on past relationships will pay and pay handsomely. All my relationships, the common theme, the defect in every one of them comes down to one thing, me. They were not defective. I was the defect in the relationship. I sold with three years. I was doing an A-step through an AWOL group, fourth step through an AWOL Group. And I realized that from the age of 18 to the age of 44, every relationship I had was a direct result of me lining up the next relationship or cheating on the one I was with. So, I went to my sponsor after doing the ninth step already and said, oh, all these people, I've got to go back and make more amends. He said, no you don't. Your amend is to leave them alone now. Some amends is leaving people alone. I didn't understand that at the time because I wasn't looking to make right something I had wronged. What I was looking to do was get a little vicarious pleasure out of those things. I was not looking to be honest with them. I was looking to manipulate so I had to be real careful and that's where sponsorship comes in so some of the things you got is you got discovery I learned what the mend process is about uh to amend is to to make something whole I didn't know how to make anything whole and I needed to make a list before I can make it whole I was learning more about myself I got some peace out of making that list I learned about partnership and brotherhood I was willing uh to go forward even though I was uncomfortable and afraid because I knew step 9 was coming there was a morality involved in this I was taking inventory I was practicing forgiveness to everybody even the people I hated I would pray for my ex-wife from the day I came in here that her and her husband have all the happiness in the world I prayed what I wanted for myself for them I prayed for my kids that if they were supposed to be in my life if it was God's will that he put him back when he saw fit not because i wanted it those were hard careers for me because i went to my kids right now they're the reason i came into aaa so i was starting to practice forgiving my ex-wife because i realized that when i made my list about my ex wife i know why she didn't let me speak to those children if i look at my behaviors when i took my kids in the back of the car and left them outside a ball while i went and got drunk and did what i had to and uh did the damage i did why she didn't want me to speak to them, I understand today. I have to own up to my part in it. And when I made the amends with her, I did that. So I had to keep a good focus on what this was all about. My focus is on making the list at this point. I had patience. I had stay open-minded. I had be willing to admit all those things that I did without reservations. I had confidence, and I was practicing humility. God was all over this I believe God's all over my A-step without God in my A step it's me running the show and if I'm running the show if I make like I did at the beginning I would have probably been drunk by now I learned some happiness from it, I learned about searching honesty, my actions my motive, I learn about restitution all different kinds I'm going to tell one story in a minute I learned to investigate, I learnt about calmness and thoroughness I learned abut being quiet and I learned some insight about myself. I wasn't as bad as I told everybody I was, and I wasn't good as I led you to believe. I found out that I was okay being right-sized. I can sit in the middle somewhere. I got a lot of reflection, and it was thorough, and I learned about courage. I've got some integrity out of this. I can be objective. And one of my favorite things, I was steadfast, and one of the guys I was talking to on the way here said to me, my perseverance, I persevered in this step a lot. And the biggest thing that I learned about in step eight was consideration of another human being. I had to be considerate of how it was going, what I was about to do was going to affect somebody else. You know, going into that, you know, I tell the story of when I came into these rooms, I was sober for a very short time and Bob used to say to me, there's a young lady over there with a baby, why don't you go over there and ask if he can babysit for a half hour or for the hour during the meeting? And I'd say, well, why? He said, well it may be the only meeting this woman can make. So you go babysit for that child. And I go babysitting and do whatever I went. The women that let me babysit in the room with the kids for an hour, they paid attention and I got to babysit. And about two or three months down the road, I got tired of this. So I went to Bob and said, you know, I'm getting real tired of these babysitting things. He said, well, you're doing it for two reasons. I said, Well, you told me the only reason I was doing it is that this may be the only time the woman could get to a meeting and I've been doing this for two months. I don't think I should do this anymore. He says, Well you need to continue doing it because there's another reason you're going it. And what's that? He says, because now you're practicing being the father you never were. Now if you want to know what a two by four feels like, that's what a 2x4 felt like to me because I was an absentee parent and in these rooms I learned to be a parent. My A-step list was given to me by actions I took that led me to nine so when my daughter finally showed up I was able to be able to do nine step work with her but I had to be willing to write the list put the people in the proper places uh when we talk about nine next week i'm going to go over a whole lot of different kinds of amends that went on some good and some not so good but the willingness to face these people to clean up my side of the street the alcoholic is a tornado running through the lives of others sweet relationships are broken the home is in turmoil we think that man is unthinking when he says sobriety is enough enough. Sobriety was not enough anymore. It was about getting right with my fellow man and God. The 8th Step is all about me getting right with my man and God, and it's really getting right with me at the same time. And that's what the 8th Step has given me, and I kept it on the list, and next we'll talk about the immense process and the good and the bad of facing the people that I had to face. Thanks for letting me share on Step 1.