Step 10 — Watch, Ask, Discuss, Amend, and Turn – Adam

Hi everybody, my name's Adam, I'm a recovered alcoholic. Hi Adam. Also a drug addict too. But this is Alcoholics Anonymous and I believe in singleness of purpose. So, like you just read. How many people have been to AA before? Okay, it seems like it's getting a little more like what I was used to. When I went to rehab, everybody pretty much, it was like one or two people who had never been to Alcoholics Anonymous before. And one of the things that I used to hear a lot, you know, was that it didn't work or, you know, and the reasons why was people got tired of hearing the war stories. They got tired of hearing the bitching and the moaning. It was all about sharing about our issues and our feelings and all that stuff. And not enough about recovery. And I found that to be true for myself. When I walked into the rooms of AA, I walked into an area where the local AA idea of a program of recovery was very much like group therapy. There wasn't a lot of talk of God. There wasn't a lot of talk of the 12 steps. There wasn't a whole lot of real substantial solution. It was all about, you know, how was your day? How shitty was your day? Let's feel better, you know. Let's talk about it. And they used to say all the time, a problem shared is a problem halved, you know. And for me, I'm the type of alcoholic. That wasn't my truth. That wasn't my solution, you know. I can bitch about my problems. I can go home and have the same damn problem and feel better, go home and wake up the next day and have the same damn problem. Come to a meeting and bitch about it, feel a little better, go home, wake up the next day, have the same problem, you know. And I can only last for a certain period of time, a very short period of time. My grace period was about three days when I was in that place where if I wasn't able to deal with the internal conflict that was going on with me, I was going to go get high. That was the solution that I had. Yeah. At that point. The only thing that ever worked for me for the way I was feeling was to get loaded. And until somebody gave me another way to live, I was going to continue to go back to that. I wanted to read something. It was jumping in my head when all the readings in the beginning were starting off. And it's something that really gave me a lot of hope when I first came across it. And we don't hear it enough in the meetings. We hear a lot about the nine-step promises. Everybody talks about the nine-step promises. We read them in the beginning of almost every meeting or at the end of every meeting. You know, the painstaking about this phase of our development, blah, blah, blah. Well, if you flip the page, the ten-step promises are amazing. The ten-step promises say, We ceased fighting everything and anyone, even alcohol, for by this time sanity will have returned. We'll seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as if from a hot flame. We react sanely. We react only and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes. That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we have been placed in a position of neutrality, safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is our experience. That is how we react. We are not afraid to act so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition. When I first heard that, that was a major eye-opener to me. Because I was under this idea, and it was perpetuated by the fellowship that I was around, was that I'm going to be recovering for the rest of my life. I'm going to stay sick. I'm going to always be screwed up and trudging through my day and have to make a meeting and get through this issue or that issue or whatever for the rest of my life. And that's not really a message of hope to me. I want to hear that I'm going to get better. I want to hear that things are going to get better. I was recovering for a period of time. It took me getting through the 12 steps to reach a place where all of a sudden those things started to happen. My problem with alcohol and drugs was lifted. I didn't think about getting high anymore. I still was crazy. I still acted like an asshole sometimes. But I didn't think about getting loaded anymore. And that was an amazing thing for me because I'm the type of guy who got high no matter what. I drank and I used no matter what. I'm the oldest of three boys. I'm a byproduct of the 60s. My parents were hippies. I should have been born at Woodstock, but my mom backed out at the last second. They were on their way. I would have been born in the parking lot on the way home. Actually, I probably would have been born sooner because of the acid and all that. I used to get mad because I thought that would be a great excuse. That's why I'm the way I am. I was born on acid. The family unit that I grew up in, it's like getting drunk and getting loaded were not necessarily bad. They were bad or wrong in my home. I drank with my dad and I smoked pot with my mom. I lived on a commune when I was a kid. I lived in a teepee. I lived in a school bus. I crossed the country five times before I was five. We lived in that world. And it was perfectly acceptable. My mom was growing plants when I was a kid. I was raised up in this life and it wasn't viewed as being bad. I took my first conscious let's go get drunk drink when I was about 12. I had some drinks before that but they weren't necessarily either. If I took them, they weren't to get drunk. And if my parents gave them to me, I had no consent. And they had. I was that little baby that they put beer in the bottle and watched him stagger around the parking lot. And they thought it was funny. And looking back, I think it was funny too. But the idea is... I had my first drink with my buddies at around 12. We got two jugs of like Gala wine or something like that. You know, with a screw top and a six pack of beer. And we went and hung out on the train tracks next to a construction site. And we proceeded to get drunk. And it was what I had been looking for. You know. I found where I belonged. You know, I was home in a sense. And I was at home. And I was at home. It felt great. I lost all my inhibitions, all my fears, all the stuff that was going on inside of me disappeared that night. And I had a blast. At some point in the evening, I blacked out. I woke up in a puddle of red wine and Dorito puke. Yeah, exactly. But you know what? And this I'll never forget. I don't remember necessarily a lot of my first drunk. But I remember the next morning. I remember the next morning. And I was laying out in the yard. And the sun is beating on my face and my head. And I had the most obscene hangover that anybody could have. You know, red wine and Doritos. And my only thought was, I can't wait until next weekend. You know, I want to do this again. You know. I felt like I was home. Over the next couple of years, I wasn't able to drink a lot. Because my parents at that point were traveling a bit. And I left. I lost contact with my friends that week. And I had to build new friends and all that kind of crap. But the first chance I got, I drank again. By the time I was 16 years old, I had settled down again. And I was in Northern California. That's where I pretty much grew up. And I started to drink almost daily. It wasn't really daily. But it was damn close. You know. I grew up in a college town. And so, you know, Thursday is the weekend. You know, Friday, Saturday. And Sunday is the weekend too. And then Monday, you've got to recover from the weekend. And Wednesday is hump day. You know. So, I had justification to drink on all six of those days. And it took me a couple more years to find a reason for Tuesday. But I eventually did. I found a 50 cent mug night. And that was a good enough reason to drink on Tuesday. But from 16 on, I was basically a daily drinker. In high school, I had a liquor locker. We had three separate lockers. One for clothes, one for books, and one for booze. And we drank and got high all the way through high school. I don't know. Actually, I didn't graduate. I was going to say I don't know how I graduated. I didn't. But I did get my GED at the end. I don't know how. I showed up to school just to socialize. I didn't show up for any other reason. No, I didn't care about classes. You know, I remember one year I was smart and I took an office practice class so that I could clear all my cuts in the process, you know, and never have any troubles. Like I said, we grew up in a college town. We used to have a lot of keg parties at my house. We lived on the outskirts of town. We didn't live in the city limits, so it was real easy to get away with keg parties. We had a six-foot friend. Six-foot fence. Two bucks a head, you know. You get a cup, drink all you want, you know. Or we'd sell the promotions. Three bucks a cup and chicks are free, you know. And, you know, we used to have raging keg parties at my house. And none of this seemed to be a problem, you know. Like I said, the grown-ups, for lack of a better word, didn't have a problem with this stuff. The only problem? The only problem my dad had was with the drug use. And he had a problem with the drugs because he told me I should move to Alaska or Maine or I forget what else was legal at the time, you know, because of the legalities of it. And that's all he was concerned about. He didn't want me to get locked up. But he didn't see anything wrong with it. And so I didn't. At 16, I had my first encounter moving on the street. I lived on the street. I lived on the streets for a summer, you know, a good three months. I lived in a treehouse we had as kids. Yeah, a friend of ours' parents or father had built us this really great treehouse, you know, a really stable, solid treehouse. And I lived in it for three months over the summer. I had a job that year, and I was drinking and partying and going to work all summer long and living in this treehouse. And I loved it. Ultimately, my dad had finally found me. He found me and dragged me back home that year, you know, and back to school. But by the time I was 18, I was out there again. You know, I was out on my own doing my thing, and I was never about trying to live in this world. I was never about trying to show up and go to work and pay bills. And, you know, my dad had a piece of property that he owned, and he wasn't there anymore. And we had a trailer on it. There was no electricity because I didn't work or pay for electricity. The water, I had this special wrench. You know, it's like six feet tall, and you shove it into the ground and turn the water back on, you know, every time the water company would turn it off. I had a fire pit in the backyard that we used to cook on. You know, I had the lawn sofas and the lazy boy chairs in the backyard. And this was perfectly normal to me. You know, it was perfectly acceptable because, like I said, I didn't want to be a man. I didn't want to join. I didn't want to be part of society. So it was real easy for me to live like that and then immediately move to the streets. My dad had come back to California and told me I couldn't live the way I was living, so my idea was to camp out under the stars. And I stayed out there for like five years. I was never a hardened criminal type, you know. I didn't do robberies or burglaries. I didn't do anything like that, but I was a drug dealer. I was a booster. You know, I did whatever I had to do to continue to get high. You know, because that's all it was about. I was never about dealing drugs to make money. I was about dealing drugs so that I could have friends that I could get loaded with. You know, I sold acid. Acid's cheap. You know, you could spend $30, get 100 hits, sell 10 of them, get your money back, and then party with everybody. You know, and that's the reason that I did it. You know, like I said, it wasn't about any of that life stuff. I ended up going to jail. I remember being locked up and writing letters to anybody who would listen. I got a problem. There's something up. You know, I need, I don't know what I need. I need some kind of treatment. I need whatever. Didn't know what any of that meant. I just knew that every time I got in trouble, you know, it was somehow surrounding getting loaded. It was either trying to or in the middle of being high. And I thoroughly believed that I had a problem when I was locked up. And within 20 minutes of being released, I had a six-pack. Within two hours of being released, I had a half ounce of weed down my pants, a bottle of schnapps in my back pocket, and two hits of acid in my system. And I spent the night outside that night. I hadn't even seen my parole officer yet. I called her the next morning and I said, I've got to get out of California. I'm going to spend the rest of my life in and out of jail. All my friends were like that. They were either dead or they were doing life on the installment plan. You know, they'd do six months in, three months out. A year in, six months out. And I didn't want to do that. You know, jail was easy for me. I didn't have a problem with it. It didn't scare me. It actually scared me that it was easy. That's what scared me. Because you tell me when to eat, you tell me when to sleep, you tell me when to go play cards or work out or watch TV, you know. I have no responsibility. I have no accountability to anything. And that's what I was looking for all of those years. You know, I don't want to be responsible. I don't want to do anything. I just want to get loaded. And I could get loaded inside. It was a little harder to make it. It was a little harder to make it. It was a little harder to get it. But I could still do it. And that kind of scared me. So I had my parole transferred to New Jersey. And I had family back here. I was born back here. All the relatives were back here. And my mom was here. And she was in AA at the time. She had gotten sober. She was about five years sober when I came back. And her only rule was that I don't get high in her house while I'm living in her house. And that just lasted like three days. I just can't do that. I don't know how to live without being loaded. I don't know how to go to the supermarket. I don't know how to go to the deli. I don't know how to go on a job interview. I don't know how to do anything without being high. Because that's all I've ever done. You know? And so like I said, it lasted about three days. I stayed with her for a little while. Eventually she threw me out. But I've always been fortunate. I always found the rich girls. I always found girls with daddy issues and who were rich. And they liked to take care of me. I don't know why. Too bad I ain't got one now. I actually got one who I got to support. But at the time, that's who I always found. And I found this girl. Who had a $100,000 settlement from a car accident. And so again, I didn't have to do anything. And you know, I had my stash. And I had my booze. And she bought a car for herself that she didn't have a license for. But I did. So she got me a car. You know? And I remember it was May. I had gotten a petty theft, two dirty tests, and a drunk driving. And I was still on parole. And I knew... I knew I was going to get locked up. And I called my parole officer. And I told her I needed to go into rehab. And after quite a bit of work, I went to detox and another rehab that I just will not stay in. It's one of those therapeutic community types. They make you wear a diaper and a dunce cap and shit. And I was like, that ain't happening. I called her. I called my parole. I said, send me back to the joint or give me another day. You know? I'll find somewhere. But I ain't going to stay in a place like that. It's not locked. You know? And if you treat me like that, I'm not going to stay. I ended up getting into the Salvation Army. You know? Not really a rehab, but it was what I could get into at the time. And I got a taste. I got a taste of what recovery was. You know? And I got to give credit to the Sally. And I always do this. The Sally did save my life. Because they said the one thing that I needed. You know? And it's carried me to this day. As they said, you'll never get and stay sober if you don't find God. You know? Plain and simple. And they had their brand. And they were pushing their brand. You know? But the bottom line is, is I needed to find a higher power. Doesn't have to be any particular brand. It doesn't have to be theirs or mine or yours or whatever. But I got to find something that I can believe in. And I held on to that. You know? And I remember talking to all the guys in this place. And asking them what they believed. And what are the principles behind what you believe? And my first higher power in recovery was a set of principles. You know? It was a set of principles common to all the world's religions. You know? And that's all it was. It was something that basic. And I could get behind that. I could get with that. And I came into alcohol. It's anonymous. And I started to do everything they told me to do. The problem was I went into that area where they said make 90 and 90. You know? Don't drink and go to meetings. Share about your problems. You know? And I did all that. I did everything they told me to do in the fellowship. You know? I had a coffee commitment. I had lots of phone numbers. I called people. I hung out. I went to the diner. I went bowling. And I drank. You know? Because all that external shit didn't matter. You know? All that external stuff isn't why I got drunk. You know? I didn't get drunk because of the people I hung out with. You know? I didn't get drunk because of the music that I listened to or the shirt that I wore. You know? None of that external crap mattered. It was all what was going on inside of me. You know? The book talks about unmanageability. You know? It says that our lives had become unmanageable. It's not that outside stuff. It's not the crashed cars, the lost jobs, you know? The pissed off wife, girlfriend. Husband. Whatever. That's not the unmanageability. Unmanageability is the shit that goes on inside of me. You know? There's a paragraph on page 52 of the big book. It talks about having trouble with personal relationships. Prey to misery and depression. We can't control our emotional nature. We're full of fear. I forget. But there's eight of those things that it talks about. And that's me, drunk or sober. That's who I am. That's what I'm left with when you take the, the booze out of me. So if I'm still that person, my only solution that I know is to go back and get high until I can change that stuff. The book tells us that once the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically. You know? So I deal with this, for lack of a better word, God issue. I deal with this, this need for a higher power. And once I've done that, everything else falls. Everything else falls into place. And that's been my experience. That's what, that's what happened in my life. Because my life didn't, you know, I didn't, I didn't get a job and get a place and get this stuff and get that stuff, get the girlfriend, get the kids, and then my, you know, and then get God. That's not the way it worked for me. I dealt with my God stuff. And all that stuff started to fall into place. And I know I'm talking a lot about God. And, and, just to clarify, I have the same perception of a higher power that I have. I have today that I had back then. And what that is, is I use a simple thing. It's called, my God's name is Sam. Okay? It's an acronym that stands for Sure Ain't Me. Okay? I'm not a religious person. I don't go to church. You know? My prayer and meditation at its perfect, picture perfect time is a walk in the woods. You know? It is. It is in my garden, planting and doing shit like that. You know? I don't have a particular religion that I adhere to. I find the benefit to all of them. And the rest of the shit, throw it out. You know? The stuff that doesn't work. I've, I've come to realize though that that method was wonderful for me, but it was very difficult. Because I had to come to my own understanding of my morality. I had to come to my own understanding of what I believe God was. You know? It's extremely strong today. But over the years it was hard because I could be wishy-washy. And I'm a self-centered, selfish asshole who wants things his way and can easily justify, well, maybe that is God's will. You know? Because I don't have any kind of book or doctrine to tell me what's right or wrong. Because I don't follow any of that. I had to actually really work at it. I had to sit in meditation. I had to practice this stuff regularly. And ultimately it's made my faith strong as a result of that. But it was hard. I came to Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, I knew I was an alcoholic at 16 years old, but I didn't know what it meant. I called myself an alcoholic at 16 years old and I didn't know what it meant. And I was in AA for three years and still didn't know what it means. You know, I thought it had to do with the trouble and how much I drank and all that other stuff. You know? And what it really boiled down to, I had to sit down and read this book and find out what the description of an alcoholic is. Once I put booze in my system, I can't guarantee what's going to happen. You know? I may be able to drink two. I may end up drinking 20. I have no idea. Because I have drank two. You know? I was asked by a girlfriend one time, please don't drink a lot tonight. I'll, you know, she offered up favors and, you know, and, you know, and all that, you know. And so, you know, I'm thinking about this. That might be a good idea, you know. And I drank two. But the problem was, the problem was, is that I have this physical craving for alcohol when I put it in my body. Okay? I take one drink and my body tells me I want more. So I'm all uncomfortable. I'm restless. I'm irritated. I'm agitated. I'm, you know, so that, that night that I drank two, was I a happy-go-lucky guy who was going to get some that night? No, it was a miserable prick whose body was telling him he wanted to drink. So I didn't get any of that thing. But it took me a long time to realize that because I didn't, I never drank with the intent of having a couple. I always drank to get fucked up. That's, that was the only reason that I drank. You know? So I had to scour my brain and I found that one instance. And, and, and I could see that, that, that I was irritated. I was agitated. You know, I was crawling out of my skin. And that's the allergy. That's the, that's the craving that I was experiencing. You know? And that's the one part. It says, it says in the book that this, this phenomenon of craving only, only happens, what does it say? It only happens to this type. They're talking about chronic alcoholics. It never occurs in the average tempered drinker. You know, so I'm not an average tempered drinker. I may not be, I may be an alcoholic because I have craving, but I'm not an average tempered drinker. So I, I could be a hard drinker. I could be an alcoholic. So that limits it a little bit. So then I start going further into the book and I, and it talks about the obsession of the mind. You know? And, and what that is, is knowing the consequences. Knowing that when I put a drink in my body, there's a really good chance I'm going to jail. You know? Or at best, I'm going to wake up with all kinds of new consequences. You know? Other than the ones I started with. You know? Knowing that full well, you know, can I convince myself it's okay? Do I convince myself it's okay? Do I think that it'll be different this time? You know? Or I'll handle it. I'll only drink beer tonight. You know? No, no Jack Daniels. You know? No, no vodka. You know? I remember by the end of my drinking, the only hard liquor I could drink was tequila. Because Jack made me violent. Vodka made me, blackout. You know? Southern Comfort made me, made me yak. You know? It's like, there was nothing I could drink anymore. You know? Because I had, it's all the booze's fault. It's not mine. You know? Obviously. You know? It's, it's, it's this brand. You know? And, you know, this obsession of the mind, that tells me, you know, it says, they, they describe it perfectly in here. It's on page 24. The fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons yet obscure, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so-called willpower becomes practically non-existent. We are unable, at certain times, to bring into our consciousness, with sufficient force, the memory of the suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first drink. You know? How many times, did I pick up a drink, and forget about all that shit that happened yesterday? You know? Or last week, or last month. You know? Or this morning. You know? You know? I woke up in the morning, oh, I'll never do that again. By lunchtime, how am I going to do this tonight? You know? That's the obsession of the mind. You know? So that's the two aspects of powerlessness. And then we already talked about the spiritual malady. You know? My default setting is restless, irritable, and discontent. You know? I have trouble with personal relationships, I'm prey to misery and depression. That's my default setting. That's how I am, regardless. You know? That's how I can be today. You know? If I don't do the things on this, this sheet here, you know, if I don't do this stuff on a daily basis, I default back to that restless, irritable, discontented person. And I'm miserable. And then I start looking around, and I start seeing, you know, people getting away with doing stuff. You know? Whether it be drinking, you know, drugging, doing stuff that I know I'm not supposed to do, behavior-wise. You know? They're getting away with it. Well, why can't I? You know? And the reason that I feel that way is because I'm not doing the things that keep me from being restless, irritable, and discontent. You know? Second step is really easy. You know? Do I now believe, or am I even willing to believe, that there's a power greater than myself? You know? It's that simple. You know? Do I now believe, or am I willing to believe, that I'm not God? Because if there's a power greater than myself out there, I'm not God. It's that simple. I don't have to know what God is. I don't have to even really have faith in God in the second step. I just, gotta believe that I'm not it. So, I move on. Third step. Made a decision to turn my will and my life, my thoughts and my actions. My will is my thoughts, my life is my actions. Made a decision to turn my thoughts and my actions over to the care of this God. You know, whatever it is. Sam. You know? How do I do that? I don't know. It's just a decision. It's not an action. It's a decision. So, if I can make that decision, yeah, I'll do that. How do I go about it? Four through nine. Continue with the steps. You know? I wrote my first four step and it was garbage. It was, it was 80% lies. You know? You know? 90% victim. You know? And, you know, and it was only three columns because that's the picture they show you. You know? I didn't bother reading to the next page. You know? I didn't bother reading to the next page. You know? You know? The next page tells me the fourth column which is my real truth. But, you know, it was crap. But the, the, the good thing about it is, is, is another line in this book is God doesn't make too hard terms for those who seek. You know? And when I was writing this four step, even though 80% was bullshit and 90% was victim and it was only three columns, I was honestly trying to do it to the best of my ability. I was a mess. I was two months sober at the time. I was jumping out of my skin. You know? And I wanted to climb a bell tower every two minutes. You know? And I'm writing this stuff down and I honestly wanted to get better. And God doesn't make too hard terms. You know? He allowed me to get some truth from that. I sat down with my sponsor. I shared this stuff with him. And I got a little bit of freedom. You know? Because up until that point, I was either the biggest piece of shit on the planet or I was a nice guy who drank a little too much. You know? You know? I had these polar extremes view of myself. And, you know, after I shared this with him, I realized, you know what? I wasn't a nice guy who drank too much. But I'm also not garbage. Somewhere in the middle. You know? I was an asshole. Yeah. But I'm a drunk. Yeah. You know? I'm okay here and I'm not. I got to see some balance from that inventory. And I went about moving forward. You know? I was... I don't know. Roughly four months sober when I did my first fifth step. And I completed the first round of amends before I was a year sober. Now again, like I said, 90% was bullshit on this or 80% was bullshit on this inventory. So there was a lot more amends that I had to do. But off of that first inventory, I was able to get some freedom. You know? And I remember in the first few months of recovery, I thought about getting loaded every single day. All the time. You know? And then I started writing and it subsided a little bit. You know? It still came regularly. But not all day every day. You know? And then I did this fifth step. And all of a sudden, it started dissipating a little more. You know? And it was coming like once or twice a week. You know? And then I started making some amends and then it's once or twice a month. And you know, and by the time I was about 18 months sober, because I had started a new round of step work shortly thereafter finishing my amends, by the time I was about 18 months sober, I stopped thinking about getting high. It just went away. And that first paragraph that I read tonight about cease fighting everything and everyone, even alcohol, happened. You know? I stopped living in that problem. The problem was removed. And you know, I haven't... It came back a couple times after that, but I don't know when it stopped, but I always like to use the number four years. You know? I was... Because it probably happened around two, but I don't want to lie, you know, and say that it went away quicker than it did. So it's easier to say four because I know at four years I didn't think about getting high anymore at all. And I haven't since. Coming up on 19 years this year. You know? It's 15 years that I haven't thought about picking up a drink or a drug and it has not crossed my mind. Granted, I could still be crazy. I could still be an asshole at times. You know? I got in a huge fight with my wife this morning over something really stupid and it was my fault. You know? So, you know, I'm no saint. I'm not perfect. I'm still getting better. You know? But it's not a booze problem anymore. Now it's just an asshole problem. You know? And I can live with that. I really can. You know? I'm not going to jail over that. You know? I'm not living under a bridge over that stuff. You know? I remember I was... I didn't really talk much about six or seven because in that first couple times nothing really happened. It was just a quick jump from my fifth step to my ninth step. It was literally... It's actually technically the way the book says it's only an hour and a half. Maybe two hours most. You sit quietly after your fifth step for an hour. Meditate on what you've written. See if you missed anything. Call your sponsor if it did. If you did, make your list of amends and go about making your amends. You know? Two hours. Okay? But I was probably five or six years sober. And I was going through a round of work with a guy in Western Jersey. And we had done this. He told me, go home, take my five-hour. And I... At the time I had two kids, I think. Maybe my third... No, two kids at the time. And my kids have always been savages. They're a lot like me. You know? And we've kind of encouraged that, you know, to a certain degree. You know, my house is not my own. It's my kids' house. And they run the house. They do their thing. And we buy shitty furniture. You know? And I said, I don't have a quiet hour at home. And he goes, well, there's a hunter's trail over down the road. You know, go down there. So I went down to this hunter's trail. And I took a walk out into the woods. And it was off-season, thank God. Um... And I got quiet. And I prayed. And I meditated for an hour-long walk out into the woods. And I came back. And I got down on my knees. And as I'm saying my seven-step prayer, it started to rain. And it was actually kind of cool. You know, it was like this quick, out-of-the-blue downpour kind of thing. And I finished up my prayer. And I got in my car and I drove an hour home. And I forgot to turn on the radio. And I'm the guy who has the radio on full blast as soon as I get in my car. I forgot to turn on the radio because the first time in my life, the hamster fell off the wheel. I was at peace inside my own head for the first time in my life. And it was friggin' amazing. It really was. You know. And granted, that hamster jumped back on every once in a while. You know, he does. He does. And, you know, but you know what? He stays off more and more today. You know. There's times over the years that it'll last for six months of peace in my head. You know. Without any kind of issues. You know. And don't get me wrong. My life is not easy or rosy or whatever. You know. You know. Everybody got friggin' hammered, what was it, five years ago when the housing market died. I was in construction. You know. And, you know, between, I was a single income, household. We went to a dual income household and still took like a 50% cut in our income. You know. It's just like, it's ridiculous. You know. We got all kinds of crazy shit going on in our lives. But, I'm okay inside. And that's what this did for me. You know. That's what this step process did. You know. It got the noise out of my head. First, it got the booze out of my, way. And now it's getting the noise out of my head and it's getting the insanity out of me. So that even when it's crazy outside, I'm still okay. And I have the tools to deal with that craziness outside. Because how the hell do you deal with the craziness outside when there's craziness going on inside of your head? You know. And I, it seems so simple now looking back. But at the time, you know, I got all this noise in here and all this shit going on out here and I'm damn near running over people because the little old blue haired lady cut me off. And you know, and all that stuff. And I think it's perfectly normal. And I can't even imagine how I used to live that way because it's not like that anymore. You know. It can be. You know. And there's been times. I remember last summer. I, I hadn't done any step work for like a year and a half. Almost two years. I'd been doing my daily 10 and 11 stuff. I'm still working with others. But I hadn't done a linear approach to the steps where I went through, from one to 12 again for like two years. And all of a sudden I woke up and I was squirrely as shit. You know. Out of the blue. I don't know, I don't, I don't know where it came from or why it happened. But all of a sudden I was just nuts. And I'm okay. It's no big deal. I don't need to write. You know. I'm good. I got this. You know. A couple days later. Yeah. I'm even, it's even louder and louder and louder. And it got to this point where there's three days and I'm just jammed. And I can't function. And I run, I work for a, I work for an old sponsee of mine. And he's got a, he's got a shop down in Jersey. And I was working with him at the time. And I come running into the office one day with my notebook in my hand. Help! I got this inventory. I'm fucked up. You know. And, you know, he sat down with me and we talked through it and got me back on track. But that squirreliness, that craziness that I was in lasted for three days. Not three months. You know. Not six months. Not three years like it used to. You know. It lasted for three days. And I couldn't take it anymore. Because I'm so used to the, the normal, peaceful life. You know. Granted, chaos outside, but normal, peaceful inside of me. You know. And I can't tolerate the craziness anymore. It's, it's, it's just, it's a gift. Step ten. Did I skip something? I skipped nine. Nine. I made a, I finally made my last payment. 19 years sober almost. Took me 19 years to pay off my financial amends. Well, it actually took me 18, 17. I finished it last summer. I was paying Motor Vehicle. It was my last one. You know. I, I, and, and the amazing thing about finishing this amend, I don't get pulled over anymore. All these years, I'm fighting paying this thing. You know. I, I pay a little bit, and then I fuck it off. And I pay a little bit, and then I blow it off. And I pay a little bit, and I blow it off. All through that, I'm getting pulled over twice a week. You know. And I'm blaming it on the long hair. I'm blaming it on the rich people that I'm working for. I'm, you know. It's not the amend. You know. It's these, these other things. You know. I paid it off. I stopped getting pulled over. Huh. You know. And then I look back at every one of the amends that I've made. When I finally completed that amend, the problems that were associated with it had dissipated. They, they went away. I had gotten a freedom. I stopped looking over my shoulder. And that's the, that, that was the first major thing about the amends process that really struck me. Was that I no longer have to look over my shoulder. I no longer have to worry about who I'm going to come in contact with. Because I've made a direct amends to everybody I possibly could. Out of my list of stuff over the years. And it was, you know, probably upward, I don't know, maybe six, seven hundred names on my inventories over the years. You know. By the time I started getting just current stuff. It took me seven years to stop writing about the past. You know. Because new stuff would come up every year that I'd forget the year before. Um. And by the time I hit seven years I wrote my first inventory on nothing but what had happened in the past year. And uh, you know, I got to figure it was close to, you know, give or take eighty names, sixty names, a hundred names on an inventory in those first seven years. And uh, I finally finished all that stuff and I no longer have to look over my shoulder. And the amends that I made to the, I actually, I had a very hardcore sponsor, um, when I was going through the amends process who uh, wouldn't let me get out of making amends just because I couldn't find somebody. You know. Um. There were seventeen women from my sex inventory that I didn't know how to get a hold of. I didn't know their names. I didn't, I didn't know their last names, let alone their first names. Um. I, you know, I didn't know where they were or who they were or what had happened to them or anything like that. And uh, he made me find somebody to tell, to actually make the amends to. So I was in this meeting one night, it was my old home group, and this chick walks in. And she was the uh, kind of stereotypical my kind of girl. You know, she was who I would have hooked up with in high school and shortly thereafter. She was, you know, a girl from the good side of the tracks who had a, had a inkling for the guys from the wrong side of the tracks. And you know, and aesthetically she was somebody that I would, I would have been attracted to at the time. And she was doing the steps and she was understood where I was at. And I told her what I needed to do. You know. And I asked her if she would stand in and I'd give her spiritual license to tell me whatever the fuck I need to do to set this stuff right. And I went through a list of seventeen names and all the shitty stuff I did. And I got to see this girl in my home group. Yeah. And it really sucked. But, when it was said and done, it was really awesome. It really was. It, there was a, a major weight lifted off of me. And it ended up being tremendously beneficial to my relationship. My, my current relationship. Because it got me clear of all the garbage that I had been uh, the way I had been living. And, and the way I was viewing my relationships. You know. I had to make a few of those type of amends. I had to make amends to my gr- my grandmother disowned me when I tried to make amends to her. So I had to find somebody who reminded me of my grandma. You know. And like I said, my sponsor didn't let me slide on some of this stuff. And I'm really grateful for that. You know. Because it, it gave me an extra bit of freedom when I did those. Um. My 10 step is probably my most important daily step. Um. Because, you know what? I don't like to write. I don't want to do 11. Um. So if I do, and this doesn't happen very often. But if I do a perfect 10 step, I don't have to do a nightly review. I don't have to sit down and write out my day. Because I did a perfect 10 step. I don't do that. But the better I do my 10 step, the less I have to write at night. And 10 step tells me to watch. For selfishness, dishonesty, and, uh, fear. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. You know. So I'm going through my day and I get jammed up about something. You know. The blue haired old lady cuts me off on the highway. And I, uh, you know. Oh, watch. Okay, I'm pissed off. I'm, I'm in fear. Why am I in fear? You know. Walk it through the fear inventory in my head. I don't need to sit down and write this stuff. I've done this stuff enough. You know. I know what fear is being activated. I know what fear is being activated. I know what fear is being activated. I know what fear is being activated. I know what fear is being activated. I know what fear is being activated. You know. Ask God at once to remove this. Talk to someone. What is it? It's watch, ask, discuss, amend, and turn. So I discuss it with somebody. I go to God first. You know. A lot of people mistake that one. You know. A lot of people think that the fellowship is there for me. I got to bounce this off somebody. I got to talk to somebody. I got to talk to somebody. I got to talk to somebody. I'm relying on human power. I'm relying on God. I know. I'm relying on God. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. what the steps are all about is getting me to go to God. I don't need AA. I benefit greatly from AA. I need AA in the sense that I need new people in my life. I need somebody that I can help. But when I'm doing good, I don't need AA. I need God. And that's what this is all about. AA for me and the people in AA are my backup for when I'm off the beam and I can't get to God, check my motives, stuff like that. So I watch, I ask, I discuss. So when I call somebody with my 10-step, I actually don't run through all the drama. I just tell them I'm being selfish. I want her to do what I want her to do. I want her to get out of my way and not cut me off and not slow me down getting to work. I'm being selfish and self-centered. I'm afraid. I'm afraid of getting in an accident. Because if I get in an accident and I can't provide for my family, they'll leave me and I'll get depressed. I'll drink and I'll die. Because the blue-haired old lady cut me off the road. That's the alcoholic insanity that can happen to me. It doesn't happen the way it used to. The book talks about being driven by fear. And I was driven by fear for a lot of years. Today I'm not. Today I deal with fear. My fears don't go away. They still happen. But I'm capable of walking through them today because I have God in my life and I can watch, ask, discuss, amend if I need to make an amends to a blue-haired old lady. I didn't say nothing to her. I just got jammed up. So, okay. Now I turn my thoughts to somebody that I can help. That person that I just spoke to on the phone and told them that I was being a selfish asshole, how can I be of service to you? How are you doing today? Are you okay? Boom. That's my 10-step. It takes about two minutes. And some days I've got to do it 10 times a day. Good days I only have to do it a couple times. When I miss that stuff and I retire at night, there's 12 questions to ask. It's on page 86, I think. It asks me 12 questions to go through my day and look at where I behaved, how I behaved, where I screwed up, did I miss anything. And it's basically doing a 10-step but sitting at night and looking where I missed in my 10-step. And what I do, or what I was taught to do, I don't do it every day because I'm lazy, is I take that nightly review when I wake up in the morning and I look at it and sweat through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God. It says upon awakening we look at our day. Well, what do I have to do? I've got this nightly review that I did yesterday. I screwed up here, I screwed up here, I screwed up here, I have to make an amends here. That's the basis of my day. That's where I start. That's where I start with my day. I've got to take care of these things, clean up yesterday. Because the bottom line is, is I need to be where my feet are at. If I'm stuck back there or anxious about up there, I'm screwed because there's no God. If I'm where my feet are, that's where God is. And I'm okay, I'm safe and protected. But if I'm busy worrying about the past or I'm thinking about the future and being all anxiety and psycho, I don't have God. And when I don't have God, brings me back to, I'm powerless. I'm a recovered alcoholic. I don't have a problem with alcohol today. But it doesn't mean that I'm not powerless. It doesn't mean that left to my own devices, I'm not powerless. The only reason that I'm recovered is because I seek God on a daily basis. And that's the bottom line. I don't have that power of choice that it talked about. I can't wake up in the morning and I can't do anything. I can't do anything. I wake up in the morning I choose not to drink today. I tried that for three years in AA and got drunk on a regular basis. I couldn't do it. But I can wake up in the morning and say, God, what do you got? And go about my day and the drink problem doesn't come into play. God, what do you got? Do that and the drink problem doesn't happen. Or I can wake up in the morning and say, fuck you god. I'm taking the reins back and I'm going to do what I want to do. And you know what, and I pay the price for stuff like that. And when I'm like that, I'm back into that powerless mode. I'm back into that running on self, driven by fear. And it's a crapshoot. Every day is a crapshoot when I'm like that. So, you know, oh, I didn't even get to talk about 12. Damn. Real quickly, having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, okay, the solution to my problem, I'm powerless over alcohol. That's my problem. The solution to my problem is have a spiritual experience. Have a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps. I've got to finish the steps. I've got to do the deal. I don't get a spiritual awakening by doing a four-step. You know, I don't get a spiritual awakening by doing a fifth step. I get a spiritual awakening by doing them all. You know, I got God shots all the way through. Every time I did a step, every time I took spiritual action, I got God shots all the way through. I got a God shot. I got a little closer. I felt a little better. I was on fire. I was good. It was the momentum to keep me moving forward. But once I sat down at my kitchen table and was working with a new guy, I seen that light go on. It was amazing. Blew me out of the water. That's the spiritual experience as the result of these steps. We carry this message to others and practice these principles in all our affairs. AA doesn't happen in this room. AA happens in my life. It happens in the Mr. Z supermarket. You know, it happens at work. It happens on the road. It's the way I live. It's not a place I go. You know, I live these 12 steps. Don't do them perfectly, but I've gotten to a point where it's not even a thought anymore. It's just something that I do. I wake up in the morning and say, God, what do you got for me? You know, it's my first thought. If it's not, it better be, my second or third, because by that point, I'm already running into my day. You know, and I know that, but I can always stop and step back and say, I fucked up. What do you got? You know, so, for anybody who's new, or not new, but hasn't done this yet, do it. It can't hurt. It really can't hurt, and it's not as scary as some people like to make it out to be. You know, I've brought people through the steps in the course of a weekend, and over the course of a year. You know, there ain't no single cut and dry way to do this. Just do it. You know, there's this guy out of Minnesota. He says, any step worth doing is a step worth doing wrong. You know, just do it. Give it a shot. It can't hurt. I told you about my first inventory. Lies, bullshit, and fear. You know, but it still got me over the hump. You know, it's a wonderful way of life, and I wouldn't change it if I could. That's all I got. Thanks.