Removing the alcohol only removes the chemical veil; it leaves the diseased thinking intact and exposed. — Roger B.

I have set my timer. It is to give you hope. I'm Roger. I'm an alcoholic. I've been sober since October 11th, 1978. It is pretty amazing. In 1976, I was given a terminal diagnosis. Kidney liver damage, internal bleeding. Doc said, you're going to die. My response was relief. Good. This is going to be over. My plan was to have it be over by the time I was 30, and I was right on time. I did not get that information and go, oh, I better go to detox. Oh, I better go to ANA. Oh, I better go to treatment. My dad sobered up 10 years before I did, and AA worked beautifully for him. And I was really happy for him, but it really had nothing to do with me, right? Because I was different. I was different the whole way. People were talking, other speakers were talking about this. You know, I was supposed to address steps four and five, and I don't know how you do that in an hour, except in a real general way. Because we could do a whole weekend on that, either one of those. So I'm going to try in a general way. I have a lot of experience in what doesn't work, and it's valuable. It's valuable. One of the things that I love about this weekend is all the speakers are big book people, right? There are places, I'm sure you go, I go, there are places you talk about God in the big book, and they go, oh, we don't do that here. I said, oh, really? That's the whole, damn thing. I'm sorry, right? That's what it's about. So I got a problem. Everything I found in that fourth step relative to defects of character, I had long before I ever drank. I had those by the time I was about six years old, okay? And all the alcohol did was it set them free. The beginning, it was a tamping down. It appeared that everything that hurt, everything that was uncomfortable, everything that had been my problem my whole life disappeared. And we talked, Don referenced that, the doctor's opinion talks about us having an allergy, allergic, abnormal response to alcohol. It wasn't abnormal for me. It was the only one I ever had. It would not appear to me to be abnormal because it was a normal response for me. So I had no reference point. For this allergy idea, right? So for me, it appeared to be a solution. So as I collected consequences and events in my life relative to my drinking, I never connected the drinking and the consequence. I never connected those two because alcohol had always been a solution for me. So I got kidney and liver damage. The doctor says I'm going to die in 12 to 18 months. I go back to drink till I don't wake up. That's my plan. I have read your book. Thank you very much. It might as well have been in Arabic. I read it five, six times while I was drinking, stole it from my dad's house. He seemed to have a lot of them. I got very little out of it that I was aware of. That I was aware of. But what I did do is I got to the page where those steps are and I looked at them. And I could really cop to the first one. Powerless over alcohol. Powerless to manage my life. No problem. I only had a problem with the other 11. So this is what it sounds like in my mind because it makes perfect sense. Why? Because it's my sense. It's perfectly logical because it's my logic. Right? I'm a liar, a cheat, and a thief. I don't want to be a hypocrite. So I look at your steps. So I look at your steps. So I go, step two, I can't do that. Read ahead. Step three says they identified the power. It says you came to believe something in this power greater than you that could restore you. Could, maybe, would restore you. Right? No. Nope. And also, I had no reference point in my life that I wanted to be restored to. If it would have said made new, that might have been different. But restored, I didn't want to be, there was no point in my history that I said, bring me back, I'd like to be restored to the way I was then. Because there never was a point in my life where I was okay. There was never a point in my life where it worked. There were some points where they're highly distracted and lots of stuff going on. And some peak moments. But overall, no satisfaction. No satisfaction. When you're externally referred, when you're driven by your instincts, it's much more important that you like me than I be authentic. So I just got to figure out what do I need to do to get you to like me. We're over in the social instinct. I really don't want to be liked. I'd like to be adored. Really not adored. I'd really like to be revered. You know? If I can get you to like me, then I want you to love me. If I can get you to love me, then I want you to love me a little more, a little differently. Right? Because there is no satisfaction in those instincts. There is no satisfaction in those relationships. Right? There's no satisfaction in relationships with things and people. There's nothing wrong with it. Don and I were talking about this yesterday. Instincts, basic instincts. They're called basic instincts for a reason. Because they're basic. Social security sex instincts. I had a lot of sex problems. I didn't think there were problems. Other people thought there were problems. But I had a lot of problems. And in examining that, I found out they weren't sex problems. They were social security instinct problems. I was willing to trade me for what they would do for me and with me or to me for the idea that that was going to somehow make me okay. Okay. I was driven by two things my whole life. Pre-drinking, drinking, after drinking. I'm afraid. And that appeared in a million different ways as I'm not safe. Jeff was talking about it. Why didn't you give me that compliment? I'm not safe. I walk in the room. I don't know any of you. I don't feel safe. I don't know that it's not feeling safe. And the other one is that I'm broken. I'm bad. I'm unredeemable. That's shame. Fear and shame were my taskmasters. And drinking mollified that. It quieted those voices down and gave me the illusion that I was being agnostic. It talks about faith, love, and worship and those things were absolutely important to me being a dedicated militant and sometimes evangelical atheist. It was important to me. But when I got to the point where I could ask those questions honestly of myself faith, love, and worship I had always had faith in ethyl alcohol. I had complete faith. I had loved money, power, prestige. I loved women. I loved sex. And I worshipped those things. So I had examples of those things. It was like willingness, honesty, and open-mindedness. I thought I had none. I had some. You wouldn't be in the room if there wasn't some present. So I copped to this thing. I got the capacity. Now I've got to build the capacity. Because the amount of willingness I come here with in the beginning is not nearly enough willingness, honesty, and open-mindedness to sustain me. But you have to start where you are. You can't start where Don is or Mari is You have to start where you are. So where am I? That's the question. Where am I? I've got questions. I need to get them answered. The big book calls them reservations. I called them arguments. We go two, we go three. I'm not going to make a decision. I'm not going to do an inventory. I like to read ahead. Read ahead, you're going to do some form of confessional with some yahoo. If I tell someone my stuff, if I really tell them my stuff, one of two things is going to happen. I'm going to go to the hospital or jail. So we're not doing that. Six and seven, no reason for that because we don't believe in that. Eight and nine, restitution is a problem because I know I've hurt a lot of people. But upon deeper reflection, I realized everyone I hurt had hurt me too. We'll call it even. Move on. Ten, I'm not going to take an inventory I never took and it involves prayer. I'm not doing that because I don't believe in God. I don't want to be a hypocrite. Eleven, there's nothing to seek because I don't believe there's anything to seek. I hadn't had a spiritual awakening as a result of not doing these first eleven exercises. What I have to share with you is untreated alcoholism. And I promise you, as I was going to AA in these early years, nobody was coming up to me afterwards and going, I want what you have. And I am willing to go to any length to get it. I didn't get it. I didn't get it at all. I thought, I'm not contradicting, this is all opinion, okay. We give our opinions on our experience, but I'm not telling you you should have my opinion. I'm not here to tell you what to do or what not to do. I'm here to tell you what I found, a little bit of what I found, and what I've done with what I found. So the value, the great value, has been in the errors. Here's the first error. I thought I had a drinking problem. The cops thought I had a drinking problem. The lawyers thought I had a drinking problem. I had warrants in six states. I hadn't filed taxes, federal or state, for five years. I had about $12,000 worth of bad checks in town because I had a financial policy that most people didn't agree with. I had three accounts. It's called kiting. You can't do that now because there's a computer system, but in those days you could, and you just set up bogus accounts to pay yourself. And my philosophy essentially was if I have checks, I have money. Oh, no, no. Oh, no, no. So I got problems. I had done a little entrepreneurial work with a motorcycle gang around some controlled substances, and I owed them a lot of money. And they were not interested in my spiritual evolution. I had a real problem there. A real problem there. I was a musician. I started playing professionally when I was 15, and we were the house band for this gang, and they had one of their fronts was this bar. They had a stand-up bar on one side, and they had a club on the other side. So we were in town. We would play, and they liked it because we filled the place, and it made them look like they had a business. So that was my home bar. And I was safe there because Corky, the president, I had impunity. You couldn't mess with me. They couldn't mess with me, so I could just drink and do my business. And I thought it was pretty great. But I owed these guys a lot of money, and that's a problem. That's a real problem. Because those guys, those guys were the rejects from the Angels. And they were an interesting lot. They were, yes. And they were offering. You know, I'd come off the road, and they'd say, how was the trip? And I'd say, oh, the clubby shorted us. They'd say, he wants to blow up. Blow his car up. We can blow the radar up, out, in. You want flames? You want to cripple him? You want to kill him? What do you want? Just let me do my thing, you know. They were all Vietnam vets. Snipers. Demolition guys. They were just aching. These are the guys that were aching to get me when I dissed the club. So I had problems, right? And I had, as an atheist, you can't have a spiritual experience. So I had some phenomena that happened that were inexplicable, that were upsetting. And the first one that I didn't recognize was I stopped drinking. Actually, the God that I insisted on, I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. And I was at the bar drinking the last night I drank, drinking to not wake up. My goal. No God, no A&A. Thank you for sharing. I'm out. And I couldn't swallow it. It came out my nose. And I got two immediate problems that come to me in seconds, fractions of seconds. One, did you see that? No. No. it's not cool to be spitting your whiskey up in this place, right? The other is, how am I going to get this off the bar without looking like I'm a dog lapping my drink off the bar? Because I'm to that point where I have to have it or I'm going to die, and if I get it, I'm going to die. But I have to have it. And while I'm pondering this, which is fractions of a second, my alcoholism came into my awareness and it said, I know what's wrong with you. Come with me. You're suffering from an amphetamine deficiency. And I always had a pocket full of speed because you never know when you're going to get tired, right? And you don't want to get tired before you get done drinking. And I took a handful of speed and I couldn't swallow it. And I walked out of the bar and I started crying, which you don't do either. Hadn't done that since I was a little boy. And I heard myself say this, I'm done. I'm toast. I can't do this. Step one for Roger. I went back to the flop I was living in. It's a classy place. We got a chain of really low rent burger joints in Minnesota called White Castle. You know about White Castle? Well, my home bar's here. White Castle's between the flop and the bar. That White Castle in those days was one of the only places open 24 hours. And all the junkies and the whores used the bathrooms to clean up. So the bathrooms were covered in blood and syringes and condoms. And that's where I cleaned up because it was so much better than where I lived. So I went back to this flop I was living in. Two guys lived with me. One is dead from drinking. The other one, I have no idea what happened to him. He's either in prison or dead. And I said, I'm going to kick and you guys need to babysit me. And I did. And it took roughly about a week. Don't know for sure because I wasn't too coherent. But when I came out of detox, you know in Fred's story, he has the idea that if you're going to be a doctor, you have to be a doctor. So he's in a car with the alcoholics and then he goes at the end of a perfect day, ends up on a week-long drunk and wakes up in the hospital. There's a line, he says, when I regain my ability to think. And then he goes on to say, I remember what the AA guys told me. That's not the point. The point is I remembered when I regained my ability to think. And the first coherent thought after seven, eight days of this was, well, I'm sure not going to AA. Okay. I'll do this my way. I'll do this my way is the mantra I fashioned when I was 12. So I've already missed the whole damn plot. I think I have a drinking problem, therefore not drinking is the solution. Right? I'll do this my way is totally... You were talking about delusion. Here's my take on delusion for Roger. I can see the facts, but I can't see the truth. I can see there. There seems to be a drinking problem here, but I have no idea what the real facts are. Right? I just know I'm done. I don't know if I'm done for four hours or for four days or for four months or forever. I don't know. I just know I'm done, damn it. And I have never had a moment more honest and deep and complete than that moment that night when I walked out of the bar. I just knew it. I knew it on a cellular level. I didn't know what it meant. But the... The problem is I still had every single idea and attitude in place that got me where I was. The only thing I'd done is I'd removed the chemicals. And I removed them all. I didn't remove one or two of them. I removed a whole plethora of helpers. And I thought, there you go. And shortly after that detox, I started... When I was playing in clubs, then I started working in clubs five, seven nights a week. And something happened. That was, again, totally transparent to me, which was, I'm working in these clubs. I'm right up to here in available women, free booze and free drugs. And it has no poll. No poll. Later on, the second thing that happened, I was in a meeting. And it was a meeting of whiners anonymous. You've been? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was in one of those meetings and they were talking, I think it was the first meeting, but they were talking about how bad they wanted to drink. And every guy was one-upping the next guy in front of them. I've been to nine meetings today. Well, I've been to 33 meetings in the last two days and I'm praying my ass off. Look it, there's holes in my knees. I mean, gee, I'm dreaming and I'm in my brain and I'm screaming, shut up, shut up. If you want to drink that bad, I'll buy you a bottle of it. Just please shut up. Right? So the whole rest of the meeting, it looked like I was at the meeting. It looked like I was at the meeting. I'm sitting in the chair. But all the rest of the meeting, all I heard was, loser, loser, loser, loser, loser. That's what I was doing. Right? And it popped into my head. I don't want to drink. They're all talking about how bad they want to drink. And I was the poster child for what not to do in AA. The only willingness I had was to go sit in your stupid meetings, which were a total mystery to me. And something happened while I was sitting in the meetings. And I have this moment. This is a bad moment. If you're a dyed-in-the-wool, in-depth atheist, I have had an experience now, too. I stopped drinking when I couldn't stop. And my goal was to drink myself to death. And now I'm sitting in this meeting. And everything that these guys are whining about has already been taken care of for me. I don't want to drink. I'm not haunted by the idea that I need to drink. That obsession is gone. The book says it'll be removed. It better be, because I'm powerless over that. When that voice comes and says, time for a drink, it's not, am I going to drink? It's, when am I going to drink? Right? Something's happened either to me or through me or both while I've been sitting in these meetings with this horrible attitude. And it's making me uncomfortable. I went looking for the obsession. I went looking in here. I went back to my bars. I went back to my friends. I went back to my friends. I went back to my friends. I went back to my friends. I went back to my friends. I went back to my liquor stores, walked up and down the aisles, waited for the beast to appear. The beast did not appear. Like I told you, I had quite a significant problem with your steps. But I realized also with some time that I was going to have to figure out a way to do them. So I think the question is really, which ones are you going to do? And how are you going to modify the ones you're going to do? Well, which leads us to the fourth step, right? We talked about, we talked about it. Interesting. There's no surrender in the steps. There's admittance. When we say we admit it, it means I allow in. I allow in this idea that I'm powerless. That didn't occur to me until I was sober. It never felt like powerlessness. It felt like power. It felt like solution. It was only in retrospect that I started getting my head around the powerless. The unmanageability was, there was no question. It wasn't about, I can't manage these circumstances. That's true. And I have no argument about that. But when you look at the interior landscape, I can't manage my emotions. I can't manage when fear pops up. I can't manage when resentment pops up. Don and I were talking about this. So we create this thing. It's called a facade. Persona. It means mask. I show you the me I want you to think I am. And all of that is for protection. To keep me safe. To keep me safe. I was doing that since I was a little kid. I got really good at it. I don't want anyone to get close to me because people hurt you. So I perfected a persona that kept you away from me. And I'm going there. And the tool of that was intimidation, sarcasm, and overbearance. Just dominance. Have to dominate to be successful. To be safe. Have to dominate. And the only reason you were in my life is because you had something for me. Money. Applause. A connection. Sex. Praise. And when I finished with you, you were discarded. You know, they tell us we're supposed to abandon ourselves to these ideas. I'm going, I don't know anything about abandonment. I knew a lot about abandonment. I had abandoned everybody in my life. When I was done using them. I had abandoned every principle I was raised with. I'm really good at abandonment. I found out I was really good at inventory too. I just never did mine. But, I mean, you know this. You sit around and you're talking to someone. I know what you need to do. I know exactly what you need to do. Because I am the smartest guy in the room. And let me just bring my insight to bear on your problem. This is what you need to do. I never did any of this stuff. Totally different thing. So I got a problem. I got to do this. I got to do this inventory. It says I'm supposed to make a searching and fearless moral inventory. First off, I'm not too keen about this searching thing. I understand morals to be values of principles. Okay. I'm supposed to do an inventory of what my values are. Hmm. Fearless. I don't think so. You know, I see this around our area. And I think it's a huge disservice. We're, you know, we're all in this together. We're all in this together. We're all in this together. We're all in this together. We're all in this together. We're all in this together. We're, there are people telling people the four step. Oh, that's the hardest thing I've ever done. That's the scariest thing I've ever done. And you come in, some new person will be going, coming up on a four step and everyone will go, oh, oh, whoa, slow down, slow down. I waited a year before I did that, you know. I know guys that waited a year and only made it about six months and they're dead, right? You've got to be where you are when you're there. If I have been able to sign off on the ideas in the first three steps, I'm there. Am I powerless? Can I admit that? Yeah, yeah. Am I powerless to manage my life? Yeah, I'm on board. Yes, yes. Do I now believe? Am I willing to believe? The step says came to believe, which means later on. That's past tense. Later on, the idea revealed to me there is a power. It is working in my life and I have to learn how to interface with it. That's prayer and meditation, right? And inventory. Okay. So, am I willing to say? Am I willing to believe in the possibility of a power? That's the only requirement. And I finally got to that after a suicide attempt. You were talking. There is nothing in my experience worse than physical abstinence with no emotional or spiritual recovery. That was the hardest years of my life. I was a blackout drinker, so most of my history is hearsay. You know, I can adjust that the way I want to. But this idea, this idea, scares the hell out of me. Because if I say, okay, I'm willing to believe in the possibility of this power, I'm also saying I was wrong. Now shame comes into play. That's why it's so hard to admit I'm powerless. I don't want to come into this meeting full of people I don't know and go, hi, I'm Roger. What you want you to do? I'm powerless, man. No, because if I'm powerless, it means I did fail. And that confirms the shame. You're bad, you're broken, you're unredeemable. So some of us get to that in a really tedious manner. Others of us embrace it pretty much out of the gate. I didn't. I didn't embrace any of this stuff out of the gate. I'm a trial and error guy. And, you know, we're talking about opinions. The whole big book is an opinion. It starts with the doctor's opinion, then it's multiple chapters of their opinion on what their experience was and how they did it. And the thing that's brilliant about that book, they really, they knew their audience because they never told me what to do. They just told me what they did. And then they told me what they found. And if you look at doctor's opinion through agnostics, I think we're about 85 pages of text on the first two steps. Pretty important. So I just got to be able to sign off. Then those conclusions, lack of power is the problem, finding the power is the solution. Based on those conclusions, I make a decision to turn my thinking and my actions in the direction of the power that I'm not sure is there. That sounds so wimpy. But what's the alternative? I sit with guys all the time. They want to argue about this. Well, that's fine. Let's not do that. What's your alternative? What are you going to do? What are you going to do? I don't know. That means you're going to do what you've always done. How did that work? We're talking about results. I don't care how you get this. You want to go back to church? Go back to church. You like the results? Go with it. You don't like the results? I got something you could try. I sit with guys all the time and say, I've done the steps. Right there. You missed the plot. You don't ever finish them. I've done those. What else do you have? No, no, no. I must be slow. I'm still doing them. I'm sorry. Right? So if I made a decision, Jeff was talking about the frog deal. A decision that's not married to an action is a fantasy. I made no decision. If I made a decision, the evidence of the decision is the force of the force. The force of the force. I'm not stupid. I'm insane. That's different. So I got a problem. I got to do this. Can you tell that I sponsor myself? Well, you know, it's a management question, isn't it? So I was talking about that. Was that you that was talking about this morning, Jeff? Management? Yeah. Okay. I got a management problem. I have no problem. Many managements failed. But the new hire is the problem. Because I don't know anyone who cares more about my well-being than me. And who would be better suited to deal with the idiosyncrasies, my personality, and who loves me more than me. Right? So it's the hire and the hire is God. Oh, and then I'm slammed right in to my intolerance. And my closed mindedness. Most emphatically. We wish to say any alcohol capable of facing their problems in the light of our experience can recover. That's the promise. It's in the spiritual experience appendix. That's the promise. And then there's conditions. Provided you don't close your mind to all spiritual concepts. Damn. That means I can't do this as an atheist. Sorry. Because the whole thing is predicated on me finding a power that's not me. Power greater than me. Atheist. No power greater than me. No power greater than you. Oh, okay. Right? And then it says the only thing that can trip me up, the only thing that can ruin me, that can fail, the only thing that can make me fail is an attitude. Attitude is your angle of approach. If your angle of approach is intolerance, is belligerent, is closed minded, you can't do this. So that moves me to this quote by George Bernard Shaw. He said, all progress requires change. And if you can't change your thinking, you can't change anything. And I am impaled on my thinking. I'm impaled on the way I see the world. And the first time I get an idea of how I see the world is that inventory. I had no sponsor. I listened to a lot of tapes. Listened to a lot of speakers. A lot of stories. A lot of step studies. A lot of big book studies. And it was irritating. But it was the only place I could be honest. I was sitting at home with my tape player. I could not let down the shields in a meeting. And I heard all this inventory stuff. You know, I'm looking at that fourth step and I'm saying, you know, I'm having this meeting with me. And we're having a discussion on, you know, how much of this do you really have to do to be okay? Right? I don't think we need to write this. Why would you write it? We lived it. I know this stuff. So now I've got to find someone to share this confidence with, this fifth step. I don't trust anyone. I have trust issues. You know why I have trust issues? Because I'm untrustworthy. I'm a liar. I'm a cheat and a thief. I cannot be relied on for anything. And I project what I am onto you and I assume you're all the same way. So I have a trust issue and I project it onto you and I think it's with you. It's not. I have a trust issue with me. I'm out of integrity. Right? So anyway, I figure, well, I still have quite a large resentment to church, institution, the institution of religion in general. But a specific denominator. A specific denomination would do too. Okay. And there's this Francescan monk down in south of town that hears fifth steps. I think that's it. I'll go talk to this dude. Right? I can do your step. I can gross out the padre. It's like a win-win. Right? So I go and I start reciting my crap. He's not impressed. Which is kind of irritating. And I, you know, I'm a songwriter. I'm creative. Right? And I'm noticing people looking bored. So I start making stuff up. Then I start telling them stuff I heard on your tapes. Right? And I've exhausted my creativity. I go, that's it. I'm done. And he says, consider six and seven. I did that as I was standing up. And I went out and I'm ready for my amends now. And I had, after my searching and fearless inventory, I had three names. Two of them were my parents. Okay? That's not what they mean. So what's the result of that? Pain. Now I'm walking around, because I am my own counsel. I'm walking around thinking, you know, I've done nine of your damn steps. Well, kind of. I've done nine of your steps. That's what I'm telling myself. I should be feeling better. You know, these promises. None of that's happening. You know, where's mine? Where's my approach? Where's mine? Look at what I've done for you. Right? Do you realize what I've done? I've set aside all this junk. I've come to your stupid meetings. I can't relate to any of you people. There should be something in this for me, shouldn't there? There comes the entitlement. I've done nothing. I looked at the promises. They read the promises at meetings. I hated that. I think it's a cruel thing to do to a new guy. My head's about to explode. I'm trying to think of what order I'm going to kill all you, and some yahoo is reading the promises. The promises are byproducts. They're not goals. They're byproducts. There's only one goal. Establish and grow a relationship with the God of my understanding. That's the goal. That's the only goal. Everything else comes out of that. My service, my helping, my fellows, my prayer, my meditation. You know, they said things like, you're new. No relationship with you for a year. Right? No major changes. Got it? They didn't say this to me because I didn't have a sponsor, but I'm listening in the rooms. This is what you need to do. I'm going, oh, no, not me. Right? You won't be getting a divorce or you won't be getting married. You won't be changing jobs. You won't be doing anything major for at least the first year, maybe two. Now, go find a concept of God you can work with. Do you hear what they're saying? Go create a theology. What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? What? And while you're at it, you're also going to have to create a concept or two around prayer meditation that you can work with. We'll be talking about that later. So I'm in a bad situation. I did a couple of those inventories. What I ended up doing was putting a gun in my mouth, and it wasn't because I wanted to drink. It was because I couldn't stand the noise in my head and I thought I had surrendered and I felt screwed. I felt chipped. I felt that you are awriter. One of a kind. One of a kind. I felt chipped. And I'd done nine of your bloody steps. And it's getting worse. I got more warrants. It's been six and a half years since I filed taxes. You know, I'm not racing through this thing. Let's not rush. You're all reporting things are getting better. My experience is they're getting worse. If you're new, I'm sorry. It's kind of depressing. But understand, the reason it's getting worse is because I'm not doing anything. I have suspended the drinking and the drugs. I have suspended medicating myself. I have all the same attitudes and beliefs and ideas that I had while I was drinking. And they do not work. That's the feedback I'm getting. This doesn't work. What does work? And what happened was I decided, again, sponsorship. Sponsoring self. We had a meeting. Several meetings. And we concluded the best thing we could do is blow our brains out. Now, it's an interesting thing looking back on it. When the sum total of your experience on the planet Earth and what you've learned or not learned being in the rooms, the sum total of all that you come up with, my best idea for ending this is just to blow my brains all over the bedroom wall. So I'm thinking about killing myself. This is how nuts I am. I listen to a lot of... A lot of speakers. And I thought, well, I could hang myself in the garage. And then I remember this tape I heard. This guy hung himself in the garage with his belt. And he put the belt over the raptor, tied it around his neck, jumped off the stool, but he had an elastic belt. So he's just doing that thing. He said, that's not going to work. You could turn the car on and take a little nap. I know guys that did that and got saved, and they were potato heads. You know, just... So I can't do that. And I'm thinking, you could drink. You could overdose. That would ruin your sobriety. You know? This is the insanity that we live with, right? This is the noise in the head. This is the problem. What's going on between my ears? The drinking can't be the problem. It's not there anymore. And because I'm sponsoring myself, and because this is a tedious process, it's taking a while for me to get up to speed that the main problem does center in my thinking. I read it. I read it many times. But I didn't know it. That's why the steps don't work from the way I was doing them. Because they're experiential. They're not intellectual. You can't study them and get it. You have to do them. Do them crappy. Do them imprecisely. But do them, and you'll have an experience. And that experience will point you at what you need to do differently or in addition to. The book is beautiful that way. Because they say, first you conclude. Then when you get to chapter five, all of a sudden the gloves come off. And it's like, oh, you made a decision. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. a few pages, we're down here praying and meditating and doing all this other stuff. A man's and such. And I forgot what I was going to say. Oh well. Must be that hair product. So anyway, in my mind, in my thinking. So I'm back to killing myself. And then the... So I put the gun in my mouth. And I have an expression I do with the guys that I work with and that I share with you. Whatever this G-O-D thing is, when we talk about God, we're talking about your concept of God. The only reason I'm here is because I got to choose my own concept and I could progress rather than be perfect. That's why I'm here. The door was really, really wide open. And so I got to bang... I got to hang around in two things I did not believe in. Grace and mercy. Grace and mercy. I got much more than I deserved and I didn't get what I should have got. So I put the gun in my mouth and this is how God speaks to me. Mighty small caliber. Please. So you understand every question needs an answer. Regardless. Regardless. If you have any information or not. Please. There'll be a large exit wound. I put the gun back in the second time, pulled the hammer back and this flashed in my brain. I went to high school with a kid named Patrick. Tenth grade Patrick tried to blow his head off with a shotgun. Put the shotgun in his mouth, was sitting on his bed, his underwear and socks. And when he pushed the trigger with his big toe, he moved his stock and he blew an eye in the side of his face off. And he lived. Had about 18 reconstructive surgeries and then hung himself for Christmas at his parents. And right behind that was this. That'll be my luck. I'll pull the trigger. I'll wake up in the hospital paralyzed from the cheekbones down. And one of those old World War II guys from my meeting will be standing by the bed. Roger. Do you want to do the steps now? Blink once for yes, twice for no. Right? No shit. I'm having a bad suicide. Laughter. Laughter. And I put the gun back in the third time and I heard a voice. I don't know if it was a voice or a thought but it sounded like a voice. And it said this, are you willing to believe in the possibility? And from somewhere totally unfamiliar to me came yes. It came from my spirit. It came from my soul. It came from my higher conscious. Whatever you want to call it. Whatever you call it. It's fine. So I went back and this is what occurred to me. I wonder if I just did this the way they wrote it. If I'd get a different result. And it's really laid out pretty nicely. They say what they did. They say what they found. They say what they did that worked. They say what they did that didn't work. So all I got to do is I got to know did I get these results. Right? So they start and they talk about resentment. And they say resentment's the number one offender. It kills more alcoholics than anything else. Resentment is an emotion. There is no resentment out here. We take ten of us, view one thing. Some of us will be resentful. Some of us will be scared. Some of us will be nonplussed. Totally different reactions to the same event. My resentment comes from the way I see the world. They're saying that resentment, the review, the reliving, the redoing, the re-feeling of past injury or harm has the power to kill me. That seems to be pretty important. Let's look at that. Yeah. Let's look at that. And they say it's not. It's not. Mystical. It's simple. It's the only test you're ever going to take that you have all the answers. You're going to do it perfectly. Right? Who or what pissed you off or hurt you? Oh. What did they do? Let me tell you what they did. How did it affect you? Social Security, sex instinct. Oh God. Get it all down and look at it. Yeah. What occurs to me is I'm right and there's a lot of crappy people in the world. Just what I thought. But what they've done is they've had me objectify my thinking. It's turned into an object on the page. It's not that. I like this. This is not a hard exercise. Anyone can do this. Answer the questions. Make the list. Make the list. Answer the questions. Make the other list. Now get it all down and look at it. Do you see how the past is dominating you? I spend most of my time re-feeling things that have happened. They say another thing that's beautiful. Real or imagined. We're not arguing realities. You think it happened that way? Fine. Fine. It's a set up. Because then they say, put it out of your mind all that. How did you show up? Oh. I don't want this inventory. Selfish, dishonest, fearful, inconsiderate, self-seeking. Ew. My dad was dominant in my resentment list, right? So I want my dad to love me. I don't get his approval. I don't like his parenting. He's shame-based. It affects all these areas of my life, right? But then we get over here. We put it out of the mind what dad did. What kind of son were you? Pardon me? Maybe you didn't hear my story. No, no. What kind of son were you? I swore at him. I disrespected him. I disrespected his wife. I stole from him. I lied and I cheated him and I manipulated him. And I want you to love me. Hmm. Now, can I change anything my dad did? No. Can I change anything in the past? No. And what they put me in front of, the only thing you can change is that fourth column, Roger. You can change what, how you showed up. That's who you be. You can change who you be. But there's no way to go back and change the past. We're going to rectify that with amends later. But you can't change who you are. You can't change who you are. You can't change who you are. But you can't change it. It is what it is. And now I find out this is what I am. And I start realizing, oh, this is the problem, right? Then they go to fear. I'm living in the future. Now, living in the past, resentment, living in the future, fear. 95% of the things I've lived through have never happened. That's fear. Right? You're planning, planning, got to plan what? To keep me safe. Got to plan. That's what, it's not really fear. It's a plan. is my response for each of those things. I go there and none of it happens. They go, we looked over the proposal. We'd really like to get busy on this right away. Thank you for coming. And I'm like, wait a minute. I have no plan for this. I have no plan for success. This is not one of the options. Because when I'm thinking from fear, the options are bad, worse, and awful. That's why I don't like to do anything. I don't want to make any moves. Because none of them are acceptable to me. What I learned in the fear inventory is that my self-reliance, underline, underline, underlined in all these inventories, my self-reliance is what's failed me. That's the powerless. That's the unmanageability. Self has failed me. Well, self-reliance is the hallmark of my atheism. You see why it's so hard? That's failed. Then I failed. No. I got sick. I made some mistakes. But I am not the failure. The behavior and the choices are the failure. I need to separate. And the way they separated it for me was they said, you're sick, you're not bad. You're sick, you're not bad. What a concept. Because if I'm bad, shame. If I'm bad, that's the status. I can't change that. So I'm screwed. If I'm sick, and I start looking at these steps as a prescription for what is my problem, I can deal with that. I can treat it. Another question is, will I? Will I? Someone, one of their quotes was, and there's a solution. We did this because we honestly wanted to, and we're willing to make the effort. That's a thinner of the herd. Honestly want to? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Willing to make the effort? Oh, yeah. I mean, I know what the right answer is, right? But your actions betray. You didn't make a decision. Because it's not in your actions, right? So I got this thing with fear. And they're saying, the things you've relied on, they're not in your actions. And they're saying, they're not in your actions. And they're saying, they're not in your actions. And they're saying, that's what I see in my inventory. People, places, things, stature, money, power, prestige, self-esteem, compliments, achievements, awards, don't mean anything. All they do is produce more. When I finally get you to love me, I just need you to love me a little more. Mario was talking about it. After a while, you start getting on my nerves. You know why you get on my nerves? Because you didn't fix me. You didn't fix me. You fixed me for a while. for a while while you were new and shiny, but now the toothpaste, the toilet paper, and that breathing. You know, God. And now she's looking really good. And you're not looking so good. I thought I bought a Mercedes home. I unwrapped it. I got a Volkswagen. This is not what I wanted. I'm running off those instincts all the time, thinking that something out here is going to make this okay. Then I look at my sex conduct. And I found out my sex conduct was all fueled by my social instincts. I never loved anybody. Everything I did was a transaction. I'll do this for you. You do this back. I'll say this about you. You say this about me. We'll call it love. Because I have to, first off, there's got to be a chemistry. There's got to be a story. I had a problem. I liked other people's wives and girlfriends. Because they're low maintenance. And I thought, you know, you've got a lousy marriage. That is a shame. I totally understand. Come here. And I'm really good for two-hour shots. You know, I'm a great listener. I'm compassionate. I'm kind. I'm loving. For about two hours, right? So it says, the conclusion to that is, you've got to quit hurting people. You've got to, period. It says, if I don't quit hurting people, this is one of the places in the book that promised me, you're going to drink. You're going to drink. If you don't change the way you're acting. And I can't change the way I'm acting until I change what I'm thinking. It sounds so confusing. But this comes down to, we talked about it, this comes down, the question is not, the prayer is not, God, what would you have me do? The prayer is, God, what would you have me be? It's always a question of consciousness. So the, the, the, antidote to my fear problem is, practice an aspect of my faith. I've identified all this stuff. I've got it down on paper. I can, the problem is starting to come into focus. I'm not totally on the page yet, but it's starting to get my awareness. This is the beginning of a consciousness-raising exercise that will continue for the rest of my life. It continues in 10, 11, and 12. But I need to get in this first part, I need to get some big chunks identified and set aside in this process. So we got this thing, I go through this inventory, I got some stuff, now I gotta go talk to someone. Oh. I don't like anyone. I mean, no one. And, I don't trust anyone. And, but I gotta have this conversation. The reason, the real reason I didn't want to have the conversation, there's an expression, we don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are. And I was afraid if I went to you, and I really laid the truth out, you would say, you know, that's really good, Roger, you did a lot of good work there. You know that Monday meeting we go together? Yeah? Don't ever come there again. And you know this house you're sitting in with me and my wife and my three kids, if I see you back here, I'm gonna call the cops. And, uh, don't ever go anywhere where I am again. Got it? That's what I thought was gonna happen. Fear. I was afraid he was gonna be like me. And he did the opposite. And we've all had this experience. And then he started sharing some of his stuff with me, and after a little bit of that sharing, I'm thinking, maybe I'm not as sick as I thought I was. And he gave me a great gift. He gave me acceptance. He said, I get it. I was like that once too, right? That's the big deal with sponsorship, isn't it? I was like you once. I can describe how that feels. I know what that's like in your gut. I can walk you out of that. You wanna walk out of that? Take my hand, I'll walk you out of that. Right? So all of this, you know, I'm not gonna be like that. I'm gonna be like that. I'm gonna be like that. So all of this stuff, as we go through it, I need to talk to someone. We know what the book says. I need to talk to someone that can keep confidence, understands what I'm doing, supports what I'm doing, right? Fine. And now, most of that we do within the fellowship. Most of us, we do it with our sponsors, right? At other times, in our area, they did it with clergy. There was a guy named Forrest Richardson who was a Lutheran minister who had had hundreds of fifth steps in Minneapolis for years. It's just part of the process. It's part of an introduction, this self-evaluation tool. I've got to first, before I can figure out what the solution is, I'm gonna be able to roughly identify the problem. And now in this inventory process, I can see the problem. I can see the problem clearly if what they're saying is true. Where I'm coming from is the problem. I do not have a way to respond. I react to everything, whether it's fear, whether it's resentment, or whether it's in my mind, whether it's in my mind, I'm gonna respond. I'm gonna respond. In my sexual attitudes, I react to everything. I don't respond to anything. Respond implies choice. I'm gonna, what does it say in the 11th step? Pause, ask for an intuitive thought or direction. Make a choice. Make a response. I got nothing to respond out of, so I'm reacting out of fear. I gotta slow that process down. First, I gotta know that it's there. And when I do, when I start getting on the page with that, what happens? Oh, that third step, that second step, that first step, those ideas start to come together. And those ideas start to have more gravity, don't they? Oh, you mean powerless like with a capital P? Oh, geez. Right, really unmanageable like no area not unmanageable, you know? I do. I do need to believe. What it builds in, what it built in me was a desperation. I started understanding just a little bit, because you can only understand a little bit when you're goofy. You can only understand what you can understand. That's enough to move you to the next level, the next step, right? And then your understanding will grow, and your experience will deepen, and you'll reconsider these ideas as you're going along. And as you practice and practice and practice for years and years and years, the whole process looks different, right? It's supposed to evolve. It's interesting to think about change. Most of us have been exposed to a religious idea at some time in our life, usually when we're young, right? And we don't like change. We don't like change. That's what we report. Don't like change. No, no, this is change. Yeah, but it might save your life. I mean, it's kind of a relevant change. No, but if you look at your history, I've changed everything over my life. The people I hang out with, my body's changed, my size has changed, color has changed, preferences have changed, women have changed, relationships have changed, everything's changed. The food I eat, everything's changed. But you know that concept of God I was given when I was eight years old? Never changed. And now I'm a grown-ass man trying to get well, and I got a concept of an eight-year-old. That's not going to work. I'm not knocking religion. I'm not knocking that. What I'm saying is I've got to be able to examine my concept and say, does it work or not? Or how's it working? Do I like the results? Because my result, my satisfaction level is supposed to be going up as I'm doing this. In the beginning, not so. I was not thinking, this is really fun, seeing how exactly the multitude of ways that I'm mentally ill. This is really fun to see what a, this is what informs my skullduggery. This is why you're the way you are. It was not fun. It was a deconstruction. A deconstruction of my ideas and concepts and the way I saw the world. It wasn't pleasant because the part of me, the addiction, the alcoholism that didn't want to change was fighting it. It was fighting. I said, oh, don't do that. You know, I'll let you go to some meetings. Fine. But, you know, let's not get too crazy about this surrender stuff. You know, just take your time. Slow it down. No, I don't, I can't afford to slow it down. I've had it in creeper most of my life. You know, I got to get going. And what happens is I get more desperate. Not desperate because I'm afraid I'm going to drink. Desperate for the God idea. I get more desperate for a solution. I don't know that it's a God idea right away, but I get desperate for a solution. And I have enough experiences now. I have the cessation of my drinking. I have the removal of the obsession. And then I have this spiritual experience with a gun. I went from atheist to agnostic. And agnostic can do the steps. I had to satisfy that argument. And we agnostics is my consciousness. It's all my arguments. It's all our arguments, right? If there is a God, why is this? I can't do a punishing God. You don't have to. You can choose your own concept. Thank you very much. Thank you. So I got to figure out why crappy things happen on occasion. Some of those things I create, some of those things seem to be collateral damage. So I don't know where I got this, but I got it somewhere. I'm sure I couldn't have thought it up. I don't want a punishing God. I will not turn my will and my life over the care of a God who is capricious. Good day for you. Oh, guess what? IRS, screw you. Pray, pray. Oh, don't forget to pray. Right? I don't need a God whose self-esteem is dependent on my worship. I don't need a God who is punishing that I can't trust. So I got a problem. Why is this stuff happening? Why do I appear to be being punished? And this is what I got, which was a lifesaver for me. I'm not punished for my thinking. I'm punished by my thinking. And we're right back into that inventory. Punishing thought. It's not God doing it to me. It's me doing it to me. Oh, God. When I can come down off the cross, that cross is victim. It's all happening to me. It's bad parenting. Bad gene pool. Bad breaks. And while you're nailed up on your cross, there's a convenience there. You can't do anything, can you? But when I take responsibility for my recovery and I come down off the cross, interesting. Interesting. They used to say, these guys that I hung out with, these old guys, would say, this is the way it is. This is the way it is. This is the way it is. This is the way it is. But I kind of think that they've really taken over. I think they've really taken over. They've really taken over. I think it's interesting because they're like, oh, this is really not going to work. This is going to work. This is going to be really bad. This is going to be a bad thing. But I would say, there's only one person here responsible for your recovery. It's you. I'm here to help you. But if you're not going to row, don't expect to go anywhere. Right? I would… We were talking about this. I always heard a lot about AA love. And I wasn't quite sure how that worked. But I would do things like I would be standing at the coffee thing on the break. And some guys would say, how are you doing? with Steve and he'd go, oh, that's because you're an asshole. And he'd walk away. Or I'd be, how's it going? I'd say, you want to know how it's going? This program sucks. This program sucks. And he'd look at me and say, why don't you try ours? And he'd walk away. I was so goofy I didn't even know he offended me until I'm driving home. I said, that guy. He's on the list. He's going to die. Right. Every step is critical and vital. But if you don't do them as a set, it can be pretty irrelevant. It can be pretty irrelevant. I didn't get very far in a one-step program or a three-step program or a four-step program or a five-step program. It's a process. It's a different kind of work. In our area, they talk about are you doing the work? Are you doing the work? I don't like that. Because I don't like to work. You're doing the work. That implies backache, sweat, scun knuckles. You're doing the work. You're doing the work. It sounds like drudgery. You're in the process. I like that better. You're in the process. Where are you in the process? What's going on for you today? What's alive in here today? What's the dominant feel? What's the dominant mode? What are you worshiping? Religion. The Greek means to bind together. Is your religion? Oh, my religion I've been practicing my whole life is fear and shame. Think I'll change. Think I'll change. Well, that's an incremental change. I can't just say, oh, I see it now. I get it. I get it. Fear, shame, not doing that. I'm not down with that at all. I'm going to be over here. Glory, hope, relationship with God. I've got to work my way to that. I've got to establish a relationship with that which I say I believe. Not a declaration. A practice. It's easy to declare. I'm much more interested in practice. And if you're practicing, it's going to be messy. I don't care how willing you are. It's going to be messy because you're always going to run into things you don't want to look at. And those are going to be the very things that set you free. Very things that set you free. Okay. Thank you. See you later.