Peter M and Chris S – May 2022 Workshop – Part 1 of 7 – 2022 – Chris S.

Hi, everybody. My name is Chris. I am an alcoholic. It is really, really cool to be here in Charlotte. About 12 years ago, I inherited a house in Statesville, North Carolina, not far from here. And my wife and I came down and we lived here for about 10 months. So we got to know people like Louis, you know, a bunch of different people. And there's great AA here. I love this state. You know, family has come from this state and it's just really, really good to be back here. It's great. My buddy Bill and Dane are here. They came over the mountain from Tennessee to join us. So I'm really glad of that. And whenever I get a chance to do something with Peter. It's always, uh, it's always special. So, so, you know, we, you know, I am an alcoholic now. Here's the, here's the weird thing about my alcoholism. I, uh. I there we go. That's much better. Um. I was dying of alcoholism, not knowing what alcoholism was. I you know I I knew that I drank too much? You know, the mailman knew I drank too much. Everyone around me knew I drank too mucho, and I knew I needed to stop. But I didn't have a clue just how aggressive and how all-encompassing alcoholism was. I didn' t understand that. You know so my experience with alcohol is this. If you would've put me in front of a professional at like age five, they would have said this kid has an early childhood anxiety disorder or something. Right. I mean, really what it was, was I was just not comfortable. I wasn't comfortable in most situations. I you know, I I just wanted to go home most of the time and be left alone. And I didn't do well in school, you know. And if there was more than two or three people there. I didn't do well. And I was always worried about something, you know? Like, what are they going to think? Or, you Know, am I going to look lame? I mean, all this stuff was all over me and it made my life really not that easy to live. And then one day I'm 13 years old and me and a couple of my buddies decide we're going to get drunk. We'd seen this on, you know, John Wayne movies and stuff. I'm, you know, let's go get drunk. It'll be cool. And so that's what we did. Three 13 year olds cut school and we go, we go to my mother's house and I blow some dust off a bottle of Four Roses whiskey. And I poured three big water glasses of this Four Roses whisky. And the two guys I'm drinking with did something that still annoys me to this day. They drank about half their glass and then they pushed it back. They'd had enough. Anybody in here ever drink with people that have enough on you? You know what I mean? Like, what's that all about? I never could. You know, as long as there was alcohol available, I was drinking it until I was unconscious. That's just the way I drank. You know? So they pushed it back and they just watched the show because I got drunker than a hoot owl. I mean, you know, I went into a blackout and came to in a field. You know I'm a 13 year old blackout drinker And any blackout drinkers in here? You know, a lot of hands. Isn't that disconcerting? It's like a bizarre form of time travel. You know what I mean? Like you come to in the future, like handcuffed in the back of a police car or something, you know, like, whoa! I got really good at trying to, at hinting at, you know. Tell me about last night, you now. Tell me, whoa, what did I do? So I became a terrible blackout drinker, and I just drank. And the first time I drank that Four Roses whiskey, I got so sick. You remember your first really bad illin' that alcohol put on you? You remember that? Well, you know, I'm horizontal for like two days. I'm just puking, and just my head's spinning, and I got a monster headache. But I'm thinking, man, you know, I'm going to make this work somehow, this alcohol. Because what it did was it made me free. Everything that was wrong was made right by this alcohol." I was no longer worrying about what you're thinking about me. I don't have any anxiety. I, you know, I'm sitting there with my two new best friends and, you know, this is great. I'm this great. And it's so cool. We're going to do this every day. This is great, you know, like, like it completely changed my perspective on life. And I really thought that this magic elixir called alcohol was, was what would make me feel like you probably feel normally because there's something wrong with me. And I developed a relationship with this alcohol. And over any considerable period of time, you know, alcoholism gets worse. It does not get better. So it's a progressive illness. So what did that look like with me? Well, the one thing, if you were to chart how many ounces of alcohol I was putting in my body every week, you know. The chart would go like this for 19 years. You know, I just, I was drinking more and more and More often, more alcohol. and, you know, it wasn't something that, you know, I was planning. It happens organically when you're an alcoholic, the progression comes on you organically and you're just drinking more alcohol. And there were plenty of people who were saying, you really should quit, you know? You got really drunk last night. Do you know what you did? You know? It got to the point where I didn't want you to tell me because it was getting worse and worse and worse the things that I was doing in Black House but it wasn't like it wasn'T like something that I was intentionally doing that's the thing about alcoholism you know I always knew I should cut back I always knew I should take it easy tonight I always new I shouldn't get drunk before I go to court you know I always knew that stuff, and yet it was not to happen. So there's a delusion within the alcoholic, thinking that you're somehow going to be able to manage this. Like if I try a little harder, I'll be able to manage this. So probably the last 10 years of my drinking, I was attempting to manage alcohol you know and that I managed it with drugs I think a lot of us do that you know there's there's drugs that you can manage the the hangovers and the alcohol poisoning with there's drinks that you keep drinking on you know what I mean you could just you could be in this wide-eyed psychotic state you know just sitting there drinking drink after drink after drink and I tried managing it that way probably the last three years of my drinking I would come to in the clothes that I was wearing the night before and you know I'd shake myself up because I got to go to work I always worked and and I'd go in the bathroom and I throw some water on my face I do some vomiting calisthenics and then I'd be like oh my God I'd have to go out to my hundred dollar car and go off to my terrible job you know and just swear unto God that today is the day. Now, listen, I know I've said this before. I know I have said this Before that I'm going to quit drinking, but I mean it this time. You know, the 435 other times I said it, you know, I didn't mean it like I mean it now. You know, and that's the delusion. That's the delusion that I was under, thinking I had some control over putting alcohol in my body, which I didn't. And I didn' t know that. I didn'' t know what powerlessness was until I showed up in Alcoholics Anonymous. Didn' t Know What It Was. I was experiencing it, but I didn '' t know what it was. I thought that I just didn''t try hard enough. Or the guys came over. Or some excuse that I would use for breaking my promise. And then the last years of my drinking, you know, swearing to God in the morning that I'm not going to pick up. Halfway through the workday, I'd start to think, you know I know I made a commitment this morning to quit drinking but that might have been an overreaction. You know, I mean forever. You know what I really need to do is instead of buying a cord I should buy a pint, you know, or whatever. And then I'd be drinking again after swearing off alcohol that morning, I'd been drinking again. Now I understood that once I started drinking, you know clear the deck, turn the phones off, you don't lock the doors. You know, we're going to be, we're gonna be drinking. I understood. That I didn't do well out there in the world drinking. You know, I wasn't a good bar drinker. I'd get arrested or I'd pass out on the bar and bartenders hate that. You know when you fall asleep on their bar they get really annoyed or you know I'd be with my friends and I'd pass out and they'd have to carry me to the car or something. You know so most of my drinking in the last number of years was just in my house. I wasn'T you know fit to really leave the house. And it got ugly and it got decadent and it got lonely. You know what I mean? The last couple of years of my drinking, well, you could cut the loneliness with a knife and you know how I would treat my loneliness? With isolation because that's what you do. You don't want to be so. So it was it was God awful, this existence, this alcoholic existence. Now I'd lost my license for a number of DUIs. I don't know about anybody else, but you know, when I was friends, let friends drive drunk around my area, you know what I mean? Just the way it was. And he ain't taking my keys. Those are my keys, you're not getting my keys! You know, it was one of those things if somebody tried to take your keys. So, so friends let friends dive drunk and, and I crashed a ton of cars and I got, I got some DUIs. And one of these DUIs, for me to be able to get my license back, I had to go to an outpatient treatment program. It was like eight weeks of outpatient. And I remember going to this. I was no vision for you in outpatient, let me tell you. I start going to this outpatient and I went sober the first night, but it was so boring that I decided I don't really have a problem, you know, and I would get drunk, and I went to the next seven outpatients drunk. And of course nothing sank in for me, except one thing. I remembered one thing, and it was this. On the fifth and the sixth floor of this hospital wing was the inpatient unit for alcoholism and drug addiction. And if you ever get really, really bad you go up there and they lock you in for a month. And I remember hearing that, right? Like, oh my God, those poor bastards. Uh, and, and so, so about four years later, five years later when, when I'm just, I'm desperate now to separate from alcohol. I'm doing things that, that just cross every moral line that I, that I have. It's just, it's just awful. And, and I'm getting really dangerous because I'm getting really violent in these blackouts. And I know I'm going to end up in jail. I know i'm going to hurt somebody I love. And i got i got really uh i got really desperate and uh i signed myself into that 28-day program. Now this particular 28- day program um i wouldn't call it the cutting edge of alcoholism treatment. They had something that that they used for therapy for me, which I still don't get. It's called group. Anybody ever go to group? You sit around in a big circle and you talk about your day. And I just remember being in this circle just furious pissed. Like somebody would be talking and I'd be like, will you shut up? Will you shut it? Who cares? Who cares about you? I don't care. I don't care. I want to share, you know? And so group just made me more pissed. So that's really all they had there. They didn't have any one-on-one with anybody that had a clue. So I got out of there and, you know, I'd been sober for 28 days. You know, hey, this is good. I'm sober now. I'm sore. I'm sober now. Everything's great. You know? They tell me to go to AA. They tellme to go outpatient. So I'll go to AAA. I'llgo to outpatient." That's how desperate I was to separate from alcohol. You've got to understand, I don't want to go anywhere. I don'T want to GO TO OUTPATIENT. I DON'T WANT TO GO TO A.A. But I'LL DO IT BECAUSE THAT'S HOW COMMITTED I AM TO THIS NOT DRINKING THING. AND THEN JUST BEFORE I GOT 90 DAYS, I'M ON THE WAY TO AN A.I. MEETING. AND THE THOUGHT CROSSES MY MIND THAT I SHOULD BUY A GALLON OF VODKA AND DRINK IT. NOW WAIT. NOW HEAR ME OUT NOW. HEARMEOUT. Okay. You got to understand my reasoning. I thought, I'm not really doing a great job with this AA. I could be doing a much better job. I Could be sharing more and I could be really more of a member of this thing. I'll bet if I drank a gallon of vodka, it would remind me at just how bad it is drinking, and I'll shoot back into AA with like a renewed resolve. So this is a good idea. You know, so I bought a gallon of vodka, and I started drinking it, and i'm thinking, you know, I'm drinking the first drink. This is good. This is a great idea. I'm really glad I did this. I've been drinking the second drink, you know? This is such a good idea. I'm going to share this the next meeting I go to. I think everybody should do this. And by the time intoxication washed over me somewhere in the third drink, I recognized the enormity of my mistake. The enormity OF MY MISTAKE. I have opened the cage door to the beast and the beast is going to move me around like a puppet until the beast IS DONE. I knew that. So I knew, how could I have been so stupid? In the book Alcoholics Anonymous, it goes sometimes we start beating on the bar, asking ourselves, how can we have done this one more time, right? How could this happen one more times knowing what I know and making the commitment that I made? How could these happen one time? One more time. And I didn't understand. I didn't understand the nature of powerlessness. I didn' t understand the first step. I'm going to AA meetings, but I'm going to discussion meetings, right? And discussion meetings would be like this in my area. These were the closest meetings to my house. I'd go to a discussion meeting. Somebody would raise their hand and go, well, you know, I went to the shop today because I had to get my lawnmower blades sharpened. And I get to the shopping. And I don't have my wallet, you know. And I'm sitting there with a lawnmower blade and no wallet. And it just got worse from there, you know. Thank you for letting me share. And then somebody would raise their hand and go, yeah, I know just what it's like to not have a wallet when you're getting a lawn mower blade sharp. I mean, and you know, I'm sit in these meetings like, what is going on? First of all, who cares about you or your lawn mow blade? I could care less. You know, what does this have to do with staying sober? I just didn't get it. But I was going. I was willing, right? Now, my personal experience was this. I made the first friend I made in Alcoholics Anonymous. He was a lunatic. His name was Radio Shack Mike. I nicknamed everybody. You know he's still called Radio Shag Mike 30 years later. He hasn't worked at Radio Shak in 30 years. But Radio Shack Mike was half a psychotic, and he started hanging out with me. Now, understand, this is 1990 Northern New Jersey Alcoholics Anonymous. And Radio Shck Mike wasn't even close to an alcoholic. What happened was he'd been busted with an eight ball. And his lawyer said, you should go to treatment, and then you should go to AA and you should get all the AA people to write your letters to the judge. So that's what he did, you know? And listen, this is the thing with him. In five minutes, he was happy as could be. In five moments, he's reading spiritual books and praying and meditating. And I'm a basket case psychotic because I have untreated alcoholism. I just want to kill half the people in the meeting. And somehow we end up being friends. And Radio Shack Mike is one of these pious guys. Now he's going to all the New Age bookstores. The spirituality thing really caught on for him because he wasn't an alcoholic. He got busted with an eight ball. So he's doing great at like a month. I really worry when I see people start to do great like in their first month. You know what I mean? I'm like, dude, are you in the right room? So anyway, he's really pious and he's going to all these new age bookstores. And one day he comes up to me and he goes, Chris, Chris do you have a pyramid over your bed, Chris? Oh man, I put a pyramid over my bed. Oh, my life has changed. And the next day he'd go, Chris crystals, crystals you got to get yourself some crystals, dude. I got these crystals you got against some crystals you'll probably need the strong ones but you got it you got some crystals and one day he's like affirmations I got this book of affirmations my life has never been better, you know? And he's like this pious guy. Now he gives me a book of affirmations and I'm trying them, right? Trying to treat alcoholism with affirmations is like trying to stop a semi with a cobweb. You know what I mean? But I'm sitting in front of the mirror. Chris is great. Chris is just great. You don't have to do that. I'm going to kill Mike, you know? So I'm worried because none of the stuff that he does that works for him is working for me, because he got busted with an eight ball. That stuff will work for him. Self-help stuff will worked for somebody like that. It's not going to work for an alcohol. So what happens though, is one day he comes up to me and he hands me a set of eight 90 minute tapes, cassette tapes, back in the cassette tape days, right? And I go, dude, what's that? He goes, oh man, this is a big book workshop. I go, big book? I go you mean the book they give you in treatment? He goes yeah, yeah, the book Alcoholics Anonymous. He goes it's a workshop on that book. They break it down. I go okay, who's breaking it down? A couple of guys from Arkansas. Like Arkansas and I look at I look at the tapes, and I do the math. It's 12 hours. Eight 90-minute tapes is 12 hours? I'm going to listen to somebody talk about a book that was written in 1939. A couple of guys from Arkansas are going to talk about it for 12 hours! But he makes me promise to listen to it. And so I do. I've got like a half an hour to work, and i've got a cassette player in my car, and start listening to this workshop. Now, my first impression was, who the hell are these guys? This is crap. I mean, what Joe and Charlie were doing was they were putting the spiritual mechanics around the recovery program that's laid out in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. So they would tell you what a step will do, how to take that step, what will happen after you take that stop, exactly how to take the step. And I wasn't hearing any of that stuff in the meetings I was in. I was hearing, yeah, I didn't have my wallet when I was getting the lawnmower blade sharpened. So it was like another language to me. What are these guys talking about? and I go through this whole set of tapes and I shove them aside maybe that's how they do it in Arkansas but in New Jersey we share you know and I shoved the tapes aside really upset it was almost as bad as the affirmation book so what happens to us in Alcoholics Anonymous it'll happen to any of us you can describe it in many different ways the dark night of the soul you get put in the barrel, you know. A set of situations or circumstances will be placed in front of you that will be incredibly difficult to navigate through in the emotional and spiritual state that you're in if there's no recovery. And that's what happened to me. There was this girl I'd started to date, you now, and oh, you should have seen the look on my sponsor's face when I went to, Phil, Phil. Yeah. I started the date. So it's so he's like, Oh, Oh no. Oh no! He's thinking an uninterrupted series of phone calls three times a day for the next six months. He's thinking, you know, this is going to be bad. And, uh, and so, so I started to date this girl and it didn't work out. You know, I, I'd first met her on the druggie buggy, you Know? I mean, I mean, what could go wrong with a setup like that? I don't know. But it didn't work out. I lost my job because there was a downturn in the economy and I went from running an electrical crew of like eight guys, seven, six, five, four, three. I'm the last guy left. And then there's not enough work for me. So I'm out of work. and I started to get letters from Florida with language like fleeing to avoid prosecution. Now, I don't know about anybody else, but there'd be some problems that I would have, misunderstandings that I could have with different people and I would Have court dates or fines to pay or community service to do or ambulance bills that were coming in the mail and I don't know about anybody else. That's all a to-do, you know? I don'T do that stuff. I don' t go to court. I don''t do paperwork, you know? That's really the way I was. I DON'T do paperwork. I DON'T like paperwork. I was so selfish and self-centered. If it wasn't something I wanted to do, I wouldn't do it. So if you do that enough in a state, you got to leave. You know, you got to come to the conclusion that Ma needs some help around the house, you know, I think I'll move back with Ma, and, and that's, that's what I did. So, so all this is, all this has just a huge emotional and spiritual burden on me. I mean, you Know, here I am sober like six months, and and you know all this trouble what it what it you know what the hell is going on and and I was just I know now what I know I know now what a nervous breakdown is, you know. That's what I had. I had like a nervous breakdown. I remember going over to my sponsor's house and, you know, my sponsor said something very, I could barely talk but, you know, when I told him what was going on he goes, do you pray? You know, I love sponsors. Here's the thing, you think your sponsor just doesn't get it, you know. Like, I remember one time, Phil, they're coming to get me. They're going to break my legs. You know, there's the boy, they're coming to get me. It's going to be bad. It's gonna be bad, Chris. I'd like to see you at a meeting tonight. Do you want me to explain it slower? Phil, you know what I mean? I need guns. I don't, I don'T need a meeting, you know, but, but the good sponsors, what they'll do, what the good responses will do is they'll point you toward the solution. They're not going to help you manage the symptoms of an illness. They're going to try to get you to the recovery thing, right? So why would he try to help me manage a life that I have to admit is unmanageable? Why would he do that? So he kept pointing me toward the solution and it looked like he was stupid, you know, but he was very profound. He kept pointing me back to where the healing is going to happen. And I remember I was at a jumping off point at six months over. And, you know, it's really sad. It's really sad how many alcoholics don't make it past that jumping off points. We're something like 30 times more likely to kill ourselves through suicide than non-alcoholics. Do you believe that? I'm sure you know from personal experience, there's very few in here who haven't contemplated that, I'm sure. Relapse, relapse is huge in Alcoholics Anonymous. So what happens is we get to a point where we can't deal emotionally with life on life's terms and we're put in a position that's a jumping off point. Some of us jump to alcohol, some of us jumped to just finish it all off. What happened with me, and I believe this is definitely the grace of God, was I remembered those tapes. I remembered those tapes because the truth in those tapes haunted me. There's a line in the chapter Working With Others that basically says this, if you've disturbed somebody about their alcoholism, this is all to the good. And it's one of the things Peter and I try to do. We try to be very polite while we're disturbing. But, you know, we really do want to disturb people about their alcoholism because in the disturbance comes a renewed resolve to not be disturbed anymore. Don't you want to not being disturbed? I do, and the recovery process, what the recovery process does is it really, it renders us pretty much undisturbed after a period of time. It renders this very useful and very undisturb. That's my personal experience. Anyway, I pulled those tapes back out. I opened up the big book that I'd gotten in treatment. It was funny. I hadn't opened this thing since treatment had been about a year. And I looked and I'd forgotten this, but all of my new best friends that I was going to stay in touch with the rest of my life that I never heard from again, had written in my big book. And I remember reading the first one, Chris, you crazy bastard. You're never going to make it. Love, Harry. It was in my book. I still have that book. So I blew the dust off the big book, I started listening to these tapes, I grabbed a notebook and a pen, and I started to do the Joe and Charlie-esque run through the steps. And I really need to tell you, it was a very imperfect, very cursory movement through the steps. But that's really when I started to recover from alcoholism, when I starting to look at that stuff. Now here's what I understand about the first step today. I believe that I have something That is so overpowering In the book Alcoholics Anonymous It goes over this material again and again And again, it talks about Jim It talks about Fred It talks About the Man of 30 It talks ABOUT the Jay Walker You know, Bill Wilson and his story It's just example after example After example after sample Of people who honestly wanted to separate from alcohol, who could not do it? Who could not doing it on their own? And then it talks about, especially in the doctor's opinion, it talks abut this thing, this allergy that the alcoholic has, this phenomenon of craving. So what I have is this. I have a mind that is prone to obsession. Now, what does an obsession look like? What does it look like to me? To me, it looks like I'm going to go to a meeting. You know, my sponsor will be there. He wants to talk to me after the meeting. You know what's her name will be there. That'll be nice. And you know, maybe we'll go out to the diner afterward. I think I'll stop and get a gallon of vodka and drink it. Now, the obsession is that thought that leapfrogs above all the other common sense all the stuff that's in my own self-preservation and it becomes primary. So it's an obsession, and it's not something I'm in control of. If I'm in an unrecovered state, I am prey to the obsession. And the obsession is, I'm telling you, it talks in this book about the obsession. It says sometimes we think about it before we drink. Sometimes we'll use some trivial excuse when we go out and drink. But if you really look at that going out and drinking, you have to understand that it comes from a place of insanity, because knowing what we know about what alcohol has done to us in our lives and the people we love, it has to come from a place of sanity for us to put it back in our body. It has to. Now, that obsession, that thought that leapfrogs above all the other ones, I think I'll buy a gallon of vodka and drink it, is what I'm prey to. That's part of alcoholism. That's a symptom of alcoholismo, that obsession of the mind that they talk about in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. And that's not good news. Listen, alcoholism is such an unorthodox illness and it's so misunderstood by so many people. So many people still think we're just weak-willed. So may people just think, oh, he decided to go out and drink. You know, there's so much stigma and there's so much misunderstanding about alcoholism. Folks, how much power is powerless? It's right up there with not a whole hell of a lot. You know what I mean? If I could have done better, I would have. So that's not good news. The craving presents in me like this. The first drink always does one thing. Asks for the second drink. Second drink insists on the third. the third demands the fourth, and I want the 27th drink more than I wanted the 26th drink. Because the more alcohol in my body, the more my body and my mind wants more alcohol. Now that's not normal. Only one out of 10 people on this planet or in this country at least have that. That's a genetic, that's a biological, that is something that is different. Aunt Fanny and Uncle Fudd don't close the bottle club if you give them a glass of wine at Thanksgiving. You know what I mean? Like, I am bodily and mentally different than my fellows. And this is the bad news that the book Alcoholics Anonymous carries. You know, Dr. Silkworth, Dr. silkworth, he's the chief psychiatrist at the number one hospital for alcoholism and drug dependence in the 30s. He's the number one guy. And he says, if you go past that point of no return, which is into alcoholism, you're going to have to get locked up to survive. They're goingto have to lock you up to survival. And they used to do that. My grandfather was locked up for life. No, my great-grandfather was locked up for life. My father's father was a little bit out of control, and that's back when two doctors could sign a slip and you're gone forever, man. You're in the home. You know, you're in Happy Hills the rest of your life. And he spent the last 40 years of his life in Happy Hills because that was the only thing that they knew to do if you were hopeless, if you were a real alcoholic, if you were hopeless. Now the thing about Alcoholics Anonymous is people come in before they're hopeless and that's a good thing. People come in here who still have some power choice and control, who can still make a decision not to drink and have that decision mean something. But there's also the alcoholics that show up in here. Who can't do that? And, And, you know, a lot of times they are misunderstood. Oh, he just doesn't want it, you know? He's just not being honest. Well, how about he's an alcoholic who has not gone through the steps? How about that? How about it's not his fault? How about its your fault, you know? Like I truly believe that today, you know? Have you tried to take him through the steps? So that's what I believe about the first part of step one. But then there's a dash, right? Then there's a dash that our lives had become unmanageable. Now, could I admit that my life became unmanegeable? Yeah, when I was drinking. My life was unmanangeable when I Was drinking. That ain't what they're talking about. They're talking About can I manage my own life in a good way? So I believe that there's external Unmanageability and that's the crashed cars, the waking up in jail not knowing why you're there, the divorces, all the lost jobs, all that stuff. Sure, that's unmanageability. I'll give you that. But non-alcoholics have that kind of stuff too when they drink. Non-alcoolics can get DUIs. Non alcoholics can get divorces. It's got to be something deeper. What do they mean by I can't manage my own life? and the information in the book Alcoholics Anonymous paints a pretty bleak picture for me as far as quality of life. The bleak picture that it paints is this, on a good day I'm restless, I'm irritable and I'm discontented. Anybody in here relate to that? You know, you ever get cranky? You ever just want to get the hell out of there? You You know what I mean? Like, shouldn't things be a lot better than they are now, you know? Restless, irritable, and discontent. Those are emotional states. That's a good day. A normal day for me is prey to misery, depression, anxiety, self-centered fear, resentment, you know, just, and guilt and shame and remorse over the things that I've done because I'm just horrified at how I've behaved over the years, right? So I beat myself up with this shame and this guilt. Now that's a normal day. A bad day is pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. You know, coming to one more time with the DUI summons in your back pocket, you know what I mean? Or coming home after a three-day tear and finding all your possessions out on the front yard. You know, pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. You know really just letting yourself and everybody down around you and just not being able to tolerate that because I don't believe we're bad people. We do bad things. I just don't belief that we're a bad people the hideous four horsemen, terror, frustration bewilderment and despair. I believe that is a picture of unmanageability. What kind of a quality of life do I have? I can't control my emotional nature. I can't seem to make a life, a life that I can be really satisfied with and really proud of. I can'T seem to put that stuff together. Everything always slips out of my hands. You know, I build a bright outlook, you know, for the new people I'm hanging out with and I tear it down in a series of senseless sprees. Now, that's what the first step is showing me and telling me in the information that's in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. And it's not good news. It's Custer's last stand, and there's more Indians coming. You know? And I'm going to meetings. I'm, I'm go to meetings, I got this, I got this guy Phil as a sponsor, and he only told me one thing. He saw how shot out I was. Oh man, I was shot. And, and I was sensitive. And I was like, I had the tension of a garage door spring when I showed up here. And he said one thing. He goes, Chris, I want to see you at a meeting every night until I tell you to stop. So I did. I went to a meeting Every Night, and he moved away and forgot to tell me to stop, so for the first eight years, I went through a meeting Everybody Night. I did, I tried to be as compliant as I could with this stuff. I was desperate, but it wasn't the meetings that were, that was changing the way, the way I was inside. It wasn't the meetings That were changing my emotional state. You know, I was staying sober. Yes, but I was still suffering from the stuff that I suffered from in between drinks before I quit drinking. And I'll show you just, I'll tell you just how crazy I was. I remember, I remember there was the oak group and the chestnut group at the top of my street. And it was the craziest sharing you'd ever seen. Like we'd just gone through, uh, we'd Just gone through a lot of psychological stuff. And so many of the people in these meetings had come out of treatment and there was just so many mixed messages. It was like, it was like Alcoholics Anonymous gone wild. You know, that's what it was in 1990 in these discussion meetings. And, uh. And I remember sitting in the discussion meeting, and now I've got to look like a good AA, right? I don't want anybody thinking poorly of me. So I would, you know, I'd act like an AA member. And then I'd look over, and he would raise his hand. You know exactly who I'm talking about, right. Oh my God, he raised his hand. Oh, please don't call. Please don't Callum. Oh what a blowhard this guy is. Oh My God, they called on him. Oh, now I'm going to have to sit here for five minutes and hear him talk about his family. Buddy, tell somebody who cares. You know, I'm gonna want that five minutes back. You know? Oh, he's grateful now. Oh he's sharing that he's Grateful. That warms the cockles of my heart that he is grateful. I think I'll go outside and slash all four of his tires. And then I'll walk out of the meeting with him because I want to see how that gratitude holds up under adversity. You know, and all this is going through my head. Oh, finally, finally. Thank God he's done. Thank God. He's done and I'm sitting here like this like a good day. Thanks for sharing now. Now, this is the stuff that's going through my head, I can't tell you about it, you'd throw a net over me, that's obviously psychotic thought patterns, you know what I mean? So that's what's going on with me in an unrecovered state, I'm just, I am a lunatic, you know, I look okay because, you know, folks, we know how to like show up sane. You know, it's like a skill set we have, whether we're sane or not, you know, we can look sane, but I'm out of my mind. So, you know, so I start going through these steps and I'll tell you what, this is what I believe. that I came into all of you with a broken spirit. My spirit was broken. I mean, if you'd let everybody down, I let down. I means, it just was pathetic. The things I put my mother through, the things I Put my ex-wife through, the things I put My child through, it's just, it breaks your spirit to be that guy. And I showed up with you with just a crushed spirit. And as I start to go through these steps, I start to understand a little bit more about myself and I start to recover from alcoholism. I start the spiritual emotional recovery from alcohol is, you know, I start to get sane. And that happened very slowly over the course of time because it was very slowly over the course of time I went through the steps. You know, it talks about in the spiritual appendix, it says that some of us have this slow educational variety because we slowly go through the steps and that was me. I was on my own. There was nobody in my area that was taking anybody through the Steps at that period of time. I had the Joe and Charlie tapes and that was it. So I started to heal from alcoholism. I did a very imperfect run through the steps. And I started to believe, I started to believe that there's a power. There's a spiritual power that I can gain access to that's going to solve this problem of alcoholism. Now, this was an organic thing for me. It wasn't like all of a sudden it dawned on me that there's God. God couldn't would. You know, it wasn't like that at all for me . It was like I started to believe that there was power in the meetings. I keep going to a meeting and I'm staying sober. I keep listening to these people. They're giving great wisdom teachings. They've given great one-liners. It was like the land of the one-liner. There was this old guy who used to chew a cigar. His name was Joe. And everybody adored this guy. He was the king of the one- liners. He'd be chewing a cigar, he'd go, kid, underneath every skirt is a slit. And everybody would go, whoa, you know, whoa. He was like the king of the one-liners. You know, so I'm gaining some intellectual understanding of this spirituality, right? Some intellectual stuff. But when I started to go through the steps, I started To Gain It experientially. Now in the beginning, I thought that the power resides with all of you. You know there's a spiritual power. what we can do together, what we can't do by ourselves and that's not wrong and then I started to think you know if I get a sponsor and I place myself unreservedly under his care and direction he is going to you know and I follow his direction there's going to be some power from that and that is not wrong and then I start to believe that you know if I go through these 12 steps if I end up with a spiritual awakening You know, that's going to present me with a power that's gonna be able to solve my problem. And that's not wrong either. But what I believe today is I do all of this stuff. I do All My Alcoholics Anonymous work. I do ALL My Spiritual Work. I doAll My Step Work. I doALL My Prayer and Meditation Work as an expression of gratitude for he who is already keeping me sober and has placed me in a recovered state of mind. You know, so the power, it's funny, it says we find it deep down within us, but it also says it's a power greater than ourselves. You know? It's one of those conundrums that you run up against in Alcoholics Anonymous. It's like, how do you hang on? How do you hand on? Well, you let go. It's like one of those conundrums, but it's true. It's true, I have over the years, this relationship that I've developed with the spirit is something that it's hard for me to even describe in English language. Now there's a couple of things I wanna read here, if you'll permit me. One day I was asked, Chris, would you talk on spirituality for an hour? I'm like, oh, sure. So what do you do? You go to the Google and you pull down some information off the Google is what you do. And I found that spirituality is kind of like alcoholism. There's no set definition, but there's descriptions. So there's description of spirituality. It says spirituality includes a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves, and it typically involves a search for meaning in life. That resonates with me. Spirituality refers to a broad set of principles that transcend all religions. Spirituality is about the relationship between ourselves and something larger. I like that too. But my favorite is this. Spirituality is an interpersonal pathway to connection with the divine. You know what the book Alcoholics Anonymous is? If you follow the instructions in the book, Alcoholics Anonymous, it's an interpersonal pathway to connection with the divine. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, okay, that's what this whole thing is about. This whole thing ist about healing and connecting spiritually. Now, I don't know about anybody else. I had some doubts about all this stuff because I had some experiences with religion and religious people up to this point in time. And, you know, I was like, that stuff's really not for me. And the difference between religion and spirituality, it says is this. Religion is a specific set of organized beliefs and practices usually shared by a community or group. Now, I'm 11 years old and my parents take me up to church and put me in Sunday school to be confirmed as a Methodist. We're Methodists. You're going to be a Methodists go to confirmation. And what they taught me in there is this is what we believe. We believe this. We believe that. We believe all that stuff and we'll confirm you as a Methodist so, you know, that statement is correct. It says spirituality is more of an individual practice, and it has to do with having a sense of peace and purpose. It also relates to the process of developing beliefs around the meaning of life and connection with others. My big, my big, the big hole in my life was connection to others. I wanted to have a crew. I'm from New Jersey. We want like a crew, right? And I could never get friends that would stay loyal, you know? I could Never establish these relationships. But here's the truth of the matter. For 100,000 years, human beings lived tribally, right? This is up until like the modern era a couple thousand years ago when we became 100, when we started growing agriculture, right, But up until that point in time, you know what we were? We were hunter-gatherers. And what would happen is we would have a group of people, somewhere around 20 adults, maybe 40 children, and we'd move around and try to find food and try not to get killed. For like 100,000 years, that's how we lived. Tribally connected. We worked together. We were part of a group. And all of a sudden now there's modern society where we sit on a computer all day long or something. There's something missing. And I believe that missing piece is the fellowship, the fellowship that I've been blessed enough to experience. We connect with each other because we're genetically programmed to do that. That's what human beings are supposed to do. So connection with others and the real way to be able to connect with others is spiritually. I'm going to read a couple of things and then I'm gonna sit down Now, I guess we'll take a break and then Peter's going to come up. And I'm looking forward to that. All right, I'm going to give you the bad news first. I'll give you some good news and give you Some Bad News. Here's the bad new. Unless each AA member, this is from page 174 in Tradition 9 of the 12 and 12. Unless each AAA member follows to the best of their ability our suggested 12 steps to recovery, they almost certainly sign their own death warrant. You think if we don't practice the 12 steps to the best of our ability, we're signing our own death warrant? I don't remember that being a topic in the closed-minded discussion meeting. Their drunkenness and disillusion are not penalties inflicted by people in authority. They result from their personal disobedience to spiritual principles. Let me unpack that because I believe that's true today. After 32 years of being a strong AA member, sponsoring a gazillion lunatics, you know, being involved with all these different organizations that have to do with helping us, I believe this is true. It says our drunkenness and disillusion are not penalties inflicted by people in authority. In other words, we're not punished with drunkeness or disilllusion. what happens is they result from my personal disobedience to spiritual principles. See the 12 steps up on the wall? Yeah, but I don't think that's going to be necessary in my case. Okay, if you're an alcoholic, you're taking a big chance. We are going to be punished with drunkenness by our personal disobedance to spiritual principle. I believe that's true. Listen, my ego always wants to come up with a reason. You know, I drank yesterday, you know, Bill, I drunk yesterday. Why'd you get drunk? Well, you know she left me. But weren't you drinking when she stayed? Yeah. Why were you drinking? You know I lost my job, I got no money. That doesn't make a lot of sense. Didn't you get drink when you got a good job and out a lot of money? Yeah. You know, we want it to be causal. We want to be able to say we got drunk because there's something out there. But it's an inside issue. It results from our own personal disobedience to spiritual principles. So that's the bad news. Now what I want to do is I want to read the good news because I don't want to leave you with bad news." Peter would fix it anyway if I did. Peter always fixes things for me. All right, this is from the forward of the 12 and 12. I know this is a big book workshop. You know, it's the last stuff I'll read from the 12 until it's going to be big book moving forward. It says, AA's 12 steps are a group of principles spiritual in their nature which have practiced as a way of life can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and uselessly whole. What a great statement, okay? let's unpack that a little bit. All right, what are the 12 steps? They're a group of spiritual principles. All Right, what happens if I practice those things? If practice is a way of life, they expel the obsession. So in the first step where we admit that we are subject and prey to the obsession, practicing the 12 Steps removes that. We're released from that. It's not like we're going to have to fight it. We'RE GOING TO BE RELEASED FROM THAT OBSESSION. And it will enable us to become happily and usefully whole. Don't you want to be happy and useably whole? That's what I always wanted. I tried to find that in a bottle of whiskey. A bottle of whisky would make me feel happily and usefully whole, even though I was good for absolutely nothing when I drank it, you know? So anyway, that's kind of my experience, my personal experience with the first two steps. let's take, what do you want to take? A 10-minute break, 15-minute break? What do you take around here? Let's take 15 minutes and then Peter can come up and finish us off. All right. Oh, can it be that you're here with me let's start writing our own history let's take this road oh this winding winding road let's just take the long way home you've got me running in circles i don't ever want to