Peter M and Chris S – May 2022 Workshop – Part 3 of 7 – 2022 – Chris S.

Peter alcoholic. Hey, Peter. Just a heads up. I was telling Chris earlier, this is the most difficult session of the whole weekend because we had lunch, probably smoked cigarettes, which we shouldn't, but we smoked cigarettes and we talked and we sat around. So during the next two sessions, if you feel a need to get up and walk around and that's cool. If you start to meditate on me while I'm speaking. It's really okay. If you need to do some knee bends in the back of the room or something to get the blood going or get up for a bunch of calls, just make it light and easy. If we get through this one, the next one will be a little bit better but this is always the toughest session. I've done enough of these to watch tables fall asleep right in front of me and we try to pretend we're not sleeping. Yeah. So before we get going with a little of eight, nine here, I wanted to share something out of our book, In A Vision For You, and it says this. For most normal folks, drinking means conviviality, companionship, and colorful imagination. It means release from care boredom and worry. It is joyous intimacy with friends and a feeling that life is good, but not so with us in those last days of heavy drinking. The old pleasures were gone. They were but memories. Never could we recapture the great moments of the past. There was an insistent yearning to enjoy life as we once did in a heartbreaking obsession that some new miracle of control would enable us to do it. There was always one more attempt and one more failure. The less people tolerated us, the more we withdrew from society, from life itself. As we became subjects of king alcohol, shivering denizens in his mad realm, afraid inhabitants, angry in this place if you could picture someone who's this little child who's frightened by this big boogeyman that's what I see when I read that. It goes on to say the chilling vapor that is loneliness settled down it thickened ever becoming blacker some of us sought out sordid places hoping to find understanding and companionship and approval momentarily we did then would come the oblivion and the awful awakening to face the hideous four horsemen, terror, bewilderment, frustration, and despair. Unhappy drinkers who read this page will understand it. I get it. I identify with that in trying to recapture that first innocent drunk I had and I found myself in the bottom of a barrel over and over again and when I've learned like many of us that trap doors have trap jaws, wondering when is it going to be okay? When am I going to get some sort of control, a handle on this? And getting sober seemed drastic. I'll just modify, regulate. I'll do something different. I'll go on marijuana maintenance. I'll juste eat pills. I won't drink. I drink. I won' t eat pills, I won''t do narcotics. I'll be occasional crack smoker. I'll smoke crack on the weekends. I never did that stuff, but we do all of these things and it just won'' t end. And the majority of folks like us die from alcoholism. Very few of us make it in here. And I was handed a frightening statistic a number of years ago that more alcoholics commit suicide sober than when we're drinking because we just can't do life without this kind of information and then transformation. Another reason why I read that, because it made me think of, you know, we work with our big book, And then, you know, you read how it works a hundred times and you read it again. You say, oh my God, it means something completely different today. Or when did they put that in here? Like one of the lines were 100% hopeless apart from divine help. I read that a million times and one day it just, I paid attention to it. That's my condition. I'm 100% homeless apart from Divine Help. And that little couple of paragraphs on a vision for you. not only am I suffering from alcoholism with the hideous four horsemen and the turmoil and the daily humiliations and degradations and trying to cover up and front and pretend everything's okay then I got to a place where I knew you knew and I don't I don'T pretend anymore this is what I am so I try to hide out I remember one time getting on the subway and I was homeless and I wouldn't pay for the subway I'd sneak on the train Mr. Big Shot because a dollar for a token was a dollar towards alcohol so I'm going to sneak on and it's really embarrassing when a police officer is lecturing you as I'm a grown man I'm 28 years old I'm sneaking on a train but I was on the train one day and um I hadn't bathed or shaved in a while and I had a hoodie over my head and um i'm sitting and I'm staring at the floor because we're good at that when we're active we stare on her shoes. And I hear the bells, the train stops, they hear the bells and the door closes and I hear what sounded like this lady with a couple little toddlers, little girls, and they happen to sit opposite me. If you've been on a New York City train, they're kind of bench seats and you face each other. And i can't look up. I'm embarrassed to look up, I'm just staring at my shoes. And a couple of stops went by, and I just kind of peeked up a little. And there was a woman there, maybe in her 30s, with two little daughters. I'm assuming they were daughters. That's how they were looking at me. And I was more than mortified by this or humiliated because I kept thinking I could do better than this. I'm better than this, but what they're looking at is a bum and I've become something I never thought I'd become. I'm literally a bum. Sneak on a train. I don't bathe. I don' t eat. I just hustle money to drink, eat pills and hopefully die by midnight and they were looking at this and it was one of those aha moments but I couldn't get out and when i read this recently i thought of a story something that happened to me to tell you a story years ago i was hanging out in manhattan a lot and i had this this car that i didn't buy my dad had to buy me a car i was like maybe 24 or 25 and he knew i needed a vehicle so he got me the secondhand car and i trashed it immediately like i do with everything and i was dating this young lady from Manhattan, and we were dating, but we were running partners. There's no dating when you're active. You have a running partner. I love you, you love me, but if there's one bag of drug left, it's mine, and you have to go, you know how that goes. I Love You, But I Won't Tell You Where I Hit It. And she went into this store to get something, and I'm double parked. Now, if anyone's familiar with Manhattan, there used to be an old Bonnie's on 17th Street, and I think it's like 6th Avenue. It's crowded, Chelsea area and I double park because I don't care. You don't double park. I'm double park and out of this building shows this guy who I knew from the neighborhood who had a really bad rep he was dangerous and I knew he didn't like me and I found out the girl I was dating was his ex-girlfriend and he comes out and he's standing by the doorway with a brown paper bag. Now if you know anything about the streets we can hide alcohol in there, but usually a brown paper bag, you're usually hiding a weapon in there. And my friend's nodding his head. I knew you looked familiar. So that's what he was doing. And so I'm trying to motion to her to hurry up. And this took place in about 10 seconds. And she caught his, you know, she saw him and hopped in the car and I pulled away. And I literally mean this. The guy gets out. He can't catch us. He kneels down on one knee like military and stopped firing shots at my car. Now, it was obviously a low-caliber gun. It was like a .22 or something. It wasn't a big gun because someone told me the way the bullet holes in the car, they're probably ricocheting around the car. So I got to get home, and I'm still living with my dad. Now, what my dad would do with me was check my car the next morning when I got home. My younger brothers were driving. He never checked on them ever. But with me, he would check. So he looked for my car, and I knew this. So I parked about four blocks away because what had happened, the rear window was blown out. The passenger right side window was flown out, and there were holes in my trunk in the roof of the car. And I know he can't see this because he'll shoot me. And so I park about four block away, and the next morning there's a knock on my door to wake up. and where's your car and he was angry I said there were no part my head's on sideways at this point you know when you come to the next morning it's like I can't even think and I said there were spots so I parked down the block and he knew I was lying he says okay he comes back banging on the door your car's not down the bloc I checked all four corners so I don't remember I'll go get it now I'm in panic mode And he warned me, if I go to my car and don't come home, like bring the car back, then don't come home. I turned a corner and he started with, oh my God, and then it got really bad. I mean, the language and the anger coming out of this guy was scary. He had, back in his day, a loud voice that was very intimidating. And the neighbors came out, he was so loud. And when I told him what happened, first he was furious with me. And this is what happens. When we went back in the house, when he calmed down, he asked me questions like this. Do you know the guy who did it? I says, yeah, I got a pretty good idea who did that. He says, here's what I want you to do. He says this week we're going to go to New York with a couple of my friends. I just want you point him out and walk away. My brothers heard this and went in and shut the whole thing down, the ripple effect. My dad was about to do something because someone affected, someone hurt his son. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time doing a lot of wrong things. I brought about this myself. But he went past that and someone hurt his son so his code was we get revenge now. Now if that would have happened, a lot more bad things would have came out of that. This is what I do in the grip of my alcoholism. I bring people in. I take about nine hostages. In his mind, even though I was wrong, I was right now because I'm Victor's son and I need to fix this situation. No one's going to hurt my family like that. It would have been catastrophic. And thank God for my brothers who pretty much told my dad stop and they were angry with me. This is his fault. He shouldn't even be living here, they told my Dad. They had had it with me That's king alcohol. That's terror, frustration, bewilderment, and despair. But not for me. For the family members who were involved in a drive-by shooting who did nothing. Because there's no such thing as every family is dysfunctional. Who has a functional family? We all have our stuff. But I won't get up to a podium and say I come from a dysfunctional family. Some of us have horrific families. I've heard the stories. The business I'm in, I hear it all the time. But they're also not here to defend themselves. so I can't do that here. So my family, we had our stuff but it didn't warrant my type of behavior nor did it warrant someone taking revenge on someone to protect me who was just doing what I do. So my family was suffering from alcoholism and they're not alcoholic and the family afterwards at the bottom of the first page it says years of living with an alcoholic will make any child or wife neurotic The whole family has, to some extent, become ill. My alcoholism has infected family members. My grandparents were impacted by this. My uncles and aunts were impacted by this I remember one Sunday morning I knew my grandmother and grandfather would go to Mass on Sunday morning and I was in Manhattan on a three-day drunk I was filthy and I needed money and I'm still on the drunk and I think, where am I going to get money? It's Sunday morning I lived in the house my grandmother was living in at the time with my grandfather. We lived upstairs, she lived downstairs. And the back door, in the backyard, the lock was never fixed. And we weren't worried about someone breaking. And if you're Jimmy, the locker, you just walk right in. Everyone knew about it. So did I. So I was on Canal Street in Lower Manhattan. And I make my way to my grandmother's house. and I'm looking at the time and she's definitely in mass right now I know there's money in jewelry in the house Now, I'm not thinking I'm about to steal from my grandparents who brought me up when my mom died who provided me with everything I needed, who loved us unconditionally They were good folks They came from the other side with nothing and built a life They were great people They were really good people But my alcoholism doesn't give me a seed of compassion or integrity or dignity or anything good I know there's money in jewelry, and I'll fix it. I will pay any price tomorrow to seek comfort right now, and that's what I was doing. And so I go into the backyard, and I'm jimmying, you know, shaking the door for it to open, and it opens, and my grandmother's standing there. We were both surprised to see each other. My grandfather was sick. He wasn't feeling well. So they decided to stay home and not go to Mass. And she invited me in. She wanted to know if I would like a cup of coffee. When you're in that condition, you can't even look at anything but alcohol. Almost puked at thinking drinking coffee right now. And then she invited my husband. She invited me out. And when I left, I had ugly language under my breath that she asked me to leave. I didn't know. My dad says if he comes around, don't let him in the house. my dad was getting some Al-Anon muscles I didn't know it things like that I hated but part of the things that saved my life they were raising the bottom and I left there disgruntled and just how dare she I lost sight I was trying to break in to steal and I went about my business how do I fix those things how do i fix it with my grandparents they knew why I was there I stole before how do I fix it with my dad and my brothers who I almost brought them into some serious stuff I stole from my brothers they had little part time jobs after school at one point one was a waiter you get all this tip money and keep it in a drawer and I'd borrow it like it was a Chase Bank or something I mean how do you embarrass how do we fix this by just saying I'm sorry there's a long period of reconstruction ahead a remorseful mumbling won't fill the bill at all a book says and by me being sober they're happy I'm sober but that doesn't pay the bill all I have to do today is stay sober and that's it sobriety is not enough here I owe now untreated I'm going to say I'm going to talk, I should say, about making amends one day when the time is right or I'm in the mood. I'll get back there and fix it. In the meantime, I'm sober and I go to all the parties and I'm not getting in trouble. That's good. But maybe I need to sit down with them and understand that although the wounds have closed, the scars never go away. Some of us, I have some scars on my body. It's healed, it's gone, but there's a scar there. When I look at it, I say, oh yeah, I remember. there's no transparency it's the elephant sitting in the living room that no one wants to talk about and they don't have to, I have to I have fix that and the men's is not only repairing the broken fence but changing so I don't break any more fences how do I do that on my own power I can't on my old power I'm probably already drunk in AA, I'll stay here and leave But with God's power, something happens. And as I'm moving through the steps, I'm starting to experience this thing called God, this power called God that's starting to do for me what I can't do for myself. And part of that package is giving me what starts with a seed of compassion and becomes compassion, with a seat of integrity and becomes integrity, where I have to go back. I cannot stay away from this. I need to face the music, I need to go if you will in amends with hat in hand and I'm willing to hear you say get out and never come back again you can take your AA, your big book and your amends, I don't want to see, I'm willing to take that kind of hit because when I was out on the street I was beaten up plenty of times I was arrested plenty of time, I kept going back I took that and maybe a family member just wants to just unload on me, I can handle some of that, my book says I'm not supposed to be survival of scraping, but I could take a little heat. I'm a big boy. I need to go back there. And so as I come out of seven and pray and meditate on some of the things in six and seven, I begin to make this list. And it was really important that I prayed and meditated before I wrote that list. Albeit a lot of it's going to come out on my fourth step. Our book talks about that. But there are things that weren't on my four step that amends are going to show up. And There's a lot of things that are going to come on my ASEP list that I had no resentment with. Names are goingto fly out. It's great to have conversation with other AAs about amends because we shake it up a little bit and say, I just thought of an amends I owe. So I write this list. Now the first time out of the gate, there was, I made probably 200 direct amends the first Time Out of the Gate. If you're here a while, and let me speak for myself, My experience has been this. The longer I'm here living this life, go through the work, there should be maybe a couple of names on that list. I'm not harming anyone anymore. I should be getting better. I shouldn't be going through this work after like 34 years and having 300 people on an amends list. I'm doing something wrong. But the first time, it was a lot. It was a heavy lifting, and God gave me the strength to do that. And I remember I had to see both my brothers and my dad. They were closest to me and saw it all. After that were my grandparents and my extended family, but my dad and my brothers saw it all, the car wrecks, the arrests, all of it, like many of us in here. And it's interesting when I was out there, I hated them and I get sober and I realize I need them with me. They became incredibly important to me in my life and how did I screw this up so bad? Again, we live life forward and understand a lot of it backwards. And my sponsor, who never edited my amends, said, don't do this. You got to do that. He never, I never got, if you did this, this is fine. I just never did. Never, maybe, I have to make him now that when we break the amends into columns like that. My sponsors told me God will determine who you're going to go see, not you. So I prayed, pardon me, for willingness to do it at every single person and institution on my eight-step list. Everyone. Whether all walks of life, lawbreakers or good citizens, my job was to willingness, go to God for the willingness to see everyone on the list, to approach everyone on that list. Step nine is going to say except one to do so would injure them or others. Not for me to discern right here. Ever, actually. but my sponsor did offer me a really good suggestion he says you've probably said I'm sorry to your dad and your brothers forever we're not doing that here but let the walk be your sermon first and let's see what God has so I pumped the brakes on seeing my dad and I got my job back and I start to do what I do in AA I showed up for work early and left late and when I worked, I worked some of it were easy days where there's not much work to do sometimes it was heavy lifting and I worked but I worked and sometimes I didn't feel like going to work and sometimes i wanted to go on late sometimes I wanted to leave early but I went early and stayed late it's interesting when you're sober and you're employed if your payday happens to be Friday morning it's interested how the following Friday I have money from last payday in my pocket this is unbelievable It's like I discovered some sort of, you know, cure for cancer or something. And so I'm walking the walk. And my dad started to get used to see me showing up at work at like 7 a.m. He's an old-timer. He would be hanging out in the office with some of his friends at like 5, 30, 6 o'clock in the morning having coffee or at a little diner across the street. They used to call it the hole in the wall, and they'd be there, you know all the old-timers, a lot of truck drivers, longshoremen and I started to show up and it became this thing where when's the kid coming in at 7 o'clock I'd be there and have coffee with them and listen to these guys tell their war stories and just talk about the street and growing up and I would leave late and then after doing this a while I'm praying and praying for the willingness to go to any lens the willingness of God to make amends the willingness to go to any lengths, things like that. And I had been taking money out of my paycheck and putting it in an envelope to pay back my dad. I mean, if I hit lottery tomorrow for a million dollars, I'd probably still owe him a few more. You know, it's like that, but I put money away and I had a dollar amount on how much I have to start or how to make a payment plan with him. If I put all the lawyers together, it is thousands, but I didn't have that so I started and I have a chunk of money in this envelope and I remember going to see my dad and I said to him can I have a few minutes of your time alone and my dad being my dad, yes they got up and we went and sat down and talked somewhere else and I go into my coat pocket and I take out an embalm what's that and I begin the approach without dragging anyone through the mud and revisiting those uncomfortable scenes unless they ask me to. I need to be hard on myself but considerate of others. Maybe some things he don't even want to go there anymore. I can't walk in like a bull in a china shop saying, remember that time? He knew what I was about to do. And as I took the money out and I began the approach and talked about my life that he was seeing and how I wanted to make this right, I'll do anything, he stopped me. and I remember he put up his hand and he said to me the following, all I ever wanted was my son back that was it and I said I can't take this money it's your money, he said I don't want money he said you don't have to do that, so I gave that money to charity, I dispersed it to a lot of different charities, I was putting extra money in the baskets because it's not my money and that was the beginning of a new relationship with my dad, albeit there was some more healing that had to be done. But now my job really started because I just made the approach on this new life and how I want to change and make things right. What can I do to make this right? Now I need to show up. There were times my dad still likes Sunday dinner. It's a big thing in my culture. Sunday, 2 o'clock, the world stops for pasta. my dad's 84 that still happens now there were times where there was a football game on my Giants are playing it's a playoff game and my dad says what are you doing Sunday come by we're having some dinner I can't say the Giants aren't because the Giands aren't making my amends and they're not keeping me sober so i go to his house and i spend time i need to show up suit up and show up and little by slowly this new relationship has happened it's a number of years now you know i remember going to my brothers my bit my youngest brother who's the biggest of the three of us big strappy kid had a meltdown he began to weep he said i thought i was never gonna have an older brother I thought you were going to die. My middle brother was very, very stoic. He didn't trust me for about two years. Another story about the effect it had on people, my alcoholism has on people. I was sober a little while. I was back home in New York. I didn't own a car yet. And taking public transportation to work or getting a ride to and from work, it was like that. I was saving up money to get a car. and I wanted to go out one night with some sober folks and I just started courting this woman and I asked my brother, would I be able to borrow your car? And he said, where are you going? And I explained to him, a bunch of AAs getting together and there's this young lady I like to take with me and what time are you coming home? He didn't say, oh that's wonderful, what time are you Coming Home? I said, you tell me. He says, you can have the car back by midnight because I need it tomorrow morning. I said, done. He reluctantly gave me the keys. Now this is where it got interesting. I was like Cinderella. I've got to be back by midnight or I turn into a pumpkin, right? So there's no parking spots at all on the block. So I'm circling around, circling round, circaling around. And on the corner, a spot happened to open up. My brother lived in the middle of the box I parked there. Walked to his house, dropped the keys in a mailbox. and went home. I had about two mile walk to get home. My phone rings the next morning. I can't repeat what he said, but it was, where is my blanking car? And before I could explain this, I knew you were going to do this. I knew it. Where are you right now? I said to him, there were no spots. I didn't get angry. If you walk out of your house, make a right, go to the corner of your car sitting right there I get a call about 15 minutes later okay I got the car and he hung up the phone that's where my middle brother was with me now there's a part of me that says how dare he talk to me that way and then the spirit says you burned this kid for like 10 years and he loaned you his car he went right back to how it used to be that's how I impact people and for me saying sobriety is enough. It is not enough if it doesn't pay the bill. I had to get out there and repair this, amend it by changing and the only power allowed me to change was this power call card. Now it's not on my time frame as to when these things are going to happen. I'm setting out to make amends. Some people I make appointments with. Some I just, you know, you see them in the mall or something. And I got to be really careful when I get to step nine that I don't decide to call up an old girlfriend or contact her on social media because on social we can basically find almost everyone and say hey remember me because she might be in a relationship and they might be on that thing together on their laptop together and there's a message from good old me remember the time when I did this and the boyfriend husband said who is this guy you never told me about this and then I start a problem so I need to be really mindful of that I can't just walk right in there and say, here I am. So there's a pause on this stuff. And some I can never go to because I'll cause more harm in so doing. It doesn't mean I don't owe the universe an amends or I don'T owe people like that an amens. So what I had to do with some of these ladies that I was inappropriate with or selfish with or wasn't a gentleman with, I'm an Alcoholics Anonymous and there's a lot of women who walk in new and vulnerable. And what I do if I see them before the wolves get to them, I say hi my name is Peter, that's Mary and Donna and Peggy and they'll come over because you ladies got us guys beat by this by a million miles. You guys circle the wagons. Us guys we gotta do a better job with new people coming in the door. We're like hey how you doing? The ladies, especially the old timers, they circle the wagons no one's getting on this little girl. So that's what I do. I'm married now one month, it's unbelievable Marion gets thanks yeah, I'm still in the movie life Marion's over 32 years so when the youngins walk in the door and they got that deer in the headlights look Marion, she's gotta be new and Marion goes with some of her little girls and they get them and they sit down and done It's really important. So there's ways to give back. Even when I'm in church or in the supermarket and things like that, when I're away from AA, it's really about practicing principles and treating women with respect and dignity and not being a dirtbag outside of AA. It's that important to me. how could I enter the world of the spirit as our book talks about when I'm still living in the past? How could I enter the world with a spirit when I am still driven by voices of the past and behaviors and attitudes by the past. How can I enter the spirit traveling heavy? I can't do it. So as far as mechanics go I might be in 10, 11 and 12 but in reality I still have a truck load of amends to make and I haven't even made the approach yet. Do I believe that completing amends has anything to do with me drinking again or not? Does I have a lot of amens on the list perhaps that I could be making and I won't cause harm in so doing? It's some financial restitution I can make the best deal possible. Some people I just need to sit down and say, hey we need to talk about that time Chris talked about with that friend and I need to clean this up with you. It's as simple as that. but I'm attending a ball game or a soccer game or something's on Netflix or another workshop to get more information, which I have enough but I don't want to go and knock on anyone's door I'll get to it starting Monday as soon as I'm done with this 30th workshop this year I'm attended that kind of stuff I need to get out there and clean this up because for me it's like if I don' t complete amends without causing more harm What's waiting for me is another drink because I will never enter the world of the spirit. How can I live now knowing how I lived then? See, back in step three, it's interesting when we make this decision to turn everything over to God, our thinking and my actions, my life. It's a tremendous vision for me of what's about to happen if I agree to turn it over to god. because there's times where I'm going to make amends and I don't know how this is going to play out but I'm gonna surrender this to God I'm not gonna turn it over to God he's gonna do what he wants with it tremendous promise a tremendous vision in doing a third step and it can be a great nightmare if I don t because if I dont do a third stop I can't do 4, 5, 6, 7 8, 9 and enter the world of the spirit what's gonna happen to me I'm just gonna go back to do what I've always done and eventually drunk. And to drink is to die, my book says. That middle brother I just mentioned, he came around and it started off little by slowly. And then he would invite me over for dinner and then we'd start to talk on the phone. And then one day, you know the old answering machines we used to have back in the newcomers? I have no clue what I'm talking about. you see the little beeps you got three messages they love me and then you come home no beeps nobody loves me and one message was from this brother as bro would you get a chance give me a call so I call I'll never forget this he was calling me he was he was his wife in him were breaking up and he wanted to talk to me about how to get through this and that was when it opened up he was stoic he was hurt he wasn't trusting me but I followed my sponsors directions and that was the walk is the sermon not to talk and then he called me up because he needed a shoulder to lean on and some insight on how to walk through this he just assumed because I got past this monster called addiction that I would have some insight on how he can get through the hurt he was feeling in losing a marriage. And since then, my brothers and I and my dad are inseparable. Not codependent but inseparable, it's a big difference. It's a pretty cool relationship and what's happened with my dad, you know he was always there for me, I'll turn this over to Chris in a moment he's 84 and that guy I knew growing up is gone he shows up every once in a while, I can tell by how he smokes a cigarette and he kind of gets a little swagger back in him once in a while and that's the old guy but he's 94 and sometimes whether it's on the phone or when he's down in Florida I meet him once a week for coffee early in the morning sometimes for dinner on a Sunday but sometimes he'll ask me the same question three times or four times tell the same story and then he's back to you know some of that going on and at my wedding he had called me, he took a couple of falls and he needs a walker my dad was about you know maybe 6'1 in his day 220 and he just had a presence and he's not there anymore and he needs a walk and I remember him calling me up and he asked me he said he said would you mind if I came to your wedding with the walker would that be okay and I says there's going to be AAs there we've seen and done it all come on in because he felt embarrassed by it. He didn't want to embarrass me. And he suited up and showed up at a walk-in. No one really paid much attention to it. In fact, here's what happened. This is my... Pardon me. My gratitude to AA, all of you. It was a destination wedding. A lot of people flew into Florida and we were at this really nice resort in Fort Lauderdale. A lot of folks stayed three, four, five days down there. And my dad was sitting with me on Sunday morning, the day after the wedding, we were having coffee. And he's done this a few times. But he said to me, he says, your friends, meaning you guys, he said, oh, incredible. He says every one of them saw me, stopped me, gave me a kiss on the cheek, sat down and talked to me. He said, I can't believe that they live the way they live like you did, that they look so good. He said they're spotless. My dad's appearance was everything. They're spoteless. He says, the woman came, sat down, kissed me on the cheek. Mr. Marinelli, so nice to see you. We're so glad to be here. Talked about them. Listened to me talk about my aches and pains the guys came over this is that's why I keep going back but here was an outsider if you will praising us just going about life with we I didn't have respect and we learn respect we learn integrity we learn dignity we learn some humility and we pass that on just by going about our day it's not a pretend anymore, it's just who we be and an outsider got that in neon lights and had to say my dad's not the type of guy to just offer praise for the heck of it you have to earn it and that's what he was doing and he's been doing it he's still talking about the wedding, it blows my mind about your friends, meaning my friends Alcoholics Anonymous where the broken get fixed and we walk head up and shoulders square not better than, not less than we just walk and all I have to do is follow a simple set of instructions per my sponsor God watching the whole thing and then something happens from the inside out I don't need to pretend I don' t need to tell you I'm sober and I'm working the steps I don''t need to do any of that You will see at my walk, my grand sponsor or my, yeah, my grand sponsor. He was out of Colorado. Chris remembers him. He'd walk in the room with a flannel shirt, maybe some overalls. He had blue eyes that were this big and he'd walk into the room and for some reason you just want to get around this guy. He didn't have to have a big book. He Didn't have talk about the steps. You can talk about a football game, a baseball game. And you knew this guy was operating from someplace else. and that man was Don Pretz I call him the godfather of AA there was just something about him it was the soul was awakened and if you ever got a hug from him you didn't want to leave it he didn't have to pontificate or convince someone how he did his fourth step or he did perfect demand he didn's do any of that he just walked it was just the spirit and that's available to all of us because it's called Alcoholics Anonymous So as of right now, I don't know what will happen an hour from now or next week. But as of Right Now, I'm clean on amends. But that's delicate because I don' t know what's going to happen an hour from tomorrow. Tomorrow we go to the airport. Anything is possible. You really want to see how spiritual you are. Traveling airports a lot. It's a whole other thing. I think it's one big science experiment by the government to test patients intolerance. I don't know what's going on. But as of now, I'm clear. So maybe that's why I feel like I'm traveling light. There was a story of this gentleman who was very, very religious. Did all the things his religion asked him to do and told everyone about it. But devout, devout religious person. Even pompous about it. And he wasn't feeling well and goes to the doctor, and the doctor does a whole bunch of tests on the guy, and he sits this person down and says, Bill, I got bad news. You have a few months to live. Make arrangements. This guy's irate. And he goes back to his past and he says, what kind of God is this? I've been doing everything the church told me to do. I'm a devout Christian. How dare this God, how dare this church? And he walks away from God and church. And he falls asleep one night and has a dream. And in this dream, he's walking across this big field to the edge of this cliff, this mountain. And he's carrying this huge, heavy cross. And what he's saying to himself after all I've done for the church for my Christianity. Not only did they give me a death sentence, now they get a cross on my back. How dare this God do this? But he looks around and he sees all these other people carrying the same cross, singing hymns, joyfully carrying the cross. This is ridiculous. He hates God now. As he's walking, he sees a little barn on the side of the road. He goes in there and he finds a little sword and he starts chopping down the cross that he has to carry. where it's manageable. Now he thinks they got over on God, the church, the doctors, and all these other fools who are carrying a cross and singing until they get to the edge of a mountain. And they have to cross over to eternity, paradise. And all these people lay down their cross, it reaches the other side, and they walk over. And his is too small to make it over, and he's stuck exactly where he's at, in his own stuff. What Alcoholics Anonymous allowed me to do, first it says you're going to carry a lot of heavy lifting here and we're goingto force feed you some humility to where it hurts and God's going to prune the entire tree so you say there's nothing left, you know there's a lot more to go and it's goingto hurt and I want to push it away and I don't want to go to that meeting tonight and I dont want to hear another inventory and I don't want to write an inventory and I do not want to pray today but you are going to do it until it hurts and then one day you will wake up and realize how free you are that the past is something we talk about for point of reference to help another drunk but you're not going to live there anymore I am not the guy who wrote his first fourth step I am NOT that guy anymore thank you God I'm far from perfect there's a lot of cracks in his armor I am not that guy when I wrote it I was and that's just getting a little information and having a transformation not being programmed by a program but enlightened by a program and understanding the difference between a fellowship, a program and a service I get asked to do. At the beginning they're separate. There's fellowship, there's service and there's recovery and as we wake up they all blend. It all becomes one movement because I'm being led by the soul now, cleaning up the wreckage of my past was key, it was vital. It unlocked the gates of hell for me where I'm able to stand free. Our book talks about free at last and I don't want to quote where that originally came from a great man. You notice all our great spiritual people from 2,000 years ago to currently have been killed? Gandhi, Martin Luther King I don't know what it's very interesting people stand for something we need to get rid of great people but we get to stand free at last where that monster not cured, but that monster is in the other room, it's dormant and I get to travel a lot lighter and so when I'm with my family or if one of those women I talked about ever walked into a meeting called Alcoholics Anonymous I'd have to say Chris I gotta get out of here I don't have to do that and the people I owed money to I paid back so I get to walk light and free in Alcoholics Anonymous I'm going to take a break and bring Chris up ok thanks guys