Step 4 – Friday Night Recovery Workshop – Part 3 of 17 – 2021 – Chris S.

all right chris we're going to start are you ready chris we make a cheers chris so good evening everyone my name is david i'm alcoholic it's i make it 10 o'clock in the uk so i guess that makes it 5 p.m on the east coast of america you're all very welcome and along with stewart uh i will be serving as your co-host good evening everyone. I'm Stuart, I'm an alcoholic. You're welcome to the meeting. I'll see you later for the Q&A. This is one workshop in a series of workshops inspired by recoveryspeakers.com and it's hosted by the Saturday Night A group of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now I'm going to read the preamble tonight for some reason, maybe because I like to read it now and again to remind me of what I'm a member of. So AlcoholicsAnonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength and hope with each other that they may solve the common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for membership. We are self-supporting through our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organisation or institution. It does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses nor opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety now in keeping with his traditions in particular number five tradition five which states each a group has but one primary purpose that is to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers so therefore the main purpose of these workshops is to introduce and or develop ideas and concepts and hopefully encourage participants to do some further investigation on their own and the common thread throughout has been a quote from step 10 in the basic text which says we have entered the world of the spirit and that our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness and that's on page 84 paragraph 2 now tonight we have what we're delighted to say we've got chris schroeder back in in the house in the meeting room on zoom and chris is going to be speaking tonight about just title his mind and chris thankfully he's going to agree to come along next week as well and share on spirit so we're really looking forward to both of those and the audio of tonight's presentation and obviously next week will be recorded by Mike McKay at recoverytapers.com and you can find the link to most of our workshops and much more besides that and I'll put the link in the chat during the meeting so we just like to point out what is shared at these workshops meetings represents the experience strength and hope of AA members and not to be taken to represent AA as a whole. The 12-step program of recovery can be found in the basic textbook titled Alcoholics Anonymous, which we fondly call The Big Book. Now I'm just going to put up a version of the set-aside prayer and we'll just get into a bit of the language of the heart of it all and if you'd like to unmute and maybe we can do this collectively, I'd appreciate that. So, God please help me set aside everything I think and know for a new life and a new experience. Amen. Amen. Thank you. And we just have a few moments of silence to gather our thoughts, reflect on why we're here and those who carry the message to us and obviously those we are going to carry the message too and their families. Thank you thank you everyone and as i said i'm actually looking forward to this very much so i do enjoy listening to chris talk i think if chris talked about stripping paint i'd listen to him so with that it's over to you chris david thank you hi everybody my name is chris i'm an alcoholic it's uh it's really good to be here this is this is an extraordinary uh meeting the the topics are all so interesting and the people the people that are getting an opportunity to share all really worth hearing you want to you want to deepen your understanding of Alcoholics Anonymous and the history of Alcoholic Anonymous and the mystery of the spirit the spiritual program of recovery this is a really cool place to be so so when I was asked early on this is going to be two weeks in a row you know what what do i want my topic to be you know i always just kind of go into contemplation you know i'm available for an intuitive thought and i usually go with the first thing uh that comes up and and you know my topic is going to be the mind um this weekend and the spirit next week and you know I believe um I believe in the book Alcoholics Anonymous I believe what it's telling me and and i believe that um the writer the main architect of the information in the book alcoholic synonymous and an architect is somebody who assembles who is who assemblies things that already exist into a unique whole that's kind of what an architect does right builds builds something from pre-existing uh materials and and build it bill i don't think bill invented a lot I think what he did was he put into practical application information that someone who was suffering from alcoholism would need to understand and then would need to do for recovery from alcoholismo. And to this day, I am still blown away by how intuitive the information is in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. My first exposure to it was it was kind of clanky, the steel prosthetic girder and the safe cracker who's been wronged and all this stuff. And it just seemed rather clunky to me with further study and further applying of the principles and the exercises in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. i'm blown away by how how intuitive and how correct it all is and in the book uh alcoholics anonymous uh it's pointed out that the alcoholics problem uh rests in their mind the problem is really in the mind of the alcoholic now i'm going to go back in my history as an alcoholic and and kind of share some things where, where I think, I think I turned, I took a left-hand turn and I started to get everything wrong. Uh, and, and I, you know, I S I started the belief things that weren't true. I started seeing things that were so, and uh, and I think that that has a lot to do with, with alcohol. I was like a pre alcoholic. All right. I was born a court low. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, I just was. Because when I discovered alcohol, it seemed to answer a lot of my problems, and it seemed to treat my emotional condition. It seemed to. So anyway, you know, I'm a young kid, and for one reason or another, I'm just not fitting in. I'm not feeling comfortable. I'm that getting with the program. I'm not a third grader among third graders. You know what I mean? I'm feeling apart from, I'm feelin' disconnected from, I'm no feeling in unity with. And I'm tryin' the best I can to show up and do what is expected of me, but it all feels wrong. You know wha I mean, it all feel wrong. It feels like, you know, it just doesn't make sense. But I know I'm going to get in trouble if I just drop out of school at age seven. But I felt like doing that because this just didn't – it wasn't working for me. OK, all this, all the neighbors and, you know, the church and the school and the softball and all this stuff. None of it was working for me. And I kind of retreated into my own head. I retreated to a fantasy life. I retreating to, you know, reading comic books. And, you know, I started to just separate myself from the pack. And, you know, I don't think I'm unique in all this. I think, listen, we all have our own story. We all have your own experience. Some of the things you might find that I'm sharing are common. Maybe they aren't. But I believe that my thinking, my thinking started to get really, really tangled up as a young kid. You would have diagnosed me with childhood anxiety disorder. You know what I mean? You would've diagnosed me with anti-personality challenges, whatever. But I'm not feeling comfortable. So there would be an oral report I would have to give in school. Let's say I'm in like sixth or seventh grade now, and I have to get up in front of the class and give an oral report. I wouldn't just cut school that day. I would cut school the three days after so I would miss the makeup because I was absolutely overwhelmed with anxiety to get up in front of a class and give a report, especially because I didn't do the work. I couldn't have cared less about the work, you know? I'm not going to study. I don't study, you Know what I mean? And so you put me up in front of the class, and it's going to be disaster, and people will make fun of me and people will think I'm stupid. And then I'll have to kill people. You know, all this stuff is going on in my head, you know, and it's really, really uncomfortable. And somewhere around the age 13, what happens is a couple of my buddies and I decide we're going to cut school and we're going to go back to my house and we're gonna get drunk it sounded like a cool thing that I was doing the outsider stuff at this time I mean I wasn't playing team sports I was riding mini bikes you know what I mean you know I wasn'T hanging out in crowds I was doing crimes you know What I mean like like I just I just didn't fit in so so so I start drinking um this Four Roses whiskey, and everything that was wrong was all of a sudden right. All of a suddenly I'm in the right place. For the first time in my life, I'm in the Right Place with the right people doing the right thing with my brand new best buddies. And isn't this great? This is so cool. This is great. And it woke something up in me that had been completely asleep. And all of a sudden, I felt connected to you. All of a suddenly, I feel the complete removal of that anxiety and that self-centered fear. And I started to look at this booze. The booze had done this. The boozes had done it. right and from that moment forward I became preoccupied with alcohol listen I overshot the mark because I'm an alcoholic what happened was I finished my glass I finished their glasses because they'd had enough you know you ever drink with people that have enough on you you know it's just annoying but I didn't have enough I you know I drank I drank as much as I could until I went into a blackout and passed out out in the field somewhere you know and staggered to my feet and I was violently ill for two days but what but the whole time I'm violently ill für two days I'm thinking I'm gonna figure out how to make this alcohol stuff work because because what it did for me was so important so important it connected me to the divine it connected me to this planet and all of a sudden I felt like I'm in the right place at the right time now I start to become you know an active alcoholic not a pre alcoholic now I'm a real alcoholic and I start using drugs I start you know every, you know, if you have a pill, I'll eat it and then I'll ask you what it is. You know what I mean? And I'm just, I am absolutely obsessed with changing the way I am perceiving reality and changing theway I feel within reality. And, you Know, I start smoking pot and doing speed and doing LSD and downers. And but always, always there's a bottle of booze there. There's a model of boozer that's there in the beginning and that's there in me, you know, because I could rely on it. There was some quality control with George Dickle bourbon. You know, there was no quality control to crap that I was I was buying in high school or whatever. Who knows? I remember this one guy sold me a bunch of pills. Oh, man, they're cool, man. These pills are really old. They'll get you messed up. And so I'm taking these pills and nothing has happened. I'm taken these pills. And nothing's out calling them up. I'm like, what are these? You know, they're good. I do them all the time. So I ended up taking like 15 of these pills there. His father's heart medication, you know, all of a sudden my, my heart is going, you know? I can see it beating out of my chest, but, but I'm not going to go to the hospital. I'm going to get a little hospital. You know? they, they think I was lame, you know? So I like laid down on the floor and, you know, survived it somehow beat the guy up in school the next day for nearly poisoning me. So what, you Know, all this stuff, all this stuff is going on now, you know, uh, now this is abnormal. Okay. The way I am living and, and the priorities that I'm putting on life is abnormal. You know, a normal kid would be thinking, you know, I probably should start getting my grades up right around now because the SAT is coming and, you know. I want to be able to get into the college of my choice. You know, like that's what a normal high schooler is thinking, right? I'm not thinking about that. I'm I'm not thinking about getting into the college of my choice. I'm thinking about who has what, who is, you know, who's going to be drinking with me? Where's the concert? You know, where's the party? Let's go to a park with a case of beer. You know? That's what I'm talking about. That's the thing that I'm speaking about. Now, the problem centers in my mind. I have become abnormal, you And listen, I've learned how to hide and go around the back and disappear so that people don't really get a clue about everything that's going on with me. Because somewhere deep down inside, I know that it's criminal for one thing, the stuff that I'm doing. I'm drinking and driving. And, you know, so so now I'm part of like this underground culture of hardcore partiers, you know, and and a lot of us are sticking together. There's one of them on this meeting tonight that I was in this underground culture with. Right. But but it but it's it's abnormal. It's deviant to to to a degree to be this this type of person so so obsessed and so occupied with altering my reality as many times as I can because I'm uncomfortable with sobriety. Sobriety has now become untenable to me. Sobiety has now become something like doing time you know what I mean like if I got no money and the town is dry it's like doing Time you know and I'm calling up every all over the place hey who's got what you know where's the party you know who's got money because sobriety is like doing time now now you know when they say when they say the problem resides in the mind you know there's a lot that goes on with that okay i kind of explained my my situation as an active alcoholic and what's what's going on up here but because of because of the 20 years of living like that I come into I come into sobriety just not having any healthy skills not having anything healthy thoughts you know my thoughts are tangled now now if you if you ask me like Chris what's going through your head right now if he would have asked me that I wouldn't have told you I would have told you because you i'd have been afraid they'd throw and you'd throw a net over me you know you'd take me off to the to the bin and you know the the psychiatrist should probably have me gassed you know what i mean like like the stuff that was going on my head was a mess so on any any day any day when i when i would come to in the morning i would be absolutely overwhelmed with resentment there'd be people places and things i was pissed at and i would have anxiety i would having this underlying terror of facing things that i needed to face I just I just didn't want it I just not today I'm calling it sick today you know what I mean no I'm I'm not gonna I'm Not Going To School You Know What If It Doesn't Work I'm Gonna Get You Know And I Mean You You Want Me To Go Do Say I'm NOT I'M NOT OKAY WITH THAT YOU KNOW You know, and I start my my world starts to get smaller and smaller and smaller because I'm pissed at half of it. And I'm afraid of the other half, you know? So so I remember I remember I'd gotten married and I'm like this, right? I got married and and, you know, you're supposed to like like be responsible. You're supposed to like be able to support a family and be supportive. And, you know, I got a daughter by this time and I can't go anywhere. I'm sitting at home smoking pot, getting paranoid, watching Love Boat reruns while my wife goes off to work. It's just, I'm crippled with an inability to deal. It's like a lack of dealage. This is where my mind has taken me to. So I show up in sobriety with all these twisted thoughts, all these crazy perceptions about how the world works and what's unfair and who's trying to get over on me. And all this stuff is going through my head And it's a mental illness. You know, I believe when I separate, I've already got it, but when I separate from alcohol, I now have a mental and emotional illness. My emotions are ill. I'm suffering from guilt, from shame, remorse, self-centered fear, anxiety, depression. I've got suicidal ideation. Okay, that's an emotional and a mental illness. And I show up in Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, and hey, Chris, you're welcome. You want a cup of coffee? And I can't let you know what's going on in my head because you'll throw a net over me and half of me gasped. So I got to now pretend that I'm not stark raving out of my mind, you know? And here's the thing. I've been stark raveing out of My Mind in the sober periods of time in my life for a long time now. It's almost become normal for me. But I know deep down inside there's something desperately wrong. There's something desperately wrong. And I remember going to AA, and you were great with the suggestions. Chris, I want you to do a 90 and 90. Okay. Chris, I want you to pick up the ashtrays. Okay. Chris, I want you to put away the chairs, even if you didn't sit in them. Okay. Chris, I want you to get to the meeting early. Okay. I'm so desperate that I'm following these suggestions that make absolutely no sense to me and are not going to work for me, you know? Like, understand, I have a mind that wants to kill me. There's no other way to put it. I have an idea of a mind that is programmed for my destruction. The only time my mind is comfortable is five minutes before I pass out from drinking too much. You know, somewhere between drink seven and drink nine, I can do this. Oh! And that's not even working anymore. So I'm in desperate, desperate trouble. And here's the thing about alcoholism. alcoholism does not allow you the dignity of an accurate self-appraisal and and and i think i think that's i thinkthat's compassionate you know if i really knew how much trouble i was in you know and what i would have to do to recover from it if i knew all that like my on day one it would be a real bleak outlook for me because I would think there's no way I can do that you want me to join AA for good you know what I mean you want my to not drink forever so I got it I got at a piece at a time and I got it from a really really compassionate sponsor now my sponsor started off like in a very you gotta understand what was going on up here you know you know what was going on in my head he understood he understood because he was an alcoholic too and so he kept it very simply goes chris just i want you to just go to a meeting every night can you do that yeah and and so I started I started to go to AA meetings instead of being out there drinking the AA meetings were during my drinking time so it made you know it made a lot of sense to to go and go to a seven o'clock or an eight o' clock or a nine o'clockwise meeting back then and there was little lessons that he he would give me now this is how far off the beam was. I remember he was the first guy that was inviting me over to his house, people weren't inviting me Over to their house. They weren't saying, Hey, Chris, we're going away for a couple of weeks on vacation, you want you want to watch my house? You know, they know that they'd come back and there'd probably not be any furniture in it or something, you know, so nobody, nobody was asking me to do this. But he was inviting Me over to this house. And I remember the first time I met his children, he had a son and a daughter who were like 12 and 13. And he had me break bread at the table. So it was me, my sponsor and his 12 and his 13 year old kids. And they got up afterward and they went into their room to do homework or whatever normal kids do that I didn't do. And He goes, He was very, very kind to me. He goes Chris, Chris, could I ask you a favor? and I said yes Phil yeah yeah sure sure he goes could you not use the f word in front of my children and I'm like oh my god like every other word out of my here's a here's another one he goes this was years later he goes he goes Chris remember we would drive to meetings together in the winter I go yeah he goes remember I'd always have my window open and I go yet he goes you know why i always had my window open i don't know phil why he goes because you would be talking like this and i'm like oh my god i was an absolute lunatic but i didn't think i was you know when i when i got sober i didn' t i didn''t i shouldn't say i didn'T think i WAS i DIDN'T KNOW HOW BAD IT WAS didn't know how bad it was. I remember this other time there was a bunch of halfway houses around where I was going to meetings and I remember uh this this one newcomer girl I got six months now right there's this one newcomer girl this one Newcomer guy like hook up you know boy meets girl on a campus and trouble soon follows right and I Remember you know she she kicked him to the curb and he flipped out and he was literally chasing her around the church like trying to get her and and somebody said something downstairs and so I start heading up the stairs my sponsor's coming down the stairs and I'm heading up to stairs right and he goes Chris where you going where you're going he goes um I go I go wait what's his name Jason what's your name yeah I'm I'm going to go kill him. And he goes, he goes Chris we don't kill people in AA and I'm like, you know it was like a Yoda moment. You know what I mean? It was like an acid moment for me. Like whoa you know, we don'T kill people in AA. This is how far from reality I had gotten. This is how far off the beam I had got. Now, I'm going to a lot of meetings and my life is getting better like a millimeter a day. You know, the things that are getting my health is getting a little better, you know but but but still within me is all this resentment and all this anxiety and all this distance the best way I can describe it is the distance you know what I mean from from connection and it's getting just a little bit better every single meeting I go to then I get exposed to some people who uh who give me a set of 90 minute tapes and these tapes are uh are an early like mid-80s workshop uh by the late great joe and charlie the original joe charlie and this guy this guy lends them to me and says dude you know you're hardcore you i didn't care much for this but i have a feeling there's going to be something in this of value to you and uh and there there was uh i i because i got really upset with the material on those tapes they were talking about an a.a i knew nothing about they were Talking About An A.A That Was Not Being Discussed In The Closed-Minded Discussion Meetings I Was Going To They Were Talking About an experience that i had not had i was sober but i was a long way away from recovered and they were talking about the process that you go through to go from sober to recovered and because i'm not hearing it in meetings because i because i you know i you Know i'm I'm not really okay with all this stuff. They're talking about four-column inventory and, you know, putting together an amends list and going out making amends and how you got to pray and meditate and upon awakening, you know, and all this staff that I'm doing and I have no experience with. My life blows up like a month after I listened to these tapes and I had no tools. I had No emotional fortitude to get through the things that, that happened. And I, I, I just started to go like almost into a fetal position. The emotional pain was so great. You know, it was like a second bottom that I had in, in, uh, in AA. And there was, there was something about those tapes that haunted me. Joe and Charlie spoke with authority, they spoke with confidence, and they spoke with humility. And they spoke about the nature of alcoholism and the process of recovery. And they did it with sheer confidence. So that information haunted me. I ended up going back to those tapes, taking it as a serious piece of real business you know and and i started to go through these tapes and i started to do what they what they said you were supposed to do and i blew off the dust off of my big book that i'd gotten in treatment and i starting to do a very very imperfect very haphazard uh approach to actually taking the steps and you know when i found out what i found out in the steps was, I've got a mind that's really resentful. Okay. David, what did you say? What did you mean by that? I know what you meant by that. You know, I mean, that's where my mind would go like out of the blue. And what the fourth step asks me to do right out of the gate is it asks me to inventory my anger and my resentment. The things that I'm holding on, being pissed off at people, principles or institutions that I am hanging on to because my mind won't let me let this go. If you ripped me off on a drug deal, 10 years later I would be slashing your tires if i found you i wouldn't let any of this stuff go so the exercise is the exercises is to inventory this stuff to inventory it to see to see where these resentments are corroding my thought processes, corroding my experience with other people, other places and other institutions and other principles. My relationship with all this stuff has been corroded because of these resentments. And I start to see the truth in them. And I started to change the way I think. It asks me to change the way I think. We deal with these people as we would sick people. These people are not coming at you. They're doing what they do, and you are perceiving. You're perceiving things incorrectly. you should be looking at these people like sick people with compassion and trying to see how you can be helpful now that's a jump from wanting to slash their tires to to to trying to be compassionate and understanding but the process in the book Alcoholics Anonymous is simple enough That if I follow the instructions, I begin to make that jump from wanting to get revenge. And my thinking starts to change. Okay, I'm really, I told you, I am really anxious and I am uncomfortable. And you know, I just don't feel like being here right now. I think I am going to go. you know that anxiety the second thing they asked me to inventory is my fears or my anxieties you know fear is an evil and corroding thread the fabric of my existence is shot through with it it creates chains of circumstances that just put me in a position to be hosed every single time It's a direct quote. So these fears are ruining any quality of life because I just don't want to, you guys go without me. You know what I mean? They asked me to look at this. They asked me to look at these fears. They ask me to identify them. They asked me the question, why do I have them? And then there's a prayer and then there is a process. And then they get me to start change my thinking about all these things. Don't I have this fear and don't I have this anxiety because I'm relying upon myself all the time. You know, I'm not the best person to rely on, you know, don't rely on me for it. Yet I'm relying on myself for everything. And it's, it starts to change the way I think about my reality. And all of a sudden I start to outgrow this fear. I start to, I start To outgrow my anxiety and I start to be able to show up, show up comfortably where I'm supposed to be, doing what I'm supposed to do. And this is a fundamental change within my mind because my anxiety comes from my mind. My resentments come from my mine. And then it asks me to look at my relationships. Now, I don't know about anybody else, but people let me down. Did people let you down? did you change friends a lot did you cut people out of your life did you stop taking phone calls from people did you stopped talking to people did quit jobs because of the boss and did you move to other towns because of a way it is in this town well i was incapable of being the type of person who could be in a healthy relationship you gotta remember I've got a mind that wants to kill me and there's collateral damage everywhere there's lateral damage everywhere when you have a mind like mine because I'm seeing everything wrong I'm perceiving everything wrong so I get so I've got these relationships where people were foolish enough to buy into my facade and get into a relationship whether it was a friendship or whether it was intimate. And very soon they would recognize the enormity of their mistake and they would exit themselves, or I would get resentment and I would kick them to the curb. And this happened over and over and ever again. I could not develop any meaningful relationships. I couldn't develop any of them. I had rendered myself permanently single, you know, without even knowing it. You know what I mean? So this inventory, it asks me to review the relationships I've been in. And there's nine questions. You know, where did I, you knows, did I unjustifiably arouse jealousy, suspicion, or bitterness? Who did I hurt? You know? There's a number of questions that I need to ask. And I need to look at every single relationship and I need to answer these questions. And all of a sudden my thinking starts to change. And I start to recognize that my problems aren't coming at me, they're coming from me. My mind had created all of these situations because I had a bad manual, you know? my, my owner's manual was really bad. And, and I, you know, I was inappropriate every way you could be inappropriate. And then it asks me to develop an ideal, an ideal for a relationship and it, you Know, I can, you can use this on intimate relationships. You can use it for friends. You can us it as, as a, uh, an employee ideal, a family ideal, whatever, but to put together the characteristics of a good relationship, then there's a process where repeatedly I ask God to help me grow and to help Me become the type. I've now got a goal to help ME become the type of person who can be in relationships, who can be in friendships, who could be in a family, who can who can stick it out at a job and all of these simple exercises have changed the way i perceive reality they've changed theway i think about things and all the sudden mentally um i'm becoming more healthy with that emotionally i'mbecomingmorehealthy you know because i'm acting appropriately i'm not in shame anymore about how inappropriate i was you know now that i'mnot pissed off at everybody you know i'm able to be in a long-term uh friendship or relationship with somebody and my thinking is is changing does alcoholism Does the main aspect of alcoholism reside in my mind? I believe it does. I believe next week, I'm going to be talking about the movement from the mental health piece into the spiritual and emotional health piece, which I believe goes from step six to step 12. I believe, is what healed me emotionally and spiritually. But at least I'm thinking correctly now. At least I understand who the problem is. It basically says in the book Alcoholics Anonymous, self in the various manifestations is what had defeated me. I had defeated myself because of how I thought. You know, I love the set-aside prayer. I love to set aside prayer. I believe my home group was the first home group in the world to start using that prayer. We started using it in 1997 in Murrinsville. And you can't shake a stick without hitting a meeting that uses the set aside pray right now. But I believe so much in this prayer. Help me set aside what I think about something, what I believe about something. My opinion about something help me set that aside, not throw it away, but set it aside so that there's room for me to be open to a new perspective, to a New understanding of something because you know what folks? I could be wrong the hardest thing for an alcoholic to ever admit I was I was wrong I know today that I could be wrong and you know what's cool about being wrong the right is usually better than the wrong I had so I'm cool with being wrong today But anyway, you know, have I been restored to some form of mental health? Absolutely. Do I still have quirks? Does my wife still think I'm crazy? Yeah. You know, because there's still a lot of progress. There's still A lot of work I got to do. You know, sometimes I rest on my laurels. Sometimes I sit on my ass. There's more work to do. There is more work to do to grow in understanding and with the understanding I grow in effectiveness. And you know what? I am absolutely done guys with the presentation. I love being across the pod. You're all my friends. i love all of you and uh and with that i'm gonna pass it back to david that's fantastic thank you