Peter M and Chris S – May 2022 Workshop – Part 2 of 7 – 2022 – Chris S.

Good morning everybody. Chris, alcoholic. So really, really glad to be in this area. And there's a great spirit in this room too. Peter and I were talking about it. I'm really, Really enjoying myself. Now last night we covered from our own experience a little bit about the problem, a little bit about the solution. We're going to start moving through the program of recovery today and we do that from our own experience. We've both got experience with these steps and experience sometimes what it'll do is it'll help form a personal philosophy about the work and what it's done for us. And, you know, we're really privileged to have an opportunity to share that. And, You know, the spiritual experience is something that's very, very personal. Each of us is going to have our own experience with this process. and that's as it should be because if it's our own experience there's an ownership to that you know, there's an identity to that when we actually have our own experience and grow spiritually which I think is the whole point of this whole hell, I think it's the whole point of being a human being is to recognize that to grow spiritually really is our job. Now, yesterday we talked a little bit about step one and just briefly to recap. Step one, the alcoholism part of step one is I've got a mind that's going to bring me back to alcohol every time. No matter what I try to do myself, there's nothing I can do to prevent alcohol from going into my body. I'm powerless over choice in alcohol. I can swear it off. I can have a thousand reasons why I shouldn't drink. She's gonna leave, the judge is gonna lock me up. You know what I mean? None of that stuff is sufficient defense against the first drink. And that puts me in a really, really bad spot. You know, alcoholics are really in a bad spot And then once I start drinking, once my mind has taken me back to alcohol, I don't have control. I start to drink and the drink just takes it from there. And the last years of my drinking, what would happen is I would drink until I couldn't drink anymore. And that usually would be unconsciousness. You know, I would just drink into a blackout and unconsciousness。 Now, those two things in themselves are a real problem. You know, they used to consider that hopeless before Alcoholics Anonymous. They used to considered that hopeless. But it's even worse than that because there's a dash that my life had become unmanageable. Now, it was hard for me to accept that early on when I showed up in Alcoholics Anonymous, my life is unmanagable. Okay, I'll grant you that I've had some DUIs and some divorces and been in jail You know, I'll grant you all of that and been in treatment. But but I've always managed my life and I always had, you know, I mean, I mean think about your experience. Didn't you do what you wanted to do? Didn't You make the decisions in your life? Didn't YOU decide who to go out with what kind of job to get? What kind of car to buy where to live? You know I made all those decisions and I and the what I what I came to understand was I made them from a foundation of selfishness and self-centeredness. Now the book Alcoholics Anonymous, as it starts moving us into some considerations prior to step three, prior to making a third step decision, it moves us into Some Considerations. And in those considerations, it basically says selfishness, and self centeredness is the root of my trouble. Now, when I was first exposed to that, it was very difficult for me to say, okay, yeah, that's it. That's the problem. I'm selfish. It didn't make any sense to me because I've been selfish and self-centered for so long, it was just the way I was. I thought it was my personality. I thought you know, my identity. And I was so selfish, I didn't think I was selfish. So now, you know, I need to start to comprehend the enormity of this problem. This selfishness and this self-centeredness, what I believe it does is it makes my life so untenable that it's the driving force for me to seek escape with alcohol. I'm just, you know, living a life based on selfishness and self-centeredness becomes untenable. It's just, it's an ugly way to live. Now, I'm going to go into the big book. I don't know if I've done that yet. But let's just cover the ABCs to make sure that we've looked at the first two steps. We've all heard how it works read a billion times, right? And sometimes when something is that overused, it becomes redundant. It becomes the preamble before we can share, you know? But how it works is how it looks. And I think the ABCs are very important for us to really deeply consider. A, that we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives. That's a heavy lift for many of us. I just told you that, you know, you're telling me I can't manage my own life anymore. What does that mean? Where am I going to go from there? Okay, let's say I admit that. Where amI going togo from there who's going to be managing my life? You know, it didn't make a lot of sense to me in the beginning, but I understand what they're saying now. I can't continue to manage my own life from a foundation of selfishness and self-centeredness. Because it's a failure. It's a failure. I ended up alcoholing with my life getting worse. As every year went by, my life was getting worse, so I have to admit this. B, that probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism. So there's nothing I can do about my alcoholism I'm a human power. There's nothing a group can do about my alcoholism. A group is a human part. This power has to be a power greater than myself. Now, where did all this stuff come from? Bill and Bob both got sober in a group called the Oxford Group. And what the Oxford group was, it was a break off of the Episcopal Church. This guy Frank Buchman got a whole bunch of people together and said, let's really practice first century Christianity. Let's take those principles from the book of Acts and the book of James and the Sermon on the Mount. Let's like really, really practice this stuff as a way of life. And let's all join together and do that. And that's basically what the Oxford Group was. And they started to grow in the early part of the 1900s. They really started to growth, and they were popping up all over the place. Now, there was a faction of the Oxford group out in Akron, Ohio. And Dr. Bob had been going to that for about four years before he met Bill Wilson. His wife recognized that, you know, the only solution for this guy's drinking, It's going to have to be spiritual. It's gonna have to Be God it's gonna you know That it just there's Just got to be something that's going To help his drinking so she starts dragging Him to the auction group now What happens though is he's going Late he's leaving Early and he's not getting Involved anybody In here sponsor people You Know what happens you know when there's No when there'S no commitment to involvement in Alcoholics Anonymous, it usually doesn't end well, right? Well, Dr. Bob continued to drink for four years. Now, Bill Wilson, on the other hand, he gets involved with the Oxford Groupers in New York City. And for one reason or another, he was motivated, maybe out of desperation, but he was motivation. And he went early, he stayed late, and when they told him to do something, he did it. When they said, get up on that soapbox and preach Jesus on 42nd Street, he would do it. you know, and then he started to work with alcoholics. And he started to bring alcoholics into the Oxford group, much to the chagrin of many of the Oxford grouppers. He's bringing these blackout drunks in and he's working with them. Now Bill is staying sober. Now remember I said he came early, he stayed late, and he got involved, right? So it created a sober environment for him. And then he starting to get involved in the practices of the Oxford Group. There's this wonderful book, I didn't bring it, but it's called What is the Oxford Group? It's a Hazleton publication or something, but what it is, like when you come into Alcoholics Anonymous, they give you a big book, right? Well, when you went into the Oxford Group, they gave you this book, What is the Oxford group? And in it, it has things like surrender, confession, and witness. It has restitution, It has guidance. It has all these principles that you can find in our 12 steps. And that's what Bill Wilson did. He followed the practices in the Oxford Group, and he talked Dr. Bob into doing the same thing when he met him in Akron. Let's really do this thing because this thing works. And they started to practice these spiritual principles that were inherent in the Oxford Group. And they had what would be seen today as a religious conversion experience both Dr. Bob and Bill Wilson. Now, when Bill Wilson was building the architecture of the book Alcoholics Anonymous, him and Hank Parkhurst were basically the guys that were putting this book together. They separated the architecture out of the religion and made it a spiritual architecture so that it's open to all. It's the same principles. It is the same spiritual exercises, but it's now spiritual. You know, it can be done by people who are not religious. It can be run by people of all religions. It's now a spiritual program of recovery. And that's what they did when they built Alcoholics Anonymous. But it's very, very important for us to understand what the solution is. The problem is alcoholism. The solution is living life along spiritual lines. now it says in c that god couldn't would if you were sought so we are to become seekers we're to become seekers of this spirituality i don't know i don'T know about anybody else you know i can i can certainly speak for myself once i started to experience some recovery organically i became a seeker i started the read book i've read so many spiritual books i started to pay attention to different practices and people that were sharing about spirituality and recovery, I got interested. And maybe I got interesting from a selfish point of view because I found a lot of comfort in this stuff. Found a lot comfort in recovery. But I became a seeker. I think Bill Wilson was always a seeaker. He saw it a little too far sometimes with the Ouija boards and stuff. you know, but I don't judge. So it says being convinced of the ABCs. So we must become convinced of the ABCs. It says we decided to turn our will and our life over to the care of God as we understood him. Just what we mean by that and just what do we do? Now the book starts to put a program of recovery together and it starts to give us the considerations for step three now some of some of the things uh in here i'm just i'm not going to read the whole thing but i'm going to read some of those points that i i find at least important it says the first requirement the first requirement for the considerations prior to step three is that i'd be convinced that life run on self-will can hardly be a success. Now, I've got the experience to show that. I'm 33 years old when I come into Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm living at home with mom with $100 car and a terrible job and I haven't been on a date in two years. You know what I mean? Like how am I not going to admit that. So my life run on the decisions that I come up with is not going to be a success. One of the first things they ask you to do when you show up in AA is get a sponsor. Why? Because there's a real good chance your sponsor is going to be able to make better decisions in your life than you will. That's why, you know. Please, please get a sponsor. Then it's got some information in here that we're like the actor who wants to run the whole show, you know? We're like this safe cracker who's mad at society. You know, it goes on and on and giving some examples, right? Then it basically tells us what our problem is. Selfishness, self-centeredness. That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, and self-seeking, and self-pity. We step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. So it's because of this foundation of selfishness and self centeredness that my life is a failure. I'm not living life along spiritual lines. That's so painful it obsesses me into putting alcohol in my body and I can't continue to live this way. There's got to be a fundamental rearrangement. My legs have to grasp new soil. I mean, I need to be reborn, it says in here. You know, my attitudes and opinions and outlook has to be fundamentally changed. I need a personality change at death to recover from alcoholism. And that has to быть, Peter was talking about last night, it's an internal change. I have to be internally rearranged. I need to believe that for me to be able to recover from alcoholism. I have to quit playing God, it says. Now, this isn't easy. It wasn't easy for me. How did I used to play God? Well, I knew what you should do better than you did. And my boss was always an idiot. And my family was not, they just aren't acting right. My families just aren't acting right. You know, they should be different. And everybody should be different and everything should be difference. That's that's playing. That's playing God. You know my listen, I've just admitted my life is a failure and I'm going to tell you what to do. You know what I mean? I have to quit playing God it's it's it's the humility that that Bill Wilson talked about so much in his later recovery. Launched on a course of vigorous action, the first step is which is a personal house cleaning. They're about to get us into step four. But before they move us into step four, it says this. Being convinced. So after considerations, we're supposed to be at a point where we have become convinced that self manifested in various ways was what had defeated us, then we need to consider self's common manifestations. Now this is a really important statement. Think about this for a minute. This is half mystical. Self has defeated you. Well, wait a minute, aren't I self? this is basically saying self is a condition we're us you know this construct in my mind, this perspective I have on the world is based on selfishness and self-centeredness and what it's done is it's trapped me in the past and made me scared to death of the future so the stream of consciousness that's going through my mind in an unrecovered state is constantly going back into the past and rehashing events and being resentful at people and having shame and having guilt. And oh, I can't believe I did that. Oh God. Oh, I'll never be able to look at that person again. You know, like a million things like that. Um, I'm stuck in the past. And if I'm not stuck in the past. I'm anxious about the future. Oh, I'm going to go to work tomorrow and the boss is going to yell at me and then I'm gonna have to hit him and then i'm gonna lose my job and I won't have any money and I'll be out on the street and I'LL DIE! You know? I mean, just crazy, crazy stream of consciousness. That's self, okay? And I must be free of that. I must before that. Now, that seems like crazy because I've always lived this way. These are the thoughts that have always been going through my mind. You know, how am I going to be free of them? Peter said something last night that reminded me of something that I read. He said parasite. This is true. I read this, I think in a book, Chasing the Scream or something about the opiate crisis. But so there is a parasite that lives in a cat's stomach. It's happy as hell in a cow's stomach, that's where it lives, right? Now when the cat defecates, mice eat the cat's defecating and the eggs from the parasite go out with the defecation. Mice eat that and swallow the eggs And now all of a sudden, this parasite that lives in a cat's stomach is now hatching in the mice. Right? But the parasite doesn't want to be in the mouse. The parasite wants to be on the cat's tummy. So guess what happens? All of a suddenly, the mice get real attracted to cats. They start running in front of cats. The cats eat the mice, and now the parasite's back where it belongs. Now think about this. This parasite is taking control of the organism that it's in and causing it to do things that are against its own best interest. Isn't that a little bit like alcohol in us? You know, this alcohol gets in us and causes us to do thing that are in our own best interests. Do things that against our best interest You know, like crashing cars and insulting people at parties and all this stuff. It's something, this problem is greater than something I can deal with on my own. It takes ownership of me. Alcoholism. so so self manifested various ways from from this point on that's what we need to concentrate on for recovery from alcoholism self manifested in various ways in step four we identify the common manifestations of self that have defeated us in step five we share them with ourselves with God and with another person, the manifestations of self which have defeated us. In step six, we begin to desire to have God remove these manifestations of itself which have defeat us. In step seven, we humbly ask God to remove these manifestations of self that have defeated use. In step eight, we put a list together of the people and institutions that the manifestation of self that we've exhibited have harmed. In step nine, we make direct amends to the people in the institutions that are manifestations of self-harm. In step 10, we continue to look for these manifestations of self in real time, in the present now, and take action when we recognize them. In step 11, we seek through prayer and meditation to gain a better connection to this power greater than ourselves that's the only thing, the only thing out there that can relieve us of these manifestations of self and that's what the program of recovery is about it's not about alcohol it's about manifestations of self and I need to understand that because that's what my third step decision is going to be I'm going to make a third step decision to seek connection with god so that there can be a process where there's a removal of these these these selfish and self-centered you know perspective that i have on the world now i see recovery like on a on a continuum now i i've been going to a beginner's meeting there'sa beginner's meaning and i never share exactly where this beginner's reading is because it wouldn't be right but But it's the Basking Ridge Monday night beginner's meeting in New Jersey, right? And here's the format of the meeting. The format ofthe meeting is this. If you have less than 90 days, you're asked to share. You know, please raise your hand after you have 90 days. And then the leader calls on everybody that raised their hand, much to the under-90-day people's chagrin. But you get called on and you share. Now, I go to this because I love this meeting because here's what you get. You get your hair blown back by the selfishness and self-centeredness that comes out of the mouths of the people with less than 90 days. It's like, oh my God, my parents are throwing me out. My girlfriend broke up with me and I got fired. Thanks for letting me share. And it's just your hair is blown back, right? Now, after all the under 90 day people share, the people from six months, the 90 days to six months share And you start to see a little bit of the healing. You know, my life really still sucks. I'm talking to my sponsor about it. I'm starting to recognize the matter. Thanks for letting me share. You start to See a little Bit of Healing. Then it's people from six months to a year share. And you really start to Seek. Now you start To, you know, I've been having problems in my life. I don't know. I just finished my fourth step. I did a fifth step with my sponsor. I'm really starting to See. I'm Really starting to see some stuff. You know? I'm Starting to feel a lot better. and you start to heal it. And then after they're done, people with more than a year are allowed to share and the experience, the strength and the hope comes at the newcomers, you know, because we've all been there. You know, we have all been here. And what we do is we give testimony to the fact that you don't have to be like that anymore. You know? Recovery is real. Change is real And I love this meeting. Now, I've identified, hopefully before I make this decision, what the real problem is. You know, I came into Alcoholics Anonymous believing that I've got to fight alcohol the rest of my life. I'm going to have to be fighting alcohol. And you guys are going to help me fight alcohol, right? We're going to go to meetings every night. Tomorrow we'll go to the Looney Nooney and, you know, we'll fight this alcohol together. Well, that's coming in the way I think we all come in, but it changes. There's got to be an organic change to seeing that it is an internal condition. It's an internal position that we suffer from, and there's gotto be an aggressive fundamental change in us for us to not only, you know, stay sober and get to a place where we're recovered, but to be able to stay in these rooms. You know, we need to experience a vital change. So what do we do? What do we doing? It says the first thing we need to do is we need identify, we look at the major manifestation of self that kills most us. And that manifestation of self is resentment. I don't know, I'm figuring most of you will identify this way. When I showed up in Alcoholics Anonymous, I was pissed. I was pissed at anybody and everything. I Was mad at the cops. I was mad at my family as mad at The wife who left me when I needed her most, you You know, I just was burning up with resentment. Burning up with resentment. And it's all because you know, I didn't get my way. I didn' t get my every single turn of the vents. What happened is I stepped on the toes of my fellows and they retaliated which meant that they took their toys and went home or whatever and it didn't work for me. And so I was mad. I was really mad. Now, this resentment, it needs to be looked at for a number of reasons. I'm going to share with you my personal reason why resentment needed to be dealt with. All right, the first home group I joined, and again, I never shared, you know, the location or the names of these groups, but it was a Morristown St. Pete's group in New Jersey. And this group had about 100 people in it. and, you know, there was some young people and there were some older people and I'm right in the middle. I'm about 34 years old. I'm not hanging with the young people. They're all hooking up with each other. There's like a ton of halfway houses and everything and then there's the old guys that sit around the coffee pot and talk about golf. You know, I didn't fit in with them either but my sponsor was part of this home group so I'm going to this home groups for about six months and finally I just get pissed. Nobody's talking to me. I feel like an outsider, right? So I'm like, the hell with all you guys. I'm out of here, you know? And I leave a home group. Anybody ever leave a Home Group? That's like saying, you know, the dialysis guy was rude to me this morning. The heck with that dialysis, you know? The pharmacist was short with me when I got my insulin. so what the hell with that insulin? You know, I mean, it's the same kind of decision like that, right? So now the only thing I did right was I went to another home group. Now this home group, there were people right in my age group and I made friends with everybody pretty quick, you know. We'd go out to the diner and we had a sober volleyball team and, you Know, we'd hang out. And I started to experience the fellowship. But what happened in that particular home group And again, I don't want to, it's a Myersville Tuesday and Friday as well. What happened in that home group was there was a guy who would call business meetings, group consciences, right? Like he was really upset. Here's basically the dynamic of the meeting. On Friday night, it was a speaker meeting. On Tuesday night, It was a step meeting. And that's when all the officers would give their reports, like the treasurer report and all that. Well, he only went on Friday and he wanted reports, you know, because it says somewhere in the traditions or somewhere in the concepts that you give reports, right? So he's calling all these business meetings and the guy who gives the report on Tuesday doesn't go to Friday. So he is not going to go to Friday just to give a report. So this whole, all of a sudden he's calling these slow, painful, root canal-esque business meetings, one after another. And there's factions now and there's half of the room mad at the other half of the room. And we went from about 80 people down to about 15 people. People were peeling out of this group. You know, it was just really an uncomfortable, contentious environment. You know? So really what this guy did was he destroyed the group because he wanted to know what the heck was going on with his dollar. You know what I mean? It was insane. And so finally, finally, I can't take it anymore. And I'm like, I'm out of here. I'm not here. You know, the hell with this group. Now, what happened was I went to another group and this group, well, it was the Somerset Hills High Bottom Group in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. Anyway, I go to this group and it's like the wrong group for me. You got to understand, this is like all the professionals in a really high-end area of Somerset County, New Jersey. And I mean, I'd literally be sitting next to a brain surgeon, a hedge funds guy, a lawyer, you know, a doctor, a stockbroker. There'd be like Rolls Royces in the parking lot and stuff. And I'm there with my $100, you know, 1972 Ford Granada or whatever. It was a wrong group for me. But it was the only home group left, you know? You know, I quit all the other ones. Now, there was this one guy there. I love this guy. It was the other group. Like we'd be on step nine, right? There'd be a step meeting. We'd be at step nine. He'd raise his hand. He'd go, I haven't done this step formally, but I'm going to share the next five minutes on what my opinion is on this step and take the whole meeting hostage. And you'd have to listen to this guy's opinion on a step he never took. It was one of those kinds of groups, right? And here's the thing though. Here's the things though. I had done my fourth, my fifth, my sixth, my seventh, my eighth and I was in the middle of my ninth by the time I got to this group and guess what? I stayed in that group for 20 years. You could not resent me out of a group anymore because I dealt with these resentments. Do you see how these resentment can kill? they can take us out of the sunlight of the spirit and place us in a position where we're back to making our own decisions, managing our own life, and living life on a selfish and self-centered basis. That's what these resentments can do. Now I'm just going to look real quick, and then I'm going to bring Peter up because Peter always fixes the things that I break. I'm really glad that he's here. I just want to look. This is on page 65. This is a resentment example that Bill gives us. I want to point out something to you, because if I listen to a lot of fifth steps, I wantto point out to you the economy of this, please. You understand what I'm saying? You know, like, let's go over this resentment. All right, who's he mad at? Mr. Brown. He's got a problem with Brown. Why? his attention to my wife. Okay, so Brown's hitting on the wife. Not good, right? Told my wife of my mistress. Holy mackerel! How many bro codes does that break? You know what I mean? That's low. And Brown may get my job at the office. Holy mckerel, he's going after the guy's job. He's hitting on the guy's wife. He's blowing up his relationship with his mistress and he's trying to push him out of the job. Whoa. Every once in a while you see t-shirts at conventions and stuff, Mr. Brown needs his ass kicked. You know, that's like the t-shirt. I love that because I understand. Isn't this lock and load time? You know, something like this. Let's go all the way down to the wife. The wife misunderstands and nags and likes Brown. Uh-oh. So Brown's hitting on the wife and the wife likes him. And then she wants the house put in her name. So now Brown wants the House. He wants to move right in on this guy. Now, I just want to ask you a question. Has anyone ever come at you this hard? Has anyone ever come at you this hard? No one's ever even come close to coming at me that hard. And Bill is saying this is a resentment we have to get rid of. If ever there was a justifiable resentment, it would be brown, right? But he's saying there are no justifiable resentments. There are only fatal ones. So we need to get rid of this resentment. Even Brown. Can you imagine? So that's what I want to share with you and I want bring my buddy Peter up now. So, Peter. Thank you.