Relief and Freedom – Steps Workshop – Part 2 of 2 – Kerry

Hi, I'm Carrie, I am an alcoholic. It's amazing how early in the morning a big book scares people away. I have patched room last night and it's like, she's going to talk about some steps. It's not going to be as much fun. I'll come for the dance later. Anyway, my sobriety date is September 6th, 1994. My sponsor's name is Peggy and my home group is The Way Out Group in Tannersville, Pennsylvania. If you ever find your way to that very cold, very desolate spot in America, you're all welcome. I wanted to talk, and one of the, when they asked me what I wanted to talk about this weekend, they were like, you can talk about anything you want. Pick your subject. I'm like, I'm an alcoholic. Don't give me that option because I'll talk about some frivolous stuff and entertain myself at your expense and we're not going to get a whole lot done but what I thought about it is there's not a lot of women who do big book studies that you'll find. You know, if you peruse speaker tape sites, you'll find there's a lot of women speakers. But there's not a whole lot of studies from a woman's perspective. And not that I don't like the more rugged sex. I think that women are somewhat underrepresented in Alcoholics Anonymous. At least in America they are. When you walk into a local AA meeting, there will be 30 men. And there will Be five women sitting in the corner very scared. um and in Alcoholics Anonymous also where I live is um big book sponsorship amongst the women is very weak and I think part of there's a lot of things that contribute to that I mean I think you know women we we often are you know the caretakers of our homes I mean i have four kids and married so it's like you know I have a lot responsibility in my house as well as you know obviously outside um and it's very easy to get caught up in our lives and forget that there's something that allows me to live today you know being Alcoholics Anonymous and so it's really easy to getting caught get caught in those responsibilities and sponsor you know in taking care of my family and forget things like sponsorship and I've met a lot of women over the years who really struggled with that where they you know were really good in the first five years of their recovery they get married they settle down they have a bunch of rugrats and all of a sudden, they find it difficult to make meetings. They find it difficult to sponsor. They're too busy to do these things. And then they wonder why at 10 years they want a divorce and they want to kill themselves or they're having 101 affairs or they get high. And we wonder why. Why are women not staying sober as long? Or their sobriety is not as fruitful. And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that And the sponsorship in America, as far as women go, is a very light thing. You know, I had a sponsor who used to tell me to take a bubble bath when I had resentment. Just eat chocolate, take a little bubble bath, honey, and it'll all be okay. You know? And like, you know what? That's well and good. I love bubble baths. Trust me on this one. I love chocolate. But that really doesn't deal with or treat the problems that I have. It just alleviates some of the symptoms and the problems remain. you know and the other thing too is it and I'm getting I don't want to denigrate my sex but you know women we could be a little bitchy oh and you know I mean we can be a little snarky and gossipy and you know she her boobs are bigger she's a little bit prettier so then I'm gonna like y'all and put you know and so I think that sometimes we fall into those roles I think you know even in sponsorship and fellowship in AA where it's you know we still have that mentality at times. I mean, anybody who's been to a woman's meeting and seen the clause come out will tell you that that can very much be the case. And so I think that all of these factors come together, and what I found is that as far as female sponsorship goes, it's a little light on substance, at least where I live. So that's how I end up here, by the way, is because it's not because I'm so awesome with the staffs or such a great sponsor, I'm such a great speaker because I'm not any of those things. I just happen to be somebody who has been doing this consistently working the steps and applying these principles in my life to the best of my ability for 15 years. I'm not going to count the first two years of my recovery because I was just stark raving mad but since the solution was presented to me and I was able to, I was graced with the ability to apply it, you know I have 15 years experience of applying these principles. And by virtue of that, I think that's something that is relatively rare in America. We have women with 20, 30 years of sobriety but not necessarily intensive step work. And I'll tell you why I have the intensive step work that I have and why I have the big book message I have. You know why? Because I was sponsored by men. Because when I got sober, where I got silver, people, and I talked about this last night, were not really into the recovery side of the triangle. They were very much into the fellowship. We made coffee, we hung out, you know, we went to dances, we did all these things, but we really didn't treat the alcoholic problem, we simply transferred it to Alcoholics Anonymous. We brought our sick alcoholic selves to Alcoholic Anonymous and just made it worse. Fed off each other's bullshit. I'm going to try, I promise y'all, I'll try not to curse too too much. But we fed off each other's sickness, and we made each other sick, and we didn't help each other up, we pushed each other down. And that's the kind of recovery that I came into. And obviously it didn't do much for me. And again, it wasn't because these people weren't trying, it wasn't because they were doing something malicious, simply the step message in Alcoholics Anonymous had become very non-popular or unpopular in the late 80s. And there's something about that, and I think a lot of it had to do with the kind of pop psychology thing, and we had a lot at rehabs. In fact, if you ever want to hear the theory as to why, at least in America, the big book fell out of favor, a friend of mine named Chris S., you can download him on XA, explains this much better than I ever could. But essentially what he said was that, you know, Phil Wilson died. Most of the old-timers who had originally helped to found Alcoholics Anonymous were dead. So we had these second, third, fourth generation alcoholics. We had psychology as a science began to grow immensely in the late 1900s. So you had, you now, this pop psychology, all of these things going on and there was a kind of symbiotic relationship between Alcoholics Anonymous and psychology itself as a science or a treatment. So what began to happen was Alcoholics Anonymous began to lose its signal as a purpose, and it began to get confused with things like group therapy, because group therapy was very popular in the late 60s, 70s, and 80s for that matter, and the concept of the self-help movement. You know, I'm going to tell you something. AlcoholicsAnonymous is not a self-health program. it's a kill self the self program my job as a recovered alcoholic is to not think about my effing self so when i hear people talking about it's like oh you're a member of a self-help program no i'm a memberof a 12-step fellowship but i think that concept that alcoholics anonymous was a self help program and that my jobas an alcoholic was to come here and complain about the stupid crap that went on in my life, you know, because the healing's in the sharing. You know, so I'm going to share about my problems and somehow I'm gonna dump them all out on the table and it's all... I'm getting better for the moment because I basically took a crap. I felt better momentarily, but the real problems, the significant issues that were going on with me were never truly addressed because all I did was vent. So we'd go to these open disgusting meetings, that's what I call them because I'm an intolerant little brat. Yeah. And we'd go to the open discussing meetings or open discussion meetings and we'd all talk about our problems. And if you look at, if you take an AA big book, if You take like a meeting list for New Jersey and you'll see like, I don't know, a couple of hundred open disgusting meetings and then you'll have like maybe like 50 big book and maybe like 70 step meetings or 12 and 12 meetings. because literature meetings really became not very popular because you have to read. The big book is written in a very antiquated language. It says things like the goose hung hard. I don't know what the hell that meant. You know, Bill was not the best writer. I think he thought he was. I mean, I think she was. I think they thought he would like this sublime writer because he was all polished and posh, but in reality, like the semicolon is a very good thing and I don' t think he ever used one in the entire big book. Um, you know, conditional, I mean, they're just very bad grammar. Um, and he uses like this lofty language. And I think it was Bill presenting himself as being like, you know, one of those upper crust, upper class sort of dudes. You know, I'm an ex-stockbroker and I'm very wealthy and I was very successful and then I drank myself half to death and I recovered and I am going to sound very verbose and important. And you know one of the funniest things about Bill Wilson? I was in Barnes & Noble about 10 years ago and I saw this book and it was The 100 Most Important People of the 20th Century and Bill Wilson was in this book and I thought this was kind of interesting because I was like oh it must be for AA and it wasn't it was actually for his business acumen you know Bill Wilson not only was he a genius when it came to the founding of this fellowship but beyond that he was actually an incredibly savvy businessman and some of the ideas that he have are actually followed today immensely you know, so he was not only a cutting edge thinker, an out of the box thinker when it came to treatment of alcoholism but he was an out-of-the-box thinker when it became to all kinds of stuff which I think is kind of interesting but it also makes us think you know that this guy he was a very intelligent man and he was very successful in his life And so he wrote this book, and he wrote this book in a language that appealed to what the American aristocracy, which is kind of funny because supposedly in America we don't have that, but we do. And so it was really written in a way that people in the upper class would understand it. So you take somebody from like a little brat who's 16 years old in the 1990s, and I read this book and I go, what? So I think that there's a lot of reasons why the, you know, why the big book fell out of favor. You know, I think that language changed, values changed. I think that when people from this, you know, who grew up in the 60s and 70s read this book, you know, with the revolution that we had, the cultural revolution and this embracing the concept of freedom as opposed to stuffy, you know, snarkyism of the earlier years, I I think that, you know, people felt that this book really didn't apply to them. I think they felt that it didn't... I know I felt it didn' t apply to me. So I think for all of these reasons, you now, Alcoholics Anonymous began to die a slow death in America. It wasn' t that we didn' T have people coming into AA because there are alcoholics everywhere and alcoholics will seek, you kno, a beacon no matter what because alcoholism is a deadly disease and we know we' re dying, you kow. And so we'll seek any life raft. But the real question is whether or not Alcoholics Anonymous was successful. And something that is really interesting, it's something that's debated in big book circles a lot. If you've ever been on a Facebook big book forum, you will know. Big book thumpers and alcoholics in general can be very contentious bunch. And they will argue over the meaning of a word. They will argue a return. you know they're just they'll argue for the sake of arguing so the idea is that I think explain this and try to put this in a way that makes sense to people other than myself you know I think that when when we're looking at what I'm looking at this and when I'm looking at why Alcoholics Anonymous has become what it was and why I don't feel that it is as successful today as it was when it was originally founded. You know, the big book says that they had a 75% recovery rate. It says it in the forward to the second edition. It said that 50% of all the people who came into Alcoholics Anonymous and really tried got sober at once. 25 came in, tried, relapsed, then got sober and another 25% improved. So essentially, 75% of the people who came into Alcoholics Anonymous got sober in a short period of time, whether or not they got sober immediately or they got sore after a few slips. Now I have a friend, his name is Chris R., and he's like a stickler for these facts and figures regarding AA success rate. And his suggestion is that AA in America has about a 6% recovery rate. I have another friend who I'm going to trust a little bit more because he's actually a professor of statistics in Ann Arbor. And he says that we have a 26% recovery rate if you take all factors, such as the fact that there are many more members that are coming into Alcoholics Anonymous. You kind of boil it down, all of these things. He says that it's a 20, we have 26% success rate. So I'm gonna go with that one, you know, because I have taken statistics. So I am like, that really makes sense to me. So wondering, we need to ask ourselves, what I ask myself is why isn't Alcoholics Anonymous had a 75% success rate in 1955? And in 2011, when this person came up with this statistic, we have a 26% success rating. What happened to AlcoholicsAnonymous in those years? And what happened to alcoholics anonymous in those year is the fact that the recovery side of the triangle was essentially ignored and eliminated. And Alcoholics Anonymous became therapy. This is not a therapy program. You know, it's amazing to me. I'm a psych student. I'm working on my master's in psychology. So I really liked that lecture last night. I'm probably going to steal some of that crap for some papers I have to write. But so I'm an alcoholics student. I'm also a psych students. So I have a general understanding of treatment of mental illness. I have an understanding of different types of therapy. And I will tell you that Alcoholics Anonymous is still, to this day, cutting edge when it comes to the treatment of obsessive-compulsive behavior. And I'll tell you why. It's because AlcoholicsAnonymous is essentially cognitive behavioral therapy. It really is. Anybody who's ever taken a psych class will be like, yeah, that's pretty much what we do. Cognitive behavioral therapy, but it was cognitive behavioral theory before that word even existed. Before behavioralism existed, by the way, too. You know, like what, you know, let's really look at this. In fact, alcohol, essentially psychology has robbed from Alcoholics Anonymous many of our ideas. You know the concept of group therapy or talking and sharing with one another. I mean that's, we kind of invented that. The idea of, you Know, Alcoholics Aonymous, we've talked about this all the time. It says, you can't think yourself into right action, you act yourself into the right thinking. Well, I mean, we kinda invented that too, right? Isn't that essentially cognitive behavioral therapy, if you want to make it real simple? Yeah. The concept of alcoholism as a disease. Prior to Alcoholics Anonymous and prior to Dr. Silkworth suggesting that alcoholism was a disease, it was considered to be a moral failing. I mean, there still is that stigma of alcoholismo as if somehow we're morally corrupt being an alcoholic. I mean absolutely. Or somehow we have character flaws, so to speak, or personality disorders, whatever you want to call it. But essentially the concept of alcoholism as a disease was popularized by Alcoholics Anonymous. In fact, if you read your big book, the first 50-something pages is really about describing not only the symptoms of alcoholismo but explaining exactly why or the idea that we need to start thinking about alcoholism as less of being something about, something wrong with our moral fiber and more thinking about there's something wrong not only with how we think but also our physical, you know, being what we call the allergy but what the doctor last night explained better obviously as the abnormal reaction of the alcoholic when we drink you know and that spiritual malady you know all of those things together you know being the disease of alcoholism you know what was suggested prior to Alcoholics Anonymous was that alcoholics drank because they wanted to that we wanted there was something that was somewhat perverse about us and essentially we drank because we didn't like people and we wanted to make their lives miserable and drinking made us feel good and we did it because we were weak willed and there was nothing wrong with us and that it was our moral character as opposed to something that was beyond our control at work. So Alcoholics Anonymous popularized this idea that alcoholism was a disease, the disease concept of alcoholism. And of course, you know, the AMA and the APA ran with that, but it was really AA that brought that to the consciousness of the world. so in reality for many many years psychiatry has robbed AA of all of our ideas and then they took them and what happened was is Alcoholics Anonymous consigned the treatment of alcoholism to psychiatry we said okay you guys have been doing this research this stuff so we'll let the rehabs deal with the recovery of alcohol and we'll just come here and talk about our problems our Lexuses and our dogs and our divorce and our bull crap. And we'll let the treatment of alcoholism go to the psychiatrists, the counselors, the doctors. And again, I'm not denigrating. This is my profession. I'm actually a counselor. So I'm nicht talking about this in terms of saying that I don't believe in psychiatry. What I'm explaining to you is why Alcoholics Anonymous does not have the recovery rate that it used to have. Because basically we sat back on our fat asses, drank coffee and talked about our problems and let the treatment of alcoholism be transferred to institutions outside of Alcoholics Anonymous. So why am I here today, and why do I talk about the big book, and why is it that there is a huge movement moving towards the treatment of alcohol in the 12 steps? Because it stopped working. It stopped working, rehabs closed, people couldn't get sober, where people were coming in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous like a revolving door. And somewhere along the line, some old-timer stepped up to the plate, and I'm going to call him Don P., and his ilk, and there was a bunch of them who had 40-something years of sobriety, who stepped up on the plate and said, you know what, you young people just ruined AlcoholicsAnonymous, and I am going to tell you what you are doing wrong. And the old-timers stepped up and said you know, I knew Bill Wilson. He would die if he heard this bullcrap in this meeting. So let me sponsor you, and I'm going to teach you how to do this. And so there's been this revival, what friends of mine like to call pockets of enthusiasm. And it's not pockets anymore. When I first got into this step process, and I started really working the steps ardently out of the big book, it was myself and my husband and a handful of our sponsees and nothing. We didn't have a meeting that we can go to where people studied the big books the way I'm gonna talk about today. We didn' t have that. But what we did is we had meetings in our homes, and we read the big book together, and then we went to the open disgusting meetings and hoped that we can grab more people to bring back to our house to read the Big Book in our kitchen. Because I've been thrown out of meetings for talking about the Big Books. I've being shut down where like, you know, we'd be in a step meeting, we'd talk about the fourth step, and people would say, there are no directions to the fourth steps. And I'd be like, yeah, there are. They're in the Big book. Oh, you can't talk about The Big Book here. Why? This is FNAI. sorry you know so I mean there was a great antagonism to the big book and so what I think when I started to do this you know we were kind of out on a limb and sort of in no man's land and we're kind of like blazing a trail and there are people who had done it ahead of me their sponsors and friends who you know who have been doing this a really long time took me under their wing and said no kid you don't know anything this is how you do it and I talked about one of those men last night his name was Joe H and so there are people who have done this before me who took me under their wing and said this is the program of Alcoholics Anonymous because this is another thing that we do and I don't think you do this here but in America we do this we mix up the concept of program and fellowship when we talk about the program of Alcoholic Anonymous what we're talking about is the 12 steps. Those are traditions, steps are over there. The program of Alcoholics Anonymous is 12 steps the fellowship is what we are doing right now the fellowship is when all of us come together and we talk about the program of alcoholics anonymous or we have coffee or we eat steak and laugh that's the fellowship of alcoholic anonymous this over here is our service structure we have the traditions and the concepts so three things come together to make that three-sided triangle so when I talk about coming into the fellowship what I mean is when I started to go to meetings when I talked about practicing the program of alcoholics anonymous I'm talking about those 12 steps and those were things that I had to be disabused up when I first started to have this spiritual experience because I would say I work you know you know I work a program you know and my I work my program and my sponsor feel like really So, you know, you founded Alcoholics Anonymous? You wrote those steps? There's a Cary program. Is there a Cray and Anonymous that I need to know about? Is this a club of one? I don't work my program. I work the program. There'sa difference. See, when I work my programme, I can, like, pick and choose what I want to do. I don' t want to make amends to that person. I don''t want to write that resentment. I don ''t wantto listen to that suggestion of my sponsor. I can go... You know, whenI work my programmes, I'm, like , really working my programme. When I work THE programme, I'm applying these principles in toto. I don't get to choose what principles I like. You know, and that's the thing is we talk about this being a suggested program of recovery. Now, here's the deal. The 36 principles of Alcoholics Anonymous are not suggested individually. It is a suggested programming recovery in to-to. Which is, I didn't understand that. Like, I thought AlcoholicsAnonymous was like a cafeteria. I can pick and choose what I want and they used to say, take what you want and leave the rest. Well, yeah, I'll take the boyfriends. I'll take the approval and acceptance. I'll takethe feeling really freaking important in a meeting and sharing my bullcrap and having everybody feel all sorry for me because my life is terrible. And I'lltake all of those things, but I won't, you know, self-reflection, self-work and self-sacrifice for others. I'll leave that rest. We don't take what we want and leave the rest. Where is that in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's not. It says there are requirements, there are musts. There are no musts in AlcoholicsAnonymous. Really? I don't know about you, but my big book says you must do a lot of things. So there's a lot misinformation about what Alcoholics Anonymous was and a lot is misinformation I had. And I thought I knew what it meant to recover from alcoholism. What I knew about recovery from alcoholismo was being a whiny brat, and sitting in meetings and polluting them with my bull crap. That's what I knew about recovery from alcoholism. And when I was introduced to what it really meant to be an alcoholic, and what it realmente meant to work the program of recovery, my life changed dramatically. Because I stopped dictating my own reality. So, and again, you're asking And why am I giving you a history lesson of Alcoholics Anonymous? Why am I sitting here ranting about these things? Because it's fun. I like writing people up. But also because I really want you to understand why it is that I'm so passionate about this and why I want AlcoholicsAnonymous to be better. I want that 75% success rate, goddammit. Because I'm tired of watching people die. I'm tire of funerals. I am tired of that stuff. I am tired of watching people rotate in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous. And the thing is, when we talk about dying an alcoholic death, I'm not talking about drinking yourself to death. I mean, that's the easy way out. I'm talking about that horrible, disgusting, degrading death that you do stone cold sober. When your soul dies. When you're empty, alone, depressed, anxious, and the barrel of a gun looks like a good damn idea. That's the death I'm talking about. I'm talk about doing things to yourself, degrading yourself to just not feel anymore without putting a drink in your body. Because then I have nothing to anesthetize it. I'm entirely present for the stupid things I do. And dying inside. Has anybody ever felt like that? Yeah? That's called untreated alcoholism. I didn't know that. I thought that was just being an individual. individual. I thought it was being cute. No, you know, doing incredibly stupid things and degrading myself is not being cute, it's called dying an alcoholic death. Now the thing is, if I persisted in living that way, it would be, I mean, by the time I was two years sober, I wanted to kill myself again. I mean I had already killed myself and I died for two minutes and I was brought back to life So God didn't want me because, you know, I was dead and, you know, still here, you know, and I kind of, I didn't look at it like we have a really good paramedics, you know. I looked at it like God rejected me, you know, as like another rejection because everything's always about me and my worth. So like, you know, when I died, I couldn't die. I woke up intubated, you know, in the ICU with stuff sticking out of me and I was like, great, now God doesn't even like me. I can't even die, you I can't drink. I can' t live. Everybody hates me. Crap. And I lived like that for a couple of years before I got sober, too. So the idea is at two years sober, at 20 years old, I'm looking at my life. I'm looki ng at my beautiful daughter. I'm loo king at my wonderful husband, who, by the way, is at home right now with my four kids. I've got a great life and a great husband. Think about that for an minute. I'm hanging out here in beautiful Australia with palm trees and sunshine and wonderful people. He's in snowy Pennsylvania. with four kids, you know, and he's proud of me for being here. How awesome is that? He's a little resentful too because Australia is like his dream place, you know. He's sort of like a redneck hippie so I think he'd fit in really good here because he's very laid back but he's also like very like, you know, likes to chop wood and do like real rugged stuff, you know, so, you know, like coming to Australia is like his dream, and he's like, well, why did you get to be asked? And I was like, because I'm special. No, kidding. But the idea here is this, is that I had this great life, I had this beautiful daughter, I had all these things in front of me, and all I wanted to do was die. And I wanted it to do, well I wanted her to die because I had untreated alcoholism and I didn't know it. I didn' t know that my alcoholism wasn' t being treated by coming into meetings and sharing about my problems. I did' n't know that there was something greater wrong with me. I di' n' t understand the concept of a spiritual normality. I didn't understand that selfishness and self-centeredness was the root of my problems. I didn' t realize that I was truly dishonest. I thought dishonesty was lying outright, telling you that I'm very important in America. I'm famous. I make a lot of money. I have a lot of prestige. So that's a lie. That's an outright lie because I'm really not any of those things. I thought that that was what being dishonest was all about, was telling you something that wasn't true. But I didn't realize that my true dishonesty was telling myself things that were not true. That my real dishonesty, it was when the way that I perceived myself in the world, not what came out of my mouth. So I walked around with this untreated alcoholism. I walked Around with this and somebody shined a light on me and told me that my perception of AI, my perception of God, my reception of self was infinitely skewed. And it was the most painful and the most awesome revelation I ever had. It was painful because my ego said, well, what do you mean what I've been doing thus far hasn't been working? What do you mean I've be in AA since I was 13 years old? I've in AA and Alateen since I was 13 year old. I'm an Alatot. You know, I used to go to Alatee meetings drunk and they used to politely, the Alanons would politely go, don't you think you want to go upstairs to the AA meeting? I'm like, nah, that'd make me stop drinking. You You know, I'm going to hang out down here in Alateep. But it was through those fellowships that I was able to at least halt the consumption of alcohol. But it wasn't through this process, this transformative process of the 12 steps, that I became a woman of substance and integrity. Which is something that I couldn't conceive of prior to. So with that being said, what I really want to talk to you about is what we as alcoholics and what we as members of a 12-step fellowship, because there's not just alcoholics in these rooms, what we, as members of a twelve-step fellowship can do to assist those who are still struggling with these diseases, who are still afflicted. And what we can do is have this experience ourselves and then transmit it. Because there's a principle at work in Alcoholics Anonymous that says that we can't transmit what we don't have. I can think about the steps. I can have an intellectual... Actually, it turned out that I was a pretty smart lady. Like, I didn't know that because I never got past the ninth grade in high school. And that was probably because I didnít go. so I had a ninth grade education and I was a high school dropout when I came into Alcoholics Anonymous. And our educational system sucks. It really does. America, you know, we all know, everybody knows that America's like our exports are celebrities and like, you know, fashion. I'm not about it. But our educational system really sucks. So, I mean, like I had ninth grade education, but I might as well have had a fifth grade, you know, and that's the God's honest truth. Um, so I had this hard, I had no education. I was, you know, essentially, you know, taking up air. I had no concept of, you know, civic duty or responsibility. You know, I was really just an empty shell, you know? And when I began to experience or have this experience with the steps, I began to realize that I was a lot more intelligent than, and that was my perspective, by the way. I wasn't actually an empty shell because none of us are. But I thought I was. I thought that I was an utterly useless human being who would never succeed at anything because everything I had tried to do, including die, didn't work. So I just assumed I was in epic failure and I would continue to be an epic failure. And I'd work at Walmart and I asked people, do you want fries with that? And that would be my lot in life. Because I didn't believe that I could be anything more than just that. And not that any of those things are bad things, but the fact is, is that I couldn't conceive of being anything other than a nothing. And so what I found out through this process was that that wasn't even remotely the case, that being a woman of integrity and a woman, you know, I want to say a woman of information. I had no idea, you know, because everything I had tried and everything I had done had utterly failed because I was doing it. I was driving my life. I was making decisions. I Was thinking if you're thinking just don't man, it's just bad. You know, my thoughts owned me and I was constantly in sprawl with my own mind. And when you're always thinking all the time like you can't hear anything. So it's a wonder that I didn't absorb anything in school because my head was constantly screaming at me or I was drunk, you know, or both, you know, but I mean, that was pretty much my state. If I wasn't drinking, I was crazy. And if I was crazy, I wasn'T, you KNOW, it was just that constant thing. So essentially I didn'T know that I had all of this wealth inside of me because it was so blocked by all of that fear and all of that anxiety and all of that sense of unworthiness and feeling as if I was a worthless human being, that my fear was that if I plumbed the depths of who I was, I might find out that it was empty. And the confirmation of being empty was a terrible thing. It's one thing to suspect you're nothing, it's another thing to know it. And I was afraid that if I looked inside myself deep enough, I would find that I was nothing. So I skated along the surface of my life. I just skated and I never looked. And what this program asks me to do is to take a damn good look at that nothing and realize that none of us are nothing. I mean, I'm sure we've all heard that statement, God don't make junk. Well, yeah, he does. It's a matter of perspective. The only thing that's wrong with my life is the way that I perceive it. Everything is always as it should be, and it's always a matter of me changing my perspective or my expectations on who or what you or me or anything else should be. Once I arrange my expectations to line up with reality, I have freedom. But when I'm expecting reality to modify itself to appease my expectations, I'm lost. so with that being said is how do we do that because that's really the thing we hear this statement live and let live, let go and let God well if I know how to live and Let Live I feel like there's something better with my time I could be at the beach right now instead of talking to you guys Melworth is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in my life and I've been to lots of really cool places because one ofthe really cool things about being a circuit speaker is I get to go to cool-ass places and see awesome people. And I will tell you that this is actually the top of my list of cool places that I have gotten to go. And, of course, I have lots more places to go, but I think it's going to stay there. So, like, I could totally be down at the beach right now or hanging out, like in the city, like shopping instead of like at 11, 10 on a Saturday morning talking to you all. So why is it that I'm here? Why is it that I have to put this energy into the program of recovery? Because the fact is, I don't know how to live and let live. I don'T know how TO let go and let God. Those are ideas, those are concepts. The slogans are beautiful things, but the slogans are things that we apply after we've had a spiritual experience. Before you have a spiritual experience, we say things like live and LET live, and let go and let god, and it's like, I have no concept of how to let go and let God because all I know how to do is be God. I know how to dictate my reality, dictate your reality and demand you live up to it. So letting go and let god? I don't know howto do that. So the intent or the purpose of these 12 steps is to allow me to learn how to do that It says to enable me to find a relationship with a power greater than myself And it's a power by which I can live. You know, so that's the purpose of this book. You know it used to be a coaster. At one time it held open the window of my apartment. One time I actually threw it at somebody in a disgusting meeting. I was really, really violent back then. I didn't have a problem like tossing stuff across the room if somebody annoyed me. I broke a lot of remote controls. I used to call it my Irish temper, and I thought it was adorable. Other people didn't think it was so adorable. So, you know, my big book has been a lot of things over the years. It's served a lot for me. It's had a lot purposes. But the greatest purpose it ever served was to help me to gain freedom. Freedom from self. Freedom from alcoholism. and the freedom to be a woman of authenticity. Now, being a woman of authenticity means that I have flaws. It means that I am not perfect. It means THAT I AM INCREDIBLY, SPECTACULARLY DEMENTED AT TIMES. BUT I'M ABSOLUTELY OKAY WITH BEING A MORON. FOR ME, BEING A WOMAN OF AUTHENTICITY IS EMBRACING NOT ONLY THE WONDERFUL things about me, but also the crazy things about me. Because if I wasn't crazy, I wouldn't be me. We all have things about ourselves that we don't like. We allhave aspects of ourselves that we wish were different. And we also have things about ourselfsthat make us uniquely ourselves. This program isn't here to erase those things. It's not going to shave us down and shape us into automatons. Working the steps and applying spiritual principles to our life does not make us spiritual robots. What it does, it makes us us without the noise in our head. So I still have a foul mouth sometimes. Actually, the more I try not to curse, the more I do because it's like, you know, try not to think about the word penguin. All you do is think about penguins. So, you know, but it's one of those things, you know, I'm covered in tattoos. I'm snarky and sarcastic, you know I'm weird you know I have all my little piccadillos but they don't own me the way they used to. You know when we talk about the word sarcasm, sarcasm means to cut. You would have a conversation with me walk away feeling like you were nothing and you would wonder why because what was it that I said because I never actually said anything but I just talked to you in a way that made you feel like you're an unworthy piece of crap because that's how I felt and I felt that it was important that everybody feel the way I did because I'm very much about equality. So rather than learning to pull myself up to being equal with you, instead my job was to lessen you to make you feel as empty as I thought I was. So there are certain aspects of my personality that have definitely changed through this process. But it didn't take away who I was, it made me a better me. And I think the reason why I'm talking about this in the very beginning of this, this workshop thing that I'm doing is to kind of set our expectations on what this process is all about. I mean, I think that for me, I thought that, you know, the steps were like a magic pill and I was going to wake up to be a different person one day. And then all of a sudden everything in my life would be perfect and I would have perfect hair and my butt would be like perfectly sculpted and everybody would think I was wonderful. Well, that's not what this is about. This isn't about waking up to being a fairy princess. This is about waking up to being real human being. I walked around as subhuman and I became a human. This process for me is about, you know, we talk about getting right-sized. And humility isn't about being humiliated. It's about understanding exactly who I am in the relationship to everything else. I'm not any more important or less important than anybody else. But in my mind, in my perception, I am. I am incredibly important because I'm me. And everything that I think and feel is, or you think and feels, and I think feel as an extension of my ego because everything you do is a reflection of my worth because I am constantly searching for somebody telling me I'm okay. Because I have no concept that I am myself as I am okay so this process is really about giving us that sense of self giving us that sense up it gives us a compass it gives me an internal compass to know exactly who I am it's like having GPS you know I have a GPS I get lost but I always know who I have I don't always have to like it that's the other thing actually Belinda and I were talking about that this morning we were talking about feelings and you know about the alcoholic you know you know I put alcohol on my body for so long that I became incapable of handling any emotion that made me uncomfortable because alcohol anesthetized everything so it was like being in a dark room and you when you turn on the lights it's painful it's bright it's overwhelming it's oh well as an alcoholic I put the alcohol down and I begin to experience normal human emotions I have no idea what to do you know the light and sound is so bright I have mechanisms no coping skills to help process these things because I've atrophied them through my addiction in my alcoholism and of course doing all the things that we alcoholics do because we don't just drink we blot out the intolerance of our situation through all kinds of means you know you look around a day and we can look at the people who are living on a spiritual basis people are not we know you know those are us who are running up gambling debts and you know going to the doctor clinic to get you know antibiotics for the clap on a pretty regular basis and all those other things there's a people who are blotting out the intolerance of their situation we're doing anything in anything to not face themselves by stuffing the psychic and spiritual payment of untreated alcoholism through money food sex work approval you know we do these things as alcoholics to you know a greater or lesser degree but when those instincts run wild and begin to cause on manageability in our lives were in untreated alcoholism so you know I just absolutely lost what the hell I was talking about sorry about that so let's So the next subject, so let's talk about what it means to be an alcoholic. We talked about that last night. We had that wonderful presentation on the doctor's opinion on, you know, the physical allergy, the physical, the abnormal reaction of the alcoholic, meaning that we for some reason are able to consume copious amounts of alcohol. Our tolerance is high. You know, I have a non-alcoholic sister. She's awesome. She's incredible. She's beautiful. She's the nurse. She's very successful in her life for the most part. She's a wonderful human being. And she says things like, you know, I'm going to have a nightcap. And I think, what? She says, well, I've just got to have half a glass of wine and then go to sleep. And I'm like, such a waste. Such a waste, you now. She says like, I am feeling the first one. I'm feeling the fist hit of crack. You know, okay. you know so she said these things and she's not an alcoholic she's not having the same physical experience with alcohol than I have and I love her to death that she says these crazy things and I just smiled and I go good for you and she said to me one day and I was maybe like I must have been like seven or eight years sober and she was like well you know you've been doing that a thing a really long time you haven't had a drink do you think that it was just a phase I'm like I don't know having sex with 40 year old men for booze was that a phase? No. I'm pretty sure that was a lifestyle choice, man. I don't really think that that was something I was really in control of, nor am I willing to make that experiment again. I thought I'm closer to 40 now, so maybe that's not so gross. But you see my point. It's not alcoholics think those things. They think that, you know, prostituting one's self for booze is a phase. Alcoholics, we know better. We know it's not a phase, it's an affliction. You know, the book talks about it, calls it an afflation for a reason because it is a damn afflaction. So the non-alcoholic reacts to alcohol very differently than we do. They think about alcohol very different than we do because they're having a very different experience with alcohol than we did. And the very technical, wonderful explanations to that. You know, I love the fact that the big book doesn't do that. I'm glad that Bill doesn't go into the whole biochemistry I've taken classes on addiction medicine they're really dry and boring and sometimes I actually want to throw my textbook at my professor and just say shut up we don't care why we're alcoholics, we want to know why how can you not drink man, that's really what's important, you know but anyway, the idea here is that the mind and the body of the alcoholic is different than the average drinker and I don't really care how I got there I don't care if it's genetic. I don'T CARE IF IT'S BIOCHEMICAL. I DON'T CARe WHY. I DONT CARE WHAT GENES ARE IN CONTROL OF IT. BECAUSE HONESTLY, IT DOESN'T CHANGE THE FACT THAT I'M AN ALCOHOLIC. AND IT REALLY DOESNT CHANGE WHAT I HAVE TO DO TO TREAT MY ALCOHOLISM. SO I DONOT GIVE A CRAP. MY PROFESSORS DON'T REALLY LIKE THAT. THEY THINK IT'S REALLY QUIRKY AND UNUSUAL THAT SOMEBODY IN GRADUATE SCHOOL DOES NOT GIVEA CRAP ABOUT HOW ALCOHALISIM, WHAT THE CAUSES OF ALCOhoLISOM. THEY THING IT'S REALTY ADORABLE. but that's God's honest truth I just don't care because there's nothing that's going to treat it or fix it except for Alcoholics Anonymous in my experience now we talk about the hopeless alcoholic the big book talks about the hopeless alcohol over and over again it says hopeless alcoholic what does it mean to be a hopeless alcoholic you know or the alcoholic of the hopeless variety what it means to be an alcoholic of the homeless variety is not a gin swilling vagrant I mean that was what I thought it meant like I needed to have dirty pants in a trench coat, you know, and a bottle, you know, in a paper bag in my coat, and I had to smell of piss. And I thought that's what it meant to be a hopeless alcoholic. No. Well, being a hopeless alcohol means that all other human power to relieve my alcoholism failed me. That's what it means to be an alcoholic. So it means that getting a better boyfriend, a better job, bigger boobs, you now, a smaller hiney, being important, getting good grades, getting all of those things will not cure my alcoholism because alcoholism is an internally caused condition, not an external condition. I am not an alcoholic because I grew up in an alcoholic household. My big book tells me that alcoholism does not cause it. It says to me that, and I love this, when I do this big book study, there's not really enough time to go page by page, chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph. And I don't want to do that because I'm going to cheat you out of the experience of finding a sponsor and doing that sitting at her kitchen table or his, sorry guys I forget you exist and doing this amongst yourselves but what I want to do is give you the highlights and the concepts to get you fired up my job is to get your enthusiastic and excited about this process whether you've done it once or ten times look man, I've been through the steps probably once a year for the past 15 years there was a couple of years where I kept working the steps over and over and again because I was really really really crazy crazy. Um, and it really helped, but I mean, I've been through the steps consistently over and over again. I am not a one and done. There are people in AA who are a lot of big book thumpers who are, but, um, I'm too crazy for one and none. So I need to keep going through the stats and continually have a new experience because I have an ego which likes to morph itself into different things. And so I have to continually be willing to surrender to this process and have a New experience so that my ego can be kept under check by god because sometimes my ego likes to tell me that i'm being spiritual when i'm really just being stupid and a lot of times my spiritual pride masquerades as good intentions so for me i have to continually have a new experience and i'm continually learning in fact when i come home from australia i have an appointment to meet with my sponsor to have it to write another four step she was very kind to tellme that she would wait till i came back because she didn't want me all demented and writing a four-step while I was like talking to you guys because you know lord knows what I would do then but the fact is is that I'm consistently willing to have a new experience with these steps so my job in in these talks is not necessarily to give you the information to work them but to explain the necessity and my experience with them to get you excited about it so that you will continue to have that new experience whether you have 30 years or 30 days there's nothing wrong There is nothing, and I love that there's this guy whose name is Bob, I'm sorry, Bob Blank. No last names, I forgot that. America, we kind of do that. We all use our last names. But anyway, there's This Guy, and he used to say there's nothing, that a step worth doing is a step forth doing wrong. Meaning there is no way to work the steps wrong if you're willing to work the steps because the truth is is that it's the willingness and the energy that one puts into this transformative experience than what you literally put on that piece of paper when you're writing a four-step. That doesn't mean that I'm not a stickler and I don't make my sponsees rewrite things and I won't sit there with a red pen when we're doing our fifth step or any of those other things, but what I mean by that is this, is that if you're willing to have an experience and you're willing to do this, we can blunder through this blindly and still come out the other side shiny and new. That's the beautiful thing about this, is that the steps themselves, however we try to attempt them, are transformative And as long as we're willing to put aside our concepts and ideas and are willing to have a new experience, we will absolutely have one. You know, so whether or not you're the perfect anal-intentive dot your I's and pressure T big big thumper, or you're a little bit more chilled and relaxed, it doesn't mean that you're not going to have an experience with the steps. Because the message itself has steps in wait. So, again, the willingness to have this experience or to grow into it and continue to grow is what's necessary for us to what we call broaden and deepen our experience. You know, Bill says that we need to broaden and deepen our spiritual experience. He says that this experience, AI, is but a beginning. But what really is important is our demonstration, the demonstration of these principles in our homes, occupations, and affairs. So in reality, the experience that I have in Alcoholics Anonymous is secondary to the experience that I had in my life. My job is to bring these principles and this experience I have in AA and apply it to the life that AA gave me. That I'm not to live my life in AA, I'm to live by myself. I'm going to live with AA. So we all know that it's a lot easier to be really nice and awesome in AA and then we go home and we kick the dog and yell at our husbands and we gossip on the phone and we do all these things and we're snarky at work that's not what this program is intended for us to do and when we do it I fall short but the fact is it's what I do with my life and the way that I live it that's more important than whether or not I chair a meeting or make coffee I need to do those things because it's about service and giving back to AA, but the true test of this experience with the 12 steps is what does my life become after I've applied them? And transferring these principles into the practical application in my life. That didn't make any sense, but I'm sure you understand it. It was not even remotely grammatically correct. But the practical application of these principles in my Life. Yeah, that was what I had to say. You know, so my book tells me, it says that the body of the alcoholic is quite as abnormal as my mind. That it doesn't satisfy me to be told that I can't control my drinking just because I'm maladjusted to life. And trust me, I am and was. Does not, that I was in full flight of reality. Uh-huh. That I was outright mental defective. Yeah, I mean, I got diagnoses that absolutely confirm that I'm mentally defective, but these things were true to some extent to, in fact, to considerable extent with some of us, but we are sure that the bodies of the alcoholic are sickened as well. Our belief that in the picture of the alcoholic which leaves out the physical factors incomplete. So what that's telling me is that I'm not an alcoholic because my life sucked. I'm an alcoholic cause I'm a alcoholic and my life sucks, yeah. But one of the concepts or ideas that I had to be disabused of when I began this process and when I was really presented with what the first step was all about was the idea that I was an alcoholic because bad things happen to me and I drank because bad things happened to me. See, the thing about being an alcoholic is I drink because I drink. And I drink at incredibly dumb times and I do incredibly stupid things and my behavior doesn't make any sense to myself so I have to explain things to myself in order to make sense. I mean, really, do we, after like a really bad night of like swilling vodka and fighting, you know, do you really sit there and go, you know, it was absolutely utterly insane what I did. I absolutely knew this was going to happen. My behavior doesn't make any sense whatsoever. And I'm a complete another whack job. Or do I say my job sucks and that girl was a bitch and she stole my coat and that's why I decked her in the face? That's what I say. I make up these excuses and eventually I believe them because I can't differentiate the truth from the false. So why say things about my alcoholism? I grew up, I'm what you would call a double-witter, meaning that I qualify for Al-Anon as well as AA. And friends of mine in Al-A-Nan called me a visiting dignitary. And what that means is I like to go to Al- Anon and I like to steal their crap and then come back to AA and tell everybody all about it. So, but what I'm talking about is that I grewup in an alcoholic household. My parents were adult children of alcoholics. My brother's an ex-heroin addict. My other brother is and an on-and-off crackhead. And my other sister has been to rehab almost as many times as I have, and she died too. And then I had the non-alcoholic sister who doesn't understand any of us. And she's an Al-Anon like you wouldn't believe. In fact, every once in a while, I trick her when I'm doing a conference in the United States. I'm like, hey, you want to come with me and we'll go to some Al-Alan meetings? And she goes, no, I don't like those things. But anyway. But one time I actually did trick her to go to a conference and go to Al-Alan meetings and she was like, she was Like, you tricked me. You said it was going to be a beautiful place. I brought her to Ontario, Canada, which is pretty much like Detroit. And I told them, look, I'm going to beautiful Canada. You know, Ontario, China. And we're going to go to a conference. And then I brought here a bunch of Al-Anon meetings. And she was like, you suck. But anyway, so I have that one sister who doesn't do any of that stuff. And then, I have a family full of demented substance abusing psychopaths, including myself. My poor parents, they're not alcoholics at all. They're adult children of alcoholics. My mother's a compulsive overeater who has been to OA. My dad's a propulsive gambler. So, they really didn't understand it. They're wonderful people. My mother's a Eucharistic minister. My parents are Irish Catholic. They're upstanding members of their community. They're a wonderful, wonderful people that truly did not deserve the hell spawn that they sired. And they gave birth to four of the most shiftless, useless pieces of crap you could ever have met. You know? And so I really feel bad for them. you know thank god most of us are actually pretty okay today you know it's like it's a miracle that their lives are and then the grandchildren are a whole nother story and that's so it's definitely a it's certainly a family disease but the point is is this is that i grew up in a household in which you know shooting heroin wasn't such a you know an odd thing you know fistfights on the lawn was not such an odd i'm irish catholic that just explains it all come on i mean it'slike irish Catholic alcoholic so like you know fists fights violence you know horrible things I mean these are things that were not abnormal occurrences in my life so I thought that I drank because of those things I thought that I was drinking because you know people hurt me and I felt pain I thought I drank you know because I had been molested I thought that I drink because I suffered physical abuse I thought that I drunk because I suffer you know mental and emotional abuse and I thought i was a victim of the world and I drank because I deserved to drink because other people did me wrong And so if I drink and I screw other people over, well, you know, sorry, but I deserve a drink. And your pain doesn't matter to me because my pain is greater, more important. And, you now, and I just couldn't conceive of the fact that I could be the very thing that ruined my life. You know, because I grew up hating alcoholics. I grew upp hating drug addicts. I grew opp looking at my brother shooting heroin. My brother used to, my brother used like to shoot up in my room. I don't really know why like there's something about my bedroom that he really liked it must because it was small I was the youngest I was youngest by like 16 years so I had like the cubby hole bedroom like with a single bed and the chest of drawers and like you know like two feet to move around and I guess it must have felt like a womb or something but he used to go into my room and just like he said use my training bras tie off and shoot heroin on my bed it's kind of funny but thank god he's sober by the way he's been sober for almost 20 years but um so you know i had a family that like my brother didn't think twice about using my undergarments to you know to shoot drugs on my bed i come home and they'd be like crusty needles and like cook spoons i come from like you know like middle school this is before i was even really bad and i'm just like man can't you just do that somewhere else you know so i grew up in this household and that were like these these things occur and i thought that i drank because of those things, I was like, well, they set a bad example for me. My brother set a bad example. So therefore, I drink because my family made me an alcoholic because they set bad examples and we do. You know that commercial? I don't know if you guys ever had it in Australia, but it was that, you know, the kid smoking pot and the dad finds the pot under the bed and he goes, I did it! I did It for watching you, Dad! Well, that's kind of what I felt when the alcoholism saw it. It's like, you know, well yeah, I'm an alcoholic and I'm a demented psychopath and I carry knives and I'm violent and I break things. But, you know, hey, shit, everybody in my family does that. Oh well, when in Rome. But no, I'm not an alcoholic because of those things. I'm an alcoholic because I am. And for me, I think the biggest thing about the first step was understanding that I had become the very thing that I hated. I talked about that sense of emptiness, that sense OF loneliness, that sense Of being worthless and unworthy Because the very thing that I believed or I blamed for my behavior was the very thing I had become. And to reconcile myself to that idea that not only was I an alcoholic, but the people who hurt me didn't mean it because, you know, when somebody does something to hurt you, you want to believe that they had some sort of intent because then it's just like a bizarre accident. But if it's intent, I can hate you. if it's because you couldn't help it and you were sick. I can't really hate you now, could I? So there were two things I had to do is I had understand that alcoholism was a disease and therefore the alcoholics and drug addicts who did things that were not so great to me didn't do it because they were bad people but they did it because we were bad. Because they were sick and also understand that I was sick like them and I couldn't have the moral superiority of blaming them for who I became that ultimately the responsibility of who I was was on myself. And that for me was the greatest pill to swallow with the first step. It wasn't that I was an alcoholic, because I claimed alcoholism to excuse my behavior, but to understand that alcoholism was a disease that I wasn't responsible for it, nor anybody else. That it is what it is, it was what it was, and that it's not an external cause. And I didn't do these things because I was enjoying them, I was doing them because Iwas in pain and and I didn't know anything else to do. Because that's ultimately what being an alcoholic is all about, it's about seeking relief. That I experienced a tremendous amount of mental and psychic pain, and then I found that alcohol gave me relief. I mean, shit, if Cheez-Its gave me release, I'd be eating them like you wouldn't believe. Anything that would give me relief from that state of being is worth doing until I die. and what this program is all about is treating that state of being so we don't feel the need to seek relief and the real question that was put to me by my sponsor was whether I was willing to seek release or freedom there's a big difference between relief and freedom relief is about appeasing or ridding the immediate symptoms of my problem freedom is about transcending my problem and i sought relief through all kinds of things you know we named a bunch of them you know i don't mind sitting here from the podium standing here from podium telling you the funny bizarre dismented things that i do i can laugh at you know the well sleeping with dirty old men to get booze i mean that's not something that really bothers me anymore because i'm not that woman and i'll never be again i'm talking about somebody who is dead she no longer exists i've made my men's my past is gone, it is what it is. So I can talk about that thing in a room full of strangers and not feel the slightest bit of shame or remorse. Nor pride. Absolute detachment. Because that woman, that girl, that being, she died. And somebody new was put in her place. And that's what freedom is all about. It's about being willing to become who you were meant to be in the first place. Taking away all of that stuff within us, that spirituality, that obsessive mind, that constant thinking, that drive, being driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion and pity. Constantly moving and roving. We're like sharks in our mind. I don't know if that's an old wives tale or not that like whether sharks like they have to swim all the time or they'll drown but I think an alcoholic and we have to think all the timer will cease to exist you know we're constantly driven by your thoughts our thoughts on us in our mind mind goes you never have one of those days where you did nothing and you're absolutely exhausted because all you did was think it yourself I think that's them the state of the alcoholic and the relief from that the freedom from that is you know transcending that is the promise of Alcoholics Anonymous I mean that's the benefit that's the spiritual experience is spiritual waking the vital second change that Alcoholics anonymous promises us and I'll finish with this you know in Bill story talks about he says that it's simple but not easy a price had to be paid it says that I'm no longer allowed to be self-centered that my life is to be about service my job is about being fitting myself to be a maximum service to God and others. So essentially, I am my problem and you are my solution. That constant shark-like thought process, going and going and doing without cease, can only be treated by being willing to think about or experience something that's beyond myself and be willing to experience a life that has nothing to do with me. My life has nothing TO DO WITH ME are nothing to do with my business. The story about how I got here and the 101 phone calls and all the serendipitous things that occurred in order to get me to Australia is absolutely hilarious. And the most hilarious thing is that everybody downloaded my talk off of XA, which I'm actually involved in, and had they actually just emailed XA they probably would have gotten me or my husband, which is the funniest thing. So we call America when we could have emailed the very site, but that's serendipity and that's God. Had it not happened that way, we wouldn't have had this awesome story. But that's how God's world works. You know, we weren't supposed to contact XA. We were supposed to call my sponsor. And that's the way that this experience was and exactly how it's supposed to be. And so there is a price to pay. And it's called the end, the death of self. And so I'm not allowed to dictate how things happen in my life. I'm Not allowed to dictate how I get to Australia. I am not allowed to dictate what my kids do, what my husband does. All I can do is apply spiritual principles and believe and have faith that my life will be exactly how it's meant to be and not put expectations on demands on who I'm supposed to be. So what we're going to talk about over the next session is how do we do that, which is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. And we're gonna talk about that process. Questions and answers, Belinda? Do you want to do that or...? Okay, so I wanted to kind of open it up for the last couple minutes and see if there's any questions you guys have about whatever weirdness I talked about this morning. Okay. You awake? Did I bore you? Hello. Like, sense of self like how? Like having a sense of selfer, perception of myself as an individual or sense of itself like... Okay. Well, when we... Ah, yeah. Yes. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think in outbox anonymous We use the term ego as different than the Freudian concept of ego, like the id, the ego, and the superego. So I mean, I think the thing about Apollos Anonymous, when we talk about the ego yet, we're talking about pride. I mean when I think of the ego I'm thinking about pride, self-centeredness, selfishness, dishonesty. It's that sense of self or that bondage of self in that obsession with myself. self. And the sense of self that I was talking about, it seems like a sense of self, but I know exactly how confusing, that sense of identity that I was talking abut, about the humility and knowing who you are as an individual, seeing your flaws as well as your assets and accepting them exactly as they are supposed to be. You know, I think, I think a better way of describing it would be a sense of identity. That alcoholics, we kind of lack that sense identity and we get our identity through other people's perception of ours and that we kind of lack that intrinsic sense of identity and that spiritual awakening kind of gives us that intrinsic sense of identity is that explaining it okay good question you know I actually Actually, I'm going to quote somebody who's much smarter than I am. I asked a good friend of mine, Billy, about that one day. You know, because he was actually talking about that. And what he said is that, you know, I was saying, well, when does something go from being a character defect to being like a full-blown addiction? No. When is like, you Know, my obsession with shoes become like a debtor's issue? You know? So, because I have a shoe issue. You know. I have no walk-in closet full of shoes. You know。 So the idea is, like, when does, like my adoration for shoes become a full-blown addiction? And what was explained to me in the way he said it is that it's one thing when it's a character defect and it's making your life unmanageable and we address it. But if through addressing it through the fellowship that you're in or the program that you are in, say you're an AA and you're working the steps in AA and it doesn't seem to be resolving, that that's a good time to try it from a different perspective, like another fellowship. So I kind of look at it like if I'm doing the work and the steps in AA and I'm really being honest about it, and I're doing the deal and it's just not going away, that another fellowship might have just ever so slightly different perspective that might be able to help me. So it's like when it becomes so bad that the application of these principles in terms of AA doesn't treat it, then it's time to bring in some bigger, different guns. Does that make sense? Okay. You know, and I'm all about, and I believe in this, I'm greedy, and I like to pop into different fellowships, steal their stuff, and apply them. So I'm a big believer in that. And so I'm also all about it. Like, look, I took every drink and every drug under the world. I was a complete and utter gutter whore when it came to booze. So I kind of feel like I should kind of sort of be the same thing about God. Like, man, if I was willing to take anything, if you said to, you handed me a bottle and you said dude this is going to bring you totally awesome places and it was piss if it was moose piss I would drink it and then somebody says well why don't you go to Al-Anon no I can't go there I'd drink moose piss if it got me high but I'm not going to walk into a different fellowship think about that so I think that I have to have this open mindedness with the application of the spiritual principles as I had with alcohol and non-conference-approved substances. Make sense? Yes? Yes, thank you. Jenny, I just wanted to ask you if you could share a little bit of experience when you talked about spiritual pride as the right way to do contentions. Oh, yeah. I love that one because that's where I convince myself that I'm really, really, truly loved only spiritual and it turns out I'm just an idiot. it? Yeah. Okay, spiritual pride. See here's the thing is like if you work the steps enough you kind of begin to like be able to do it almost like wrote and automatically. It's almost like sometimes like I'd be like writing my nightly review. I'd like sitting there like looking at my day and like thinking about like you know was I selfish and dishonest and I'm just like kind of yeah, yeah, I'm selfish this that and I kind of write this stuff and I get on doing the work so to speak and working the steps but in reality like I'm not really looking deep at what's going on. I'm just kind of like, what a friend of mine likes to say, and what my sponsor used to tell me, he says, Carrie, you do the work to not do the work. Meaning, like, I work the steps perfectly sometimes, and it looks on paper like I'm, like really, really doing good. In reality, I'm a demented idiot because I'm working the steps and I'm applying these principles, but I'm holding back little tiny pieces. Like, you know, I'll have some aspects of my life that I'm really not willing to apply the spiritual principles, So I gloss over it, and I sort of apply them, but not really. So that dishonesty is there. And so when we're talking about spiritual pride masquerading, it's like on paper, I look like I'm doing really good. In reality, I'm dying inside because there are things in my life that I'm not addressing. And I'm busy, I'M sponsoring, IM going to meetings, I'M making coffee, and IM doing all this stuff, and I'M really, really, REALLY, REALLY busy in AA. And you think I'M such a great member of Alcoholics Anonymous, And meanwhile, like, you know, I'm spending money I shouldn't be spending. I'm flirting with that kid in class. You know, and I'm doing things that I shouldn'T be doing. And in reality, you Know, I'M dying. I have untreated alcoholism. And I'M telling myself, Oh, I work at such a great program. You know? And it sounds silly. Like, you KNOW, just little things like that can get away and they can become big things. I don't know how many women I've sponsored over the years who, you know, had a little flirtation at work that became like a full-blown affair and it blew up their marriage. And it started because of that spiritual pride. Well, I work such a great program and it's just a little innocent flirting. Just a little email texting, sexting and all of a sudden I'm taking pictures of my butt and I'm emailing them to people and I wonder why my life is unmanageable. Well, it's probably why. So that's that spiritual proud masquerading with bad intentions. Does that make sense to you? Okay. Thank you. Hello? Hello? It's kind of like the same thing, like when people ask, like, when should I start having sex when I got sober, when it gets over? Like, it's one of those questions, which is there are some people who have, like 90 days you're like i'm perfectly fine with them dating there's some people with five years that i think they should like you know you know lock themselves up in a like a ziploc and have a body condom and never like walk out of their house i think it's like that sponsorship is much like that meaning that if you have a spiritual experience and you're awake you can have 90 days and be a wonderful sponsor and you can Have 30 years of the miserable bastard and be killing people. Yes. You know, so I think that really when your spirit's ready and I think ultimately it comes down to this thing is like, it's about rules of attraction. I think that when your spirits awaken alive, people like you. I mean, it is something that I found that living on a spiritual basis and applying these spiritual principles, I tend to attract people to me. You now, and I am an odd person, you know, I am not really all that easy to get along with i can be a little strange i stole belinda's plug i on accident when i was honest enough to tell her i accidentally stole it but the point is it's like i'm weird like that i have weird things but what i found is that having an awake spirit people want to be want to be around me and what i find is that when you have that awake spirit what it is is people like who they are when they're with me and i think they feel safe and i so i think that if you have this experience and you work the steps and people begin to feel that way around you, then sponsorship is a wonderful thing. But if you're not having this experience and you're working this program and you are not working these steps, then you're just killing alcoholics because you're dying yourself. So, you know, have an experience as soon as you do. My sponsor always told me as long as I stayed one step above the person that I was sponsoring, then I'm all good. Meaning that I can't transmit what I don't have, but I can transmit what I do have, good and bad. So if I'm a sick, demented person, then I transmit that. And if I am an alive, awake person full of love, I transmit that. So when you have something good to transmit, then you are all good to sponsor, I think. Make sense? Okay. We got like 30 seconds. Do we have one quickie or are we good for the next session? Okay. You had it? Yeah. Did you have your hand up? Oh, you were just moving your hand. Okay. Seeing stuff's sadness, everything's about me. So if you have any other questions, we'll open up the next session with some questions and answers and we'll get into some other stuff. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.