Step 4 — Moral Inventory – Rick H. – Wilson House Big Book Workshop Retreat – 2024

Hello, I'm Sonia and I'm still an alcoholic. Fantastic. All right. Step four, made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Dun-dun-dum-dung. Oh, the freedom. Let's see. Creation gave us instincts for a purpose. Without them, we wouldn't be complete human beings. Yet these instincts, so necessary for our existence, often far exceed their proper function. Powerfully, blindly, and many times subtly, they drive us, dominate us, and insist upon ruling our lives. The story of me. So I remember feeling really excited and happy that I wasn't defective. Like, wow, all of my character defects and all of My behaviors were instinctual. I just took them to another place, like a really another place. Like probably some of you did too. um and i never uh understood how to keep things in balance that was never my forte i was either a zero or a ten and when the pendulum swung boom i was the other way with all the inertia And coming into a four, five and six in life and staying there, that required a lot of things. And one of those things that it required was constant vigilance to paying attention to how I'm showing up in my day. And those are all my instincts. And so I have to be prepared to look at that. And when I feel like I'm moving out of that arena, get back into that arena because it's never good. But when I was active, I loved the chaos. So zero and 10 were awesome. And my sponsor, she wasn't big on like kudos and good job, honey. like not a lot of that but the first time I recall her complimenting me on my sobriety was after I made the statement oh my gosh Yvonne I just can't stand the chaos anymore and she looked at me and she said Sony honey you're growing up and I thought oh my god like the good little daughter or school kid, I'm a good girl finally. So my instincts were always all over the place. I did not have any idea of what balance was and that made for a really difficult life and I'm sure many people in my life noticed my balance was skewed tremendously. However, that was my normal, which was, wow, that was insane in itself. Another thing I love in here is the most common symptoms of emotional insecurity are worry, anger, self-pity, and depression. These stem from causes which sometimes seem to be within us and at other times to come from without. To take inventory in this respect, we ought to consider fully all personal relationships which bring continuous or reoccurring trouble. That was all of them! It should be remembered that this kind of insecurity may arise in any area where instincts are threatened. And again, my instincts, I walked through this world before I got sober, always under fire, always under siege. I was always in protective mode. I ran from my emotional part of the brain, that like real primitive place of fight light and just survival all the time. And, you know, sobriety as i became safe within myself i was able to move to the thinking part the neocortex that i could think things through i didn't have to be impulsive people weren't running after me to kill me you know um and everything in between but all my life i had been so hyper vigilant because of fear. And some of it, as the book says, was justifiable and some of it was made up. So at the time though, none of it in my mind was made up. Yeah, it was make up. And it really was like I was in a war zone every single day and the thought of not having my weapons ready to go was probably one of the most frightening things that could happen and the relief I got from drinking and drugs was awesome when it worked and obviously it stopped working and I caught up with myself and I couldn't push those feelings down anymore. But boy, it was really painful to live that way. But it is from our twisted relations with family, friends, and society at large that many of us have suffered the most. We have been especially stupid and stubborn about them. The primary fact that we fail to recognize is our total inability to form a true partnership with another human being. I cried the first time I read that because it was true. And that was me. You know, when you go through life feeling defective, you don't believe that you're worth anything and you have anything to offer. And people just use you and you just use them. And it's not a partnership, though. That is not a partnership. Those we have other words for that. But it's not a partnership. I hadn't really been exposed to an honest partnership, though, to mimic. So I didn't know what one looked like. There was a lot of crazy, a lot of alcoholic behaviors, thinking, rationale, anger, pain, fear with the people who I was brought up with. And they were kids too when they were bringing me up and they were young and they didn't know what they didn'T know. So it just was the way it was. And what I actually learned in a different 12-step program is my emotional pain is for me to figure out and for me to heal. It is not something I throw around people who I feel has hurt me in the past, and I feel who unjustly did things to me. They did what they did because that's what they do, and I had to swallow that. And it was doing, I can remember, I was so excited to do my fourth step. Oh, my goodness. And I would always be bitching about my former husband. You know, if you had him too, you would be because he was the cause of all of it at that point. He was not the gift yet. So Yvonne said to me, you're so excited about doing your fourth step, what's taking you so long? you're like balking and I was like no I'm not and she's like yeah and I said all right and she goes how about this honey we won't I won't let you talk about Bill anymore until your fourth step is done who am I now like that's all I did was complain about him I was addicted to a person I was addicted to his behaviors. I was addicted to our dance, our pain. It gave me life. It made me feel alive because I felt dead inside my whole life. And this was how I could feel. And so now I didn't like that so now what so now i had to look at my my side of the story and my part and um i personally believe it's the only way i can heal is until i see my part in my side of a situation i'm so busy pointing justifying rationalizing lying whatever you want to call it But all of those things, they just took over for me so I didn't have to look at myself because I wanted to keep doing what I wanted to keep going. And it was selfish and self-centered and that felt good at the time when I was doing it. So doing my fourth step, my former husband took my kids, our children, for two days and I think to his office where I don't even know if they were around any adults but they couldn't get out so that was good and they were six and eight and they knew where the fridge was so that's good and then I sat in my bedroom with a notebook and started and it was 88 pages back in front and i just i did it i grouped it like it said with the columns and my sponsor said that last column do your um do the seven deadly sins pick which ones it is so pride was in all of them pride definitely like it says in here ran the parade definitely first um and greed and just just all of them were everywhere it was like a hot mess but um it was very exhausting to do my hand killed um but it was the first time all of Sonia was in one place because I had been six people all the time and there was one person my godmother pretty much knew everything about me I think, maybe her. But other than that, nobody did. And so it was really the first time I looked at it and said, holy cow, I am all of this. Like, I can't run from this anymore. I have to look at this and own it and apparently do something with it, which was quite frightening in itself too. So, you know, it's resentments is what kept me sick. And resent means to keep reliving something, a situation. And I was so good at that. And I took everybody who would listen hostage to join me in that fanfare. and it was very painful, not just for me, but that's the first time I actually realized I affected other people. Like, wow, holy cow. There was other people in this universe and it wasn't just about me. Oh my gosh. And maybe I mattered just enough where I could hurt people. And I do believe some of the times when I was lashing out and being me, I really just didn't think it mattered that I said did and was who I was because it didn't really register with anybody. People tossed me away since I was a kid. So what was, why did it matter now? So I'm glad that I did my fourth step. It turned me into one person and it got me to see the patterns that I was using that were not effective anymore. And it was the beginning to learning what I have to do differently, which I'll give you the whole thing now. The opposite. Yvonne said, if you do nothing at all or the exact opposite, honey, I think you'll be all right. She wasn't wrong. Go ahead. Thanks, Sonia. You're welcome. Everybody, Rick Alcoholic. Fourth step. I think when we all come in here in the beginning, we hear all the stories and we're deathly afraid of the fourth step. I'm not looking at Rick. I'm nicht gucken auf das. Wie viele Leute haben einen vierten Schritt gemacht? Awesome. Wie viele Menschen sind im Mittelpunkt? all right how many people haven't done at all well we know you you don't need to do it she's not one of us that's why I said that but um so I remember uh if you remember in Bill story bill did his fourth step from his hospital bed going rehab and going through recovery don't you know trying to trying to detox off of this he did his fourth step from his hospital bed I've had people ask me you know when's a good time to do your fourth step and the answer is you know when do you want to get better that's the answer you know I've had people tell me that oh my sponsor told me that I needed to wait a year to do my fourth step and I looked at him and why do you want to stay sick for a year that being said now comes my fourth step okay um my fourth stuff took me four years to complete and it's not something I would suggest you do I started my fourth step and um i had mentioned yesterday about my buddy paul that him and i ran together and him and i him and I were unspoken sponsors of each other and this is before the days of of actually getting a formal sponsor and uh and and and him and i were had gotten to this stage and doing a fourth step and uh uh, Paul comes to me one day and he's got this formatted fourth step. And, um, and he, you know, we made comp, we made doing a fourth step complicated and it's not. And I'll get to that part where it's easy and I'll show you. But, um. We complicate the crap out of everything. We're alcoholics. That's just what we do. We overthink it. We overeanalyze it. we just kind of take it to the extreme. And so he comes to me with this formatted fourth step, and you can imagine how excited I am. I'm like, awesome. I don't have to do like it says in the book. It's I can do it. I can answer a bunch of questions. I Can talk about animals, I can do whatever I want. So I take it to my sponsor, and I tell him all about it, and I put it on the table, and push it across the table to him. And he looks at it and he's like, huh. He said you know that might work. That might help you. That might be all right he said but pushed it back across the table at me and said honestly I don't know anything about that one I don t know anything about that they don't have any experience in that and he took his big book and he pushed it across the tab at me. And he said if you want to do it the way it's laid out in the big book, he says I can help you with this. He said I can't help you at that. Be my guest go ahead and do it. He I said, but if you want help, I can do it. I can help you with this, the way it's laid out in the big book. And I remember leaving how disappointed I was. And I was like, I'm looking at that formatted fourth step. And I'm like, oh, crap. Now I've got to do it the hard way. And I threw it away. I threw away that formated fourth step and I started down the path of doing my fourth step And you guys heard my story yesterday. I was living in a two-bedroom apartment with my dogs, and I had plenty of time on my hands. And I started doing my fourth step, and I got into it, and I didn't know if I was doing it wrong or doing it right. And somebody said to me one time, the only way you can do this wrong is by not doing it. And I didn' t listen to that. So I put the fourth step on top of the refrigerator, and I would never take it down. And again, I got into it. All the people that were glaring in my life that I had resentments at, those were the first ones. Those were easy. My ex-wife, the guy she's cheating on me with, my kids, my friends that screwed me over, my people that owed me money, things like that. Those people were quick on my list. And I was told that it's like peeling away the layers of an onion. You know, you have to start at what's glaring and work your way down to the stuff that's down in your core. And I wrote all those names down, and I had pages of names. And I left that fourth step on my refrigerator for a while. And Dick asked me one day, hey, how's that fourth stop coming? And I'm like, ah, you know, I had every excuse. And you guys all know the excuses like, yeah, you know, I need to take a shower today or something, you know. But he kind of lit the fire under my butt to do my fourth step. And he said to me, he said, you Know how many meetings are you going to a week? And I'm like, I'm going to seven meetings a week every day. I'm doing a meeting. And he says, Well, how about you take one of those meetings and you don't go? and you take that hour that you would be sitting at a meeting and you sit at your kitchen table and you do your fourth step. And I said, okay, I can do that. And I wrote out that fourth step and I got to the end of it and it looked like a war and peace. But, and Dick's laughing because he remembers that day. And he said to me, he says, all right, you're done? You think you're gone? I said yeah, I'm done. I think I'm gone. and it revealed to me a lot. And honestly, halfway through that fourth step, I didn't like Rick. I didn' t like who I had become. But to be honest with you, without doing that fourth step, I couldn' t see it. I couldn't see how much of a selfish, self-centered guy Rick was. So I got done with that fourth step and i um and i remember being saying the dick i'm like i think i'm done and he said okay he said um show up at my house on saturday morning we'll get this thing done and um I remember how afraid I was of doing it but I remembered like it says on the top of page 58 says rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path and that line rang a bell in my head you know I don't want to be one of those people that, that doesn't follow this path. Um, it tells me that I can recover from this disease if I just do everything this book tells us. And I mentioned, um, at the last session that there, there's things in this book that are requirements and it's not the, the steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. There's plenty of requirements in thisbook. There is, there is one phrase that that says, you know, we need to do certain things for a successful consummation of this process. Inventory is one of them. And, you Know, there's a few different stages to your inventory too. There's three different stages to our inventory. And the first one is resentments. And it says at the bottom of that page, it's bottom of page 64, it says resentment is the number one offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stem all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have also been spiritually sick. And the next line is real important. It says when the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physical. When we first come in here, We think that we need to straighten out physically first, I think. We need to put the booze down. We needto get better physically. And that's not what the book tells us. It tells us that I need to straightenaut spiritually first. When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically. I have to have that higher power. I haveto have that God in my life. I havetohave that spirit within me telling me what I need to do and telling me my thoughts and what I need to process here. And inventory is, we complicate the crap out of it. We say, oh no, I'm not doing that. And I have a lot of guys that I've tried to help over the years and they get to this process and they disappear because they don't want to physically look at who they've become. some of them like who they've become you know, some of them just don't want to look at it I was one of them, it took me four years, don't ever let your inventory hold you up for that kind of time it held me hostage for four years and I was still sick for those four years even though I'm sober, I was still sick and so I remember that day Dick said to me show up on Saturday morning and we'll do your fifth and I showed up and showed up early and we started doing it and by 5 or 7 o'clock that night we were only halfway through and he said okay, I guess you're coming back tomorrow so I showed up on Sunday morning and um we finished that fourth step and it revealed a lot it really did you know i'm i'm a i'ma self-centered to the extreme and um my my fourth step my i mentioned that it's a few different stages resentment is the first one you know the second one is fear you know why do i have these fears and um and and i put those fears down on paper and uh and way back way back on page 53 it says when we became alcoholics crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade We had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else he is nothing. God either is or he isn't. What was my choice to be? So I had to look at Rick and look at him, Rick, through God's eyes. I had I had actually physically believe that in everything, God, everything is God given and God was putting me down that path to do that inventory. And so I looked at those fears and why do I have those fears? It's because I didn't trust that God was taking care of me. I didn'T trust that God was going to take care of mE in those things. And I don't mean fears like I'm afraid of spiders or I'm afraid of heights or something like that. I mean those fears of I'm a fraid of not being loved or I'm afraid of losing my wife and my family and my kids. And, you know, Sonia talked about her husband being a gift and we don't see that either. And I look back and my ex-wife is my gift of desperation. That was the gift of inspiration that she gave me. she gave me that gift by not taking me back had she took taken me back and had she had she let me back home I never would have done any of this stuff I definitely would have all of this for show and because she didn't take me back I I knew that I had to do something I knew I had to do my inventory I had to get over that whole thing and and it showed me that God is handling my life it showed the inventory showed me that I had to trust in my higher power and I had the trust in God and now we get to the we call it in our men's group we used to call it the relationship inventory you You know, in the book they call it the sex inventory. And I was bad in this department. This is kind of the only way to keep Sonia loving me. That's it. So that's the truth right there, what she said. you know the good thing is that she has this Rick she doesn't have that Rick you know that Rick was very selfish, very self-centered I would do everything and anything in my power to get you to love me to getyou to like me and once I got what I wanted I was on to the next you know it was more of a conquering thing more than anything once I'd got what I wanted I was looking for the next thing that would make me happy and make me happier. And, and that's the crazy part of this relationship inventory. I call it the relationship inventory because there was many people that I looked at that had nothing to do with sex. You know, people like my mother, you know, People like my father, people, like my siblings, people that were friends, You know, there were plenty of people I stepped on their toes in my life that didn't show up in my resentment inventory. But they did show up. They showed up in the relationship inventory. So, you know, for me that was huge because I needed to look at something more than just sexual relationships. I had to look AT those other ones that were pretty important to me. and I remember having that talk with Dick about this, and he said, okay. He said, you know, now that we were done, you know we had to take a look. I had to look in the fourth column. We talk about the fourth volume all the time. Now let me back up a little bit here. What time do we got, G? Oh yeah, plenty of it. plenty of time so like I mentioned we complicate the crap out of this inventory thing and it's pretty simple so dealing with resentments it says in dealing with resentment we set them on paper we listed people institutions or principles with whom we were angry. And this is the part that gets people confused, and if you listen, this is really simple, really not complicated at all. It says, we asked ourselves why we were hungry. In most cases it was found that our self-esteem, our pocketbooks, our ambitions, our personal relationships, including sex, were hurt or threatened. So we were sore, we were burned up. Those are the things we're looking for in our fourth step. That's all we're looking for is those things. It's not complicated. It's only a few things that we're actually looking for in that fourth step, and then we get over to the fourth column, so the fourth column's on page 67, and they don't tell you this, but it says remember I mentioned there's all kinds of one-liners in this book that we have to pay attention to. If you don't have your nose in this big book, you're never going to see these things. And one of them is double underlined in my book and it says, we avoid retaliation or argument. We wouldn't treat sick people that way. If we do, we destroy our chance of being helpful. It says, We cannot be helpful to all people, but at least God will show us how to take a kindly and tolerant view of each and every one. If I don't have my head in this book, I don�t see that line. I'm still retaliating and arguing with everything and everyone. This next line it says, this is our fourth column, it says referring to our list again, putting out of our minds the wrongs others had done, we resolutely look for our own mistakes. And this is the fourth column. Where had we been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened? Though a situation is not entirely our fault. We tried to disregard the other person involved entirely. Where were we to blame? That's the fourth column. So don't get confused, don't complicate this thing. It's only asking for a few things. had we been selfish, dishonest, self-seeking and frightened? Four things. I take that back. There's actually five things that they're actually looking for. Where were we to blame? That's the other one. That's another question that we're looking for, where was I to blame in those things? I got to see a lot in my fourth column of what Rick really was. Like I mentioned already, I didn't like the person I was discovering. So I had to look, like Sonia did, at what kind of person I wanted to be. You know, do I want to be selfish, dishonest, resentful? No. I want to be the exact opposite. Like Sonia said, if I just do the exact opposite of what I read there on that paper, I'm going to be okay. And I hate to say it this way, but you're going to do even better because you're going to get the Rick that's recovered. You're going get the Ric that's not selfish. You're gonna get the rick that's honest. You're gunna get that new Rick. And like I said, Sonia has that. She doesn't know. Sonia and I have been together four years, coming up on four years and she's never seen that old Rick. she can't believe that I used to be that way and Sonia was expecting in our relationship one time she was expecting something and something was going on in our relationship, and she was expecting her ex-husband to show up. The things that he was and the type of person that he was because that's all she knew. She didn't know what to expect from Rick. And I said to her, I said, you just don't put me in that category because that's not who I am. I said, and she could probably elaborate better on this, but I said to her, I said you know you're just going to have to wait and see. You're going to see that I'm not him. That I'm the person that you are. That I am not the traits that he is. All the traitsthat he had, I was. I'mnot that person today. And I was worried. I was honestly worried about doing this with her. And I had a talk with Dick about it, and Dick smiled, and he laughed, and he said, you're not that person, Rick. you know she doesn't have that old guy that old Rick she has the new improved version you know the updated version Rick 2.0 whatever you want to call him and he was right and I went to Sonia and I said to Sonja that I was definitely afraid of doing this with her because I knew there was going to be things that were going to come out when we got to this stage in our talk and our inventory and talking about sex relations and things like that. And she smiled, too, and said the same thing. I don't have that rig. I have this rig. What a gift this program is. and she talks about her husband was a gift, my wife was a gift. She gave me this program whether she believes it or not and I am so grateful that I went through this process. I wish I had not waited four years to do the inventory, to be honest with you. It's four years of my life that I can't get back. But it's that experience of waiting that four years. I had to have that experience in order to get to the net, to move on. We all have to have our own experience in this program. You guys are all having yours. Hopefully, you hear something this week and that maybe lights a spark under your inventory, maybe lights the spark in your life and maybe forces you to kind of get off your ass and do what's better for you. You know, that's what we're here for. We're here to share our experience and hopefully our experience will help your experience and enhance that. That's what wir'e here for, you know. I did step five with Dick that day and it tells us at the end of step five it says we after having shared this experience we'd be quiet for an hour that's the end of step five some people think it's the beginning of step six But it's not. It's the end of step five where we actually physically go in and look at and examine what we've done. You know, have I done the fourth, the first five steps correctly? Have I done it to the best of my ability? Have I have I Done What I Needed To Do? And that's important. I've had people that shared their fifth step with me and then went home to their wife and kids and did everything. I'm like, hey, you could go be quiet for an hour. They're like, ah, yeah, not yet. I'm still doing this and doing that and everything else. I'm Like, okay. It's not what I told you to do. It's Not What the Book Tells Us to Do. The book tells us to get quiet for an hour, and to me, that's important. I'm glad I did it. I went and sat in the woods where nobody could bother me. I left my phone in the car so it couldn't be bothering me. I looked over my inventory and I honestly, like I said, I analyzed who Rick was and I knew what I didn't want to be. I still hadn't figured out who I wanted to be yet, but I knew who I didn's want to see. I didn' t want to know who I did' n't want to be, and that's important that we self-analyze this. Alcoholism doesn't give us the ability to do a self-diagnosis or a self appraisal. When we're an act of alcoholism, it doesn' t allow us to do that. you know, that's what this fifth step is for for me. What do we got, Chief? 15 minutes? I have a half hour. Half hour? Okay. You... Step five. Thank you. Let's see. Step five so step four the principle is courage which it's like so clear we need so much courage to take step four because it's really scary to look at who we are I was scared because I knew somewhere inside of me who had been doing all those things and not wanting to look at it so I needed to muster up all the courage and get threatened too by my sponsor but um but step five the principle is integrity and um i didn't know what integrity meant um but my sponsor did tell me to buy the there used to be and i haven't seen it but i got sober in bridgeport um and there usedと be a little dictionary it was like five or eight pages and it had like all these words in it that the big book used that you didn't know what they were and she had me go through and highlight and not just if I didn't know them but she made me write them down and then we had to talk about what they meant so one of my homework assignments from her was to look at three different sources for one word, such as integrity. So I have my sponsees do that. And it's really great because I always thought I had courage and I had integrity and I Had all these things, but I didn't even know what they were, which just didn't make life easy. So step five is integrity. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. All of AA's 12 steps ask us to go contrary to our natural desires. They all deflate our egos. When it comes to ego deflation, few steps are harder to take than five, but scarcely any step is more necessary to long-time sobriety and peace of mind than this one. so when I did my step five I was um I went to my sponsor's house and you know we sat and it wasn't scary to do with her because Yvonne had known so much when I got sober I was like I just I couldn't hold on to all of the pain and that all of it anymore and it was like I had Yvonne and just started telling her everything so she was really aware of the players in my life and the situations that occurred and she had a lot of sobriety she had you know I wasn't her first bozo on the bus that came along and um you know she she had my number and she knew when to be hard on me which i gravitate to that type of love i understand it i know how to navigate it um it's what i was brought up with but she also knew how to nurture me when i needed to be nurtured and her way of knowing what was important for me to stay the course and feel safe so I could build my courage and learn what my integrity looked like was amazing. And I had never really felt nurtured before like that, and I'll never forget how I just think of Yvonne, and she just, it's like she cupped her hands and I was the little baby bird. Funny, my last name's Finch. but um it's not a yellow bird in there I'm like a little brown bird but anyway um but she just like would nurture me and like my eyes opened up and like she was my mom like it was you know it was just amazing like that and so when I did my step five I had already been experiencing unconditional love um and I didn't know that but I felt very safe and trusting of her and so she had been presenting to me all of these different ways to be with a human that I really either wasn't awoken to or ever experienced and um it just felt so right there was probably nothing at that point in my life that ever felt that right and I didn't mind revealing it all and we went through it line by line by line and God bless her for real she is sort of an angel I polish our halo I joke every time I see her oh there's my girl and and you know she like it says in the book, you know, told me some of her experiences. And she was a heavy-duty crack hitter. So that was her drug of choice. So she had a lot more stories than me, like crazy. So I didn't feel so bad, you now. And doing my fourth and fifth step really right-sized me. It really spoke to I wasn't the worst and I wasn'T the best because those were the zero and ten I lived in. I either was Miss America or I was, you know, worse than dog doo-doo on your shoe, you know? And there was no in between. So it was really great to get that out of me and to compile myself into like one person because I had been living as so many people for so long and trying to be whatever everybody wanted from me. And now it was like the gig was up, like I'm just me. At that point, I had enough self in me and God was in me that I was okay with that. I didn't know if everybody else was going to be okay with that, but I was told it's not your business when anybody thinks about you or whatever. So that was hard. That can still be challenging today, but for the most part, I just, you know, they said you have to be selfish right now. Now you can use that character defect on the other side of the coin and use your selfishness to get wealth and um i did so um the fear was not as intense as i've heard you know some people have a issue with in the rooms and and i i feel sad for them because I didn't get the relief like it was no burning bush or anything um but it was when I sat quiet I could actually feel me and I shut my emotions off at five years old I felt nothing since I was five years old even when I had physical pain I couldn't feel it like it's amazing mental pain emotional pain nope it wasn't gonna happen and um I could actually feel there was a me like I had blood running through me like I might be human after all and um and I was exhausted I was definitely exhausted and I really rested for some time, but I did think about who I was and how efficient and effective my fifth step was with my fourth step. And I didn't think I left anything out until my sponsor said, would you leave out? And I said, nothing. And she went, well, that's a lie. And I said, you're right. And she said, you're going to drink over whatever you didn't tell me about. You mark my words. And I thought, oh, shoot. So I had seen something when I was nine, I think. And I didn't know what to do with what I saw. and it was really, really hard and I was a kid too but the other person I saw was a really little kid and it was really hard for me and I was very confused so I felt like I was in trouble because I never said anything and even because I questioned that it was bad because I was so confused because bad things happen to me too so I was just terrified that Yvonne would hate me and she told me something and I just sobbed in her arms and told her yeah that one still hurts so this feeling of being at one with God and man this emerging from isolation through the open and honest sharing of our terrible burden of guilt brings us to a resting place where we may prepare ourselves for the following steps towards a full and meaningful sobriety. And it's true, you know, it is being one with God and having me emerge into one person and finally like that seeking of how to fill that hole was done. Like I didn't, I had a lot of work to do. I still have a lot more work to be done. It's never going to be gone while I'm on this side of the grass, but you know, the hole isn't empty anymore. God bless you. And that is a real gift And I feel comfortable in my own skin today, which is a miracle. And I mean that. And I feeling like I'm a part of my family today, like I am a Clark. Clark blood runs through me just like everybody else I'm related to. And they loved me all along. I just couldn't accept anyone's love. So that was a real gift. and Yvonne told me I could I could accept that love because I wasn't bad and I'm so grateful for that because I had to let go of as much of that as I possibly could in order to move to steps six and seven which I was told when I was being taught this that they're the character building steps and now that I've seen my lack of character or dysfunctioning character um I could now decide um who I wanted to be and I worked off of that list that I made for my higher power to be. And um you know I bob and weave and whatnot but it's I don't have to be afraid of the book of Sonia anymore because I know who's writing the next chapter. And it's always me from here on out, you know? I get to choose. It's my story. Nobody defines me today. In my fifth step, I was able to look at how I allowed people to define me. And then the next part I had to look at was their character and on their character, do I want those people defining me? Was that a real good definition? Were they of sound mind to be defining me as a kid? No, not at all. So I with my God defines me, and there is freedom in that. There's absolute freedom in it. So thank you. Rick Alcohollick. Here I am. so i mentioned that you know this the steps we always say the steps of the work the steps of the and and i like to think that the steps are not the work the step is other process that brings us to a higher power and uh way back on page 63 it says when we sincerely took such a position all sorts of remarkable things followed we had a new employer being all powerful he provided what we needed if we kept close to him and performed his work well that's the work that we're trying to do here that's what the work that this process brings us to is to to do god's will not ours um you know fifth step for me i don't think we want to move on to six and seven quite yet but um You know, the fifth step for me revealed a lot. And bear with me one second. I'll find it. So on page 72, it says, you know, it's into action, right? We're done with our inventory. Now we've got to do something about it. It says, having made our personal inventory, what shall we do about it? We have been trying to get a new attitude, a new relationship with our Creator and to discover the obstacles in our path. We had admitted certain defects. We have ascertained in a rough way what our trouble is. We have put our finger on the weak items in our personal inventory. These are about to be cast out. This requires action on our part. Remember, I've mentioned it a few times about requirements and things that this program teaches us to do. I think we do a disservice when we tell people that these are suggestions and you don't have to do it, just learn this program on your own pace and that kind of stuff. I think that we do alcoholics a disservice when we do that. I think that we need to do it the old school way, you know, light a fire and put their butt over the fire, you know, and if need be, feed that fire a little more. It says requires action on our part, which when completed will mean we have admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our defects not the other people not the other people I was looking at in my inventory because I pointed the finger at them how could they do this to me don't they know who I am and an inventory showed me a different way a different path. It says, this is perhaps difficult, especially discussing our defects with another person. Like Sonia said, we hold on to a lot of stuff and there's a lot of secrets in our past that I don't want to say or I don t want to show people. I had a bunch of them. I have a bunch that took a little time for the pen to actually write. It took a lot of them to actually physically want to put those on paper. I was a thief. You know, I did so many things under the influence of alcohol that I'm not proud of. I have things in my past and things in my amends process that I have to do that I'll probably never be able to see those people or never be able to make it up to those people. I saw those in my inventory. bingo balls are bouncing around right now I'm waiting for the trap door to open see what spits out but I don't know I think that all of us get stuck here all of use get stuck here. And I want to emphasize this. When you decide you want to do this with someone, you want pick somebody to do your fifth step, be very cautious. Pick the right person. Somebody that's going to be unaffected by it but somebody that's going to be hard on you with it too i had a i had a sponsee that um had a sponsor before me and he was doing this process and he was doing the work and um and he shared a bunch of stuff with his sponsor And the sponsor wasn't too well, is the only way to put it. And he shared a bunch of infidelity stuff. He shared a lot of stuff with me. He shared that bunch of stuff with this guy and this guy went back to his wife and shared that stuff for them. So you can imagine where this went. And I remember getting that phone call and he was a friend of mine, very good, very close and he called me that day and angry as hell and funny as it might be that guy I'm talking about was my first sponsor too and when he shared that stuff with me And I said, he said, it looks like I'm firing him as a sponsor. And I says, well, that's a good thing. He said, the bad thing is, you're now my new sponsor. So be careful of who you share that stuff with. You might not have that dirty past. You might not have all that crap that's built up. But that being said, you might. So be careful. I was one of the lucky ones that had a sponsor. Again, I mentioned that guy as my sponsor too. So now I had to fire him too because of what was going on. And I saw what that guy was. I mean, we talk about sponsorship in AA and maybe I should touch on that. You know, when we first come in, at least for me, when I first came in, I was green and I looked up to a guy that only had a year or two of sobriety. That was huge for me because I got none, okay? I got days or weeks or a month or something like that and I'm looking up to this guy that's got a year to a sobriety and and i thought he was somebody that was on the same page as me he was uh he was a 250 pound biker with um you know bald head goatee tattoos wore rings on every finger you know one of those guys you know rings that i couldn't even put on my hand you know i mean he was big guy and um and i though he was the guy had the had the pretty girlfriend he had two years of sobriety and i looked up to this guy and that was one of my first sponsor thought he could help me through the book i don't know i didn't know what his sobriete was i didn t know what his life what his whole deal was i never even researched it i just looked up to this guide because he had two years worth of sobriet you know and after after being under his sponsorship for a little while and i saw them the lifestyle and the things that he was doing and the life he was living, I realized, you know what? This guy's not sponsorship material. You know, he had never done the step work. He had never been a sponsor. He had ever done the inventory stuff. I thought he was like me. And little did I know he was like me, you know, that womanizing selfish, self-centered alcoholic and he didn't have the recovery he didn' t have the things that I needed to find Aaron and a sponsor so if you're looking for a sponsor pay attention watch how they treat their family watch how THEY treat their people in their lives listen to them at a meeting listen to what they share and be careful. You know, make sure that sponsor that you pick is going to help you through this process that's done this process, that's been through this, that's not on step two just like you are or has at least been to step 12 and understands what this process is supposed to do. You know? This process is opposed to... It mentioned in one of the things, And when you read the big book, you'll see it. This whole process of doing inventory is supposed to reveal the defects of character that are blocking me off from my higher power, that are locking me off form having a relationship with a God that I call, that a higher power that I called God. My God, like I mentioned already, is not that religious God. It's my spiritual God. And I don't even know what it looks like. I just know that that little voice that comes up to me and says, you know, you shouldn't be stealing. You shouldn't being taken that. You shouldn' t be sarcastic. You shouldn''t be saying those things. You shouldn ''t be, you now, that's my higher power talking in the back of my head. You know, so... And you... She hates sarcasm. I hate it. Period. The end. Yeah, maybe by the time we get to the end of this thing, I'll tell you about that sarcastically. But maybe. You know, that's important to me. You know I sponsor guys that don't have a belief in a higher power that are, I want to say that they think they're atheists and I point out to them, I said okay if you don't believe in a high power or you don' t have a God of your understanding I'm not sure how this program can work for you because that's what it's supposed to be doing. It's supposed be clearing a path to a higher power. And I said, try to think of your conscience as your higher power We all have one of them. We all Have that little voice that tells us, don't steal that thing. Don't give him the finger. Don't do this. You know what I mean? We all Hav one of those. And I say to those guys, if you can't believe in the higher power that I have or develop one of your own, at least listen to your conscience. Your conscience is going to tell you that picking up that drink is maybe not a good idea. So I'm going to probably leave it at that and we'll come back after lunch for... Firehouse. Firehouse, right? It's 6 and 7. Bring your coat. Bring your cloak. Scarf. Thank you.