Steps 1, 4, 6, 7 and 12 – Friday Night Recovery Workshop – Part 4 of 17 – 2021 – Chris S.

Good morning from Australia. Good morning to people over there. My name is David. I am alcoholic and I'd like to welcome you to this OpenA recovery workshop with Q&A and along with Stuart, I am serving as your co-host. Hello, I'm Stuart. I'm alcoholic. I'll see you later for the Q&As. Welcome to the meeting. right and this is a series of workshops inspired by recovery speakers.com and it's hosted by the saturday night a group camberwell london se5 just have a few moments silence get our thoughts think of why we're here and those who carry the message to us and who we're going to carry the massage to and those family members as well thank you okay thank you everyone and so with that chris again it gives me a great pleasure to talk to meet over you david thank you hi everybody my name is chris and i'm an alcoholic it's good to see some of my friends here uh alan howard um uh it's always it's always good to have uh have some uh some power you know just a little bit about what's happened between um uh this week and last uh last week i i spoke on the mind and i'll recap that a little bit but you know i want to tell uh i wantto tell a story i get i get a lot of uh phone calls from sponsees they get a lof of 10 steps you know from from people they need to run something by me and uh and i get a i get this beautiful call that this guy's working a great program uh and he calls me up and he's he's sharing with me that you know he fixes stuff around the house he's got two really young kids and young kids break stuff and and he you know we've been doing this for a long time he walked in uh he walked into the house the other day and there was a curtain rod that was bent down like a u like somebody like tried to shimmy up the the curtain or whatever and and He said he blew up. He got crazy. And, you know, then he got quiet and it was my turn to share. I basically shared with him that I've just moved and there's 13 workers in the house. And how about having no doors in the House? How about because they're in the garage being painted? How about having No Doors on your bathroom? You know, I'll take that curtain rod. You know, so it's absolutely wonderful how we're able to share with each other and how we are able to help each other walk this road of recovery and the support that we give each other. And there's always a synergy. You know, there's there's always something that we there's experience, strength and hope that we can share with people when we get into into fellowship with them and into communication with them. Now, that being said, last week I talked about mind. The problem of alcoholism rests in our mind. I believe the problem is the mind. Now, there's many ways that I can make the case that the mind is our problem. But how about the obsession of the mind? You know, that's part of step one. What is the obsession of the mine? The obsession of line is the sheer inner and sheer utter inability to stay separated from alcohol even knowing it's the it's absolutely in our best interest to do so you know we're the type of people who make solemn promises and we mean it you know this time I'm not going to do it again I swear I'm Not Gonna Do It Again uh what's in my hand oh it's vodka you know I mean And we don't even understand it. If somebody asks us, well, you know, didn't you just get your third DUI? And you just drove over to my house with a case of beer and, you know, 14 of them empty. What's wrong with you? Has anybody ever asked you that? What's raw? What's with you yet? And, uh, and, and we don'T know how to answer that. We DON'T know How to answer. So there's something deep within our mind that if we could get a hold of, if we can have control over that, we might be able to make a decision to stay separated from alcohol and have that mean something. So that's one area of the mind that's the problem. You know, last week I went into some of the other areas. You know resentment. We allow resentment to just chew us up emotionally. We allow self-centered fear to divert us from doing what we need to do, being where we need to be, you know, helping the people we need that help becoming the type of people we really need to become. We allow a self-centred fear to shut us off from that. And then I don't know any class of person that suffers more with guilt, shame and remorse than the alcoholic. You know, we suffer from guilt, shame and remorse so much that modern addictive illness treatment has become shame based in its application of the therapeutics that they use with us. The professionals are convinced our alcoholism is driven by our shame. shame. I'm not so convinced of that, but I will tell you this, I had some guilt, I had some shame, and I had Some remorse. So all this emotional, all this emotional uncomfortability is it rests, it rests in my mind. All package of alcoholism. It's the whole package of alcoholism, this is what I come to you with. I come stumbling into Alcoholics Anonymous with just a basket case of emotions, not able to control my emotional nature, just ready to freak out on you for some perceived reason. You took my chair! I was sitting there! I mean, just completely no guardrails, no filter, no governor. I'm just I'm a lunatic. And I'm even more of a lunatick in my mind. If you knew what was going through my mind, you would throw a net over me and have me gassed if you really knew what I was thinking. You know, so I believe that the mind is the real problem with that. Bottles are a symbol, But, yeah, the vodka and the bourbon didn't help much, you know, caused a lot of trouble. But why did I drink it? Knowing what I know about what alcohol does to me and the problems alcohol causes me, why do I keep putting it in my body? So that's the mind, all right? I show up in Alcoholics Anonymous and I start working a program based on separation from alcohol. It's an abstinence-based program that I start running. I start writing my program, right? I'm going to one discussion meeting after another. I'm Going to Beginners Meetings. I'M GOING TO SOME SPEAKER MEETINGS. There'S EVEN THE OCCASIONAL STEP MEETING I'M THROWING IN THERE. But I'm convinced that what Alcoholics Anonymous is giving me Is every single day it's reminding me not to get drunk I thought that was the whole point I thought there was a whole point of AA That we all get together And the first drink gets you drunk And keep it simple And first things first and upside down think three times, you know, and I'll see you back here tomorrow. And don't take a drink even if your ass falls off and I'm going to see you right here tomorrow, you know? Yeah! You know, like AA was this insane pep rally trying to convince me on a daily basis not to put alcohol in my body. And one day, I'm on the way to an AA meeting And the thought crosses my mind that I should buy a gallon of vodka and drink it. And guess what I did on the way to the AA meeting? I bought a gallon OF vodka, and I drank it, and it blew my world up for seven more months. Now, I come back to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I'm working the same program. It's based on abstinence because I don't know any better, all right? I don' t know any- yeah, I see the steps up on the wall. you know they're kind of rudimentary and you know they're kinda dated and I agree with them in theory you know but my case is different you know there's gotta be like a different form of recovery for somebody as deeply complicated as me you know this is what's going on in my head but I start going to meetings I'm going to 12 14 meetings a week i get a sponsor i'm doing service work and i'm a secretary over here i'm a treasurer over there i'm driving the boobies to the hatch you know uh from the local treatment centers and and if you didn't have any money but you were hungry i'd take you out to the diner after the meeting and i buy you dinner hot you know i'm all in to this alcoholic synonymous thing. The problem is, is my mind is still tangled. It's the best way that I can describe what was going on in my mind. My mind was tangled. All the thoughts. I was desperately attached to the past and the future. So how the past affected me, my emotional and spiritual state was. I regretted so many things that I did. I had the guilt. I had the shame. I can't believe I did that yesterday. That was so stupid. I'm so stupid! You know what I mean? That kind of stuff is going through my head constantly. And tomorrow, tomorrow, oh my God, tomorrow, you know, tomorrow I know what they're gonna do. I know what they are gonna say this And then I'm going to have to say that. And it's just, it's going to be, tomorrow's going to suck, you know? And so this is, and I'm sober going to 12, 14 meetings a week. And my mind is just trying to kill me. Now, I read the big book. I read the step book, and I'm gaining a little bit of intellectual understanding about what the recovery program is basically asking me to do. Yet I remain unconvinced it will be necessary for me. Now, you know what kills alcoholics more than anything else? looking at the recovery program and saying to yourself, I'm not convinced that's going to be necessary in my case. The four-step, the amends, the prayer and meditation, the sponsoring other people, I'm Not Convinced That That's Going To Be Necessary. So what happens? What happens? Somebody hands me a set of Joe and Charlie tapes. And what they did was they laid out the spiritual mechanics of the 12 steps. What do you actually need to do? And if you actually do this stuff, you will then be able to say that you took the steps. and um still even after listening to joe and charlie i'm still saying to myself you know i get all that 1939 stuff i get it but i'm just i just remain unconvinced that it's going to be necessary for me what happens is my life blows up my life blows to shreds okay it's it's an absolute nightmare you know a state is coming after me because I fled to avoid prosecution you know relationship that I got in you know I met this girl on the druggie buggy at my home group you know the treatment center was dropping her off you know and we you know within a couple of months we're dating and what could go wrong you know with that and And then I lose my job. So all this stuff, all this stuff that one of those things would have been a challenge in an unrecovered state with untreated alcoholism. One of those would have been a change. And I'll tell you right now, going to a lot of meetings and not drinking is not the treatment for alcoholism Bill and Bob and all those guys knew that from the beginning. They knew that abstinence was not the treatment for alcoholism. Abstinence Was a necessary part of the recovery process, but it of itself was not sufficient for the recovery of alcoholism because alcoholism is my tangled thoughts. Alcoholism is mine. resentments. Alcoholism is my self-centered fear. Alcoholismo is my character defects and my defective relationships. That's what alcoholism is. And the pain of living a life with all of those things opens the door to alcohol for me, because alcohol is an escape somewhere between drink seven and drink nine you know what i do i do this ah and i exhale the whole way do you understand what i'm talking about if you're an alcoholic you know exactly what i've talking about you could be like oh tomorrow's gonna be chill i can't believe i'll drink eight Oh, to hell with all that. You know, I could care less about all that because it would escape me from the bondage of self. Now, I get put in a barrel. These three things happen and I get to a sober jumping off point. Talks about in the book Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, we're going to get to a jumping off point where we can't imagine life with alcohol. We can't reimagine life without alcohol. And we're just going to wish for the end. You know? We just want it all to stop. We don't want to feel bad anymore. You know what I mean? We don'T want to feeL bAd anyMoRe. And because I had just been exposed to those Joe and Charlie tapes, I put them back in the cassette player and I started listening to them because I thought maybe, just maybe if I took these steps, they would address the real pain in my life. And I started to do that. And guess what? The moment that I put pen to paper was step four. The moment I shared my inventory with my sponsor, the moment I put an amends list together, The moment I started to actually go out and make amends, what happened was my spirit healed. All right, so the spiritual awakening is the treatment for alcoholism. And it's really hard to understand that prior to experiencing it. We all have to stumble into this stuff, you know? It's usually the grace of God and coincidence and good sponsorship and a decent home group that we're able to stumble into this stuff because how do you know what you don't know? Now, many, many years, it's many, many years later now and because of the spiritual experience that I had because I started to see that spiritual growth was not only beneficial to the recovery from alcoholism, but it brought me great comfort. So I startedto read just an absolute ton of spiritual literature. I've got two bookcases right next to me just filled with stuff. Now, here's basically what I learned. I started to study the mystics, the Christian mystics. These are the desert fathers, they call them, right? These are these are the aesthetics who renounced everything and went out into in a desert to seek a profound experience and understanding of God. And every religious tradition has these mystics. There's Muslim mystics, there's Hindu mystics there's Buddhist mystics and what these people all have in common is an absolute desperate desire to fill within them a spiritual vacancy that can only be filled with God. Okay, that's what these mystics are. And I start studying these mystic. And I started to realize, I started To realize that what an alcoholic is, is an alcoholic is an unresolved mystic, we have a spiritual vacancy within us that we try to fill with all kinds of stuff. Alcohol especially. Alcohol especially at periods of time gets us in touch with the divine, gives us some relief and some comfort from this vacancy, just not feeling comfortable with myself and my environment. And then I get sober and I start to, I continue to try to fill that vacancy with other things. They call it in the big book sprees. Well, a spree is not necessarily just an alcoholic spree. A spree can be a sex spree or a spending spree or a gambling spree or a drug spree You know, what happens? what happens is sobriety becomes untenable because of this spiritual vacancy. And what I found in the 12 steps is a holistic answer to the fulfillment of this emptiness that's inside me that separates me from the divine, that separates me from God. And that's what the 12 steps do. I believe every single one of us is as connected to God right now as we ever will be. The connection is there. The problem is there's interference that's causing all kinds of distortion in that connection. And that distortion is basically coming from the tangled thoughts. It's coming from the resentments, it's coming from the self-centered fear, it's comeing from the shame, it's comming from feeling like I am all on my own here. You know? I'm all on my own here and this just isn't going to work and that's what creates the dissonance in the connection in the 12 steps is this i believe i i believe the first five steps treat our mind treat the thoughts treat the tangled thoughts that create such disturbance in our emotional and our spiritual condition and then we get to step six and step six basically says, are you willing to have God remove these defects of character, these shortcomings, the things that are blocking you off from a real quality of life, the things that are going on in your head that are causing you your misfortune and your failure at life? Are you willing? Yes, I'm willing. Okay, then humbly, humbly ask God to remove those shortcomings. Humbly, I believe, means something like this. God, I can't, you know, if I could have changed, I'd have done it by now. If I could overcome these character defects, I've done it. By now, these things are too big for me. They're as big as my alcoholism, these defects of character. Will you please help me with them? It's like it's like It would be like going to a parent and saying, Dad, you know, I'm just I'm a screwed up kid and I'm messing up and I're doing things that I'm not proud of. Would you help me be a better kid? You know what I mean? Like what father wouldn't sit down and say, you're damn right I'll help you be a better kid. Let's talk about this. So our Heavenly Father is just waiting for us to say this. I truly believe it. And then the next step, the next step is, I believe it has a lot to do with our guilt, our shame, and our remorse, especially our shame. We list the people in the institutions that our character defects have caused us to cause harm to, all right? Our sense of selfishness, our sense of self-centeredness. You know, what we go out there and we rob and pillage and lie and cheat and divert and don't show up and do all that stuff. Right. I need to put together a list of the people in the institutions that my character defects have harmed. And then I need To Go and I need make direct amends to those people in those institutions. Why? I remember I was giving a talk. This is 20 some years ago. I'm giving a talk at Rutgers School of Alcohol Studies. It's one of the preeminent places where all the research and the professors, you know, they're studying us. We never see them or hear about it, but they're studied us, right? And I'm given a talk there to a bunch of people who are going to become counselors. You've got to do this summer school thing before you become a CDAC or whatever, And then you, all of a sudden you get the piece of paper and you can go out and you can counsel alcoholics, but you have to do this, this summer thing. And somebody brought me in and I gave a talk on the efficacy of the 12 steps, the efficacy meaning, meaning, you know, the applicability, the, the how well, you know, The 12 Steps works on alcoholism. And I blew through the steps and that was my talk. and somebody can you know i'm trying to leave and somebody one of these counselor pre-counselors or whatever follows me out in the hallway he won't let me go and he's going about shame what about shame right and i'm like finally i just stopped and i said okay let me can i ask you a couple of questions and he goes sure i go well have you ever fully conceded to your innermost self that you're powerless and he says no i go then you probably didn't come to believe that there's a power greater than yourself that can solve your problem? And he goes, no. And I go, well, then you probably didn't make a decision to gain access to that power, did you? And he goes no. Then you didn't really put together an inventory of resentments, fears and harms and do that self-examination, did ya? He goes no, and I go well then you weren't able to share that with somebody if you never did it, right? He says no. I go then you probably never became willing to have god remove the defects of character that you have he goes no and i go then you probably didn't humbly ask him to and he goes now and i know you probably also didn't put together a list of the people in institutions that you've harmed right and become willing to make amends to them and he says no i go obviously you never went out and made amends to the people in the institutions that you've harmed, did you? And he goes, no. I go, then how the hell do you know that you can't deal with shame with the steps? You know, you never tried. There's so many people that want to have an opinion based on an experience they've never had. You know? I'm not interested in opinions. And, you know, what's the difference? What's the different? I used to go to the step meeting, and there was a lawyer in there. I love this guy. He was like the most unrecovered lawyer in the world. And it would be the ninth step, and he'd raise his hand. He'd do something like this. Well, I haven't done this step formally, but I'm going to share for the next five minutes on what I think this step means. You know, like shut up. How about shutting up until you've actually gone out and made amends? And then you can talk to us about your experience. Opinions kill people, you know what I mean? Our experience, our experience, our good experience and our bad experience helps other people. I did this and this happened, you Know, good or bad. Thank you. thank you for sharing your experience oh i think that you should tell the irs to go pound yeah yeah well have you ever dealt with the iris no but i'd tell him to go pound you know like like come on share your experience so so in step six you know we we we become willing to have god remove the defects of character in step seven we humbly ask god then we go out and we repair the wreckage, you can have no inner peace until you've done everything that you can do to set right the wrong. Remember, we're looking for some peace from our mind, you know? We're looking For some peace. So then we move into step 10, step 10 and step 11, how marvelous, marvelous, very rudimentary, very, you know, very very simple spiritual exercises for us to do. And the spiritual life is not a complicated life. The spiritual life is a Forrest Gump kind of a life. You understand what I mean? It's simple. We overly complicate it in our head. But if we actually do the things that they ask us to do in step 10 and 11, we start to gain some real spiritual horsepower. We really do. Things start to do this. You know, the level of intensity of life starts to do this. And we start to gain access. We start to gain access to the spirit and the spirit fills the vacancy. The spirit fills, the alcoholic vacancy and the problem becomes removed. We're not fighting alcohol anymore. We are not just not drinking, even if our ass falls off anymore. It's a non-issue. It's an non- issue. What we need to do is we need to focus on the spiritual life. We need to focus on the exercises in 10 and 11 to gain access to dissipate the disturbance in our connection to God, to bring down the dissonance. Like, I don't know about anybody else, but when I grew up, we had our TV set was about the size of a refrigerator with a screen about this big. It was all tubes and everything, right? It had a wire that went up into the attic to a tv aerial antenna this antenna was like 25 feet long and it was up in the attic and you know you'd go from channel 7 to channel 11 and it would be crap the picture would be all crappy right somebody would have to go up in The Attic while you while you were down at the tv and turn the tv aerial and you get sometimes sometimes uh the signal would be coming from Newark sometimes it'd be coming from the Empire State Building. And you had to get the antenna right or the picture was all fuzzy, okay? That's the way my mind is. I do this work with 10 and 11 and it brings me into spiritual focus. And spiritual focus is about comfort and it's about quality and it'S about confidence. And it's about courage. It's about being able to be the person who can do what they need to be doing when they need To be doing it. You know what I mean? So and then the brass ring is step 12. Step 12 is is the cherry on top of all of it as far as the healing of the spirit. Step 12 is I go out and I start to help other people. I'll tell you right now, you want to learn something? You want to really learn the steps? Teach them. Right, Howard? Teach them, you wantto really learn something, teach it. And what happens and now you start to help people and people's people are saying, Chris, man, you really helped me. Oh my god, You helped me get through that so much. And my sponsor, Chris, blah, blah. Right now you're actually contributing not only to your own quality of life, but to the quality of life of the community, of the fellowship. And that's the cherry on top as far as healing the spirit. spirituality is is is what i need to concentrate on today listen i'm i'm never going to be perfect i'm not going to do that i'm going to never going to be mr spiritual because because there's default settings that are so ingrained and i get pissed off and i say things i shouldn't say and you know i get upset with my wife or Or, you know, there's no door handles on the bathroom door. There's no doors. You know? I'm not immune to that type of stuff. But I've got a 10-step. You know, I've Got an 11-step I can immediately recognize tangled thoughts. Tangled thoughts. You know I'm going in the wrong direction here. and I can steer back toward the spirit. And over the course of the years, this has become so important to me. You want to know how much I love life. I can't tell you how much I enjoy my life. Today, I am a self-aware biological entity on this wonderful planet called Earth and this wonderful solar system in a ginormous Milky Way galaxy in a sea of galaxies out there in the universe. I'm insignificant as far as my molecular structure and my size and everything, but I'm self-aware. I'm Self-Aware. I know what's going on. You know, I know What's Going On Today. My thoughts are not tangled. I appreciate everything that needs to be appreciated. I love everything that need to be loved, and I do the least amount of harm that I can possibly do. And with that, I believe that's recovery from alcoholism. I just do. So that's my talk on the spirit, David. That's my Talk on the Spirit, Patrick. Ooh.