Step 5 and the Hypocrite Who Drew the Line – Steve

Thank You Cory good evening everyone I'm Steve Lee I'm an alcoholic and I just couldn't be more grateful and pleased to be here to have been invited and and spent some time with you guys I do appreciate it where's Brent who saved the day I want to be sure and recognize him from here And I want to thank Jeremy for taking care of me. And it's just been, I came out a little early. I've got great friends here and a couple of them are coming from a wedding so they're going to be a little late but hopefully going to make it up here. So thank you for having me and I'll try to do what you invited me to do. But, you know, that's changed a little bit over the years, at least my perspective of it. Because, right, our books suggest, right. That I will, number one, that I will in my own language and from my own point of view talk about how I establish a relationship with God. And I hope that comes through at some point here. And I'll talk about that because it's been a, that was a stumbling block initially. And it is a linchpin of my sobriety and recovery today. But it also says we all hear that we say in a general way what I used to be like, what happened. and what I'm like now, and I realized that's not really what happens. Because really what happened is I tell you what I think I was like. You know, I... Yeah, I tell your what it felt like to be me. I tell what the world looked like through the prism of my alcoholism and clouded by that self-centered fear and insecurity and pride and ego And because I know now that not everybody, the facts don't change, but my experience changes dramatically. You know, I don't always see me as other people see me. I know my wife was with me a few years ago. I was giving a talk and gave what a lot of people think are maybe one of the two or three best talks ever given in Alcoholics Anonymous. And we got back up to the room that night, and she said, Steve, you know that last 10 or 15 minutes of your talk? And I prepared myself for a compliment, and I said, yeah, baby. She said, I would love to meet that guy. I wish you would bring him home sometime. So see, how I see me is not always how other people see me. And that also means how I see you is never the whole story. Our book says in talking about that higher power that no one can fully define or comprehend that power, which is God. So no one's got the whole storey, but I would say it's equally true that I can't fully define nor comprehend any other individual. I have for years realized in sobriety for quite a while that most of my relationships were colored by our worst moment together and that's who you became to me. That worst transgression as I viewed it anyway is who I think you are and also didn't give people a chance to grow and change and I really, you know, you guys have afforded me so much grace to grow in change not just from when I first got here and stopped drinking but as I progressed on in my time in Alcoholics Anonymous. My sobriety date is June 30th 1989. I will tell you that and for me that means that the last time I had a drink or a drug was June the 29th of 1989 but I did not intend to go this long between drinks and uh because i was not stopping drinking on june the 29th i was scheduled into a treatment facility on july the 1st of 1989 and i say scheduled because that really was the situation i had i had not had some epiphany that i needed or wanted to stop drinking, I did not I certainly wasn't looking for a kit of spiritual tools you know. I wasn't looking for a design for living or a program that works in tough going I was simply going to fulfill my obligation to the legal system of Williamson County, Tennessee for the conviction of my sixth DUI a year before and as a result of the legal shenanigans going on around that, I had been given some jail time, and they cut some of that jail time off if I would go to what they called residential drug and alcohol rehabilitation. Now, I'd never heard all those words strung together at one time, so I wasn't quite sure what that was going to be, but it sounded marginally better than jail. So I magnanimously said I would do that, and July the 1st was coming up. And so my wife and I went out with three other couples. You know, this is where the most embarrassing thing I share from the podium, it hurts me every time, and that's my last drink. The last drink I've had was an amaretto on the rocks. Yeah, that's humiliating. That is no way for an alcoholic to go down. There's no AA street cred in Amaretto, right? Those were the dark days. But see I was scheduled into this treatment program so my wife and I went out to dinner with three other couples just kind of a little last hurrah before I was going to head out we came home and I smoked a joint and had a glass of Amaretto and went to bed. I mean, I promise you if you'd have come to me and said, Steve, you can have one more drink, what will it be? Amaretta would not have made my top ten. But especially if I thought I'll be telling that story for the next 35 years. But see, that's the story I've got. The truth is I'm kind of a middle class alcoholic. I'm not a tough guy. I can go ahead and tell you I'm not very street smart because that last DUI, I hit a Brentwood, Tennessee police officer head on with my car. Now we weren't going fast. But I tried to bribe him and that's not such a bad plan but I tried to do it with a check. You guys know if that's got any chance of success yes, that's going to have to be a cash transaction. Today I could Venmo him the money, but that wasn't an option in 1988. So Saturday morning, July 1st of 1989, my buddy Ricky came by to pick me up to drive me off to this treatment facility. And my wife Connie, I'd been married seven years at the time, And we had a five-year-old daughter, Abby. And Connie walked out with me. And this is where a lot of my brethren kind of tear up here because a lotof you didn't get the kind of support that I got from Connie because her last words to me were, No matter what, baby, don't stop drinking. See, my wife wasn't trying to get me. Now, she didn't want me to drink there, and she didn' t want me ta drink it with them, and she wanted me to come home when I drank. But she wasn' t trying to gt me to stop drinking she just wanted me to do it differently and lest I forget to tell you that her sobriety date is ten days after mine and she had and we did not talk again by the way for three weeks and she arrived at that she actually went out to a comedy club with two other women ordered around two drinks had that drink ordered a second round of drinks when they brought that second round to drinks and they were sitting hers down, she said, no thanks, I'm done. And she will tell you she didn't have that thought a moment before. She was not considering stopping drinking. And we think we just got, we didn't know how that happened for years, but today we're quite confident there was divine intervention. And four years later, she didn'T come to AA for four years. She says she would have gotten to AA a lot sooner if I had not been so helpful to her, and so be careful with that sometimes when you come home on fire from treatment. Not everybody's ready to be proselytized too, but I head off to that treatment facility. My buddy Ricky's taking me, and I get out, and I walk in. It was just about 10 miles from where I lived, a little place called the Harbors of Brentwood, it's not there anymore. I went in and immediately they gave me a test. And I now know in the language of treatment that they were giving me an assessment. I know that some of that, there was some psychosocial stuff and there were a host of things, but there were two pages that were a little bit like Jeff Foxworthy's you might be a redneck if questions. they had 30 questions that all began with the phrase have you ever and they said Steve have you ever means even once and even with a really good reason. Have you ever drank in the morning? Have you never drank alone? Have you every had a blackout? Have ever had a DUI? Have Have you ever had trouble at home because of drinking? Have you every had trouble work because of Drinking 30 have you ever questions which you guys know just have check yes or check no to what are clearly essay questions. These are questions that beg for an explanation. Now we laugh here right? We laugh in our book says cheerfulness and laughter make for usefulness let me be clear with you that none of what I shared tonight was funny while it was happening and that morning I'm sitting there and I can't make myself check the box. I mean they're going to draw conclusions about me based on how I and how can you do that without context? How can you doing that without the back story you know I had questions about the questions it was what do you mean morning and part of the problem is seeing what they're doing here and particularly if you're new first of all I want to say unless I forget to say it in a minute that how I answered the questions on that test is not what makes me alcoholic or non-alcoholic there were 30 of them If we all took it, many of us would answer different ones differently. Those are indicators. Those are red flags. But you guys helped me see the relationship with alcohol that I finally could lay over my life experience and say that's true about me. And that is in our book right on page 44 where it says as if when I honestly want to, I can't stop entirely. and if when drinking I have little control of the amount I take, I'm probably alcoholic. And I finally got about three weeks in that I could own that but at this point in the process I feel like I've been charged with the crime of alcoholism and I am defending myself from the charges. So I said what do you mean mourning? Because see I think I know what they're asking me. I think they're asked me if I'm that guy that's got a half pint on the nightstand that's got to come to with the sweats and the shakes at four in the morning and take a pull off that to tap everything down and maybe limp into my day. And I certainly had done that a few times, but not so often I'm copping to it on this test. And then they say, because I thought, what if? And I asked, I said, what If I'm out at a very nice establishment at last call at 2 a.m., is that morning drinking? And if I don't explain the difference to you, you might think I'm poor pitiful half pint on the nightstand alcoholic rather than cool out at the club alcoholic. Have you ever drank alone? Well yes, but they left. Did you ever go, whoa, where did everybody go? go see again i think i know what they're asking me i think they're asked me if i'm that guy that's got to go home and close and lock the door and pull the shades and it used to be unplugged the phone now put it on silent or ignore it and hide from the world man i've done that a bunch but i'm not going to cop to it here and then there's another kind of alone drinking that i had to do I'm a guy that had to drink to go drinking. I got to drink to go to the club. I got to drink before I come to your house. I got a drink before I go to party. I gotta drink before I run with my buddies. I got drink before I go work. I've got to drink before I go to a family outing. I got a drink and I must start by myself because when our book says many women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol, I will tell you what was equally true is I did not like the effect produced by sobriety. And I did not know why. I've been talking a little bit about that relationship with alcohol, and I will talk about it some more, and i will give some examples. We tell our stories, right? But what I had no idea of, what took me a little while to get my arms around, was the fact that I had alcoholism when I wasn't drinking. I didn't get that at all. You know, there's a line about Dr. Bob back in A Vision for You in our book and it describes him. It says he was painfully aware of feeling somehow abnormal for he did not yet fully understand what it meant to be alcoholic. And man, I was painifully aware of the fact that I was feeling of feeling abnormal. But I couldn't have articulated that And I didn't know it had anything to do with my drinking or why I needed a drink. Now, every time I took a drink, wasn't out of some desperation or feeling, you know, sometimes I went to the party, right? And sometimes I drank and it went really well. That's one of the other very confusing things to me, particularly early on. But I don't understand I'm in the throes of a progressive illness that gets worse, never better. and over time, the good times were fewer and fewer and the consequences and the damage I did and the people I hurt became greater and greater. There's another wonderful line back in To the Employer and I know I'm with some dedicated AA members here tonight but you've got to be almost fanatic to read all the way to The Employer in that book. I'm going to bet those pages aren't dog-eared in your book But the line I love, and it's from the perspective of the employer, the uninformed employer. And it says when dealing with an alcoholic there may be a natural annoyance that someone could be so weak, stupid, and irresponsible. Because see to the untrained eye alcoholism looks weak, stupid, and irresponsible to our loved ones, to our coworkers, to our bosses, to our family, it looks like, Steve, if you loved your daughter you wouldn't do that. If you loved you wife, you wouldn' do that If you cared about this job, you would' do that. If you wanted to stay out of jail, you woul' do that. It looks like firm resolve and good intentions and good information would be sufficient for me now to straighten up. And that is one of the things that was so puzzling to me because I will tell you the people around me use another language but in one way or another we're calling me weak stupid and irresponsible but over time i begin to feel weak stupid in their responsible why why again because see i didn't spend a lot of time trying to stop drinking before i got to aa i spent a lot of time tried to not drink too much i spent alot of time try to not let that happen again I told you I got six DUIs. I didn't get any of them on purpose. Now, the first two could happen to anybody, but I tried really hard not to get numbers three through six. I had a strategy. I mean, and I'm kidding, but I did. So I don't want to have that accident, right? I totaled six automobiles in 1980 I was living in Atlanta Georgia and I left a bar I was there one afternoon throwing back kamikaze shooters and taking two annals and I got confused and went east in the westbound lane of the interstate I had a head-on collision it totaled those cars and two others that hit us so totaled four cars it sent some people to the hospital i came to in the cobb county jail just outside of atlanta i'd urinated on myself and i had vomited on myself or i hope i did because somebody did and uh sometimes when you come to in that drunk tank uh the stains you wake up with may or may not be of your own making you know because i know i got some veterans in here the drunk tank And the goal is to stay upright and against a wall. But I was not, I wasn't successful at either of those. So, but in that jail cell that morning, coming to on that Saturday morning in that jail cell with a vague memory of what had happened, I had never been so afraid of the consequences that awaited me personally, professionally, legally. I had never been more ashamed of the harm I caused other people. I didn't yet know the extent of the injuries. They turned out not to be certainly not fatal and not critical, but people were hurt, and I got sued over that and should have been. I had ever been more humiliated at the state I found myself sitting in that jail cell in my own urine and my own vomit, and I had Never been more certain that I'll never drink again. I quit that morning forever, and 10 days later, I'm driving down the road smoking a joint, drinking a bottle of wine thinking I nearly overreacted to that. We laugh here. We laugh knowingly, but it didn't feel, I get here, you guys give me language to talk about my alcoholism. I didn't have the language. It didn't feels like lack of power. it didn't feel like a strange mental blank spot it didn' t feel like alcoholic insanity it felt like I changed my mind I'll do better I'm not going to do that again that was DUI number 4 by the way two others came after it but see, I don't understand the alcoholism I have until I got to you so I'm a guy that believes there's no wrong reason to come to AA. Now, I might not stay here for other reasons, but what gets me in the door might expose me to what we read up here at the beginning of the meeting. There is a solution. But then right after you tell me there's a solution, the next line goes, but you're probably not going to like it. Because coming up on it, it doesn't look like a good plan, does it? I got a buddy of mine that passed away a number of years ago, a guy named Cliff Roach. Cliff Rocha when he was about 36 or this is 20 plus years ago but he said I've learned three things for sure and for certain since I've been in AA said the first is surrender never looks like a good idea coming up on it the second is never has surrender not served me well and the third thing is I can never remember number two the next time I'm having to relearn these lessons all the time because I will be stymied by fear. Willingness, you know, we talk about willingness being the key. I was 18 years sober before I looked up the word willingness. And one of the descriptions of willingness was doing that that I would not do as a matter of course. And see, that makes perfect sense to me. There is nothing AA has asked me to do that I was just about to do before I got here. Everything AA has asked me to do is counterintuitive to the guy who showed up here. Because, see, I've got... I have a defective character. Everything I'm seeing in the world, I'm responding to the world through the prism of that alcoholism, which then has me see things out of proportion. I can't see things as they really are, so the choices I make are based on bad information. And I don't know that until after I get here. We've got such great language. I mean, just a phenomenon of craving. How cool is that? Were you ever out at a bar somewhere and after a couple drinks, nudge the guy next to you and say, I don' t know about you, pal, but that phenomenon of craving is kicking in on me. Whoa, lack of power is my dilemma. no I didn't know how I didn' understand why my life see and sometimes when somebody stands up here to podium and talks or even in our home group and particularly if you're new as there are a few new people it sounds like we knew what was going on while it was happening and And I can't speak for other people, but I can tell you that life was just coming at me. It was being fired at point-blank range, and I'm just responding to it. I'm not thinking through this. I don't have a plan. I don' t understand it. I didn' t know anything about my... I knew I had alcohol-related problems. That's what it looked like to me, butI didn' d understand alcoholism. And I get here, andI do my best to do better. And even after I get to AA, I'm going to go back to treatment in a minute. But one thing you can already tell is I'm gonna try to do what I was asked to do, but it's not linear. I'm sort of like a Quentin Tarantino movie. There's just no time and space continuum. And I'll tell a host of seemingly unrelated stories and hope they come together at the end of the hour. But if they don't, it doesn't matter. I'm leaving town in the morning. You'll just be stuck with the mess I left behind. About three weeks into that treatment experience, men and women from Alcoholics Anonymous were coming in to that treatment program and we were going out. And as I look on the wall, I also want to pay homage, actually multiple 12-step programs came in, and I'm grateful for that because I qualify for just about everything on that wall over there. But I identify most closely with Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, I got that very special relationship with alcohol that an alcoholic has. I got the physical allergy and that mental obsession. So me and alcohol were tight. We had a committed relationship, but it was not a monogamous relationship. Me and alcohol invited other substances to the marital bed. So I played in all the different sandboxes, but alcohol as it says in Bill's story had become my master. and so once I got to the point that I could raise my hand and say I'm alcoholic I didn't quite know what that meant I did know that you guys who were in AA that you viewed sobriety as total abstinence as me not drinking anything at all which still seemed like an overcorrection I didn' t understand that And if you're new, you might be feeling like I felt even when I made the decision that I want to stop drinking. I thought that in AA we were going to spend a lot of time not drinking. I thought not drinking was an actual activity in Alcoholics Anonymous. We'll just get together and not drink. Would you look at Corey not drink over there, man? Look at the technique on that guy. and uh and we're just you know my buddy said cause steve we're gonna we're going to go the titans game sunday you want to go i said boys i would love to go you know i love pro football but i am busy sunday i'll be home not drinking and uh somebody said don't drink if your ass falls off so i'llbe home not drink and guard my ass and uh uh and i'm just gonna not drink And I was committed to that. I thought that being in AA and being sober was going to be all about what I can't do, where I can'T go, and who I can'T hang out with. I mean, I was commited to it, but it was going TO be a life of self-sacrifice. I thought my life was about to get really small, totally identified by those things I can no longer do, and I had to be sober for a little while before I realized how small my life had become. before I noticed how many people had left my life, how many places I couldn't go back to, how many place I didn't go to that I would have loved to because I was drinking, how many peeple I was separated from. I didn' t know how small my life had become and I will tell you I got a big life today and I'm really grateful for that. The truth is Alcoholics Anonymous opened my life up, that a life of sobriety and community like we have here. opened my life up in a way. Whoever thought that on June 30th of 1989, on the way of July 1st, on the day of that treatment center, I didn't envision I would be here talking to you guys 35, almost 36 years later. Yet here I am. And all we have to do is keep saying yes to stuff. Just keep saying Yes. I'm going to go back and drink just a little bit because I don't want you to think that amaretto is the only drink I had also has some Boone's farm wine and you know I heard a couple of groans and that always bothers me I know that a lot of people my age got started on Boones farm you know it's a AA is a funny place filled with funny people and it's amazing what we will hang our hat on and we will back you know brag about holding up convenience stores and married to four women in three states but oh I didn't drink the Boone's farm and yeah see how do you start drinking until I was a freshman in college and that's a little late for this group here I can tell and but you know I've been a pretty good kid from a middle-class family there wasn't any read that there weren't circumstances that contributed to me needing to drink and I don't believe circumstances cause alcoholism. I don' think good circumstances prevent it. I do understand and recognize that some people might seek relief in a drink or a drug because of their circumstances that will expose the alcoholism that I have and so I do recognize that but you don't get spared or caused by the circumstances I'm in, at least that's my belief in my own experience. I got three siblings, an older brother, older sister, younger sister. I played athletics. I wasn't going to drink. I wasn't gonna do drugs. Our book says if a mere code of morals or philosophy of living were sufficient many of us would recovered long ago and my code of morals and philosophy of living were sufficient. Right up to the moment, they were no longer sufficient. And I don't know why that is. I do know that I was out with a couple of guys and somebody did hand back. I was in the back of a 1968 Canary Yellow Volkswagen Bug. And they handed back that bottle and I took a few drinks. And all of a sudden, I could not wait to get where we were going because I thought you couldn't wait to see me when I got there. I had never felt that at ease. Because, see, what I didn't understand, I talked earlier about that unmanageability. We've been talking, or certainly I have, about that relationship to alcohol. But that second part of the first step, that un-manage-ability, which I believe is not the fact that my wife was mad at me, that I was going to jail, that I was in trouble at work. All of the mess of my life, I don't view that as the unmanageability. That's the chaos. That's the consequences of my drinking. But the unmanangeability is an internal thing. The unmanigeability, I believe, is that spiritual malady. The unmanegeability is I can't manage to be okay under any set of circumstances i talked about having to drink to go drinking right because our book calls alcohol in one place a social lubricant and that's what i need i needed to be lubricated i can almost it's like oiling myself up and then i can move easily amongst you but without that i feel like i'm wearing a velcro suit i feel like i m bumping into everything like the ball in the pinball machine So I know what it's like to stand in front of a door and get ready to walk into a social situation or a work situation or even a family situation and have to steal myself up and pop through that door and act like a guy would act if he were comfortable, if he was confident, if he wasn't, if they weren't. If he were gregarious, if you were personable. And that's exhausting work for me and I know just like to walk back out that door later and the door closed behind me and me finally be able to take a deep breath and me to feel empty on the inside. And I don't think anybody would have described me as shy, as fearful, as insecure because I didn't let you see that. My job is to not let you say how I feel. My job is to pretend like I got it together because I'm certain you do. And that required, that's exhausting for me. So it required a lot of time alone. It required, I stayed up late at night at, you know, one, two, three in the morning was sometimes my most comfortable time because it felt like the rest of the world was asleep. And if you're down, then I'm not doing what I'm supposed to be doing. And I spent a lot of time not doing or not being able to execute in the way I thought the rest of the world was doing. I told you about Connie, I'm going to step back a minute and share that origin story because it's so touching. I met Connie in a bar. She had just come back to Nashville from Lake Tahoe where she had been dealing Baccarat for about three years. She had gotten married and just gotten divorced. And she showed up in Nashville with a divorce pickup truck and a divorce pocket full of money and a Divorce 8 ball of cocaine, and I just fell for that package. And I tell you, if you put that on your Tinder profile today, it'll work. And we start running and gunning a little bit, and a few months later we went to Mexico and drank something out of a coconut and got on a boat that went out to what they swear were international waters and an Austrian merchant marine read in Spanish what he swears was a wedding ceremony. Now, we don't speak Spanish, so we don'T know what we agreed to on that boat. But we've been arguing about that for 42 years now. But I will tell you, we had some really hard times. And if you're newly sober and in a relationship, I will tell you we were challenged. I told you her sobriety date's 10 days after mine. But we had to find each other again. You know, just like we come in here and we show up at AA at the level of the problem, but we stay here at the label of the solution. And she and I were brought together at the label of our problem. Now, we loved each other to the extent we were capable of it. But then we sobered up, and we got to figure out who these new people are in the house. We had to learn to dance together again, right? We hadto figure out if we fit. Not do I care about you, but are we compatible? Do we fit now? Because those things we seem to have in common are not the things that are going to keep us together now. And we went through some very challenging times, but I will tell you that I'm so grateful that we stuck it out because I've got a marriage partner that I wouldn't trade for anything. We've got a relationship that I wouldn't trade for anything, and I'm grateful for that. I told you I had a daughter, Abby. When Abby was born on December the 17th of 1983, I was drunk at the hospital. I was trunk in the delivery room, and they made me leave. For 10 years after that, I would tell a lie about the day my daughter was born. I had a beautiful story about watching that birth and of course Connie didn't remember and Abby didn't remember right so they're not there to challenge my story but you know when you go to those little dinner parties or have friends or somebody who tells that story and I'm telling this story I had to be sober several years before I would tell them just how bad it got that day and that I was forced to leave and so you think Steve. If you loved your wife, if you loved your daughter, you wouldn't do that. Again, I know the people that love us are puzzled and we are puzzling ourselves why I can't do better even when I really want to. I came out of that treatment center and as I said, I decided I want to not drink and we've been doing a little AA so I said well AA is how I'm going to try to do that I didn't yet fully understand what that meant but I enjoyed your company from the very beginning and when i say enjoyed your company i enjoyed coming to the meeting sitting down and listening to you i wasn't part of the group yet i wasn'T right in the middle yet but i loved being here right away and i would come home you know aa is a really interesting deal because i think the thing that we have a value is our story. That's really what we bring to each other is the truth about ourselves. And as I sat there and you guys would be talking and you would say something, and the moment you said it, I would go, oh, that's it. Oh, that has been true of me forever. But I didn't know it until right now. I didn' t know how to articulate it. I did' n't know how to put a label on it. I didn't know how that felt. And so I was mesmerized right away. And you know, we speak the language of the heart. I'd get so excited. I told you that I was kind of recruiting Connie to AA, but I would go home and I'd say, you should have heard the speaker tonight. It's unbelievable. And she'd say what did he say? And I'd go, I don't know. Because it's not the information. there was a guy in southern california i'd spoken at his thing uh one one night and and i didn't know him we had mutual friends he came and introduced himself while i was having breakfast connie and i were sitting there having breakfast and he gave me the most wonderful compliment and i've come to know he gave it to everybody but it doesn't take away from what it meant to me that morning and he said steve i sure did like your talk last night he said i don't remember the words to the song but I sure did like the music and see I think that that's the language of the heart if there's no information the information is important in fact the information can be critical but if the information's not put into application it doesn't bring about the transformation but the real deal is that language of The Heart that touches me somewhere other than here it's not an academic exercise we're being spiritually awakened and that sounds high-minded that was my problem right so when I came out when I made that commitment and said I'm alcoholic and I want to get sober and then I read the next line in the books that if so you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer so all damn we got a problem I got a problem I can't solve you got a solution I'm uninterested in. You've got a solution I don't believe in.You've got the solution I don't think is accessible to me and here's the thing that the the solution that Alcoholics Anonymous offers is a spiritual awakening it is a connection with a power greater than myself which will solve my problem. You know we talk about these being uh suggestions and and i believe that i believe one thing the book says i believe the other things that the book say is and it says right that following are the steps we took which are suggested as a program of recovery and on page 164 it says our book is meant to be suggestive only we realize we know only a little but here's the thing if you're new naa that's the only suggestion we got we don't have a second set of suggestions now aa doesn't take ownership we say very openly that that there are people we don t have a monopoly on god and we don t have monopoly on getting sober we don take a position it's an outside issue we are not against anything but if I m in aa what aa is offering me as a connection to a power greater than myself which will solve my problem. And remarkably, the way it solves my problem is to make it not a problem. In fact, my problem's not my problem My problem is that my problem is a problem My problem is I've decided something's a problem and then I'm held hostage by that I texted a friend today that's back in Nashville it was 93 degrees and 80% humidity and where I was up in Sundance this morning it was 48 degrees and he wanted it to be 48 degrees in Nashville I said, that's going to be a problem for you because it's not going to happen so we both better find a way to be comfortable where we are right now under this set of circumstances. I've only got about another hour and a half, so I don't know what I'm going to say. I came out of there, and I fell in with a sponsor right away. I'm really grateful. I fell with some folks that were committed to going through the book, And some other people around call that group big book thumpers in a very derogatory way. But I will tell you, that's really not what was going on. I've been a big book Thumper, and it's not attractive on a guy like me. Because I want to win the big book trivia contest, right? I wantto tell you in the meeting that you misquoted this. Oh, you got the page wrong. I can get hung up on that, see. But what these folks were doing and what they helped me do was go through the book, look what was there, and try to go, how do I go do that? I see what it says on the page, but how do i do it? How do I let go and let God? How do i surrender? How in the hell does acceptance the answer? I've been trying to drum up some acceptance. How do l do it ? And that's what those people were helping me do, right? We would come in, we would talk about a problem, and we'd go home, we'd come back the next day. It's like a football game, right? That's the huddle. We call the play. I go home and try to run the play and I'll come back to the next day and tell them how it went and then they'll help me and that's what it looked like but I will tell you that I discovered I'm going to share about three or four stories and I'm not going to tell you I'll tell you right now while we're at 10 delay that the two most often told lies from the podium in Alcoholics Anonymous us. The first is I'll be brief and the others I'll end with this. You know when somebody says and you see it in your home group right they've talked about five minutes and then when I'll end with which means I just remembered what I meant to say. I'm sure I've been that guy for sure my group has actually a three minute sharing rule which is often referred to as the Steve Lee rule but I want to tell two or three stories I was stuck when I got here because again I've got the problem you're talking about a spiritual awakening a connection with a power greater than myself as being the solution i don't think that's available to me i wouldn't hold hands and say the prayer at the end of the meeting uh i went through my big book and blacked out everywhere it said spiritual experience or spiritual awakening in an act of defiance a lot of that was just ego driven but some of it was was honest to the extent that I could be honest. And a guy came up to me after the meeting one night and he said, Steve, when I wasn't holding hands and saying the prayer, and by the way, you guys said that's perfectly okay if I don't want to hold hands and say the prayer and it's perfectly okay if you don't wants to. But he was asking me what my problem was. He said, why is that a problem for you? And I said, well, I don' t want to be a hypocrite, you know. And I was being serious i said i don't know what i believe and i'm not just going to hold hands and sing kumbaya with the rest of the campers because that's what y'all are doing and uh this guy had i said and i just don't want to be a hypocrite and he had heard my treatment fifth step so he had heard about infidelities in my marriage he had hurt about these car wrecks he had heard about me stealing time and money from a family business he had heart about me being drunk at the hospital when my daughter was born he said but hypocrisy that's where you draw the line. He said, that's really impressive, man. He said, he said, I got good news for you and bad news for ya. And I said, I'll play. You know, I felt like I was being condescended to. And if you're new and feel like you've been condescending to, it's because someone was just being condescening. And he said I got a good news and bad news. I'll play. What's the bad news? He said, the bad news is hypocrisy is way down your list of problems and you might ought to address them in the order in which they will kill your ass. And I said, what's the good news? He said the good news is there is room for another hypocrite in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I'm more grateful for that tonight than I was then. And that allowed me, it didn't change everything, it allowed me to step in and lean in just a little bit. He said, we don't care what you... See, I spent a lot of time telling people what I didn't believe about God. And I wouldn't use the word God because I didn' t want you to think I meant what I thought you meant when you said God. And so I'm telling, I would say what I didn't belief, same guy. Closed me and said, Steve, more good news. We don't carry what you don't believe. He said, because you are free not to believe anything you don't want to believe in Alcoholics Anonymous. AlcoholicsAnonymous requires nothing of me in terms of that belief. It gives me a call to action, and that call to actions begins to inform my beliefs. My beliefs come as a result of kind of the before and after picture, right? I'm seeing it work. The book says when we can't deny seeing it work in others. So he freed me up to begin taking some actions. I got stuck at what I thought was a second step. My sponsor took me to the back of the book to the appendix two on spiritual experience. And because I wouldn't use the word God because I didn't like the term spiritual awakening and spiritual experience, he said, Steve, you're hung up on language. I don't care what you call it. So he took me back there, and those of you who have read that know that it uses, there's some language that was more accessible to me at the time. It talks about a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery. It talks abut having a profound alteration in my reaction to life. And I was willing to have a personality changed long before I was wiling to have a spiritual experience. And he said, I don't care what you call it, I want you to have an experience. and then you can describe it to other people using any language you want. And that freed me up to move a little bit more. So I'll be brief. Tell two stories and then I'll close with that. i talked about my problem not being my problem i get here right and i don't when i'm sober and now i got to figure out how to navigate through life and a lot of that and i'm hearing that stuff about acceptance right i was at a conference or it was a men's retreat actually a number of years ago and we broke for lunch and went out to a restaurant and I was sitting at a table, a round table with about eight people, you know. And I'm leading the weekend. That's kind of like I'm standing up here so I'm the main guy, right? So I clearly got my stuff together and guys, they came around and they took our order and I ordered a cheeseburger and the guy next to me, I noticed, ordered a club sandwich and they went around and took other people's orders. A little while later, they brought our food and they gave me a cheeseburger and I opened it and they give the guy next to me a cheese burger. And I said, man, I thought you ordered a club sandwich. And listen to this, it's unbelievable. He said, I did, but they brought me a cheesburger. That's it. I said, brother, you don't have to live like that. We can get you a club sandwich. And I'm standing up and I'm calling people over. He goes, no, Steve, I'm good. I said lack of power in my ass, we can get a club sandwich. And I am waving the guy over and the young kid he goes, Steve I am good man. And I want you to understand he wasn't just eating the damn cheeseburger because that is what life served him. And it would have been perfectly okay for him to have said, you know what, I ordered a club sandwich, would you mind? And they would have gotten it for him 10 or 15 minutes. But wasn't his life better because he was okay with the cheeseburger? And metaphorically speaking, I go through life ordering a club sandwich and getting a cheeseburger and it ain't okay. In fact, I've never even really placed my order. I just expect the world to get my order correctly. My sponsor said, I used to say I didn't have any resentments. My sponsor says, no Steve, you're just quietly disappointed in the world and its people. And that can often be the case. When I was bumping up against this higher power thing and worried what you thought God was versus what I thought God was or all of the varying descriptions that we might give. A guy shared a story with me that some of you may have heard and it's about the blind men and the elephant and it says there were three men from Hindustan to learning much inclined. They went to see an elephant but all of them were blind. One of them grabbed the elephant by its tail. The other one grabbed the elephant around its big leg and the third one grabbed it by its trunk and they went back to their village and the villagers said tell us about the elephant. Tell us about the elephant and the one who grabbed it by the tail said it's like a rope and the one who grabbed it around this big leg said it was like the trunk of a tree and the one who grabbed it by its trunk said it is like a snake and they argued endlessly about what an elephant was never recognizing that the elephant was big enough to have all those characteristics and they weren't talking about the elephant they were talking about their touch point to the elephant. They were talking About their relationship to the elephant. So when we in AA talk about our relationship to a higher power, we at our best don't spend much time describing God. We spend time talking about how to access that higher power. The 12 steps are the pathway to the power. They will connect me to the power. And then we all get to have our own experience with the power. If I said I'm going from here to Las Vegas and you guys said, oh Steve, and I'm saying somebody please give me directions on how to get to Las Vegas. Steve, you're going to love Las Vegas. These are the shows you need to see. This is the restaurant you need to eat at. This is where you want to go gamble. You're goingto love Las Vegas." I said, "...Dude, I asked you how to get to Las Vegas? Give me directions and then let me explore Vegas for myself. Let me go have that experience." And that's what you guys allow me do with the higher power the 12 steps are the pathway to the power they are removing those things that block me off from the sunlight of the spirit my wife and i we when we moved uh into our into our home 25 years ago we've since moved again but there was a little courtyard that i envisioned in the backyard it was only about 20 by 20 trees surrounding it beautifully I got my friend Mike to come over he was in the sod business and he laid down this beautiful lush rich green grass and man this thing was gorgeous and about two weeks later it's just dirt brown and I called Mike to complain and ask him to come back over and take another look and when we walked out there and he surveyed and he took a look and again this thing was encircled by trees and he said uh he said steve he said that grass is not the sun can't get through and this grass is knocking no matter what you do you can water it you can miracle grow it but this grass isn't going to grow since if you want this grass to grow you're going to have to trim the trees when we trim the tree the sun comes in the power does what the power does. It doesn't ask for permission. It didn't make that yard wait six months of penance. It did not say how much do you believe the sun just did what the sun does and what you guys have helped me see here in AA that what I've got to do is trim the spiritual trees. My job is only to access that power however I choose to relate myself to it and however you choose to related yourself to it and let the power do what the power does. And then we get to talk about that with each other in language that doesn't nearly do justice to the experience because you can't describe a spiritual experience. Or I certainly don't have the vocabulary to. I'm going to end by talking about how I finally at eight years sober, no really I want you to have hope if you're new. We are truly wrapping up. Well, you know, I just thought of what I meant to say. When I had eight years sober, I had a crisis of faith. I'm trying to figure out what do I believe? What can I connect to? What is my conception of God? So I just grabbed for me what I found in We Agnostics. and it started with what I said earlier, that no one can fully define or comprehend that power. So that gave me comfort that none of us have the whole story. Then it says deep within every man, woman, and child is the fundamental idea of God. So I decided for me that's where God's hanging out, deep within. It says as I draw near to him, he will disclose himself to me. so if God is deep within every man woman and child the way I draw near to him is to draw near to you when you guys have me here let me talk for an hour and a little longer patiently pretend to listen that power shows up in a way that I can't define or comprehend but I feel the presence and it informs how I live my life There was a fellow named Mo Holleran back in Nashville, and Mo was that guy. And many of you have that man or woman, particularly if you're new and going to meetings. And all of a sudden there's people you see and hear there, and you don't know them yet. But you hope they're at the meeting tomorrow or next week. And Mo was one of those guys that I didn't yet know early in my sobriety, but I hoped he would be there because it made me feel like everything was going to be okay. He had that kind of presence and that kind of voice that just let me take a deep breath and relax. And Mo always used to close his talks with the short little poem. When he came down with cancer in 2003, my friend Jerry and I took him to breakfast one morning and we knew that his time was short and I said, Mo, would you mind if when I get a chance to share my story, I close with that poem because it will help me honor you. And in the truest sense of AA, it will helped me pass on what you've given to me and so many others. And he was a little embarrassed. And you said, oh, Steve, if you think it'll help another drunk, cause that's the kind of guy Moe was. He loved drunks more than anybody I've ever known. We can get here and start loving AA but not like drunks too much you know but Mo loved the drunk wet or dry but he said oh Steve if you think it'll help another drunk and since October of 2003 I've never told a version of this story that I didn't end with that poem and it's always helped another drunk because I'm the drunk it always helps. And he said, I sought my God and my God I could not see. I sought my soul. My soul eluded me. But I sought my fellow man and found all three. And see, when you strip everything away, that's what Alcoholics Anonymous has been for me. That when I seek you guys, when we reach back and forth to each other, that power shows up in a way I can't define or comprehend. But it's made it unnecessary for me to take a drink since June the 29th of 1989, and for much of that time when I'm willing to accept the gift it's offered me a life that's happily and usefully whole. And if it's whole nothing is missing. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.