Step 5 Took an Hour and a Few Embarrassing Things – Tom W.

Hello, my name is Tom and I am an alcoholic and I live in Oakland, California since 1981 and I notice up here you have the habit of giving your sobriety date, which we don't do in my home group. but I'm visiting so I want you to know that my first day without a drink was the day that Gerald Ford was nominated for President of the United States I had to look it up myself a little bit later and I found it was August 18th 1976 I was 29 years old, I thought I was the youngest alcoholic in the history of the world to get sober and I was studying theology at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley at the Graduate Theological Union and I had finished two years of studies and I was drowning in booze. Had been for quite some time. I'm not one of those guys that asks for help. It doesn't occur to me. if I'm in trouble I want to keep it secret and I want to try harder and I sure want to stay away from you one of the reasons I'm still alive is I was intervened on, I belong to a religious community, the Jesuits and in the late 60's and early 70's the leadership across the country got an education on alcoholism and they were told it was a disease, it was a treatable disease and it was a recognizable disease and if someone is suffering from the disease wait for the right time but then get that person help so they've been waiting for a while and I'm a loud drunk I'm an old drunk I'm one of those drunks who will be very friendly for a long time perhaps overly friendly and then we'll have an argument frequently over politics or religion and then I will snarl and be not physically abusive but verbally very, very abusive. Usually in a blackout and then the next morning I kind of wonder what happened. And I did that for years and years and years. I heard one of the brothers in the community refer to me as being all piss and vinegar. And I wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. You know, is that a good things? Is that a bad or a good or a thing? So I'm put into treatment and I go through a 21-day program that was very AA friendly. A care unit in the city of Berkeley at Alta Bates Hospital. I come out of treatment on a Friday and start my third year of studies on a Monday. and I like books, I like reading I don't like being a student but I like learning I was a teacher for a hundred years I taught high school kids and I taught until I was just so angry at everybody I had to leave I have a little trouble with anger sometimes alcoholism all over the family I grew up in San Jose, California and the Swedish Lutheran Republicans a lot of them were alcoholic and the Irish Catholic Democrats a lotof them were alcoholic and we never called it alcoholism in the Swedish and we're Swedes off the boat Swedes we're people with accents and names like Ingeborg and Ingemar. In the Swedish side of the family, we didn't have alcoholics. We had nervous people. And sometimes they got so nervous, they got hospitalized. But it was nerves. And on the Irish side ofthe family, we didn' t have alcoholists. We had characters. And they would be talked about as, oh, so-and-so is such a character. And it took me a while to realize is that a lot of families talk in code. And you have to figure out what the code is. And I was well into my recovery before I figured that out. Anyway, I heard someone say, if you're at a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, you should mention that you drank. And I drank. I drank before high school. I sure drank in high school and throughout my 20s. and when I was a little kid, I would sneak alcohol, creme de menthe, which you really can't sneak because you're green, you know. So there's evidence, and so I only did that a couple of times because I wasn't stupid, but I can remember the rush and the excitement of the hit of a bottle of creme du menthe. And then by the time I'm seven, eight, and nine, I graduated to a bourbon right out of the bottle and then a can of Hershey's syrup right out of the can, and that is de-licious. I think a lot of the syrupy, sweet, sugary drinks are for kids anyway. It's so we can get started. I tried seventh or eighth grade, I remember trying a tequila milkshake, which doesn't really go at all. Vanilla ice cream and tequila. And I remember taking a hit of the blend and it was awful and I drank the whole thing, which is a bad sign. I was sober for a while and I met a sober physician by the name of Dr. Gill. He's been gone a couple years now. But Dr. Gil grew up in French Canada and when he was a little boy it was during prohibition and he would see Americans cross the border and come into Canada and get drunk and fall down and he's this little kid and he says what a great country I can't wait to get there and goes through medical school in Canada and becomes a doctor and comes to San Francisco in the 50s. Dr. Gill gets sober when General Eisenhower is president and then he has a little relapse under Mr. Kennedy. And then he gets sober again with Lyndon Johnson, which just shocks me more than I can tell you because Lyndon Johnston used to get me drunk. As soon as he talked I'd be drunk and mad. Didn't matter about what. And Gil spent years and years and years as a physician in recovery helping people get well. And he would give lectures on alcoholism and addiction to physicians and nurses and other people, and I was present for one of those. And he described alcoholism as being a disease that had three distinct phases. Phase one is the fun phase. This is when it's fun. Phase two is called fun plus problems. It's still fun, but you start to have problems. And phase three is called problems. The fun, she is over. But we're still doing it. If it wasn't the craziness when it started to get unfun, we'd stop. But alcoholics hold on and hold on and hold one. And I think the first step of the program, that powerlessness and unmanageability stuff, I think what they're really asking is, are you still having any fun? And if you are, you're probably not going to hang around us very much. If you're still having fun, we don't look that good to you. If your miserable, we look pretty good to you it's my sponsor sometimes talks about having the gift of desperation. And the gift of desperation makes a lot of us look pretty good. If you're desperate enough, we're glad to see you. I think that's equally true for Al-Anon, if not more so. I was talking I've been a member of Al-Alanon for a long time I got sober first, but I was talking to someone about Al-Alanon stuff and a lady came up to me and she said, I'm seven years clean and sober and I hate everybody is it time for Al-Anon? And I said hold out as long as you can. Because if you're completely desperate, you'll like them a lot. And if you are not ready, they are going to be too old and too this and too that and you won't go back. Step one. I went to meetings I got sober in Berkeley, like I said, and I went to meetings a lot. And I found that meetings were helpful. And at the end of a year, I finished my studies. My ordination to the priesthood was held up because you shouldn't make a major change in your life for a year or so. So it was heldup. That was very painful for me. But I moved to Los Angeles to go back to work as a teacher. and then I was ordained a priest on April 1st, 1978 and I did it kind of as a third step you know, you turn your will and your life over to the care of God as you understand God and somebody well how is it possible that a priest can be an alcoholic and the answer is with any luck at all you can be An Alcoholic the same way a doctor can be And Alcoholic or a teacher can be In Alcoholic or your mom and dad can be an alcoholic with any luck at all. So I've gone to a lot of meetings. My first meeting was in Berkeley, and I heard a guy there say, we here in Alcoholics Anonymous go to lots of meetings, we don't drink in between meetings, and we don'T use no dope. and those were three completely new ideas to me I was, and that did become my program for a long time I mean steps and having it took me a while to get here after I got here I was a very sedated person when I got here. I loved depressants and I loved alcohol and I loved what it did for me and one of the things it did for me is it shut me down There's a woman in the Bay Area named Phoebe, and she said, alcohol did a lot for me before it did a lot to me. And the fun, you know, it was a very helpful thing. Anyway, stopping the drinking and Kurt mentioned today a little non-habit forming marijuana. I'd been smoking non-habit forming marijuana every day for seven to ten years. So I was a little depressed when I got here, a little shut down. And I did some therapy and why am I so depressed? And one of the reasons I was depressed is I was taking depressants on a daily basis. And I think if you're depressed and on an antidepressant, you should not take depressants. I know this is shockingly revolutionary to think about, but I found once I was no longer taking depressents, I started coming to, and I did not come too friendly, and I didn't come too nice. A lot of rage, and a lot of confusion, and a lots of energy, and lots of exhaustion. After I was sober for a couple of months, I was really afraid that I was going crazy. The second step talks about being restored to sanity, And I was pretty sure I was mentally and emotionally very damaged, maybe permanently. Sanity. How do you know? How do You Know Anything? I started having these rages and huge amounts of energy, no energy. up and down and back and forth and black and white very, very strong reactions to things and I thought I was going crazy because I was having feelings. And as I entered the world of having feelings it literally was learning a whole new language and vocabulary. I did some therapy the therapist was very helpful and then there's just life I was at it and I'd go to meetings and everybody was happy and grateful for every golden step. And I just felt crazy. And I heard finally someone say that they were having a very, very hard couple of days because they were on the roller coaster. Soon as I got an image of the rollercoaster up and down and around and fast And it helped explain things. It was a very helpful image for me. Also, I knew there were two of us because everyone else was so grateful all the time. And I just knew that there was someone that I could talk to if I had to. I mean, I asked someone to be my sponsor, but what do you do with them? You know, I mean odd. I went to a young people's conference in Monterey. I was maybe five or six months sober. All California Young People's Conference. And I thought I'd be one of the youngest alcoholics there because I was 29. And when I got there, a whole bunch of us from Berkeley went. Otherwise, I never would have gone. But there was a bunch of them. There was a group. And the shock to me was that if you had divided the room in half, I would have been on the older half. And on the opening night of the conference, they said how... There were 1,000 people there. How many people are here tonight sober who are not yet of legal drinking age? And about 25 people stood up, and the place just went wild. Well, I felt a little depressed because it wasn't about me. But one of the other speakers talked about developing a twitch. And again, I had just developed a twitch about three days before. And again there were two of us, and I remember going up to him afterwards. I said, thank you for mentioning the twitch. I've had mine since Friday. Now they come and they go. That's the good news. So where I got sober? We didn't clap. We didn' t give sobriety dates. We didn''t give chips or medallions. We were such a low maintenance group. The rooms were dark. We didn ''t really have a lot of bright lights. We all smoked. we quoted our therapists and we were all depressed that's where I got sober and a big meeting was 35 or 40 people I'm sober a year and it's time to go back to Los Angeles now, I knew Los Angeles as a drinker for 5 years and I taught school in Los Angeles for 5 year and I was going back to the school I had taught at before, the scene of many crimes and I wrote Cardinal Manning who was the boss at the time and I said I'm coming to Los Angeles and I'm a sober person and if you know any sober priests I'd love a name or two and he wrote back a gracious letter and he said welcome and when you come to Los Angles call Father Terry R and I got to Los Angels on Friday, I went to a meeting Friday night, two meetings on Saturday 2 on Sunday. I called Terry Monday and I said, I need a sponsor. And he said, when did you come to Los Angeles? And I said Friday. He said, have you been to a meeting yet? I said I've been to five. And, he likes to sponsor desperate men. So, yes. And then he picked me up that night and took me to this awful meeting that he loves. And it's called the white flag men's stag, and it's just a bunch of dreary self-obsessed male alcoholics talking about themselves and then clapping after each one. It's Los Angeles, and it just drove me crazy. But I went because I didn't know what else to do. And the first time I went, the Bonaventure Hotel is where the old Episcopal Cathedral used to be, and this used to be in the back of the Episcodal Cathedral. And it was wooden, and you had to go upstairs, and it was very, very dank and dark, and kind of a Skid Row meeting. And a lot of Skid row people came there. Also physicians, some of whom could practice, jazz musicians, and writers. It was that kind of the meeting. And I'm new in Los Angeles, and it's hot, and its weird, and I'm with my new sponsor, and not sure I even like him, and it's going to take months to figure that out. And we walk up these stairs and the guy immediately in front of me isn't what we'd call sober yet. He's a little sedated. He has that kind of atmosphere, a certain je ne sais quoi. But as he's going up the stairs, his sphincter relaxes and he soils himself. He doesn't even notice, he just keeps moving. And he moves into the room where the meeting is being held, a room without windows. But everybody's smoking, this is 1977, everyone's smoking. And so they have a fan to blow the smoke out. Anyway, he comes into the Room and he's a little odiferous at this moment. And one of the regulars there had a, he was a stuntman, Hollywood stuntman. He had a barrel chest and a Taurus bulb, a mustache and a shaved head. And he got a whiff of our friend and threw up immediately. Just, Kurt mentioned projectile vomiting. It was like that. So now I'm watching with horror at this Southern California men's meeting. my sponsor goes up to Taurus Bulba and says are you alright he says oh yeah I'm alright I just got caught by surprise I'll be fine and Terry said go get the kitty litter which means this has happened before they got kitty litter they threw it on the barf and on some of the other things in the room then Terry goes up to a couple of the guys from the halfway house and they say our friend needs some help and he needs some friends. Why don't you take him back and clean him up and then come back to the meeting? So they took this guy, he was still so out of it, they helped him down and we're cleaning up and air and smoking and the meeting started on time. Now what I saw there was a lot of traditions at work. Anybody can come in, we treat people with respect, we start the meeting on time, the common welfare comes first and always have kitty litter as one of the traditions. I think that's pretty important. Here's the rule. Wherever you get sober is where they do it right. And if you go anywhere, it's going to be a crisis because they're going to do it wrong. And in Los Angeles, here's what was wrong about Los Angeles. Number one, the meetings were too big. Number two, the rooms were too well lit. Number three, they clapped constantly. Number four, they were happy, aggressively so. Greeters at the door. God, help me. I don't want to meet you. I don' t want to get your phone number. I want to sit in the back and be left alone. Thank you very much. so but I think it took me about 18 months to get used to the LA way of doing things so I was very uncomfortable for a long time why did I keep going to meetings I had the gift of desperation I simply didn't know what other tool to use but I'm waking up and I'm coming to and I have a second sponsor, Terry. I met a woman from North Carolina named Ellie last year and Ellie said when new people come in she tells them the first three steps are make your bed and get a job. We'll talk theology on your first birthday. Make your bed, get a Job. Well what's God? That's very helpful. Let's talk about that a little later. A power greater than ourselves. I'm glad that that phrasing is used. A sober priest friend of mine, he's a military chaplain now with our troops over in Kosovo on his third tour of duty. Tim is a true madman. And he says, you know, so many of us have trouble with the higher power turning our will and our lives over to the care of a higher power. we had no trouble turning our will and our lives over to the care of a lower power. You know, we did that over and over and over again with ease. But if it's a higher power, we suddenly get defensive. I find that interesting. Fun, fun plus problems, problems. It took me a while To start making friends, it took me a while to start doing a lot of things in AA. I went to meetings, I went to meetings even in Southern California, I went to meetings but I wasn't meeting people. I didn't know how to do it. I didn't have any small talk and I would think a lot and then get nothing done and a lot of my thinking is really just tying my brain in knots, knot after knot after knot calling them ideas. So I asked my sponsor, are there any small meetings in Southern California? Because I thought that would be, at least I could start meeting some people. Because I'm not doing it. And he said try a big book study. They are always small. And I opened up the Los Angeles meeting directory and there were, this was 1977, they had 1,000 meetings a week in Los Angeles County. As you know, meetings get started because of resentments. So that gives you an idea of how many resentments were in Alcoholics Anonymous in Los Angelos County too. Anyway, I found this meeting. It was a big book study in the Korean church on Olympic Boulevard on a Friday night and I started going there Friday night. My sponsor would regularly show up too. So the women and men in that group, I had just turned 30, the women and men of that group were in their 40s, 50s, and 60s and over the next year or two they became my first friends. Little bit by little bit by little bit. I heard at a meeting that if you don't do a fourth step you'll drink again. That was motivation. And so I started doing research on the fourth step. That'll delay it for months. I was doing research, you know, and examining different, asking people's opinions on it. Finally what happened is, you Know, resentments and fears and sexual stuff and finances, kind of the list that Bill presents in the big book in the 12 and 12. And I couldn't write and I couldn' t write and i couldn't right. and I went to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and the person leading the meeting just made me mad. I didn't like his sense of humor and I didn' t like what he talked about and I did' n't like this topic and I di' n' t liked him. By the end of the meeting, I was mad and I wen' t home and I started the resentment list and his name was number one on the list and I wrote names, a list of names while I was mad. Boom, I got 10 or 12 or 15 names and then I kind of ran out of steam. And then I waited again until I was upset and then he went back and wrote some more and I was obsessed and I got upset and then i wrote some more so my fourth step took about a year and a half to do because i wasn't upset that much but when i was upset i could write and i was almost two years sober. And I called my sponsor and I said, I'm getting it done. Let's make a date. Now it doesn't say in the book that you have to do it with your sponsor. It says another human being and some sponsors don't qualify. But I wanted to do it with mine because I wanted him to know me. So we made the date and I took some days off and I finished and let's get this done and he came to my room and I read him the stuff it took an hour or two I guess, a lot of my stuff is boring and repetitive, it's not very interesting that's very embarrassing there was stuff there I was embarrassed about there was things that I was there was something there that I had confusion about I shared all that with him and he just listened and then I was done and he was quiet and you know now what do you do and he said well one thing's real clear and I just oh no it's going to be a pronouncement of some kind and he says both you and I need this program very much and then he got up and left and I was delighted now when some people do a fifth step they get high off it there's this huge sense of relief that just wasn't true for me I didn't feel a huge sense of relief I went to a meeting that night it was a Wednesday I went to a meet that night and I sat in the back my favorite place and someone said you look awful and I said I just did my fifth step they said don't move I'll get you coffee But over the next period of months, things lightened. Things lightened, and by the time I was three, I think I was happier more often than not in my recovery. I was somewhere in the Midwest, and I heard someone say, your first year of recovery is about physical stuff, and your second year of recoveries about emotional stuff, and your third year of recovery is about spiritual stuff. And I thought that was very, very deep. Right now I think that person had four years. And I think recovery takes time. I mean, I think for the first 15 years I'm dealing with some pretty basic physical stuff. And then a good 15 years of learning that language of emotions. And then dealing with understanding and getting life better organized on better principles than just I want it my way and I want it now has been the last long period of time. There's a retreat for priests in recovery every January in Southern California. And when I was 30, 31, 32 years old, my sponsor made me go and all these were old gray fat men smoking cigars and I didn't find them interesting at all. Now I am one and I go, you know, you just go. But a few years ago we had a priest giving us some talks and his name was Jeff and he's a priest in the Episcopal Church and he said a couple of things that I found very, very helpful and simple for my own program And here's one of the things he said. Surrender first, then think. And I don't think of surrendering right away. I want to negotiate. I want a strategize. I want run some surveys. I want the poll numbers in, you know? And I find it is better if I surrender first. Then I can think about some stuff. But even like with something as simple as the steps, I wanted to study the steps and have them analyzed before I do them. Because I don't want to be caught by surprise. And that's not the way we learn. Most human beings learn by doing. And that has been my experience with the steps. He also said that one of his first prayers every morning is, Oh God, protect me from myself. I did not have to ask him to explain that to me. I mentioned it to a church group once and they didn't get it at all. So I went to a meeting right after that where I could relax for just 10 seconds. You know, some groups make me very nervous. When I was 20 years sober, I took some days off and I went for some quiet and some reflection. I take the book with me when I travel. I, two of my favorite pieces of literature are the comic books. You know, Joe and Alice. I love Joe and Alex. And over the years when I've been literature person at my home group meeting, I always get extra copies of Joe and Alice in English and Spanish. And I never see anybody reading them but they disappear. and one of the reasons is a lot of people don't read that easily comic books really work, I love Joe and Alice and then there's that book called Experience, Strength and Hope which is all of the stories from the big book first edition, second edition third edition that were dropped out so more stories could be put in and it's a wonderful way of having a meeting if you're a thousand miles away from a meeting and I travel a lot and sometimes I'm far away. And I can read stories in the back. And I find that useful. Anyway, I'm 20 years sober. I'm at a monastery. I'm not a monk, but I was in a monastery in New Mexico. Kerosene light, kerosene lamp, no electricity rattlesnakes. And I was reading the short story in the book from the first guy to get sober from Chicago. Now, Chicago alcoholics are very bad alcoholics. And this guy was a young man in trouble. And his father said, listen, there's a group in Akron that might help you. And the young man said, if I ever need to meet these people in Akron, I'll drive myself. And a year or two or three later, he drives himself and he hooks up with all of our pals. This is, the short story is called He Sold Himself Short. And in the fourth edition of the book, it's on page 262. He writes, I was terribly impressed by this meeting and the quality of happiness these men displayed this is 1937-1938 despite their lack of material means in this small group during the depression there was no one who was not hard up I stayed in Akron two or three weeks on my initial trip trying to absorb as much of the program and philosophy as possible I spent a great deal of time with Dr. Bob whenever he had the time to spare and in the homes of two or 3 other people trying to see how the family lived the program every morning we would meet at the home of one of the members and have coffee and donuts and spend a social evening. They had coffee, donuts, and cigarettes and spend the social evening, that isn't mentioned. But the whole first couple of generations of sober people in the AA did not drink themselves to death, they smoked themselves to deaf, you know, just to mention that. The day before I was due to go back to Chicago, it was Dr. Bob's afternoon off, he had me to the office and we spent three or four hours formally going through the six-step program as it was at that time. The six steps were number one, complete deflation. There's something about us. There's nothing about us There's not something about me. I don't reach out for a new idea because it's helpful. In fact, if something's really healthy, I turn the channel. I'm not that interested in glowing anything. But if I'm bleeding and on fire, you might have my attention. I don't know why that's true, but it's true. Complete deflation. Number two, dependence and guidance from a higher power. Three, moral inventory. Four, confession. Five, restitution. Six, continued work with other alcoholics. Now Bill W. will take those and turn them into 12. Then this guy writes, Dr. Bob led me through all these steps. At the moral inventory, he brought up several of my bad personality traits. Now notice, it's this guy's inventory, but Dr. Bob's doing the talking. Haven't you wanted to do that with some people you sponsor? Before you say anything, I'd like to mention a couple of points, you know. Dr. Rob's a physician, and physicians pay attention. here's a I think a truism I think it's obvious if I notice something in you there's a good chance it's gone on inside of me it's not always true but a lot of the times if I noticed something in you and it bothers me, there's real good chance gone on inside of me. I was giving a talk somewhere in Southern California and a woman came up at halftime and she was livid, furious, and she said you are so arrogant! This is not a secret. It's kind of obvious. I'm a white male college graduate, citizen of the United States, and we have the bomb. What do you mean, Emma? Of course I'm arrogant. I'm raised to be arrogant. It's one of the things I'm good at, arrogance. Well, she was mad, and she had to leave. And I think she may have seen a mirror. And it just freaked her out. That's a theory. At the moral inventory, he brought up several of my bad personality traits or character defects such as selfishness, conceit, jealousy, carelessness, intolerance, ill-temper, sarcasm, and resentments. I wish there were 12 of them, you know, then it would be a little easier. But the reason these jumped off the page to me when I read them in that monastery when I was 20 years clean and sober was these are mine. I have selfishness and conceit and jealousy and carelessness and intolerance and ill temper and sarcasm and resentments. I really, really do. And I get a daily reprieve from the worst of my craziness and I've asked God to remove them and what I noticed over years is the word is removed, not erase. But remove. So they're removed and then I cut corners and I get hungry and lonely tired and I'm too busy to pray or meditate and I kind of take charge of a few things and suddenly my selfishness, my conceit, my jealousy, my carelessness my intolerance, my ill temper my sarcasm and my resentments join up in groups of two and three and ambush me and anyone else in the room oh man then I have to promptly admit it and then I have to make amends and clean up the mess I'm better at this stuff but I have a daily reprieve from the worst of my crazy. Then, Doc, this guy writes, we went over these at great length and then finally he asked me if I wanted these defects of character removed. When I said yes, we both knelt at his desk and prayed, each of us asking to have these defects taken away. This picture is still vivid. If I live to be 100, it will always stand out in my mind now one of the reasons I'm glad I read that that I read the stories is that I didn't get into the stories I never would have met Dr. Bob and I never could have seen how he sponsored people I found that very, very helpful when I started slowly going through the book and I don't do it by myself that well I do find that a group is helpful So let's see. This is right in the section that opens up the stories. Pioneers of AA. This group of 10 stories shows that sobriety in AA can be lasting. When you read Dr. Bob's story, as he talks about his chaotic life, he'll then talk about meeting Bill and getting sober and having a relapse and getting sober and then he'll write as I write this nearly four years have passed and in 1939 when you said you had four years of sobriety people gasped wow that's long term they stopped in time 17 stories may help you decide whether you are alcoholic also whether AA is for you it might not be for every alcoholic there are other things that help some people I'm so glad I'm in AA And then part three, they lost nearly all those who believe their drinking to be hopeless may again find hope in these 15 impressive tales. Hopelessness. I want to talk a little bit about the hopelessness. What happens sometimes in church, and this is just an observation, not a criticism, but what I've sometimes noticed for those of us who are church people some of us talk about hopelessness but we've never been hopeless we've had it pretty good and it's sometimes interesting in a church situation to hear people talk about hopelessness and needing help but they, you know it just doesn't ring true at an AA meeting I hear women and men talk about hopelessness and I believe them I didn't have a lot of trouble with step one, I mean I'm half Swedish I'm halfway Irish, neither group is optimistic we're pretty sure we're doomed and there's no way out and that it's going to have a bad ending, I'm just pretty sure of that the polar bears are drowning, the ice is melting, the sun is burning out, now what? I'm still not an optimist. I consider myself a pessimist with a better attitude, but I'm Still Not an Optimist. So step one was not a problem for me. Step one says, Noah, it's still raining. Step one says, General Custer, more are coming. I mean, step one is not a fun step. It's not a step you take when you're doing well. step two to my understanding and experience is about hope step two says there's a way out step two, there's a way out of the trap there's an image used in the Psalms about being caught in the fowler's snare the bird trapped in the bird trap and salvation is someone springs the trap and you're free. And I love the image of that kind of freedom. Step two, Bill in the 12 and 12 writes about step two and he writes about faith and belief, faith and believe, faith and believ... I've never liked the chapter. I had faith. I had belief. I have faith and relief in English, Latin and Greek and I was still drunk. I believe some really good stuff, but it didn't apply to me. Part of my alcoholism is the conviction that I am unique, special, and different. I knew the program would work for you because you are simple people. I, on the other hand, am complicated and damaged beyond imagination. and I just I went to meetings and I went to meetings and I went to meetings and one night at a meeting after months and months and months of sobriety and meetings I looked around the room and I noticed that I was not the only person in the room this is a big deal if you been the only real person in the room for years. My special qualities, you know. I also realized that the grace of God is available to anybody in the room and I was in the room. I figured I'm gonna, there's a chance even I can recover. There's a chance even I can have something like a human life. I just need a little bit of hope and I would get that at meetings. A little bit of hope, not too much. Too much hope and I get giddy and stupid, but just enough hope to do the footwork and return the phone calls and go to a meeting and ask God for help, to sit down with something to read that's full of spirit, knowing that there's a chance some of that may help me breathe and help we live. So my great question at 20 years, how do you get from step one, no hope, to step two, some hope? I didn't think my way from step 1 to step 2, which is what I prefer. I want to think about this. I didn' t think my away from step1 to step2. I did' n run from step one to step two. I didn't march from step one to steps two. I didn' t crawl from step one to stepped two. I got carried. The spirit of the living God working through the women and men in rooms got me to a place where one day I had enough hope to take the steps. To ask for help, to cooperate. My sponsor says the program throws us the ball, throw the ball back. Which is what I need to remember to do on a regular basis. Step three, this turning it over, you know, turning it over to God as we understand God. Well, everybody understands God a little differently. I just think that's true. Even members of the same church understand God a little differently, members of the same family understand God a little differently. And my understanding of God is that God is really, really, very, very big. God is bigger than my imagination. God is bigger that my thoughts. God as bigger than willpower. There's a classic story told from the fourth century. Augustine, one of the great minds and hearts of the early church. Augustine, living in North Africa, did all kinds of things, wrote all kinds of things. Was one of the seekers and searchers for years and years and broke his mother's heart for years. Augustin finally becomes a believer and he's sitting on the beach in North America, probably somewhere in Algeria, modern day Algeria. And he's writing a treatise on God. You know, how God works, how God is put together, God's thoughts, all that stuff. And it's not going very well. And he notices over there a little boy who has dug a hole in the sand and the boy has a bucket and the boy runs to the Mediterranean, fills the bucket with water, comes and dumps it in the sand and keeps doing this 15, 20, 30 times. Water, bucket sand and finally Augustine says what are you doing and the little boy says I'm going to empty this ocean into the hole and Augustine with all of the confidence of a grown-up says oh little boy that it's impossible the ocean's very big and your hole's very small it's not going to work. And the little boy looked at him and said, and God is very big, and your mind is very smart, and you're not going to figure out that one either. And disappears. Clearly an angel of some sort. But I need to remember that when I think I'm understanding God. My understanding of God is a little bit different. It's very limited by space and time and my own abilities. We turn things over, we turn things over, we turn things over. Also, if you're like me, you tend to take them back and take them back when I find that I've turned it, what I've taken it back, what I try to do is turn it over again. I think it's a policy statement. I turn things over and I get to do all the footwork. A lot of step three for me means show up, pay attention, tell the truth, and I leave the results in God's good hands. My job is to show up pay attention and tell the truth and then the results are in God's good hands. And I've been sober long enough and a priest long enough to know that if I truly turn things over, I don't get my own way. Can I live with that crushing disappointment? Oh yeah, it's better. I was trying to explain to my sponsor, I wanted to get, how can I manipulate God to coming around to my outcome? That was one of our conversations. And he thinks that that's a bad attitude, and that I have to trust that God knows better than I do. I think God is big. I imagine God is bigger than words. I think He is bigger that the United States. I believe He is greater than the English language. I think God is bigger than male and female. I think that God is a man. I think I think god is bigger than the bible. I think i think god is bigger than the vatican. I think god is really extremely very big. I think god is intelligent and I think god is merciful and skillful and resourceful and generous and when I turn things over that's who I turn things over to knowing I'm probably not going to get my own way. And that most of the time that's really for the common good. One of the ways I turn things over because I find it hard to turn over everything one of the ways I turned things over is I just turn over now. Now. And throughout the day I turn over now and I want to stay in conscious contact and I want to be of service and it happens in so many ways. I was tied up in the airport forever yesterday because planes were not flying in and out of San Francisco and in airports it's real clear to me I am not in charge It's a whole new definition of powerless and unmanageable and most of the time is just fine. Bring a book, have a magazine, pray a little bit. Not every passenger was as peaceful. I saw one passenger, a grown-up adult male, wagging his finger in the face of one of the airline people. I don't think that's that effective. I want to tell a story and then I'm done. I heard this a few years ago and it's about alcoholism and I find it to be so helpful, this disease. I liked Dr. Silkworth's presentation that it's an allergy of the body and an obsession of the mind. That's been mentioned more than once this weekend. I think that sure matches my experience. But I heard these things and I heard one of these that alcoholism is a lot like dancing with a gorilla. You're not done dancing until the gorilla is done dancing. And just to be, you know, full disclosure, when I first heard this story, they didn't say dancing, they said dating. And they didn' t say dating. But the gorilla, nevertheless, was in charge. the gorilla is big and strong and powerful and when the gorilla has his arms around me I'm not making the decisions even though I'm a college graduate and I'm taller gorilla kills a lot of people a lot the casualty rates among women and men who dance with the gorilla is very high I have a friend in Vegas he has a very complicated life For a while, he was dating his sponsor's wife. Not suggested. Even he now says it was a bad idea. But he was saying, Tom, I don't want to dance with the gorilla, but I'd like to pet it just a little bit, you know? And if it gets you, it's got you. If you're clean and sober today, it means the gorilla has let go. if the gorilla has let go get out of the cage and don't go back into the cage even when the gorilla starts humming your song which it does oh I'll never do that again it was so humiliating and so disgusting and I'm so ashamed and the newspapers were there and police were there and the goats it's just so disgusting I can't even think about it and then suddenly it's six months later and the moon's full and you can get thirsty. Bill W., the room fills with light. Six months later, he's in Akron and gets thirsty and he made some phone calls. So, get out of the cage and stay out of a cage. Now, people who love us, our moms and dads, our spouses, our siblings, our children, our grandchildren, people who loves us visit the zoo a lot. And they look at lions and tigers and bears. And then they walk by the gorilla cage and they see the person they love dancing with the gorilla and they react. Take action! Do something! And they frequently will get into the cage and start sweeping and vacuuming and moving the furniture around and hanging inspirational little slogans, you know, and making nice nutritious meals. And none of that helps. So then they try to get between the gorilla and the person they love and the gorilla turns on them and yanks their arms and legs off. So they have a program too. And it's called Al-Anon. And an awful lot of the Al-Anon program comes down to stay out of the cage. and my response is but I only want to sweep and vacuum and we know and it really irritates the gorilla we're meeting over by the giraffes and you can talk about your vacuuming needs in a place like that My experience, I mentioned Dr. Bob talking about four years and what a big deal it was. I went to San Antonio for the international conference. I've been going to a lot of those. My sponsor made me go the first time in New Orleans. And in San Antonio, you gave your sobriety date like you do here. And if you had 40 years or more, you were an old-timer. And all the old-timers got stuck in one part of the convention hall and Saturday night they chose names out of a hat. And you had three minutes. They chose 12 people. You have three minutes to talk to the convention. And if você tem 40 anos ou mais, você só precisa de três minutos. E cada um deles disse que eu estou tão feliz, eu estou muito grato, olá, eu estou tanto feliz, eu estou grande, eu sou muito grata, olé, obrigado, obrigado ao programa, graças a Deus. Isso é o que cada um dos eles disse. Three minutes. 20 years you couldn't do that. I need an hour. I have 20 years. I have a lot to say. So that's why they do with 40 years or more. Anyway, the point being, Saturday night in San Antonio, they had over 500 women and men with 40 year or more of recovery. You know, has the program changed over the years? Oh yeah, there's a lot of old timers. I sat next to my sponsor who had 39 years and it was wonderful just to feel his self-pity and resentment. I like that a lot. And the next international convention is July the 4th weekend in Atlanta, Georgia. Go! Go! I had some weenie friends. I can't go to Texas. It's hot. there's air conditioning grow up this is no longer the wagon train and the same will be true in Georgia it'll be hot but there's air conditioning and sober brothers and sisters and this is good news and I hope to see you there, thanks