Mercedes D. – Steps 10-12 – I’m Not For Sale Today – 2005

ah good afternoon everyone I'm an addict named Doug grateful to be here this afternoon it's interesting tenant step 10 11 and 12 had a meeting in here about the steps earlier have meeting about relationships over there and we get to step 10, 11, and 12 and things thin out a little bit. I think that speaks to the power of addiction and how difficult change is in this process. Step 10,11,12 for me is about and I'm going to speak mostly today about all the steps because what 10,12,11 for me is about taking steps 1-9 and continuing to maintain them in my life. I'm grateful for ISNAC I was talking to an addict just a minute ago out here that ISNIC 1 was my very first convention 60 days clean I walked in on Friday afternoon saw all the love in the room and turned around and walked out and scared me to death to see people enjoying recovery and people who cared about each other were intimate with each other, and it scared me to death. So I called my sponsor after that and said, man, that's crazy. What am I to do? And he said, go back Saturday night and listen for the message. And so I went to the meeting on Saturday night and there was a speaker there and people there and a lot of love. And I had a spiritual awakening at ISNAC 1 that changed the way I thought about recovery and changed theway I thought about myself and since that time it's been okay for me to be an addict you know it'sbeen okay for me to be a addict and that was not an easy process for me when I walked into that first thing and saw all those people hugging and kissing and enjoying themselves the reason I didn't like that is because I didn' want to be and addict and I didn't accept that I was an addict. And the first step in our process is about accepting that. The first step of our process is about acceptance of who's an addict and talk about honesty for a second. The way the steps work for me, there's a couple things that I do with the steps that I keep as sort of background to all the steps and one of them have to do with the change from the way I was to the way I want to be. And, you know, honesty when I was out there, we'll do a little group work here not supposed to do that but just for a second. How many people when they were out there using would consider themselves to be real honest people? Nobody's going to raise their hand. Today in this process how many people consider themselves honest people, you now pretty much everybody. That's the way the steps work that's the way the spiritual principles in my life work. Not everybody honest, but for me that's what this process is about. It's about understanding and learning spiritual principles and taking them from where they were problems for me in my life to where today they're important to me and I work towards them. If I asked everybody in here, is everybody honest all the time? I don't think so. You know, and were we dishonest back in our youth all the time? No. We were honest about wanting dope. You know. We were. But we had some honesty in our life that kept us alive. And so for me, the process of the steps is about going from, you know, being a little bit honest to being more honest to being as honest as I can be on a daily basis. And I keep practicing that. The second thing that I keep in the background is that the steps are kind of in threes. I appreciate the way ISNAC broke these up because that's the way I sort of break them up in my life. And I understand step four and five are important together, and step six and seven are important altogether, and step eight and nine are important. But to me there's a bigger thing, and that has to do with looking at me in the steps, with looking at God in the steps and looking at you in the steps. And to me, the way the steps are broken down is that within each three of these steps, I get to look at me, I look at God, and I look a you and my relationship with you. And 10, 11, and 12 for me are that way as well. You know, step one is about me. It's about admitting my problem. It's getting honest. It's surrendering. It's looking at my powerlessness. It's me. step two is about getting help you know it's about opening my mind and getting help and understanding there's hope in my life and that's about you guys you know that's all about you guys and step three is about you know for me the first time i looked at god in my life and looked at making that decision you know to let something other than me or you help me. It became God. 1, 2, 3. Step 4 was about me again. It's all about me. Anybody who worked step 4 knows it's all about you. In step 5 I worked with you. I worked for you in step 5 and in step 6 I became entirely ready and it was about God again. I think 6 and 7 for me, step 6 was a really difficult time in my recovery. It was a time when I had to look at making that serious change in my life from who I was to who I wanted to be, and I really feel that there's like a double shot of God here. Six and seven is all about God to me because I couldn't change who I was, and I spent a couple years trying to not be so dishonest and trying to be more responsible and trying not to show up late, and i couldn't do it on my own. I I struggled so hard with trying to be something that I couldn't be on my own. And until I realized that it was about praying and it was about letting go and about having a faith in something else, once that happened for me, I started liking myself a little more. I started being able to show up on time a little bit more. I started understanding what God's will was at that point. And I started understand it about humility. For me, behind each step there's a spiritual principle. And for me, I've tried to keep it simple to this point in my recovery and I've worked the steps with my sponsor all the way through and I work the steps through with sponsees all the way through, and I have worked the steps in a work group all the way through. I've work them with sheets of paper that we have given from someplace and I worked them off the workbook, you know, and I've worked them through the pamphlets and, you know, and really it is. It's an individual process about how we do it. But for me, it's about taking spiritual principles with each step, you know, in our literature relates several spiritual principles to each step. I had problems with that and that's just me, you know, that it got too complicated for me. So there was one spiritual principle that I attached to each step that I work on. The second time through, I started understanding a little more how faith was a part of the second step. To me, faith is all about the third step. That's just it. But I started understand how I needed some faith to find some hope to trust other people. And so I started seeing how it does tie together. But the first time through and the way I look at these things, there's a principle behind each step. Step one is honesty. Step two is open-mindedness. Step three for me is faith. You know, and step four is about courage and step five is about intimacy and step six is all about willingness. You know step seven becomes about humility for me. And you know in step eight it's about reaching out and finding some brotherly love and looking at other people. And again step seven for me was about God. Step eight again was all about me. You know, it's about making that list and looking at me and looking up to God. And looking at my life and looking at the damage that I had caused and looking at my relationships. And step nine was about you again. It's about going out and fixing that stuff and not wanting to be that way anymore. So it takes me to 10, 11, and 12. Another sort of breakdown. And I think it's in the book a little bit. But it's something that I learned from my sheets and from other addicts that step 1, 2, 3 and we hear it talked about so it's our foundation. For me step 4 5 and 6 is about cleansing myself. Step 7, 8 and 9 are about releasing all that stuff. Step 10, 11 and 12 like I said it's about maintaining how I work with steps 1 through 9. Step Step 10, you know, somebody out here, an addict was out here who heard that I was going to talk on this. He said, tell me, Doug, what's step 10 about to you? You know, and I don't have an hour to talk to the guy. He wanted a sound bite of what step 10 was, you now. And I told him step 10 is simply about taking steps one through nine and applying them on a daily basis in my life. You know? I've heard a lot of addicts talk about check yourself before you wreck yourself. You know. That's what step ten is, is to keep in touch with myself. be aware of what I'm doing in my activities and sit down on a daily basis and look at that. Look at the harm that I've caused to people. Look at my relationships. Look at how I feel about myself on any given day, you know. I was talking in a meeting the other night. Probably some of you heard that. There's some important people in here for me. But about a feeling that I got in the middle of the day driving down the interstate out of nowhere came this feeling of, I just don't want to care anymore. You know? I just do not want to give a shit anymore about responsibilities and the people in my life. And I remember, I wanted to remember sitting in that Lazy Boy with the channel changer and my dope and not caring and not feeling and not having stress in my life and not having, you know, making sure I had plenty of dope and, and not happening to worry about anything. And that feeling was, you know, it was sick. And I understood that pretty quick, how sick that thought was. I said that for several miles down the interstate, I went with it. I went avec that feeling for a little while. But I quickly understood through the 10th step that where is that going to take me? What's that going do in my life? How do I care about myself? How is that gonna affect my relationships? What's God mean to me in my life with that whole thing? You know, and it didn't take very long for me to realize. And again, because of that and because of that awareness and because I was working on that, I realized very quickly I had something going on in my live that I needed to look at. You know I had some situations in my life that were stressing me out, that were bothering me that I wanted to run from. And so in the tenth step, I'm able to take a look at that and I very quickly was able to realize, you know, the problem was I'm overcommitted. I'm trying to do too much. I'm doing too little. I'm not trying to be super Doug and, you know, which is my tendency is to want to be and do something more than I really am and I had to go back through the steps and look at that, you know, what's humility about? It's about being me and not being more than me or being less than me but about being me, and I was trying to be a whole lot more than me, you And so through that process, that feeling went away. I made a decision to try and do some different things in the next week and change that load that I'm trying to carry. And part of the way that I do that, step 11, when I was working step 11 the first time, I had, I don't know, I want to say about seven or eight years clean. For whatever it's worth, our sponsorship family goes through the steps pretty slow. And there's a reason for that because, for me, I want the change to happen on the inside before I'm moving on. I want it to be real about being honest. I want her to be really honest. I want real about reaching out for help. I don't want to just say I understand it. I want It to be happening in my life before I move on again. And so when I had about seven years clean, I found myself in an emergency room telling the doctor I was having a heart attack and I'm going to die. You know, things are good in my life, supposedly, you know, clean all this time, and I am laying in an urgency room telling him I am going to die and not knowing what to do about it, you know, how do I handle this thing? And they're telling me, you know, you're stressed out, man. You're having a panic attack. There's nothing wrong with you. So appropriately I was working on step 11. You know, and appropriately I had to look at a conscious contact in my life. You know what the conscious contact I had in my lifetime was I prayed in the morning. I went through this crazy ass day and I prayed at night you know and step 11 and through that process I realized that I was killing myself my thinking and the way that I was doing things I was killin' myself and so I started praying when I got up in the morning and I started prayin' in the shower I started preyin' on my drive to work I started praying in the middle of the day at work at lunchtime and I started praying on my drive home from work and I took a rest and I meditated and I sat down to do a little writing and I prayed before I went to bed and that conscious contact is what allowed me to realize you're okay slow down I'm going to take care of you You know, God's going to take care of me no matter what because that was my problem. I didn't have the faith to understand and using that power. And that's what the 11-step spiritual principle to me is. It's the power of God in my life. You know it's the Power of something else working in me. And when I first came to this program, God was, I wouldn't say that I didn' t necessarily have a problem with it. I just didn't have anything with it. It just wasn't there. I didn't necessarily have a problem with it, I certainly wasn't raised in this situation where I had a God that I already understood, but it just wasn' t there, it was non-existent, and I didn' t care. I guess that' s more the point, I just did' n't care. I didn'' t care about God when I first came in here. And so when I did get to the third step and I started understanding about a power greater than myself, and when I Did get to The Sixth Step and I Started having to be entirely ready you know, God started working in my life. And so when I got to the 11th step and I started talking to God and I stated asking for things from God and I stared asking for his will to be done it happened. You know? I'm going to talk about a miracle in this program and having faith and doing something blindly that works. You know, and to me that was just it still blows me away that I can ask for something I can talk about something I can feel something and it happens never thought that it could work that way it certainly never happens the way I want it to that's the one thing, it never goes down the way I want it to but it works so in the 10th step I get to look at me and in the 11th step it's all about God it's about that contact with God the addict there asked me you know, what's step 12 mean? And I said it means that I get to look at me and I get take God and I get to take care of you. You know, that's what the 12th step for me is about, being able to take carry you, you know and how we take care ourselves. And I did something about a year ago I'm old I'm not going to give you an age but I'm in okay I'm 30 no 40 48 years old and a year ago I went back to school and the whole decision behind that led from laying in that hospital room wondering what the hell I'm doing with my life doing what everybody else wanted me to do except what I wanted to do and you know and it was I was I had worked through these steps several times I knew what it meant and it Was time you know it took me this long but I realized you know It's time to do what I want to do and what I Want to do is help people you know And so I went back to school and I'm getting a degree in counseling and I want to go out and I Want To help people I'll care I've been in I've Been in working in my own business for 30-some years, and it's been all about money and me. Even in recovery, it's been about money and me, and I got money and me, man, it means nothing. It means nothing, it puts me in emergency rooms, is what it does, and so today, as soon as I signed up, the day that I registered for school, since that period of time, I've had no anxiety symptoms. It's crazy. It's amazing what's happened in my life since I did it. Since I made the decision to do something different in my life and reach out and help people, work all these principles in my live, do something different. I know right now and things in my business are crazy. The business I've got is just stress filled as hell. I come home at night and I work on my schoolwork and that all goes away. And I know where I'm heading, and I know what I'm doing, and it's about helping people for me today. And the way these steps work, like I say, step 10 is I consistently work on me on a daily basis through God, through a constant contact with God. Because if I work on a day-to-day basis and at work something will happen and blow up at work, and all of a sudden I'll want to say, well, damn it, let's do it my way. Let's fix it my away. And whenever I do that, that takes me deeper into the problem. It takes me, um, deeper into myself and those anxious feelings start coming back. You know, that heart starts racing, shoulders get tight, my neck gets tight, clenching my jaws, and I'm ready to explode, you know? And when I step back and I say, you Know, Tom, who's one of my employees, come in here and help me with this situation. That's me using God in my life, you know? Step back and pray. Close my eyes. Breathe. Think about the other people who are involved in this situation Think about what's honest in this situation, what's right, whether it hurts me or not. You know, getting honest about the situation and getting help for it, letting God into the solution, the anxiety goes away, and inevitably, the thing works out the way it's supposed to, which is okay for me. No matter what, it's always okay. If my business goes broke, that's going to be okay because that's what's supposed to happen and it's going to lead me to something else. You know, I've worried for the last four years about my business going broke. Every year, I tell my sponsor, it'll be next month. It's going be next months. And three years later, it still next month, you know. And I'm still there, you now. I'm being taken care of. I doing what I need to do. I am doing it to the best of my ability and I am being taken care of whether I understand it or not I'm being taken care of so real real important for me to spend time during my day paying attention to what's going on into how I feel and to how I work these principles these 12 principles that I use right now you know and step 10 for me has been about integrity you know if I if I work constantly on my program if I no matter what situation goes on in my life if I remember those previous nine principles honesty open-mindedness willingness hope faith all the things we talked about if I use those in everyday life, then I'm going to have integrity through doing what I say, caring about people, caring about myself. And no matter what the situation, if I apply those principles, I can feel okay about the decision and I can feeling okay about me. And that's what integrity is and that's step 10 does for me. Like I said, step 11 is about God and step 12 is about unconditional love you know step 12 to me is about unconditional love it's about caring for you caring about the people in my life that includes the people close to me that includes a newcomer that includes you know the people that are in my family unconditionally caring about them without me wanting to get something out of it because that's foreign for me it's real foreign for to not get involved in a relationship be it at work or be it in these rooms or be at wherever where I'm not going to get something out of it. So the step that I made to go back to school to help people is going to be unconditional. You know, for me, it's about being unconditional. And, you know, one of the things I've learned, I had this vision when I first signed up for school that I'm going to be this counselor, that I'm gonna start a private practice and I'm gonna have all these people come in wanting to bow down to me and I want to fix them and I'm going to make all this money. And the more I've read about it, what I'm really going to be is I'm gonna be scraping for people to come want to do something with me and I'm going to be doing most of my work for free and again, I don't care. For me it's about reaching out and helping people. And I got a choice about all that and I am still pretty new at this in terms of getting into what I am going to do with that whole scenario But it feels right. You know, I made a decision and it feels right. You know I know for a while I thought it was a midlife crisis. Probably is to a certain degree. But I it's the right thing for me to do you know. And when I tell people I'm 48 years old and I'm back in school they look at me like why? You know and I don't have time to tell them the whole answer but I just told you why. You know why it means something to me. And it's a real important decision that I had to make. I mentioned earlier, and I'm going to close here. I mentioned early on that I was going to be that conventions are real important to me. I was involved very heavily with our area starting a convention last year. And through that process, I got to practice all these principles. And you know, and I got the take a look at what unconditionalist means. and but you know it meant so much to me to be a part of that and for our area to grow and change you know and just coming here today and being a part of this reminds me of that whole situation of how I had people telling me conventions aren't about recovery you know they're about celebration they're not about selling stuff they're all about everything but recovery and what the hell are we doing right here And why, when I went to my first convention, did it change my life? And it wasn't about the convention necessarily. It was about me reaching out and me being willing and me Being vulnerable enough to go and me Beeing in the right spot for God to work with me. That's what it was about. But there's a lot of recovery going on at these conventions, a whole bunch of recovery that goes on. And these workshops and the people that are behind this whole thing working are giving of themselves unconditionally, and they're putting in some hours. I know what that means. You know, I know how it means to put in hours and give of myself, and it's how we serve the newcomer and how we keep people clean and how fill these rooms. And that's all I got. Thanks for letting me share. and we thank Doug for sharing next we'll have Coletta come up and introduce her sponsor our next speaker hi my name is Coletta I'm an addict Okay. This person that I'm about to introduce, you know, it talks about in the literature about how miracles and coincidence starts to happen. Yesterday, since we've been here since yesterday, when we first got into the lobby, we didn't even check in yet. They asked her, are you here to share? Are you here just to speak? You know, and so, and the last thing And right before she's going to come up here and share, the next thing somebody said, are you here to share? No, I'm here to soak up and be a sponge. And no sooner than she said that, this young guy came up to her and said, would you share? The person ain't here. And that's what I'm talking about. It's a coincidence because since the time she walked in here all the way up until now, people have been actually asking her if she's the speaker. Are you going to speak? are you going to speak because you know she has a powerful message and it's about narcotics anonymous you know and I give you no father ado I give you Mercedes I'm an addict my name is Mercedes Roy letter hey I'm grateful to be here clean I want to thank my God for getting me here that way. Thank that same power for getting you all here and I hope you two are clean. If not, next time you come back try to come back clean because a Narcotics Anonymous staying clean must come first. I'd like to welcome anybody that's new. Let you know that this program works in my life and assure you that it'll work for any addict with a desire to stop using and willingness to change. Thank Devin for asking me to share my experience, strength, and hope as it relates to steps 10 11 and 12 thanks Doug for sharing always good to hear somebody else's experience with the steps um and you know coming to ISNAC is like coming home I'm from Gary Gary born Gary bred when I die it'll be a Gary woman dead but for the last four years I've been living in st. Louis so I have another home and I was at is neck one Doug and I don't remember you know but I was that is neck 1 and we were so excited in this region about that because you know conventions sometimes get a black eye for whatever reason but nothing can get a Black Eye and na unless we give it to it you know cuz what matters the most or are the things that are the most important in Narcotics Anonymous are only important to us for real our family members our employers the greater society but it starts with us you know and you know my experience has been that you know conventions are a celebration of recovery you know if wasn't about recovering we wouldn't be having no conventions because nobody would enter into a contract with us to let us come in a hotel and all that kind of stuff you know and this is the evidence that you know recovery does happen and I'm real grateful for that you know of course I could not get to step 10 without having started with step 1 and I could not have gotten to step 1 without having started on the blank page when I got clean you know I had no clue about what recovery really was I knew it involved not using drugs anymore but I had no clue about what recovery involved and so you know my sponsor at the time knew that I had no clue and she let me know that by starting me off with what I knew about how to recover which was on the blank page and so, you know, and I had to do that assignment like three times until I got it. You know, she's like, I want you to go to the first page of the text, you knows, and write about what's there, you now, as it relates to you and so of course you know I flipped up in the text and you know and I'm over here where some writing is. You now what I'm saying? It's like I'm at the symbol she was like that's not on the first page of the text so I'm going back I'm like why would she be wanting me to write about you know the index or what is it you know I couldn't get it and finally you know i got it that if i just closed the book and opened the cover the first page was where she wanted me to start you know there was absolutely nothing there she let me know that what i knew about how to recover was written on the front page of text and uh so you know, and I've been in recovery ever since, so I thank God for that, you know. And like, you know, the literature is so wonderful in our breakout and breakdown of the literature is like, you now, starting with some stuff about just some basic stuff about narcotics and noms is like this is what NA is and this is say you want to be a member or a part of and all that kind of stuff is in this symbol, you kno, and then we move into the preface and the introduction to give us some history and how we got started, da-da-da da-dah because you know of course they might have not did it right. You know Jimmy Cadenham just might not have knew what they was doing so they put a little piece in there so we could understand that they really didn't know what they were doing. We get into who is an addict for identification purposes because you now an addict has some stigma. You now like our literature talks about the last to be lost would be the stigma of being an addict. So there's some stigma attached to being an attic. You know, if you wasn't standing around a barrel at night with a fit hanging out your arm, you might not have been an addict like me because that wasn't what I did. So I might not Have been an Addict. So when I read Who's an Addic, I got in touch with the stuff that I did do that qualifies me for membership in Narcotics Anonymous, and I felt a little bit more at ease. You know? I knew that I still needed to watch my purse because there were purse snatchers around, you know, because you were just like me. And so, right. And then, you know? got into what is the Narcotics Anonymous program, like okay I have identified this problem I'm an addict. And you know it's like what is The Narcotic Anonymous Program answers the question is how can you people help me? You know and so and then getting into why we're here, it helps me to understand the benefit that I'll receive. You know it gives me a chance to experience the love of the fellowship. You know like Doug was talking about being at his first convention and being overwhelmed with love. My first convention was CRC2, and I had like about five months or seven months or some many months clean. And so, you know, I was overwhelmed with the love and the power that was in the room. When I walked into the main speaker meeting that evening, you Know, when they were about to start the countdown and all that, it was like I was engulfed by the spirit of God, you Now, and my spirit began to fly and elevate and float, and I've been riding on that ever since. you know and I'm real grateful for that um and then finally I get over to where the steps are located which is in how it works and and it's not by mistake but by design that the steps are four chapters into the text you know there's some stuff that I have to get in touch with before I'm even ready for a first step you know it's like right before and how it worked I'm gonna go here and then I promise I'm going over into the steps and this is how I do it and I can't help it and how it works right before step one it asks us some real important questions this is preparation for the first step it's like there are some questions we have to ask ourselves are we sure we want to stop using you know that's a powerful question yeah if you ain't ready to start if you're not sure you want to start using you probably won't you know do we understand that we have no real control over drugs? Do we recognize that in the long run, we didn't use drugs. Drugs used us. Did jails and institutions take over the management of our lives at different times? Do they fully accept the fact that every attempt to stop using or control our using failed? Do know that our addiction changed us into someone we didn�t want to be � dishonest, deceitful, self-willed people at odds with ourselves and our fellow man? Do really believe that we have failed as drug users that's all before the first step so you know it's like it ain't by mistake that that how it works is way over in chapter four because there's some stuff that prepares me for the steps you know and as I got into the first Step under the guidance and direction it's a sport support of a sponsor it's Like you know in the first tip I got in touch with honesty I got In touch with surrender you know what I got ex in touch with acceptance It's some things that go with the disease of addiction and that afflict the sufferer of the disease, namely me, the addict, that don't go with, you know, like having cancer or diabetes or hepatitis C or HIV. It don't goes with them diseases. It goes exclusively with the diseases of addiction. See, because all those other diseases that I named, if you suffer from them, the symptoms of the diseases convince you that there's something wrong with you. But the symptoms of this disease convinced me that I was okay, and if you leave me alone, I would be better. So there was nothing wrong with me. You know, that's just the symptoms of the disease. You know? So, like, getting in touch with the need to be honest. I have got to be honest in order to recover. You know. I have gotta accept that something is wrong in order for me to recover... How are you gonna fix something that ain't even broke? If it ain't nothing wrong with me, I don't need to be fixed. But if I ain't sick, I ain' trying to get well. So I got in touch with that. You know, accepting there is something wrong. You know? It's like, I'm so grateful that I got clean when I got cleaned where I got cleaned. Ain't nothing we're getting clean right now. But I'm grateful that did it when I did where I did. Because I had some help. I needed a lot of help because I was real sick. You know. Real ill. very much at dis-ease and discomfort in the spirit so it made it difficult to be comfortable in my flesh right my emotions I don't even want to talk about them because they was like in the outer stratosphere somewhere my sponsor I think had to take you know a couple of Apollo flights trying to locate my emotions you know that's how far detached I had become from feelings right I wasn't feeling nothing I had a motto on the street I wear mine under the bottom of my shoes so you don't get a chance to hurt them right that's what I did with feelers you know it's like they have no use and no purpose in my life let's get rid of them let's banish them so I did that to the best of my ability you know and then I got clean you know I had to feel even when I didn't want to you know even when i didn't want to feel i still had to do it anyway you know that's still true for me today i don't always be wanting to feel I'll always be willing to feel me so you know I ain't always trying to feel you, right? Right. So, you know, hey, but I have to do it in order to recover. So you know I got in touch with honesty. You know and then the second step, you know it's like the second steps talks about we had a need for faith and sanity. It's like a lot of us could admit to a need or something to help us with our drug problem. But we had a problem admitting the need for Faith and Sanity. See we needed some faith and some sanity. You know, and the literature talks about insanity is making the same mistake again and again, expecting different results. So, you know, when I do something that I know is a mistake again, then I'm insane. Now just because I do Something Again Again doesn't mean it's a mistake and don't mean there's something wrong with that because I take a shower daily, sometimes two or three. Ain't nothing wrong with dat. You know that's a repetitive action that I take. There's nothing insane about it. Right. Going without taking a shower, you know, for two, three days and all that, that probably would be a mistake. And if I did that again and again, I would be insane, right? Real simple stuff, you Know. So it's like I had to become open-minded. You know, I had To open my mind just to the possibility, just to the possibility that something or someone somewhere could help me because I had admitted in the first step that I needed some help with something and then the second step I knew I came into a belief that uh it was some help available for me you know it's real simple stuff for the on the belief tip it's like uh when I used um you know there were times when the place where I normally copped from was out and I would see somebody that looked like they look like they might you know mess around like I messed around and I will walk up to them and ask them one of them powerful questions like do you know where it's at based on a hope see I was just hoping that they had a answer the answer would be yes and they could give me directions to follow to get what I was looking for so you know I would ask them and they would say yes and they would go down three blocks north turn left and go to the third building go up three flights of steps go down to the fifth door on the right knock three times go down to the second floor and go down to the seventh door and wait and you'll get the package. And they would run that past me one time and I would take off and I would get to that destination, knock three times and end up at the seventh door on the second player and get the package. Right. Now I believed that at least they knew where I could go cop. Then I would use whatever it was, get how I get that uh that ease and comfort that I used to get from the dope I would get that and then I would have faith but I would Have Faith double I would have faith in this individual that gave me the directions and I would have faith and the people to serve me right so it's like hey I had moved I had moved from hope through belief into faith right with that one experience and not only would I go back to that spot again I would refer other people and get the same directions and if they follow they get the same results that i get you know so the essence of sponsorship is in that story you know it's like hey i follow the directions i get what my sponsor got real simple stuff that's why she my sponsor because i want what she got right so uh you know i got in touch with open madness in the second step and and you know the way my sponsor worked with me she was like okay as i progressed down through through the steps I don't leave my steps hanging out by themselves I bring the step down into the next step so when I got to the second step I had steps one and two at work so when i got to the third step and got in touch with willingness if see in order to get from the place that had no dope to the place uh that had the dope and have it in my hand I had to be willing you know had to be willing to do whatever the director told me to do so I had to follow the directions and I did that and I got what I was looking for you know and the same is true for me today it's like I follow the direction it's like you know the basic text says our only hope the only hope we have is to follow The Directions of those who have faced our same dilemma and found a way out right so when I'm down in the hole I start yelling out hey come help me because I know y'all know how to get out the hole and those of us who care the most and love the most and recovery means the most to them jump down in the hole take me by the hand and start showing me how to get out but only if I'm willing to follow their directions only if i'm willing so you know when I get to the first step I get in touch with a deeper level of honesty and surrender. See, I get a chance to identify that stuff that made me have to have the dope in the first place. Now see, you know, I keep staying clean. I keep learning and growing and listening and reading and studying and stuff. And I have come, you don't hear of late. It's like the hit for me has been what the literature talks about. We open up every meeting with it. It's like we had to have something different, and we thought we had found it in drugs. But the hit is we had To Have Something Different. It didn't say we thought We Had To Have. It said we had TO HAVE SOMETHING DIFFERENT. So don't let me know that if I hadn't found a dope, I was going to find something because I had to HAVE SOMETHING DIFERENT! I just THOUGHT I FOUND IT IN DRUGS. That's why, you know, it's like in the rooms, it'd be a lot of sexing, a lot of stealing a lot of selling a lot because we're still looking for the thing we have to have right and until we get hooked up to the proper juice we're gonna be looking and if you ain't got no juice any juice will do so you know I got in touch with the read the hand to have piece in the fourth step I got in touch with the setup for the head to hell you know and for me man started at age four with incest you know I had an uncle more than one uncle but one in particular he's dead now he started having sex with me when I was four and I was in that incestuous relationship for about five years so around age nine it stopped and uh you know but I learned some stuff in there you know I learned power and control and manipulation and secrecy and denial right I learned to detach for my emotions you know a tool that would prove quite useful in later years through active addiction to not be feeling every time uh you know something didn't go the way I wanted it to so I got in touch with the why I had to have something different you know and then in the fifth step it's like I got In Touch With Freedom my real first taste of freedom came after my first fifth step, because I had no secret no more. Everything that came up, I let it out. Everything that came out, I wrote it down, and we talked about everything, and I had walked around with shame for years, man, but I got freedom from that, right? And I was like, you know, be able to walk around pretty light. You know, I wasn't bogged down in the spirit anymore, and i was real grateful for that and somebody else knew. And the compassion and empathy and love and concern and care that my sponsor showed me is what enabled me to continue to grow and achieve greater depths of freedom. So, you know, I got in touch with, in the sixth step I got some other stuff. It's like I got to be willing again. And, you know, in the seventh step I got to be honest again You know The second step and the seventh Step relate to each other In such that the second step Piece talks about insanity And the seventh piece talks about When we start making new mistakes We're growing It takes that first definition of insanity And throws it out Because it don't just say when we start doing new things We're going to say when мы start making New mistakes, man, we're growing And I'm real grateful for that. You know, in the eighth step, it's like, man, I have to be open-minded to the extent that I've got to be able to admit the part that I played in these harmful things that have taken place throughout the course of my life and be willing to put down every entity that I harm regardless of harm done to me. And that requires quite a bit of open-mindness Because it's real easy to get caught up in, you did something to me, and but for that, I wouldn't have did this. But the seventh and eighth and ninth steps, they require me to move beyond that. So I've got to look at exclusively the part I played in it. And then in the ninth step, I have to become willing to make the direct demands wherever possible. So that means, you know, if all of a sudden I look up and here you are, I need to be making the amends. That's why you are present in my life because I need to make the amending or else you wouldn't be there. If you normally, you don't even see each other in five years, now here you come. That's because I needed to make an amending. That's wherever possible, even if we were at the world convention, that's wherever, you now, that's what I needed to do you know except when to do so would injure them them first family not me or others now I might fit in the others category but then first now if my means is going to hurt you even more than I already hurt you I need to first talk to my sponsor about that and we need together to develop a plan for that of me and that's how we're supposed to do with everyone anyway according to our literature but especially in situations like that you know and then so now I have arrived at the 10th step right and so you know it's like now I'm at this 10th stuff hanging out you know like hey this is cool I can do this I know all this stuff to do and so the 10 step say oh you do good here's a daily opportunity to do it all right every day you get a chance to do all of what you know, what you think you know, what your sponsor knows, what your grand sponsor and your great-grand and everybody that you know. You get a chance to do it all every day. You know, there's some lines that I like. You know in the 10th step there's a line that says we will not have to suffer as much pain if we will avoid the situations that cause us pain. So now I identified the situations that caused me pain in the 4th step. I got in touch with why they are painful in the fifth step. But check this out, I also identified how I cause other people pain in them steps and why I cause them that pain. You know, and in the tenth step, it's like, you know, I got in touch with spiritual reciprocity. What I give to the universe, the universe is going to give me that back. Right? So I had to get in touch with, you know, usually when I can't stand your ass, it ain't you that I can stand for real. It ain't true. Ain't even about you. It's a spiritual thing. Narcotics Anonymous is a spiritual program. The disease of addiction is spiritual in its nature. That's why the solution must be spiritual. Hence, Narcotic Anonymous. Right. So it ainít even about you. It's about something that goes on in my spirit when I interact with you. Now, how do I interact with You? Yeah, my interaction with You will determine what happens in my Spirit. Right, because if my interaction With You is dishonest, deceitful, manipulative, right, it's automatically going to vexate my Spirit, but it ain't You that's vexating my Spirit! It's me! I'm vexing my own Spirit! I just want to take it out on You because You're present. You'll do. Thanks for showing up i needed somebody to get this off on you know right tip step stuff right this is about but check this out what the tip step requires is see because you know like you know we those of us who've been clean we like to think that we outgrow some stuff that's gone i don't suffer from that no more the literature say in the 11th step that all that stuff can rear its ugly head again there is no non-cure for the disease of addiction so everything I ever suffer from any symptom of the disease is still alive at best is under arrest and I don't have to suffer from it today that's just today it's the only day that matters to me anyway so it's like uh if I do something, and I do some stuff daily. If I talk to anybody, I almost offend somebody every day. The only days that I don't offend nobody are days that I just don't talk to people. And that might be offensive in some way. You know, but see, you're right because not talking to people says that you ain't important enough for me to focus my attention on you long enough to have a conversation with you. See, that can affect the self-esteem that might already be low. The worst that may already be in a deficit position. So, that might be offensive too. So you know I have to check all of that. This is too much for me sometimes but you know hey. But like you know it's like the way that I deliver needs to be improved. I don't deliver the message with compassion. I don't give no fuck how you get the message I don' t care if your feelings are hurt in my delivery of the message let that be the reason you stay clean long enough to have me on your fourth step resentment list when I got clean nobody was coddling my feelings they didn't care Nobody cared about my feelings being hurt. What they cared is that I stayed clean long enough to work my way through them feelings. You know, in some cases, it seems like I should have moved beyond that, but I ain't there yet. I'm still there. You know what? I don't care nothing about hurting your feelings, Kevin. Them your feelings? Call your sponsor. Let Alvin have a reason to be helping you that day. And, you know, work through some feelings. Because she done hurt my feelings. That's good. Right. yeah now you know you can stay clean when your feelings is hurt right so you know hey so and I you know but I know it needs to be improved you know uh and check this out man it's like over the last about 30 days three different newcomers have come and asked me to sponsor them now of course I'm a lot better than I was earlier on but you know it's not newcomer normally don't normally be running up to me talking about will you be my sponsor please because that is you know I ain't that usually one of my sponsees will get that job you know because they're real compassionate and loving and soft and fluffy and come on and coochie-coo and all that I ain'T on all that look what do you want to do about your problem and how can I help and that's pretty much how that comes across you know and while it may not appear to be compassionate it is it is you know it's like I understand today um the one whipping that I got as a child growing up was because I needed to be chastened I needed chastening you know if I knew the way I wouldn't have been doing what I was doing in the first place you know and so hey uh and I refuse to apologize for being how I am right because I've been this way a lot longer than you've known me and I'll do all right for myself you know. And I'm grateful for that but I do know that my delivery of the message needs to be improved. Now how that's going to be improved I don't have a clue. First I need a desire to improve it. Because all I got now is some information that need improving. Right? I have no desire to make any changes. But once the desire comes, you know, and I show up and share the conviction, I'm sure y'all will be like, oh, she done developed some desire to change that because it's something different. Right? Y'all will be able to see it because y'ALL are my eyes and ears. Y'ALL look at me and reflect back to me what you see. And I thank you for that. You know? So it's like going on, man, now I'm in the 11th step and check this out it's some stuff and I love this literature but it's some stuff man that talks about it is doubtful that without working the previous steps that we will be able to carry a message sufficient enough to attract others to recovery right now don't say you can't carry a mess it just says that it's doubtful the message you carry will be sufficient enough to attract others to recovery right and that's it says without the steps man so for me that is of the utmost importance having the steps in my life in 11 step man i get in touch with like uh god loves me i know god lovesme and i need to love me too and then i need to reflect that love and how i treat myself how i carry myself and the package did i present to the world that's important to me and i don't want to leave home looking like any old body can walk up to meand say any old thing because that ain't true it used to be true you know at some point I used to be sold to the highest bidder and then at the end I was just sold to any bidder all that has changed in my life I ain't even for sale today even though I was raised too well to be hanging out with you and you ain't helping me I'm from that school too right I ainít confused about that not even a little bit wow sorry look man on page 43 it says the purpose of the 11th step is to increase our awareness of that power and to improve our ability to use it as a source of strength in our new lives now that power that this is talking about is the power of God but you know man look But what I know is that when I got clean, you know, I already had a concept of God. At some point, I had a belief in God because back when my uncle used to have sex with me, I used to pray and ask God not to let him take me over his house this Sunday because he used to take me out of his house and have sex avec me every Sunday after church. He would take me to Sunday school that morning. I would stay for church because he was an usher in the church. And then he would takeme by his apartment and have six with me. And I can remember sitting in church praying that he not take me over there. And then, you know, I can't remember sitting at home on Saturday night praying that he wouldn't come and get me the next morning. So I already believed that God had the power to change some stuff. I knew he could stop him from coming to get me. But what happened was he kept coming to give me. So when I start cutting off that belief in God, I stopped thinking that God had the power to keep my uncle at home See, I started thinking my uncle was more powerful than God Because he would come and get me Even when I had prayed and asked God to let him stay at home So my belief began to shift From God onto man Right, and then I discovered drugs That thing I had to have And it just shifted from that onto the dope onto me Right, see every time I turned a trick It was some power at play It wasn't just that you gave me your money, man trust that right and last trick i turned i had about two years clean it wasn't about the money man it was about the power right and having me and do this and that in the other in bed and pay me that's powerful right for an addict who've been warped in that area right so i have to tread lightly into those areas right now right most of my friends just give me money because they like me right because see my expectations are attached to my panties if i let you take my pantries off my expectations end to end with your penis and that's going to destroy some stuff so i do real good in platonic relationships with brothers when we start having sex the relationship usually goes down the drain because my expectations are usually unrealistic because i expect for him to be something other than a man created by god i want him to be a man creative by me. They don't be trying to do that. Right, they don't be trying to do that. You know, we on page 46 it says that we eventually redefine our beliefs and understand it to the point where we see that our greatest need is for knowledge of God's will for us and the strength to carry that out. We are able to set aside some of our personal preference because we learned that God's will for us consists of the very things we most value. God's Will for us becomes our own true will for ourselves. This happens in an intuitive manner that cannot be adequately explained in words. Real simple, The I dies to the we. On every occasion, when I can make whatever it is that's going on with you more important than whatever it Is that's Going on with me, I am truly in the will of God because the God of my understanding was a servant to mankind. So as I become more of service to this fellowship, as I am more willing to not be the exalted one, but to be the footstool so that you can become exalted then I am in the will of God. Now with that comes some stuff. See, with knowledge of God's will for me automatically comes the power. See, the power is attached to God's will. Right, so whenever God lets me know in the way that God lets me know what it is God would have me do, God supplies the power for me to do that. Evidence of that for real for real from March this time last year March 12 2004 I quit my job I didn't work