Physical Allergy and Mental Obsession – Blueprint for Recovery Workshop – Part 1 of 2 – Dan S.

So, somewhere around page 8, some of that stuff should come up as you're going through Bill's story. The second half of Bill's Story, page 9 through 16, will basically outline his program of recovery. And you can actually identify all the 12 steps in that section. Just the basic ideas of it. And so there's a great description of three different types of drinkers on page 20, where it talks about the moderate drinker, the hard drinker and the real alcoholic. It says the moderate drunkers have little trouble in giving up liquor entirely if they have good reason for it. They can take it or leave it alone. I see that that wasn't me. When I came to the point where I absolutely knew that I had to stop living like this, I couldn't stop. It says then we have the certain type of hard drinker. He may have the habit badly enough to gradually impair him physically and mentally. It may cause him to die a few years before his time. If sufficiently strong reason, ill health, falling in love, change of environment or the warning of a doctor becomes operative this man can stop or moderate although he may find it difficult or troublesome and may even need medical attention there's people that medical attention will actually help you know the a lot of meetings that I go to they want to bash recovery programs but hopefully they filter out the people that don't need us, all right? The people that they can help. The fact was is that none of that stuff, ill health, falling at my wife, the changing environment, warnings of the doctor, there was nothing that I could change in my life that would change the way I was drinking and I tried. You know, I closed the factory down. I stopped hanging around certain people. I I eliminated all this stuff out of my life thinking that if I just get this out of my life, then my life will change. Until finally the only thing left was her, so it must be her fault. So I kicked her out. She was so nice when I met her. I don't know why she got so crazy. I know now why. It was living with me. I drove her that way she was baffled by the turn that her life took as a result of the turn that my life took I think she says but what about the real alcoholic he may start off a moderate drinker and I did he may or may not become a continuous hard drinker but at some stage of his drinking career he begins to lose all control of his liquor consumption once he starts to drink so now I see that I can relate to that part of it that I could not start drinking and know really what was going to happen hopefully if I've attached all the experiences up to this point in looking over with the physical idea in mind and how alcohol affects me, it brings us to a summary. And after each section that I look at with step one, it'll summarize that in the last paragraph. And where I see a shift from the physical allergy to the mental obsession is at the top of page 23. So the last paragraph that I look at in referring to the physical craving is, we know that while the alcoholic keeps away from drink, as he may do for months or years, he reacts much like other men. We are equally positive that once he takes any alcohol whatever into his system, something happens both in the bodily and mental sense which makes it virtually impossible for him to stop. The experience of any alcoholic will abundantly confirm this. and I have to be clear on this moving on does my experience abundantly confirm that I can't start drinking without consequence without losing control and I saw again, I've got to separate what's going on in my mind with that I look back at the history of the trash businesses and the trash marriage and see how it's attached to how much I drank and how I was living, my experience abundantly confirmed that alcohol was impacting my life at a deep level. It was confused by those times when I did go out and have a drink with somebody and didn't have consequences. And the delusion that I can control it was strong and I was so sure that one day I would straighten my life out. But the fact is that day never came and I never really knew when I would drink to the point of consequence, right? I had no control over when that would be, right. So that section ends with a summary and the next section for the mental part will start with a question. And this question has to get answered in this next section. These observations would be academic and pointless, which means they're good to know. But if you never took the first drink, thereby setting that cycle in motion... I'm sorry, let me read that again. These observations would be epidemic, meaning it's good to no, but it's pointless if you just never take that first drink. Right? Therefore, thereby setting that terrible cycle in motion. So, that brings up the question, why is it when I saw that alcohol was such a consequence in my life and caused so many problems why didn't I just stop drinking? It says, therefore, the main problem of the alcoholic centers in my mind rather than in my body. And this sentence gets so pulled out of context, right? And I'm going to get back to that, okay? Because we're still in the first half of step one. We're not even in the second half of steps one yet. My experience with that story I started to tell is that I'd go to sleep telling myself I've got to stop drinking like this. And I'd wake up and the first thing that would come to my mind is when am I going to get up and walk to the liquor store? And I'd take that long, one-block walk to the liqueur store, talking to myself out loud. What's wrong with me? Why do I keep doing this? And I would yell at myself, argue with myself. What's strong with you? And I believed that I had such a strong will, and it was true, I did. But for some reason it wasn't there when it came to the drinking situation. Now you got to remember the times were different. This was 1987 and it meant something completely different when somebody was walking down the street yelling at themselves. Now you just assume they're on their Bluetooth. In 1987 it meant something different which was more accurate and meant they were crazy so to go along with the idea that therefore the main problem of the alcoholic center is in his mind rather than his body I could see that I could say that I had a mind that just kept wanting to throw alcohol on it and you get people in the program that wants to tell you well, today I just choose not to drink I wonder what the choice was when someone with time drinks the fact is that most alcoholics for reason yet obscured have lost the power of choice and drink where so-called willpower becomes practically non-existent we are unable at certain times to bring into our own consciousness with sufficient force the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago we are without defense against the first drink I went two years in that place baffled I knew the truth, I knew that I had to stop drinking but completely baffLED by my inability to stop drinkin not everybody experienced what I'm talking about some people get stopped quicker I just happened to be in a situation that I kept myself in a situation where nobody really had control or any influence on my life I was managing where I was living as I said I wasn't paying rent threw the wife out got her out of the way because i knew that wouldn't be so bad if she wasn't nagging me like she was you know i i was basically on this on this path to just continue as i was and nothing externally was in place to stop me i had a regenerating bank account every month I had rents come in. And mind you, I didn't own the building. So I know it sounds good, but it wasn't my building. The next paragraph on page 24 after that choice paragraph talks about thinking it through. The almost certain consequences that follow taking even a glass of beer do not crowd into the mind to deter us. If these thoughts occur, they are hazy and readily supplanted with the old threadbare idea that this time we shall handle ourselves like other people. There is a complete failure of the kind of defense that keeps one from putting his hand on a hot stove. That's one of the first definitions of insanity for me in the book. the failure of the kind of defense that keeps one from putting his hand on a hot stove you know I must have been about four or five years old when I got a bunch of extension cords and I for some reason got the idea that I was going to plug a bunch of extension cords into outlets and then connect them in the middle with some scissors that experience left me in a place with deep respect for electricity you know I never had the urge to do that again but when it came to alcohol and what it was doing to my life that same ability to that same mental defense just wasn't there and as I said it went on for years so my drinking took me to the place where I absolutely was baffled and consigned myself to the idea that I was just going to keep drinking until I was dead. I hadn't actually heard about Alcoholics Anonymous before. I didn't know what I was going to do. I started seeing a therapist. Again, I'm not bashing therapists. I think some of them can be really helpful. It's just a good idea to find someone that knows something about alcoholism who's AA friendly and I think it's important to not do things in AA to make them dislike us so that they can refer us to AA and I don't know if it happens here in Canada but a lot of people will bad mouth therapists in meetings where I come from not really conducive for them to refer people to us right you know there is more and more I'm being made aware of programs where they're trying to familiarize new therapists with what we can do. And I think we have to be careful not to do anything to mess up that situation. But it is advisable to find someone that is familiar with what the options are for people who are recovering. My particular choice, AA never came up. So, we've all probably read the story of the jaywalker, right? And that always had a really profound impact on me. In fact, I don't know if anybody's ever been to the website thejaywalker.com? That was mine. That's mine. It's got a bunch of odd stuff that I've written. So if you're ever moved to go look, you're welcome to do that. But it says our behavior is absurd and incomprehensible with respect to the first drink as that of an individual with a passion, say, for jaywalking. This is on page 37, by the way. On the bottom of 38, I want to make a mention of this. It says, you may think our illustration too ridiculous, but is it we who have been through the ringer have to admit that if we substitute alcoholism for jAYwalking, the illustration would fit us exactly? So why don't we substitute alcoholism for jAywalking? Oops. If I can keep the page. He gets a thrill out of hanging out at bars. He enjoys himself for a few years in spite of friendly warnings. Up to this point, you would label him as a foolish chap having queer ideas of fun. Luck then deserts him, and he goes on benders several times in succession. You would expect him, if he were normal, to just cut it out. But presently, he gets drunk again. and this time ends up in a recovery program. Within a week after leaving the hospital, he gets drunk again with more complications, more consequences. He tells you he's decided to stop drinking for good but in a few weeks he's back drinking on another bender. On through the years, this conduct continues accompanied by his continual promise to be careful or to keep out of bars altogether. Finally, he can no longer work. His wife gets a divorce and he's held up to ridicule. He tries every known means to get the drinking idea out of his head. He shuts himself up in an asylum hoping to mend his ways or rehab, right? But the day he comes out, he races back to the bar which sets off another spree. Such a man would be crazy, wouldn't he? But that was me, over and over again, hanging out at bars, drinking, having consequences, consequence after consequence. And crazy? I absolutely believe that that's where I was. so i look at the mental obsession from the top of page 23 to the bottom of 43 so listen here's what the last paragraph on 43 says once more the alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink except in a few rare cases neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense his defense must come from a higher power. There was nobody that could stop me from drinking once that idea hit my mind. There was somebody that could stand between me and that bottle. If they tried to, I would get them out of my life. So that's the first half of step one. And I ask a question here. Chewing ice is probably coming through the microphone, isn't it? Sorry. The question. Yeah, I got sidetracked there for a minute. why is it that after I'd get a few days away from drinking when the consequences were great enough that I'd say, enough, I can't take it anymore and for some reason or some way I'd be able to get three days or four days or why is it that people come into recovery and they'll get 30 days or 60 days or 10 years or 20 years or 30 years and all of a sudden they drink again. Too many people hang on the idea of, as I said before, that the problem centers in my mind. What I have to see is there's something else going on here. there's the second half of step one that I have to understand what is the condition conducive for those obsessions to return that would be important to know even with time in the program you think those people that drank with 30 years of sobriety thought they were going to be the one to drink no, they thought it was going to beat that other guy the guy that never drinks probably it's important to understand certain things one is why is this a spiritual problem what is a spiritual solution and what do I have to have that effect because when the obsessions hit me there was no calling anybody for help like your sponsor I didn't have a sponsor at the time when I was drinking but you know there was nobody I would have thought of calling at the same time you know when that obsession hits I'm drinking alright and so I have to understand what is it that sets that up and let me just check this timing here 8.30, 9.30 okay which leads us into the second half of step one and I use page 52 a lot through this process I use it in the first step, the second step, and the third step and again in the eleventh step so let's go to page 52 where it says we had to ask ourselves why we shouldn't apply to our human problems the same readiness to change our point of view they're asking me to change my point of vue towards my human problems just like they've asked me to change my point of view towards my alcoholism. Initially, I thought my alcoholismo was a problem that the problem was out here in the consequences of my drinking, that my problem with alcohol was the consequences, right? But what it's talked about so far in the book is the idea that I have a mental obsession that sets up a condition that takes me to that first drink and then I lose control, right. That's much different than what I thought was really going on, right? I just thought if I rearranged my outside situations that I wouldn't have to drink. But they're talking about a problem that's going on inside of me. So Neherit's asking me to look inside for my other human problems to change my point of view. He says we were having trouble with personal relationships. Was I having trouble with personal relationships? Not just love relationships. I was having trouble with family. I was Having trouble with my customers in my business. I had trouble with friends. It says we couldn't control our emotional natures. And I saw that I couldn't controI my emotional natures but at a deeper level when I started to understand what they mean by the nature of it, not just my emotions the way I differentiate between those two is I show you the emotions that I want you to see but you don't see what's underneath, what's inside of me and that's my emotional nature it's the part of my emotions that are inside of me, not what you're seeing and it's The Part That's Inside to me that I can't control. Since we were prey to misery and depression, are you vulnerable to misery and depression? You know the times when you don't want to answer the phone and you keep the drapes closed and I canít just get myself out of that. I canít just talk myself out of that, right? All the mirror work in the world is not going to change that for me. You know what mirror work is, right? Look in the mirror and smile at yourself and tell yourself how great you are. Right? You know, that doesn't work. That kind of stuff doesn't work for me. Couldn't make a living. Right? I never had a life that I was satisfied with. Right? There was times that I had money and there was times when the relationship seemed good but she was never good enough. The money was never good enough, the car was never Good enough. Right. I never had a way of life that was comfortable or that was enough. So we had a feeling of uselessness, right? I wasn't really thinking about too many other people at the time, so that didn't stand out as a glaring problem. But looking back, I see that I was pretty useless. and that's something that could come up later on really when you're further down the line here in the program because sometimes people read this for the first time with time in the programme feeling useless in the programmes so we were full of fear you know fear pretty much steered the course of my life right it was the thing that stopped me from painting that picture or writing that book or going back to school and doing the things that would that something inside told me I just wasn't going to be able to accomplish so we were unhappy I was certainly unhappy near the end of my drinking right it couldn't seem to be of real help to other people now I definitely related to those things when I was new another problem though is with time and with experience sometimes you can go back to this and relate to those thing again time does not necessarily save you from this condition what I had to see was is that these are outlining outward manifestations of a spiritual malady. They aren't the spiritual malody, right? But they're the result of a spirit. A spiritual malty. Because my spiritual mality is transparent. I don't see it. It's deep down inside of me. What comes out of me is problems with personal relationships, can't control my emotional nature, prey to misery and depression, all these things. That's what's out here. It's a sign. If you can relate to these, it's a sign. But the good news is there's a cure for it. There's something that we can find in this book that will take you out of that place. Just want to throw that out there so nobody doesn't want to come back tomorrow. Well, if it's all hopeless, no. So, is there any artists here? Good. Okay, even for the non-artists, if somebody asks you to paint a picture of a lake, you'd probably take blue and just make it a solid blue, right? Because that would be water, right?" No, not exactly. If you saw a decent painting on a wall and you're looking at a picture of a lake what you see is the reflection of the mountains around the lake and the trees in the water so that which you cannot see that which is transparent to you is portrayed to you by the reflection of what's around it right And this page 52 gives me a palette, a spiritual palette to look at my life out here and see the reflection, a picture of that transparent spiritual condition. And it makes it not so transparent anymore. It gives me an idea of what my spiritual condition looks like. And yes, it's in the front of the book. But just because it's something that you've already read and maybe you've gotten to the place where you maybe read it and say, oh, I don't have that stuff in my life. My experience is after almost 22 years of doing this is it comes back. Discomfort in these areas come back. Maybe after I've done it for a couple more years that won't be the case, but I don' t think so. it explained to me the idea though that this is a spiritual program for people with a spiritual problem and this shows me what my spiritual condition is and what I have to see is this is the second half of step one and I have to understand that the spiritual malady sets up the condition conducive for the alcoholic insanity to return, the obsessions return and I drink again it doesn't matter what's going on in your mind because I was drinking telling myself I shouldn't drink I've been sober telling myself I should drink and I couldn't Let go of the idea that the problem centers in your mind. Your problem is spiritual, and your mind is going to be directed by that. If you're in a good spiritual place, it doesn't matter what your mind has to do with it. It doesn't care what your brain is thinking. You can't drink. If you are in a poor spiritual place then this stuff will be obvious in your life and it's a warning sign that you're not in fit spiritual condition time does not save you from that the proof is around us it's one of the advantages of the program is that you get to see people with time not stay sober I'm not saying I'm glad they did, I'm just saying we need to see that just staying sober never kept me sober you know there's you know the times when you're driving down the street and someone turns left in front of you and you don't even miss a beat on the radio don't ever think twice about that person that almost killed you the next day same intersection might not be the same guy but someone turns left in front of you, and your hand's out the window telling him he's number one. All right? What changed? Nothing out here. But something inside changed. All right, and it's spiritual. And I have to, so I have, again, it's illustrating the effect that my spiritual condition has on my mind. All right. So that's why, that's what I have to see to go along with the idea that I have to have a spiritual solution for this, right? And the experience for step one is not that you can't drink again. That's not it. The experience for Step 1 is there's nothing stopping you from drinking again if this is as far as you're going to go, right, that we will drink again and with the truth of the problem, it was never enough for me to stop. Just knowing that I have a spiritual solution doesn't give me more ability to turn to God to save me from this situation. Because the other situation that was going on for me that was really important was I came into this program complete atheist. Okay, you've convinced me that I'm going to drink again if I don't get something more, but, you know, how do we get moved beyond this point now? Okay, you've convinced me I can drink again, right? And it's to the extent that I'm clear on that, that truth about step one, that I get moved into step two, being able to go along with the idea that I need a power greater than myself to change what's going on in my life, to restore me to sanity. I have to see this insanity in my life and how there's no escape from it except if I get something more from this program. I don't have the power to stop this from happening. And the process pushes me forward, pushes me along with it. I come to step two out of desperation not out of virtue not because I want to be spiritual not because I know what God is I don't necessarily at this point in the beginning I didn't even necessarily believe in God yet but I start to believe a little less in my own ability in my old in my ability to change this in my whole life and And that desperation, I think, is a critical part of the program. It's a critical point in our life. It's also part of our spiritual path. I mean, I'm sure that I'm not alone with the agnostic temperament, right? I can't even stay out of agnostic behavior, right? And the idea that just because I see step one that all of a sudden I'm going to be open to this God thing is, it's just not that simple, right. But when you look at it, even though I came to this thing completely doubting the idea that there would be any kind of power that would work in my life, it was through seeing the desperation in my life before I even got here that took me to the place in my wife where I after all these trips to the liquor store telling myself I've got to stop doing this, realizing I was trapped in this way of life that I absolutely couldn't get out of. What happened is that there were some consequences that happened with some family members after that. It left me in a worse spiritual place. It just kind of took out that last bit of whatever I had that was holding me together. And I said, enough. I can't live like this anymore. And I dug out a .357 Magnum out of a drawer and was trying to figure out where people actually point these things to do to commit suicide. And that's where my drinking took me. And it wasn't because of situations in my life, like it wasn'T because I wanted to commit suiCide because of the marriage or the loss of business. It was totally because I couldn't live the way I was living any longer with the drinking and just everything that was around that. And I, holding this gun to my, around my head, trying to figure out where I was going to point it, I wasn't afraid to kill myself. It just seemed like my only solution. Therapy hadn't helped. Talking to friends hadn't help. Their solution was, you don't want to drink anymore? Let's just go get some crack. that was friend's advice and I said no, no, this felt like it was the only way to go and it was my only alternative to go on as I was or finish it right there and it was just for a split second that I thought that this thought came to my mind that it was My Brother's Gun And my brother was already on the run from the police because he had unloaded his shotgun on his friend and just took off for 20 years. And I thought, you know, my brother is the only thing that I cared about at that time. And the only thought that occurred to me was, what if they think it was him that did this? and the frustration of that is I couldn't even kill myself I just looked up and just screamed God but again it just shows you the power of being in a place of desperation because that place of aspiration got a non-believer to scream God and I didn't even know that that was the most honest prayer I might have ever made in my life there was a surrender at that point I didn't understand it all at the time, but it was just a couple days later that I bumped into somebody, a friend from the gas station that I used to hang out with who was definitely always, I always thought he was way worse than I was. But it was juste a couple of days later that, you know, was that odd or was it God? I made a surrender and then he was put back in my life and I didn't even recognize him at first his whole face had changed it turns out he had gotten sober right and he started to tell me how he got sober and I was interested at first but I was hesitant because the idea of he offered to take me to some meetings if I was interested and I thought AA meetings? I said, I couldn't be that bad yet. But it only took a couple days of me talking to him and saying, well what do you do? And I said okay, I'll go to a meeting so he took me to my first meeting If you would have talked to me about that being God in my life back then, I would have fought you on it In fact, the whole ride home, he tried to explain the program to me. And he mentioned spiritual program and that was it. I was gone. I was angry at that point. And you hear a lot of that in the programs. Like don't mention God because it will scare people away. but what I was taught and what I really believe is that the talk of God might scare people away but alcohol will bring them back if they really have a problem and that was sort of my case although I absolutely didn't want to get caught in some kind of religious organization you know I was a dead man I absolutely did not want to continue living as I was living and I knew that I couldn't stop drinking on my own. And I said, okay, I'll go to a meeting and started taking me to some meetings and I stayed sober from that point on. It's pretty miraculous that the biggest miracle in my life happened February the 23rd of 1989 where before that I was ready to blow my brains out because I couldn't stop drinking whiskey. And I'd show up at an AA meeting and never drink again. And that was without even owning a book yet, right? There was definitely something bigger going on than the book, the meetings, and the steps. And I came in contact with that first part of a succession of different levels of that power entering my life. And so they say that you only can absorb as much as your backside can take. So you've been sitting for a while, and you're probably ready to go home. As you know, I'll be back here at 9 o'clock, and we'll start with kind of a recap and then step two. So I hope to see a lot of you back tomorrow. And I hear the weather's going to be conducive for people to be inside tomorrow. Although it's really cooperating since I've been here. It's been really nice, so I feel really lucky. So again, thanks for spending the evening with me. Good morning. I'm Dan, and I'm an alcoholic. This is great, thank you It's a nice room Some nice rooms here Okay So 15, 9, 30 Okay So In between step one and step two, there's like this hallway. Behind me, I need to be clear on certain things because in order for me to come to believe that I need a power greater than myself to restore me to sanity, I have to understand what my insanity is and what I can't do anything about. so the book is interesting the way it lays out it first talks about physical craving out here and then the mental obsessions in my mind that take me to that first drink and then we talked about the second half of step one the unmanageability of my life which I also think it's the same for me as the unMANAGEABILITY of my spiritual life unmanageability of my spiritual condition and I talked about something that I don't usually hear a lot of people talk about a lot of people talk about problem centers in my mind but if it was just about a problem in my mind then maybe good therapists could take care of it or the right drugs could knock that edge off but that plenty of people, even on medication, will still drink. So I have to understand how this is a spiritual problem and why I need a spiritual solution. And it was interesting how this came to me because I was so used to going through from the beginning of the book all the way through those three sides. I was actually sitting in a restaurant. A friend had called and said she was having trouble with balking in the fourth step. So she asked if I would sit with her and see if I could get her motivated. And the best way to motivate somebody is by looking at why is it important that I finish this thing so we started talking about her drinking and the conversation wasn't clicking for me so it occurred to me that I should start backwards and we talked about the stuff on page 52 and much like we did last night, but I backed into it. We talked about I asked her about her personal relationships. If she was in a relationship that got so bad that she got so emotionally bothered by it, could she eventually drink? see my answer would be I know that if I sit in a bad relation long enough it could get I can get enough discomfort in my life to want to find some escape without a spiritual program without God, I'm talking about without any of the things that you might have today just alone on your own power could you drink again over a relationship she said no So I thought, oh, okay, well, maybe she's not that sensitive. This is what about your emotional nature? Emotional nature being part of my emotions that are inside, not necessarily what you see, right? Because I show you the face that I want you to see, but inside my emotions might be saying something different. I said, if you were emotionally tortured for long enough and hard enough, do you think you could drink? Do you think that would take you to a drink? Because I'm thinking to myself, yeah, I certainly could use a drink after a good emotional torture, right? She said no. We went through all these questions, and she wouldn't drink over any of them. And I thought, well, this is interesting. So then whenever I get cornered with not having a clue what to do when I'm working with someone, I put it back on them, just spin it around and say, okay, let's start over. If you sat in a relationship that was really difficult and you weren't getting out of it, what do you think that the obsessions what obsessions would you experience what would those that what would sitting in that still early for me I'm actually quite nocturnal if you sat in a bad relationship long enough there would be obsessions that would come to you that would feel like the natural thing for you to go to? What would those be? And she said, I'd curl up in my bed with food and I'd eat myself to death. And I thought, that's interesting. I went through the rest of the questions. What about your emotional nature? If you sat in a bad place emotionally, Where would that take you? It's the same thing. We went through all of these questions on page 52, and it occurred to me how great this is laid out because not everybody in Alcoholics Anonymous had a problem with alcohol. Some did, especially some overeaters because a lot of overeaters apparently get triggered by alcohol too because of the carbs and the sugar or whatever reason. I don't know, I'm not familiar with that program that well. But I realized the same thing happened with addicts. You go down this list and it's like where would these things ultimately take you? If it was a cocaine addict, I might drink before I go back to it, but eventually I'd go back to that, which I find this illusion of a solution. I have to find out what's true for me. And it's not just so that I can fit into AA. I haveと find out what's trуe for me because this is what's going to drive me to God. What is it that I need an act of God to save me from? because if I get clear on why I need a spiritual program and what it is exactly that's going to kill me, then I'm going to be much more clear on what my insanity is and my desperate need for more power in step two. Because if I have a problem other than what I'm focusing on and I go into step two looking for needing a power to restore me to sanity, And if I'm not clear on what that is, I'm going to step two just in this vague place and not necessarily needing a lot of power. But if I, if I am clear on it is that's killing me, I go to step 2 with the urgency of this being about life and death. and that's why it's so important to see what's true for me and some people start some people go off the wrong direction with this I think when you start asking questions in the beginning like well maybe you're not an alcoholic or maybe you don't even need this program and they it can sound sometimes like Some people are trying to weed Alcoholics Anonymous out of all these non-alcoholics. And I don't want that to be misunderstood. That's not my take on it. Because I, as a real alcoholic, don't really want to be in this club. I would rather just be able to go drink without consequences. I would rather you say I don't belong here because then I can go get a drink the purpose of that is to drive a real alcoholic to the point where he really can't doubt that he needs this thing The sad thing is that statistics are quite low as far as who actually stays and I think that this is possibly an important piece of that puzzle because if I don't see the depth of my problem then I'm not going to see as much value in the solution if I see the depth of my problem and it takes me to a place of desperation then I'm going to step two out of desperation not just because I want I like this idea of having this God in my life so that's basically what we talked about yesterday understanding what is it that I what are the manifestations of my physical powerlessness the mental state that takes me back to that over and over again obsessions and the unmanageability of my spiritual condition the second half of step one that sets up the condition conducive for that obsession to return or those obsessions to return and I believe that that becomes real important too not just in the beginning but also throughout a spiritual way of life because it's a way for me to check what my condition is and we'll come back to this later on in 10 and 11, actually. Well, we'll look at this again from a different perspective. So Was there any questions on that first step? We've got just a couple minutes before I can No questions? I had one oh sorry when the lady said that it was food that she would go to then what did you do or discussion this discussion after that was she actually started in a food program but they told her that AA is where the good program for the better sobriety was so she switched and although she had a lot of friends in AA so she ended up going to both programs again thank you sure somebody asked me about brought up the question, it was Matt brought up the question of choice before the meeting today and that's something you hear a lot of and I think it's it fits here and that was part of what we read a paragraph on choice and how people will say, and I talked a little bit about it, today I have a choice whether I'm going to drink or not. And I think it kind of... The book specifically talks about we've lost the power of choice. But I know that from a place of especially long-term sobriety, you can feel like you have a chance a choice, because the argument is, yeah, I could choose to drink today. And I hear that all the time, and it's like, yeah. My typical response is, I get that. I understand what you're saying. It's like your choice that you could throw yourself in front of a bus today. Could you choose to do that? And I say, of course. I could chose to throw myself in front off a bus. And he says, well would you show me? And I says, you can't, can you? He says, because it's really never been about choice. It's been about sanity. Because from an insane place, I chose to not drink, and I absolutely couldn't. But being brought to a place of sanity and experiencing times when I felt like a drink would really help this, and I couldn't drink even if I wanted to. right so it's never really been about choice it's never really mattered what my mind was saying to me it matters what my spiritual condition is right because if I've been restored to sanity it doesn't matter what I'm thinking I'm not going to drink because I wouldn't do an insane act from a sane place right so I don't get hung up on the word choice right because really it's about what's sane here alright so alright so at what point do we concede to our innermost self that we're alcoholic right I think the first thing to get straight here is, where's your innermost self? It's not here, as he points to his head. My innermOST self is not between my ears. My innERmost self is here in my gut, where I just know. And I think that that comes at different points for different people. But it also, I think that it's something that's easily forgotten. And that's part of our problem. But we'll read books. We'll read the big book. We'll listen to speaker tapes. We'll do all this stuff and hear the right words. but nothing will take me to the truth that's in my innermost self more than going through this book and attaching my own experience to it because if I see that I drank like Bill that I think like Bill that I felt like Bill if I could relate to the doctor's opinion if I can relate to all this stuff which is again why it's important to look at the physical part not just from the fact that did I lose control once I started, but seeing the consequences as a result of losing control because I cannot doubt the consequences that came to me from that lack of control. Because those are things that I can't dispute. Because when you look at the fact that when I started to drink I lost control, what comes to my mind is all those times that I didn't. because there were times that because of situations that kept me from drinking so there's that element of doubt but I look at all of the trash businesses that I've started and all of the relationships that died and all the times that I made alcohol more important than any of that and I see that if I just never drank. None of those problems, most of those problems wouldn't have been there. I have to see the trail of destruction behind me that I cannot doubt and admit to my innermost self that alcohol does something different to me than it does to some other people and I can't doubt that because of my experience so thanks so we'll start with step two now came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity I use we agnostics as a tool to go through step two now notice it doesn't say we believers it's going to talk about God here but we're not even at the third step here where we're making a decision to get this power So too much talk about my great belief in God here is I don't believe is as effective as looking at where I don'T believe, right? And people come to this different ways. You know, I came to this pretty much an atheist. You know I trashed my life and it was like obviously there wasn't a God that cared about what was happening with me, and I have my own past to look at that, you know, the influences that I grew up with. I grew up in a family with a lot of physical fighting between my parents, and I remember being, I must have been six years old, I remember, you Know, I lived in England, and there was churches all around the school, and they would marches to these churches, from school to the churches and especially during the holidays and make us sing hymns and say prayers and I didn't really understand a lot of it because I didn' t grow up in a religious home but my parents used to fight really bad and it used to really hurt me and I remember laying in bed trying this prayer thing and asking God to stop them from fighting to keep them together God didn't listen to me thank God they probably would have killed themselves if they stayed together, killed each other you know so all through life I lived my life based on the idea that if there was anything that I was to have in this world it was going to be based on what I do to get it that I wasn't going to wait for it to just be handed to me. Like, I'm not going to pray for things. You know, get out and work, right? That was what I believed. If you want something, go out and take it, which caused its own set of problems. But, you know, I was able to start a lot of businesses. And the idea that I had power in my life was strong. I felt I had a lot of capacity to, and I was sure I was going to retire at the age of 30. And what I failed to see was, yes, I was able to start a lot of businesses, but I wasn't able to keep them going because of the way I was living. and the other thing was I really wasn't that hireable because I was drinking and using so much. So I had to start businesses to survive and looking back it just was perfect the way it was working out but I think I might have hit a wall sooner if I had a job or if I Had regular jobs that I kept getting fired from but that wasn't the case. So, but still I was on this mission to be someone, to make myself something. And it just never happened because, again, as I mentioned before, I found myself in 1987 sitting on a couch looking around my life going, what happened? What happened to the dreams and the aspirations that I had? What happened? What happened to this great drive that I thought I had to succeed? It just never materialized. So I came to this thing not believing that there was a God. But that's not everybody's story. There's plenty of people that I've come across that could recite the Bible to me, that knew exactly what God looked like and how you're supposed to pray and just knew way more about religion than I did, way more than I knew. Way more about God. But you know where both ends come together? Where we both, where the believer and the non-believer can agree? It's we suffer agnostic behavior even with a belief system of what God is so I go through the agnostics underlining everywhere where I see that I did not rely on that power on a power other than my own and any believer can go through this and underline just as much as a non-believer because if I relied on that power that I had this big belief in then I may not have been here right so so I had all these ideas why this couldn't work and you know but the fact is that is that whatever power I was operating from look what a great job I've done here, I've got here on 45 it says lack of power that was our dilemma now dilemma is a great word dilemma just doesn't mean problem lack ofpower just isn't my problem lack of Power is my dilemma and a dilemma is when I looked it up in the dictionary I have this great dictionary it's old and it's six inches thick and it comes up with things there that just blow my mind because the wording in the dictionary it's I don't know anyway, it's a dilemma faced with alternatives that I don' t like or want faced with alternatives that I don't like or want and the word alternatives jumped out at me Oh, it talks about two alternatives on the page before. It says doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face. Doomed to an alcoholic death or to living on a spiritual basis. And only an alcoholic would have to think about that question, right? Alcoholic death, spiritual basis of life. Which one do I want? just another thing that kind of pushes me forward along this process because I don't want to continue living the way I'm living but I have no clue how to live on a spiritual basis of life so how could it possibly work we had to find a power by which we could live and it had to be a power greater than ourselves obviously, but where and how are we to find this power and that's exactly what this book is about so as I said I go through this paragraph I'm sorry, chapter underlining where I don't rely on there being a power other than my own setting aside my belief systems if I have one or trying to set aside my prejudices against this because alcohol hopefully has made me willing to have an open mind and 47 brings up an important question it says we need to ask ourselves but one short question do I now believe or am I even willing to believe that there's a power greater than myself? And for people that have done this a few times, there's another way to look at that. Do I now believe or am i willing to believe that there is a power greater than my self that can move me beyond where I am today in my process, in my program? The first time I went through this it was tough because I was still leaning heavily towards atheism but I knew in my gut and this comes back to your question about knowing in my innermost self that I'm an alcoholic and what that means so the desperation of my alcoholic problem was enough to make me willing to at least move forward willing to have an open mind to what's going to happen. Now, I've got to say this too, is that my home group was an example of people that had more than what I had... They were an example of people that had something that I wanted. So I think that my own home group was an important factor in the experience here because seeing more in them made me believe easier that there could also be more for me which took me to some other thoughts like I wonder if you can get healthier than your home group and I don't know how to answer that but just a question that came to me because it was certainly there was other groups that I went to that they basically stayed powerless they talked about things like I work all the steps every day in my life which I don't believe is true not least you couldn't do it the way I do it every day but we'll get more into that later in 10 and 11 but but basically staying powerless basically staying hopeless using meetings like unsupervised group therapy you like that term? unsupervized group therapy as opposed to a spiritual example of this program working on a spiritual basis. So, yeah, I was willing to believe because I saw it in the people around me that they had something more. And I was like, it's like I'm in a burning building and the fire is at the door behind me and there's firemen down below me saying, jump, we'll catch you. It's like, I don't want to jump. But the thing that's behind me is more scarier. to continue as I am drinking is more scarier than having an open mind about what you're going to tell me in this book as soon as a man can say that he does believe or is even willing to believe we emphatically assure him that he is on his way it has been repeatedly proven among us that upon this simple cornerstone a wonderful effective spiritual structure can be built a cornerstone is like the first stone in a structure a lot of times the cornerstone will have the name of the builder or the owner of the building but it's this first stone in place. Back on page 16 I'm sorry, on 17 it talks about let me just read it so I don't mess it up in the bottom of 17 the feeling of having shared in a common peril is one element in the powerful cement which binds us but that in itself would never have held us together as we are now joined so they're talking about the fellowship feeling of having shared in a common peril the tremendous fact for every one of us is that we have discovered a common solution in this book, in the 12 steps that we haven't a way out which we can absolutely agree and which we could enjoy in brotherly and harmonious action so they're talking about this powerful cement which binds us and this cornerstone in step two is set on top of that foundation of the fact that we have a fellowship and a solution and that's the basis of this thing we put this our willingness to believe is that first stone in place because we're going to be building this spiritual structure and we're gonna talk about that more in step three so I keep underlining as I go through this paragraph as I said where I see that I don't rely on any power other than my own and it's going to be talking about my prejudices against spiritual terms all the fight I have the resistance I have against a spiritual way of life because I had a lot of them I had this wall of arguments that I would use not only to you but also to myself why there couldn't possibly be a God that would work in my life you must be delusional if you think that there's something that will but that fight really didn't serve me well considering where it took me where my life ended up so I had to have this open mind and the question of God was a really difficult one for me and in meditation a little exercise came to me and I'd like to share that with you but first I'm going to start at 53 and pose some considerations. When I'm working with someone, when we get to this part of the book on page 53, where it says, when we became alcoholics, when I really knew that I was an alcoholic, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He's nothing. God either is or He isn't. what was your choice to be? So they're talking about either God is everything or God is nothing. God either is or he isn't. They're asking us to make a choice, and this is a really important choice.