Steps 10 and 11 Aren’t a Test You Pass — They’re What I Do From the Moment I Wake Up – Shane H.

My name's Tim, and I'm an alcoholic. Welcome to the Monday Night Blue Chip Speakers Meeting on NavaZoo, where a member of Alcoholics Anonymous for one year or more of sobriety tells his or her story. This reading is based on a passage from page 29 of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous. Each individual in our personal stories describes, in their own language and from their own point of view, the way they established their relationship with God. These give a fair cross-section of our membership and a clear-cut idea of what has happened in their lives. We hope no one will consider these self-revealing accounts in bad taste. Our hope is that you will be able to learn from these stories. Our hope is that many alcoholic men and women in our room tonight and listening later on aabloochipspeakers.org, desperately in need, will hear our speaker. And we believe that it is only by fully disclosing ourselves and our problems that any of us shall be persuaded to say, yes, I am one of them too, I must have this thing. Shane is an active member at the Serenity House. The Serenity House is Tuesday, 630. We're not a glum lot study group of Buford, or we're not a glum lot of Buford study group. And I have attended that study group. They cover the book line by line. He follows up with emails. And I mean, this man is dedicated to the program, and I'm so glad he's here. And one of our previous speakers, Terry D., is also... He's also involved in that group. And then he just thinks the world of Shane. So thank you, Shane, for coming. And I'm going to unmute you, and let's get this thing going. My name is Shane Holland. I'm an alcoholic. Zoom is sort of throwing off the impact I normally have as I would normally come up to the podium, because normally I'm in a motorized wheelchair. It sort of carries a little more weight as I'm rolling up in the wheelchair to tell my story. You can't tell that I'm in a wheelchair. So I've got to tell you everything. Before I get started, what I've experienced in this program is a relationship with something that I cannot describe. I use the word God. And before I get started, I need to invite God in, because that's the only way I'm going to be able to be honest and vulnerable with you. So if you give me just a moment, I'm just going to get quiet for two seconds, and then we'll get rolling. All right, let's see what comes out of my mouth. My sobriety date, I came back in the rooms of March 12th of 2014. I got sober first go-around September 19th of 1999. And I'm going to tell you a little bit about that story, because I think it's pertinent in everybody's recovery program, because I think the first time coming in, God removed alcohol from me. But then the second time coming in, he removed Shane out of the equation. I probably noticed the announcement was Michael, Shane in quotations, and then Holland. I've had three names in my life. I was born Michael Shane Mefford. That is my mom's maiden name. I'm a product of a one-night stand at a high school party. My father was given an ultimatum to either be there and help raise me and marry my mother or stay out. That is what my grandfather told him. And he was 18 years old. My mom was 15, and he decided that he was going to just stay out and let my grandparents and my mother raise me. So I was given my mother's maiden name. At the age of four, my mom had started dating another man. And she married him, and he decided that he didn't want me to have the name Michael, because that is my biological dad's name. So he wanted to rename me. And I was named Michael. Shane Lee Turpin. And from the age of four until the age of 26, I was known as Shane Lee Turpin. And at the age of 26, I decided, after battling with looking at myself in the mirror for years, reciting Michael Shane Mefford, Michael Shane Holland, Shane Lee Turpin, that Michael Shane Holland is the one that fit. And I, you know, you pay $100, you can change your name to whatever you want. And that's what I did. I changed it back to my biological name. So right off the bat, I was, you know, you sort of tell my childhood was a little shaky. My mom was telling me that the man that was raising me was not my dad from a very early age. But at the same time, he was the only dad I knew. And so there was this, what I thought was a happy little family, my mom, my adopted dad, and then came my little sister. And I don't know where I learned it. Somewhere along the line, I learned that the only way to get the love and attention was to be perfect, to be good at whatever I did. And from a very early age, I remember I strove for perfection. And if I did not meet whatever those expectations that I had of myself for perfection, I would never be able to do it. And so that's what I did. And from a very early age, I remember I strove for perfection. I cried. I cried a lot. I was that ball player, T-ball player, Little League player that if I wasn't winning, I was crying. You know, I was even so much as the one that, you know, I would copy things. I would put a piece of paper over top of something, and I would outline it and draw it out. And then I would hand it to my parents and say, look what I drew. And they'd go, you did that freehand? Yes, I did that freehand. I can draw. All right. Well, I was trying to be perfect no matter what. I don't know where I learned that, but I learned it. And that became something that I held myself to very early on and still struggled to let go of that up until probably even earlier in the days, to be honest. My mom and my adopted dad, they ended up getting divorced when I was about six and a half, seven years old. My sister is a little bit younger. I don't know if I grew up in Alabama. I don't know if I grew up in an alcoholic family or not. I really don't have a lot of recollection. I do remember my uncle telling stories about coming and visiting my adopted dad and my mom. And there had been a big pile of pot on the kitchen table. I know that there was, you know, beers in the house on a regular basis because I would, you know, take little strips here and there if nobody was watching. But I don't know if I did. I don't know if I was born in an alcoholic family or not. For me, it was a normal family up until the time they got divorced. And at that point, my little world that I was trying to be perfect at and everything was perfect just fell apart. And then shortly later, you know, my mom got remarried. My adopted dad got remarried. And then something odd started happening. I started falling down when I was playing sports. I would run. And the first time it happened, I was at peewee football practice and we were running suicides. You know, you run to a line, you go down, you touch it, and then you run down, sprint down to the next line, bend down, touch it. I went to touch the line and my right leg just sort of crumbled beneath me and I fell. I'm like nine and a half years old at this point playing peewee football. And, of course, the coach comes running out and he was like, Shane, what's wrong? And it was the first time he used the term. My leg gave out. And it was a good coach. He said, get up and run it off. I got up and I run it off. I ran down to the other line, touched the line, came back, and the same thing happened. And at that point, I think the coach knew something was going on and he called my adopted dad over and I started seeing doctors. And for me, it was sort of cool because I wanted attention. I don't know where I learned that either. I always wanted attention. I wanted to be center of attention. So being able to talk tonight is just filling me up because I like to be center of attention. I think it's why I do the big book study with Terry because I like to be front and center. But so I'm going to all these doctors and they're giving me braces and they're telling me to, you know, use crutches and stay off the leg and all this. And I'm able to hype it up, you know. I thought I was somebody and I'm this big sports guy and look now, you know, I got this brace. And after about a year of seeing doctors, then it started to not be so cool because then doctors were worried. There's something more going on. I remember I was I think I was about ten and a half years old and we went to see a doctor at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. That's where I'm from. And that doctor there, I'm in the in the room with my adopted dad and my stepmom. Neither are blood relatives. And this doctor is telling me I'm showing all the signs of muscular dystrophy and that I'm going to be confined to a wheelchair without any movement. From the neck down before I'm out of high school. I'm ten and a half years old. I was just playing baseball earlier that day. I can't tell you what was going through my mind. All I know is that my perfect little world that was shattered from the divorce that I was able to still be able to be perfect in sports now was falling apart. And I did not know what to do. It wasn't but maybe a year and a half later. I got to experience my first time being drunk. My adopted dad and my stepmom decided to take my sister and I and my new little baby brother to the Bahamas for a vacation. We're not from a rich family or anything. They happened to have a deal or something. And my stepmom won some trip or something. And we go to the Bahamas. And my dad decides he wants to take a snorkeling. And we all show up at this boat. And they won't let my stepmom. On with my little brother because he's only seven months, eight months at the most. They won't let him on this boat for, you know, it's a hazard. So my sister and I, my dad get on this snorkeling trip. We go. It's beautiful. We stop off at this beach. We're playing volleyball with everybody. And on the way back, it was a booze cruise. And they were serving Bahama mamas. And my sister, who's a little more adventurous than I, decides. That she's going to walk down to the bottom of the boat where this big cooler of Bahama mamas is. And she's going to get us some drinks. And we're sitting on the other side of the boat from my dad. My dad's, you know, talking it up because he's a talker. We start drinking what we think is Kool-Aid. But the next thing you know, it's making us very happy. I just remember being in a state of everything was okay. At that moment, everything was okay. I wasn't worried about what I looked like. What I felt like. I just, I was comfortably numb. I mean, here I am, what, 11 1⁄2, 12 years old. And I'm drunk. We get back to the resort. The lobby floor was painted blue. And here comes my stepmom with, you know, my little brother Christopher in the stroller. And Amy goes running. Amy's my sister. Goes running across the lobby. Flops down on the lobby floor. And starts acting like she's swimming. Look, Janice, I'm swimming. I'm swimming. Oh, my gosh. You could, the smile just dropped from her face. She knew in an instant there was something wrong. My dad tries to go up and talk to her and says, get your sister out of here. Oh, my gosh. And here I am, drunk myself. And I'm trying to get my sister, who is, what, 9 years old, wasted. Trying to get her back to the room. She was trying to talk to everybody. Get them to come to party hour. Blah, blah, blah. It was crazy. I don't know. About a year after that incident, we had moved. And from, you know, normally you're in elementary school, kindergarten to sixth grade. When we moved, we moved to a different area. And the junior high or middle school I was supposed to go to was not the one that, where our house was. And I was to go to another middle school. And I knew nobody. At the same time, I'm fighting all these things with my body's not really acting the way that it needs to. I'm falling down more often. I can't hide the fact that there's something wrong physically. And the guy I used to be in elementary school, the guy, the stand-up guy that everybody looked up to that had all the little girlfriends all the time was picked when, you know, on playground sports to be first or second was no longer the guy I used to be in elementary school. I can't hide the fact that there's something wrong physically. I'm falling down more often. And the guy I used to be in elementary school, the guy, the stand-up guy that everybody looked up to that had all the little girlfriends all the time was picked when, you know, on playground sports to be first or second was no longer the guy I used to be in elementary school. I'm falling down more often. I'm falling down more often. I'm falling down more often. I'm falling down more often. I'm falling down more often. And I was having trouble fitting in. Nobody liked me. Or at least I didn't think anybody liked me. And I didn't know what to do anymore. And so I found some friends that, you know, were not, they weren't athletic. But they accepted me for me. And next thing you know, they're asking if I wanna, you know, spend the night at this one guy's house, then we're gonna go and we're gonna get some beer. I don't really know much about beer because I've never really drank other than the time with the Papa Mama and maybe when I was real little, taking little sips out of cans around the house when I was six, seven years old. Um... But I'm all for it because they're allowing me to be a part of, and I just want to be a part of. And so we stood outside of the grocery store for hours is what it seemed like, and we're asking everybody that's going into the grocery store, hey, will you buy us a case of beer? Will you buy us a case of beer? Finally get this guy that buys a case of beer. Now, there's four of us, so we get a case of beer, old Milwaukee's best. We take it back to this guy's house, and we're in this basement, six each, and the magic happened. I think I was about three beers in, four beers in, and all of a sudden I was okay again. Everything was just fine. And from that time on, that's what I was living for. I didn't start drinking every single day after that, but every time that it was offered, I was drinking. And then when they were offering other things, I was trying it. Whatever would get me out of me, whatever would make me feel okay, I needed it because I wasn't okay with me. There was something desperately wrong. I couldn't be who I thought I was supposed to be. God screwed up somewhere, and I don't know where he screwed up or when he screwed up, but this is not how I envisioned my life. And I'm really good at playing the part. I don't know if you understand what that means, but I can be whoever you want me to be in that moment. And so here I could. I was still being a good studious student. I'm getting A's and B's, but yet I'm partying on the weekends or sometimes on a school night if I was able to get it or whatever. I know how to be around grownups. I know how to be around the jocks, the popular people. I know how to just play the part. I know who to be, when to be, and how to be it. But as the years went on and I continued to try to play all these different parts, I started to lose ground a little bit. It was really my senior year where I started to cross over, where when I was drinking, it was getting out of hand. I'm a blackout drinker. You give me about four drinks, and I'm blacked out. I started blacking out. I started doing things that I said I would never do. I started lying and cheating and stealing. More so than what I ever had. It becomes second nature. I even believed my own lies. I was so good at lying because I would give you a little bit of truth around the lie, and therefore, I'm telling the truth. The senior year came, and I was able to graduate. I graduated with a 3.8 grade point average. I was starting to struggle. I was starting to drift off into... I wasn't so worried about the persona anymore. I always had this preppy persona. I started wearing Grateful Dead shirts and Birkenstocks and started to grow my hair out and started hanging out with more what you would call shady people. Truth be known, I was getting more shadier and shadier and shadier. I found Bacardi 151 that summer. I had a... I had a high school girlfriend that entire time as well, and she sort of got sick and tired of the antics of Shane. And she, you know, she didn't... I mean, she would drink, but she wouldn't drink like I would. She definitely would not indulge in other things like I would. And after we graduated, she decided she had enough. I don't know about you, but Stephanie was my God. She was the one that made me feel like I was a man, the one that made me feel like I was a man. The one that made me feel like everything was okay. And if she wasn't there, then I needed to be drinking and doing drugs because that's the only way I know how to be okay. It's either Stephanie's there or I got to be messed up. So with Stephanie leaving, you could only imagine what happened after that. I was in my own little apartment at this time. I'm doing things from the time I wake up until the time I go to the bed. And I am getting more and more desperate. My body at this point is... I beat the doctors. I'm still walking, but I'm walking with a cane. Of course, I had to, you know, make it a fashionable cane. So I put, you know, Grateful Dead stickers on it and some pot leaves and everything else. And it was cool. But it was still... I was still trying to fit in. I was still trying to act like nothing was wrong. And the only time that I was ever okay with me was when I was in the hospital. I was under the influence of something. And I got to a point to where I was never a believer in the first place. My grandmothers were believers. My mom was a believer. But, you know, only my grandparents' behaviors sort of backed up what they believed. My mom, you know, she committed adultery. And, you know, there was a divorce. And there was all this stuff. And so I couldn't believe half the things that she would tell me. But my grandparents... I would believe. But I got to a point to where this God had screwed up so bad that it was time for me to check out. I knew what the doctor said was going to come true. It was just a matter of time. And I can't live like that. I can't continue drinking the way I'm drinking and using the way I'm using. And I can't continue to get worse. I have no hope. And so, completely bone dry, I decide to take... somewhere between 600 and 900 aspirin. I don't know how many I downed. But I took bottles upon bottles. And I laid down to die. And when I woke up that next morning, I wasn't feeling too good. And I went to the bathroom. And, of course, I got sick. And so, growing up, the thing that I knew, if you had an upset stomach, you take pecto-bismol. Well, don't do that if you took a bunch of aspirin. Because... I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. That was a nasty mess. And I laid in bed for about three days sweating all that out. And the conclusion that I came to is that God doesn't want me. God's not going to fix the fact that I have muscular dystrophy. God's not going to stop the fact that I'm going to one day be in a motorized wheelchair. God's not going to stop the fact that I'm probably never going to get married and I'm never going to have kids and I'm never going to have a career. And here, God doesn't even want me when I try to just say it's time to come home. And there's not a God. And so, I picked up right where I left off. And I kept on drinking. I kept on doing drugs. And I just tried to muster all the courage that I had to keep on moving forward because I didn't know what else to do. I felt like a failure. Here I am. I've always strived for perfection. I can't even kill myself. I felt so shameful. Shameful that, one, that I tried and I failed. But, two, that God didn't even take me. And so, a little time goes on and I'm still going to school part-time. I'm trying to make something of myself even though I can't. And the years go on and I realize that, you know what, my problem is Dayton, Ohio. My problem are all these friends. My problem is that in order for me to be somebody, I've got to go away to a university. Going to a community college is not going to cut it. And so, I go away to Ohio University. And if you know anything about Ohio University, it's a huge party school. And after about three months of being down there, I found my niche. And, my gosh, it was on. And it no longer was Bacardi 151. It was Crown Royal. And I gave it my all. And I gave everything that I had. And I gave everything that I had. And I gave everything that I had to that school from a party perspective. I was that guy that, I was the guy in the wheelchair. Because I started using the wheelchair at that point because the school is built on a hill. And so, I'd park my wheelchair outside of the bars and I'd walk in with my cane. And everybody knew where Shane was because you just look to see what bar the wheelchair is outside of. And I became somebody. And I was center point again. And I was loving life. And during that time, somehow, I was able to do what I wanted to do. And now, I ended up pledging a fraternity and became even larger, you know, in my mind. Larger than life in that sense. Because now, I had girls and everything else. And I thought I was somebody. And then, it happened once again. I don't know. I realized that I just wasn't being who I needed to be, what I wanted to be. I can't stop drinking. I can't stop doing. And I can't get away from my body getting worse. And I... No one's going to want to marry me. No one's going to want to, you know, give the cripple guy a job. I'm all living in, you know, lies. And so, I tried to take my life again. And I'm dramatic. So, I had Carolina in my mind by James Taylor on repeat, playing over and over. I got super drunk that day. Come that night, I took a whole thing of sleeping pills and a big bottle. Of NyQuil and I was done. Obviously, I failed once again. Somehow, I graduated college. Not as well as what I did in high school, but I graduated. And I came home and that was the summer of 1999. Something had to change. A little bit prior to that, coming home for the summer, it was late at night. It was probably about 3 in the morning. I'm sitting there in my little room of the apartment that I have with a bunch of other fraternity brothers. And I've got my stuff on the table in front of me, and my beers, and everything. And I don't know what came over me. And I just looked up, and I screamed as loud as I could. And I cussed, and I screamed, and I cussed, and I screamed, and I cussed, and I screamed. And why won't you help me? Why won't you help me? Why won't you help me? you are, why won't you help me? And it didn't show up again. And so here I am, it's, you know, I'm moved back home with my adoptive dad and stepmom, and I'm going to the bars on a regular basis. Now I'm back at home. I don't have a car. I'm $30,000 in debt with student loans, credit cards. I'm a mess. I come home one night from the bar, and normally after a few Crown and Cokes, I'll pass out. I'm good to go. And I laid down, and about an hour later, I woke up. And when I say I woke up, I woke up. I wasn't drunk, didn't even feel like I'd been drinking at all, and I'm wondering what is going on. And it's sort of strange, because now I believe in this power, how this power worked. Because I'm sitting there, and I grab my guitar, and I've got my acoustic guitar. My parents' bedroom's right above me, and I'm trying to strum real light, because I'm trying to just do something with myself, because I don't know what to do. I know I'm not going to get dressed and go back out to the bar. I just, I need something to sort of settle me down, so I get tired again. And I'm sitting there strumming, and I'm like, yeah, it's a little too loud. I can't do that. And so I'm looking across the room, and I have this bookshelf, and I took psychology and philosophy. That's what I got my degree in, because, you know, God knows I was thinking I would help you and make some money while I'm helping you. But my degree, and that's what I found out, is I just have every diagnosis out there. But I have all these psychology and philosophy books, and I'm looking at something, I'm thinking if I read, it will make me tired, and I'll go to bed. And there's a book on my bookshelf I never even opened. My 10th grade English teacher, Mrs. McSherry, gave it to me when I was in high school, because she saw there was something wrong with me, and she wanted to help. Later, I found out she was an Al-Anon. And the book was called The Courage to Change. And out of all these books on this bookcase of mine, I look at the book for the first time, and I'm thinking to myself, you know what, I've never looked at that book, and I probably could use a little inspiration right now. So I pull the book off of the bookcase, and I open it up. And if you know what the book's about, it's all about alcoholism. And I sat and I read that book into the wee morning hours. I couldn't put it down, because it was talking about me. It was saying everything about me, everything about the way I felt, thought, and drank. Everything. And I knew that this was it. I have a problem. I have this thing. And what was even crazier is that this little blue book right here, my girlfriend, Stephanie, and my adopted dad, when I was 19, and I was heavily drinking Bacardi 151, picked me up one day, and I was drunk out of my mind, and they took me to a meeting at the bottom, at the basement of a church. And the only thing that I remember about that meeting is that I remember standing up and saying that I was an alcoholic. And at the end of it, they gave me the book. And that book was still in my bookcase. Never opened it after that time. And so after reading The Courage to Change, I started reading the big book. And I knew what I needed to do. But yet, my friends from college were coming in that weekend, and we're going to go camping. Well, this thing's going to have to wait. So I go camping with my friend Pete and Sarah. I get pretty trashed. I decided we couldn't. They dropped me off on a Saturday afternoon. We just went for like Thursday, Friday, Saturday afternoon. Come back, and I'm ready. I'm done. I'm not going to drink anymore. I know what's wrong. I'm ready. Well, then my buddy Eric calls, and he goes, I'm having a bad day. Let's go. I know what that means. This thing's going to have to wait again. So go off to the bar, have some drinks with Eric. When I wake up, it's September 19th of 1999. I come into the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. And for the first two weeks, I go to meetings, probably three meetings a week. And I'm just, you know, I'm just hanging on. My mind is going insane. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. And I'm getting that thought again, that I'm not going to be able to beat this. I can't get what you guys are trying to give me. And I'm going to have to, I'm going to have to take it again. I'm going to have to make the ultimate sacrifice, because you just don't understand. You don't have muscular dystrophy. You don't have all these things that I've had to deal with. I go to a meeting, and thank God somebody was working a 12th step. That day. Because at the end of the meeting, it was a big book meeting. I don't know why I was at a big book meeting. I don't like big book meetings. I go to the discussion meetings, because I wanted to tell you about all my problems. But I'm at a big book meeting, and I can't even look at the speaker anymore, who's leading the big book, because all he's doing is reading stuff out of the book, and it's hitting home. Boom. Everything. And I've got my head on the table at the end of the meeting, and everybody left, except for two or three people. And I'm like, I'm not going to talk to you. I'm not going to talk to you. I'm not going to talk to you. And the guy that was running that meeting, Jerry, comes up to me at the end of the meeting, and he says, Shane, what's wrong? And I look up at him, and I said, I'm screwed. I said it in a different way, but you get my point. And I put my head back down, and he sort of chuckled, and it did not make me feel very good when he laughed at me. And he said, why don't we read a couple things in this book? And made me open up something, and first thing, it was about this physical allergy to alcohol. He said, once you start drinking, can you stop? And I said, no, not usually. He said, okay, we call that the physical allergy. He goes, turn over to this page. He goes, every time you said you were going to quit for good, have you always picked it back up again? Yeah. So that's what we call the mental obsession. He goes, why don't we turn over to page 52? He goes, Shane, you've been sober what? I go, like two weeks now. All right. So you, you say you're sober. Yes, I'm sober. He goes, I want you to answer these questions to yourself. You're having trouble with personal relationships, question mark. He goes, Shane, not, not how you're playing it off in front of them. What's going on in your head when you're thinking about your parents, about your siblings, about your friends? Okay, I'm having trouble with personal relationships. Having trouble with emotional natures. Yeah. I can't, I'm crying, I'm angry, I'm all over the place. I was full of fear. I was unhappy. Couldn't be of use to other people. Couldn't make a living. By the time he went through those bedevilments on page 52, he had me hooked. And he said, Shane, stand up. I want you to give me a hug. Men hugging men. That's what I knew this program was about. Oh my God. Okay. So I stand up. It's a struggle to stand up. I've got my cane. I stand up. I try to give him the man pat. You know the man pat? You wrap your arms around, you pat, and that's it. He wouldn't let me go. I tried to pat him again. He wouldn't let me go. And then it happened. I started crying all over that guy's shoulder. I was nodding and oh my God, five minutes went by. And I mean, I just got it out. When we were done, he said, you want to try to do Alcoholics Anonymous? I said, I just want what you have. Call me at 9 a.m. We'll see if you're serious. I called him at 9 a.m. I was at his kitchen table at 10 a.m. And he started taking me through the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. My life changed. This thing showed up. This God, this whatever term you want to use. Oh my gosh. I mean, I became so comfortable inside myself. I got in touch with this, whatever it is. My life changed on the outside. I got a job. I moved out. I'm working with guys. I'm going to conferences. I'm just doing the thing. And I don't know when it happened, but for some reason, I did not work steps 10 and 11. I look back on it. And if you asked me, I would have said I was, but I look back on it now. I was not working steps 10 and 11. I did a men's and I went right into saving the world. And after about five years of working this program, I decided I didn't need you guys anymore. I needed to go ahead and get a career. I needed to go ahead and get a wife, kids. I needed to go. You were taking up too much of my time. And I walked away. And the thing is, is right off the bat, I didn't know where I fit anymore. I didn't know where I fit in. And so I start picking up non-alcoholic beer because I start going out and I'm not drinking. But yet I can't be honest with people and say, I'm an alcoholic. I don't drink. So I'm drinking non-alcoholic beer. And then the next thing you know, I'm starting to get a little crazier and crazier in the head. So I start doing outside substances, trying to just find that peace of mind again. And that doesn't work. And through it, I find that I get married and I have a kid and I start, you know, working my butt off. I become a workaholic. I'm going up the chain, you know, making good money, buying a house, doing all the things that you're supposed to do, going to church with the family. And on the inside, I'm dying. And I lived like that for 10 years and I caused a lot of pain and suffering for my wife and my kids and everybody that I came in contact with. And I was basically bone dry. A non-alcoholic once, twice a month. You know, the outside substance lasts for six months. I got tired of being paranoid. So I just quit that. But here I am and I'm just living dry. And God, the thought came in my head again. Because at this point, I'm in a chair. I'm doing all these things that, you know, people of regular normal ability say I can't do and I'm doing. But yet, you know, to the point, the next iteration of this is that somebody's going to have to start showering me. Somebody's going to have to start getting me dressed. Somebody's going to have to start doing some of those personal things in the bathroom. And I can't, I can't do that. And so I start thinking about ousting myself one more time. And it's amazing. One of the guys I used to sponsor in Dayton, Ohio, reaches out to me on Facebook because he saw that I posted something. And we always did this thing called consideration and he said, Shane, have you considered? I don't even know what the rest of it was. I don't even remember. And I realized that I was off track again. And I needed to get back in the rooms with Alcoholics Anonymous. And so I started listening to speakers again. You know, Sandy B., Bob D., Bob Bazantz, Clancy even. I mean, all these guys and getting that inspiration. And it was like, you know, these were my heroes who were doing the thing. And I got to get back to doing it. And I start taking myself back through the book because I'm that damn good. I can take myself through the book. I know what I need to do. And I read up and then I, you know, I write my inventory and all this time I'm praying. And this thing is saying, you can't do it alone. You can't do it alone. You can't do it alone. And I knew I had to go to the meetings. I knew it. And so I'm looking up meetings that are close by my house. And I find this place. It's called the Serenity House. And I get up the nerve to go. And it's a Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. And I show up. And at this point, I've got my crutches and I get out of the car. And there's not, there's only like two or three people there, but they're sitting in the car at the moment. And I get out and I got my crutches and I go around to the back of the Ford Explorer. I pop the back. I got this motorized lift that lets my wheelchair, you know, motorized wheelchair out. I get in the chair. All right, here we go. And this lady comes out of her car and she goes and she opens up the door and I go in and I sit and here it is. I'm going to be the guy again. I'm going to be the big book thumper and we're going to do this. And here we go. And God, I just don't want to stick out like a sore thumb. I don't want to stick out like a sore thumb. I'm in a wheelchair now and I just don't want to be the oddball. And I'm sitting in that meeting and all, I mean, just women after women after women. I mean, there are nothing but women. And I realize I'm at a women's meeting and I stick out like a sore thumb, not because of the wheelchair, but because I'm at a women's meeting. And they let me stay. Thank God. The next thing you know, some ladies stayed after, gave me some numbers. The lady I sat next to, she waited until everybody left and then said, call this guy. He does the book like you were talking about. I'm an alcoholic. I don't call him that day. I call him the next day. Find out it's his birthday. It's that lady's husband. And the next thing you know, I have my sponsor and I start working through the steps again. I share my inventory and I go and I get back in touch with this thing. And that was six years ago. And where I'm at today, I can't even describe the transformation that's happened inside this time and in my head. And it's no longer about trying to be somebody. It's about just being okay with shame. And I work this thing every single day from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed because I have nothing else. Nothing else has worked. Now I'll do other things. I go to church. My wife and I, we see somebody because we need a mediator and it helps us. That's our date night. I'll read anything and anything. The AA is the bedrock. That is the thing that I will not walk away from because it is the only thing that helps this. This thing up here that screams at me when I'm not doing the program. I thought that the steps were supposed to be done sort of like how I did school. I thought that you learned it all. You regurgitated it back. You got your A on the paper and you're good. Go. And what I found is that that does not work for me. I used to quote this thing inside and out. And I used it as a weapon. I used it as a weapon to keep you from getting close to me. And today what I use it as is something to remind me that I don't have all the answers yet and that there's still more work to do. And the thing is, is that my only purpose in life is to be of help to other people. And if anything in my story has shocked you, then good. I hope it shocked you. I hope that there's some shock value in it. I hope that it goes, holy crap, what did he go through? How did he do it? What was the answer? How is he sitting here the day? Because all those things that I was fearful of, all the things that when I was 19 years old and I tried to take my life the first time or when I was 24 and I tried to take my life the second time or when I was 38 and I was thinking of taking it the third time, all the things that have that. We're going to those fears. They've all come true. My wife bathes me now. I have a male nurse that comes sometimes and has to do some of that. I've lost the ability to drive a regular car. I'm losing the strength of my hands. There's so much that I'm losing, but I'm gaining so much more as long as I stay centered in the program, because the program tells me that there is one that has all power. That one is God. May you find him now. And if I live in the now, Shane is okay. I am okay as long as I'm right here, right now. And as long as I can still wiggle my toes, that's the thing that I tell people when they're calling me up and they're all batshit crazy. Wiggle your toes. That's where you're at right here, right now. There's nothing more. There's nothing less. And when I'm right here, right now, everything's good. And I would have never known that if I wasn't smack dab in the middle of Alcoholics Anonymous, because everything else tells me to sort of prepare, get ready, you know, do this, that, and the other. You don't tell me to do anything except for sit, get quiet, pray, be okay with right here, right now. It's going to pass. Everything is okay. And it looks like I'm about out of time. So with that, I'm going to leave you with one thing. On page 68 of the big book, it says, perhaps there's a better way. We think so. For we are now on a different basis, the basis of trusting and relying upon God. We trust infinite God rather than our finite selves. We are in the world to play the role he assigns. Just to the extent that we do as we think he would have us, we humbly rely on him. Does he enable us to match calamity, with serenity? Thank you for my life. Thanks, Tim. Thank you, Shane. I couldn't resist wiggling my toes. It kept me right here with you. Just another homesick child. I can't make it through this time. All alone. Oh Lord, don't make it easy. Until I work it on out. Won't you stand and start trying to make some sense? Of this world I'm up against. Well, I know my best defense. When the struggle gets to stay. And the lessons fall. Keep it calling out your name. Look until I work it on out. From the bottom of the shadow.