The Existential Loneliness of Being Unable to Imagine Life Either Way – Steve L.

Hi everybody, my name is Steve Lopez and I'm an alcoholic. And of course you assume that otherwise why would I be here, right? I want to thank Bob and the committee for asking me to do this. And I was sort of lamenting over dinner. I was all set to give you just a scintillating discussion on one and two and then I discovered my sponsor's here. So I have to tell you the truth. and that was just sort of I have to get out in front of one of our housekeeping requirements at my home group is when we speak and our sponsors in the room I have mentioned them at least three times so that's one do you guys help me keep track alright so we're going to talk about steps 1 and 2 which in my experience are at once, you know I was talking to Peg beforehand they're so painfully obvious that much of the subtleties of them I ignored for many years almost to my peril and they are indeed the foundation of my sober experience and I guess my sharing with you tonight will be characterized by sort of this is your brain, this is your brain on drugs meaning this is the way that the book prescribes it and this is how I've done it from time to time and circled back to incorporate the principles in my life as I've gone along. It just occurred to me that I left something very essential did I leave something very central? Yeah, my glasses. Well that's a problem yeah, I set my, I have a fanny pack that I set somewhere. The hem of his garment. Thank you, sir. These will be slick. All right. Very good. A little dose of humility. I find the opportunity to talk about the steps traditions and concepts to be a very sobering enterprise uh i find it to be a man a matter of uh it's more for me it's just i guess i'll just have to tell you how it is because i am by the way i mean i guess I just want to talk over top of this if you were hoping to be entertained right out of the shoot the first night you got the wrong guy i don't have a funny bone in my body so you know i mean what can i tell you here um the uh the the premise i guess for for the talk as i see it and my experience with the steps is really born from the comment that's made by the first hundred men and women uh and i love the forward to the first edition where it says we are we have alcoholics anonymous are more than 100 men and woman now i'm I'm told that that's not the exact number, but it's close enough for our particular endeavor here. And we who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body to show other alcoholics precisely, not sort of, precisely how we have recovered is the main purpose of this book. I really cherish the fact that someone took the time to do this because when I darkened your doors in my sobriety days, January 21st, 1985, I indeed have a home group and I'm actively sponsored. And active sponsorship, all kidding aside, requires that I seek direction, not just follow it. When I don't do that, my sobriety is not exactly a vision for you. In fact, it more closely resembles most people's drunk-a-logs. But that shouldn't be too mysterious because I'm still suffering from the same illness, drunk or sober. And I'm convinced to my innermost self, it's just my experience with our alcoholic illness, my alcoholic illness, as our book describes it, that it will take my life with or without the substance alcohol in my body. I've had some pretty close scrapes trying to do it as Steve sees it. And I've come by the notion and why I'm so fond of the steps and why an attempt to incorporate that in my sponsorship with the guys that I work with as well as the traditions and the concepts is just my belief. I wouldn't debate it or defend it. but my belief is that God grants each one of us a certain amount of idiot time sober. I've used all of mine up. I can tell you, I've using all of my up. So anyway, about the steps. So our book suggests the steps in this order on page 59. It says, first of all, the first step being first, which is where you'd expect it to be. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol. new thought that our lives have become unmanageable and then the companion step that we'll be looking at tonight came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity which those two steps really deal with my need to make a primary admission about the condition from which I suffer and from there I need to then participate in building a belief construct that will inch me away from the horrors of insanity of a practicing alcoholic or an alcoholic who is succumbing to untreated alcoholism though not drinking. In other words, behaving drunk while not drinking and I have a fair amount of experience. We don't talk an awful lot about the dry drunk in Alcoholics Anonymous And I think there's a fair amount of quiet desperation in our ranks because of that. The point is that, to my way of thinking, when we don't talk about the power of the disease, and by the way, I have a very healthy respect for the disease because if I didn't, why would I be here? I'd be at a movie tonight. If I don't respect the disease of alcoholism, then why would i put any respect behind the solution therefrom that I have to recover? So for me, the issue of those two steps together are a foundation point. And it's not new to us. A little piece out of our prehistory, there was a guy named Roland wandering around in Dr. Carl Jung's office prior to the actual existence of Alcoholics Anonymous. And he mentions that he visits this great doctor who, I don't know if you've had the opportunity to go to a medical school library, as I have. And just out of curiosity, if you go into the psychology section or psychiatry section, you'll find an entire shelf devoted to his contribution to the works of medical science or legion. So this guy was very experienced with the methods of science and the wiles of the mind. and he's exchanging back and forth with Roland who's attempting to find some angle here some basis on which to work with him because Roland's a chronic alcoholic and here's what the doctor says you have the mind of a chronic alcoholic I have never seen one single case recover that has the state of mind that exists to the extent that it does in you this is not my normal prescription all right so you know i guess so what's significant about that i mean and then he goes on to say with many alcoholics the methods which i have employed are successful but i have never been successful with an alcoholic of your description and that's a precursor foreshadowing a comment that bill uses very liberally in our literature in our book which is alcoholics of our type And Dr. Jung is saying, I don't know, man, I don't have any success with your kind of duck, all right? Maybe there's some other thing that you can do to manufacture a spiritual experience or what have you, but in my hands, I think what Dr. Jung is say, just reading between the lines is, I, regardless of my schooling, am not able to reach through your alcoholism to the essential you, to help you. That's what I get from the interchange of these two guys i can't reach through your alcoholism it's too strong i don't have success with people like you because i can'T reach through whatever it is that's blocking you and i in our in our manner of intercourse so that appeared to be you know roland's great hope and it does indicate that that he had some respite from his situation where it says that he was free to wander about the world as long as he observed a few simple ideas but it doesn't catalog specifically for how long that lasted and apparently he was a member of the oxford group and observe the tenets of that group for some time. But more to the point, at least for me, is in the exchange from Dr. Jung's side of things, there appeared to be something missing for the jumping-off point to commence, for the healing to commence. For the sobriety to commence for some acknowledgment, some concession, some admission to commence and it's to me it's just almost poetic where it's found or at least one of the places where it's found, on page 181 of our book, Dr. Bob says this. And I love what he has to say because Dr.Bob was also a man of science and familiar with the methods and ways of medicine. And he says the question which might naturally come into your mind would be, what did the man do or say? Who's the man? this broken-down stockbroker, promoter, shortcut artist, fast-talking guy, not Carl Jung, right? The preeminent psychologist in the world at that time. It says the question what the man did he say that was different from what others have done or said. It must be remembered that I had read a great deal and talked to everyone who knew or thought they knew anything about the subject of alcoholism. but this man had the experience of many years of frightful drinking who had had most all of the drunkard's experiences known to man but who had been cured by the very means by which I was trying to employ that is to say the spiritual approach he gave me information about the subject of alcoholism which is undoubtedly helpful now here's where the italics kick in it says of far more importance was the fact that he was the first living human being with whom I had ever talked who knew what he was talking about in regard to alcoholism, not drinking, from actual experience. In other words, he talked my language. He knew all the answers and certainly not because he had picked them up in his reading. And what's hosted for us there, as I see it, and what impresses me is that Bob is talking about the magnificent power of identification. That was impossible between Jung. that was impossible between Jung and Roland however well intentioned the both of them were you can't buy identification apparently regardless of how good the purveyor of the help might be and so here's Dr. Bob talking with Bill and I share actually three things in common with Bill besides my alcoholism I'm also a failed stockbroker and I've managed to acquire an impeccable coat of tan as seen only on The Rich you know, you take them where you can take them what can I tell you yes so, you know one and two there's certainly one of those things that I can say in my own experience in sobriety that I've trivialized just how simple they are okay, I'm not drinking I guess I'm doing this whole powerless unmanageability etc. etc. And it turns out that there's maybe a little bit more to it than meets the eye. And on page 30, which is where we usually commence discussing the first step, and there's a very good reason for that, I think you'll agree, it says we learned we had to fully concede to our innermost self that we were alcoholics. Are you ready? This is the first steps in recovery. So the first stop is apparently the first one. The delusion. Now, an illusion is imagining that something is not there that really isn't. Delusional thinking is believing from the very bottom of your heart that the false has become true. And so Bill's choice of words always amazes me because it's deadly accurate in my case because I suffered from all sorts of delusional thinking, both drunk and sober. So he says the delusion As my sponsor Clancy has taught me the, that's two, that it has to, the door has to open from the inside. It's not something that can be sped, it's not something that, we know the deal we've been preached to, yelled at, threatened and our book talks about heavy drinkers, people who to the untrained eye kind of look like us and if they get a nudge from the judge or a threat from the wife or whatever I think the book's words are, given sufficient motivation, they might be able to clean up their act. And in the cessation of imbibing alcohol into their bodies, meaning they become abstinent, their lives potentially can get better, right? But in the case of Steve here, the book goes on to describe what else happens for me. It says, The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker. the perception of powerlessness is astonishing. The drinking neighbor doesn't have to be plagued with this abnormal notion about the controlling and enjoying. That's what I'm describing. I'm described in powerlessness. I'm describeing the futility and the frustration of trying to get to that balance point between controlling and enjoyment. What's powerful for me, what I've come to realize with Lopez is just very simply that I don't have the power any further to shield or separate my alcohol consumption from my alcoholism. I don' t have a viable firewall between the disease to which I'm host and it permeates my existence to the point where it's like my fingerprints, it's my breath. I'm here. I'm the host for this disease, alcoholism, right? And I have no way of separating that from alcoholism. It's going to activate certain things that it doesn't activate in the temperate drinker or the heavy drinker. And the reason for that is that Bill talks about on page 30 a little further down, He talks about our type, that our type of alcoholic is one who is in the grip of a progressive illness. So what does that mean for me? What's my experience with that? My experience with dat is that when you take alcohol out of the equation for me, if I no longer am consuming alcohol because I need to get her off my back or I need TO GET RIGHT WITH THE BOSS or I NEED TO TRY AND HOLD THIS JOB or whatever it is, if I'm trying to behave like a heavy drinker, I'm tying to respond to sufficient motivation. It doesn't work for me. If I don't have a sufficient substitute and I don' t have the physical properties of alcohol inside of me, my life begins to deteriorate. I can't manage it. And I'll get to the unmanageability piece in a second. Well, I might as well get to it right now. What's unmanagability for me is really, really simple. I used to use the substance alcohol to chill out my disease. alcohol managed my alcoholism very nicely, thank you now, you might say well Steve, part of your story when you give your regular pitch is you know, wetting your pants writing hot checks hitting on somebody else's old lady wrecking cars waking up in a puddle of your own vomit so what's the problem? I mean, that requires managing I just thought that was part of the fun, right? doesn't the doctor's opinion say hey, the alcoholic life is the only one that seems normal to me. I don't know that everybody doesn't go through that. And by the way, I've always been a willing participant. I will do anything to feel the way that I need to feel when I have the substance alcohol inside of me until and when or at which point I need to arrive at a point where I can no longer drink without consequences that are so severe that they're life-threatening. And obviously I wouldn't be standing here if I hadn't gotten to that point. So the book, with deadly accuracy, describes my relationship to alcoholism. And my relationship and alcoholism in the first step is characterized by the presence of alcohol in my body because I go crazy. Because I'm just not suitable for public consumption. And it's characterized by the absence of it in my life. Because what? Because I go crazy. I'm not fit for public consumption, so I need a sufficient substitute and I can't manufacture it on my own. The problem is, as Chuck C. describes it, I'm in a trap that I canít spring. The trap is over on page 62, starts with selfishness, self-centeredness. If there was such a thing as a genetic code for an alcoholic of my type, it would start with the words ìdecisions based on self.î I'm in this trap, and the antidote is giving, and that is, as my sponsor says, foreign to my nature. It's just foreign to our nature. That's French for I'm just too selfish to save my own goddamn life. I just can't do it. I don't want to do it, right? And our book on page 44 walks us through that whole thought process of, you know, living on a spiritual basis or drinking and blotting it out to the bitter end, and I still have to evaluate that, you now, while I'm sitting there with pants soaked with urine or whatever the case might be. very fashionable, very chic so the things that Bill talks about that specifically identify with that I've lived with for as long as I can remember in terms of my alcoholic drinking not only is it clear to me that in looking in hindsight of course because I didn't know what an alcoholic was when I got here which is odd I'll tell you why it's odd because when I got here, I was just about the smartest guy in Alcoholics Anonymous. I was sure I could graduate in about three years and tried. Really hard to do that. And if you're on the newer side of your sober experience, I'll tell you a little bit about why that's not a good idea to pursue it. I mean, you can't do it, but I'll show you. I'll say why it's not an idea to put any time or energy into it. But probably the most significant thing that characterizes my alcoholism And it's on page 33 where Bill happens to be talking about new people and young people. And he says, we doubt if many of them can, but this applies to me, can stop because none will really want to stop and hardly one of them because of the peculiar mental twist already acquired. I love the peculiar metal twist. I love going on panels with people I've never drank with because I know you're alcoholic just by listening to how you think because you think the way I think, man. I mean, by the time we're all done sharing, I mean I know you guys intimately. I know your probably better than your own blood relatives and likewise do you know me in the sense that one alcoholic knows another at that sort of preternatural vampiric level, you know. So our type, which leads us to the place that I ignored almost to my peril, which is, and I don't know if you had the experience of trivializing this because so many of us, when we're new, myself, I'm thinking specifically of myself, really over-amp on the front end of the first step. I'm powerless, I'M POWERLESS, and just running around sort of like magpies talking about how powerless I am without paying attention to unmanageability. And I'm think that my recital about, okay, I' m not writing hot checks, I' M NOT wetting my pants, I A M NOT wrecking my cars, and I' S just looking at the externals now, and I'm thikng, that's managing. I don't understand what alcoholism is. I don'T UNDERSTAND WHAT I JUST SAID TO YOU ABOUT POWERLESSNESS. I DON'T UNderstand what I just said to you about unmanageability, which requires, by the way, if I am in that condition where I can no longer safely use alcohol to manage my alcoholism, I need the next 11 1⁄2 steps, thank you very much. I need to embark on the crossing of a spiritual frontier that gets me to the 12th step where I CAN BE OF SOME USE TO ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS based on the possession of an awakened spirit, tools, they're called principles, applying them on a daily basis, and a message that I carry to the new guy, new man or new woman. It's that simple. There's nothing real complicated about that. Once in a while I hear people say, well, what does it mean to have a spiritual awakening? The 12 in 12 is really, really clear about it. And it's really, Really clear about what it's not. It's not about I'm going to start channeling Bob or grow a third eye or anything like that. It just simply says that the impossible becomes possible. What are we talking about there? It's this. If I'm the guy on page 62, and then you connect the dots for me over to page 20, which says, as ex-problem drinkers our very lives depend upon our constant thought of others and how we may help meet their needs, I go, no mas, man, I can't do that. I can'T do that! It's impossible for me to think about you on that basis. Right? But the 12th step says, by the time I get there and I have had this awakened spirit based on what? The preceding 11 steps. And I now have a message based on the preceding 11 steps and I now know that I now have these principles that are embedded in my behavior to some degree hopefully based on the precedeing 11 steps that I can be of some use to Alcoholics Anonymous in spite of myself. That's when the impossible becomes possible. I can become of some use to Alcoholic Anonymous my fellows and God in spite of myself certainly not because of myself. And that's the grace and that's the gift of Alcoholics Anonymous, its steps, its traditions, and its concepts. In the unmanageability category, our book very succinctly describes it this way. It says, here are some of the methods that we tried. And it goes through this whole thing, and I don't know about you, but when I was new, I would start snoring. Oh, I thought it was cute, taking a trip, not taking a trip, and we all sort of giggle about that. But not really, and I read that hundreds of times and didn't understand, And, Steve, what they're presenting here is a declaration of unmanageability. And I'll tell you why that's such a farce in my case. Let's talk a little bit about drinking just so you'll know that you're in a gathering of AA folk. You're coming to drink with me and you're not coming... I'm back in my previous life. We'll reload, and I was a medical device executive for many years. And if you're coming to my town to drink with me, and my town was the Apple, we're going to, well, first of all, I'm going to fly you in. I'm gonna fly you into first class. I'm not just anywhere, I am going to put you up at the plaza. we're going to have dinner not just anywhere it's going to be David Kaye Sign of the Dove La Spalier you're not going to catch a cab or even the hotel shuttle I'm going to give you limoed over when the menus hit the table they won't have prices on them you guys getting the picture of who you are and how you got there and where you are okay so I'm managing would you agree Steve's managing I'm managing this event very tightly damn right that's what I did for a living that was my métier I was the fireman and when we had to bring in a competitive market maker that was the thing that was ideal bring the business home and so that was part of it and I was at home I was just doing what I normally do which is let me entertain you I got very familiar with French wine lists didn't know how to read French but I knew what the rich people pointed to so I did too and so you know that would be the setup now there's only one little problem with this idyllic scenario, this garden of earthly delights is that a serpent would slither in behind me on my heels. You know who it is. Please allow me to introduce myself. You know? It turns out that my disease is a very powerful puppeteer. And here's how it expresses itself. I'm the guy who gets tied precisely at the wrong time. So I've gone through all of this work. I've done all of this managing. I've got everything just pristine, except that it's noon that day and I'm going to have a couple of drinks, aren't you? You know, I'll skip lunch and have a cup of coffee. I'll have a few cups of coffee and a couple drinks because I'm busy. And because I am a good host, I am going to get to the rendezvous point ahead of you and I am goign to have some drinks while I am waiting for you. Still no problem. I'm pretty militant when I'm drinking, up to a point. And you get there and we sit down and we have a convivial round of drinks and then another and then the wine list comes and we order wine and we Have a couple more drinks and somewhere in this sequence of events, something odd happens. Something really odd happens and I've prepared this very sumptuous experience and we're drinking. Can we underscore that? And here's what happens. All of a sudden, it's just on, man. I have to leave the table and I have a repertoire. It's a standard repertoire. I have see the maitre d' about our dessert. I have make a phone call. I have got to go to the bathroom. Whatever it is, I've got to get off of the table. And I'm like a heat-seeking missile because guys like me know those old paneled bar rooms like the back of my hand and I will always find just enough of a space to hit the bar. And those bartenders know you, they're pros. It's just eye contact. They're coming with whatever it was you were drinking and even if it's off, I'm not going to go, oh no, no,no, it was Cuervo, please give me a Stoli. They know that. And I'm going to reach into my pocket and I'm gonna pull out a wad of crumpled bills. I don't know if it's $200, $20, or $2,000. I don' t know. And I'm going to knock this back and I'm gong to pretend to go to the bathroom and if I can do it one more time I'm gonna do it and I' m gonna come back and sit down with you and continue to conduct the evening. What I just said to you is this we're drinking and I need a drink. I desperately need a drunk my way. I think it's my way It's someone else's But I desperately need a drink Folks, that's not social drinking Okay Hence the word insanity And the need to be restored To something other than The conduct and behavior That I've been perpetrating On myself and others For so long That it's just My life seems like The only thing that's normal to me Doesn't everybody have to choreograph You know Isn't everybody the guy on page 61 that has to do, you know I'll just summarize. The lights the props the scenery. Isn't everybody like that? Because that's my whole life but what I don't understand and what I'm too stupid to understand because I haven't been to Alcoholics Anonymous. I haven'T met a sponsor I haven' t read the big book. I have'nt been introduced to the steps I don' t understand that I'm dealing with alcoholism I just think I need to be on. I just thing I need to be compulsive. I think I just need to be out in front of it and competitive and all that kind of good stuff. And what's happening is I'm just a slave to this disease and I don't even know it, right? I'm groveling around in front of medical royalty acting like a pig. In fact, I've done that. I've absolutely done that the first time I got invited to a soiree in Boston that was on Beacon Hill and tall cotton, man. I mean, the same apartment building that Ethel Kennedy was living in, Secret Service guys. I'm on the third floor. I'm in this world-famous surgeon's home. I dealt with surgeon inventors who designed implants for neuro and orthopedic surgery and most of them were academics. So the people I'm rubbing elbows with are from Baylor and Johns Hopkins and the Mayo Clinic and the Harvard Medical School and like that. And the only credentials or letters I have after my name are IOU, if you can catch me. So, you know, I mean, is it a faux pas to get loaded at a party? I don't think so. I mean who knows. But here's where the morning found me. I was invited to go into surgery, and I've been in surgery several thousand times with some of the best and brightest in the world of orthopedic surgery. And I was invite to go in to surgery with a chaired professor of the Harvard Medical School. And where the morning found me was in the doctor's lounge on all fours with my head in the toilet heaving up my socks. Now, I don't know that you don't do that. I don' t know that that's not the price that everybody pays. Again, my alcoholic life is the only one that seems normal, And so I'm not even fighting to defend it. I'm just participating in it, all right? Did we drink enough? Yes? Okay, so alcoholism, insanity, drinking, you know, trying to manage it. It doesn't happen in my hands. And so, I guess what I'm trying to tell you is this part here where it says in the book, here are some of the methods we tried. I mean, I'd just start yawning when I'd hear that. And I'm missing the recital of my behavior. I'm messing with myself. I'm mixing the declaration of unmanageability. I don't understand that. See, I'm thinking with my outside perspective again that if you just give me back my money, property and prestige, what unmanangeability? Right? I'm still trying to take something from the outside and make it work by fitting it on the inside and it doesn't happen for an alcoholic of my type. It ain't going to work that way. But we try. We're triers, right? We're triers. So where that leads me, you know, where I find myself on the way in the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous and again in sobriety is on page 152. And I love this page because it talks, it characterizes my experience coming through the doors the first time and it also characterizes where I ended up at the hands of untreated alcoholism which is to stay at Steve's hands it says someday he will be unable to imagine life either with or without alcohol then he will know loneliness which is something we don't talk enough about I just have this existential loneliness a friend of mine named Cindy says I just can't get enough people to leave me alone you know, loneliness such as few do and I'll be at the jumping off place now that describes alcoholism my sponsor Clancy that's three we're good I can check in on Monday with impunity now seriously the first time I heard this is the most elegant and economical description of our disease especially for somebody who suffers from the kind of verbosity that I do he said I'm having trouble you've heard this you guys can probably recite it back to me I'm haven't I'm not having trouble drinking I'm havin' trouble stayin' sober right I can't balance the equation. There's no friendly direction. I can'T mediate the effects of this thing on my own. What he described the very first time I heard him say that, and he added this comment was, I also just described besides powerlessness over alcohol, powerlessnessover sobriety. Because neither side are sustainable. I can'T sustain my drinking beyond a certain point, and I can't predict for you when I stop how long I get to stay stopped. What's going to be the trigger event that will resume my drinking? What the wreckage is going to look like as a result of my trying to stay sober on my own? And believe me, I've created lots of it trying to do that. So alcoholism in my hands, I guess the most frightening revelation of this comment really is this notion of being kind of the nutso new guy and not knowing that one of my problems is not just the predictable powerlessness over the substance but powerless over sobriety. And our book describes it this way, or describes me this way. When I walked in the doors of Alcoholics Anonymous, I was this guy on page 52. We were having trouble with personal relationships. We couldn't control our emotional natures. We were prey to misery and depression. We couldn'T make a living. We had a feeling of uselessness. We were full of fear. We were unhappy. We couldn' t seem to be of real help to other people. And I have the audacity to think that the sum total of my problems have to do with just booze? I mean, I've got some serious living issues here. And why they're serious is because they will prevent me from living in the solution and I can't see it. So I need to participate on the flip side of all of those character deficiencies and I don't want to. All I want is for you to give me back my money, property, and prestige. Man, I don' t want to hear about unmanageability. But I'm walking in here with this hole in me the size of the Grand Canyon and I ca nt see it because I'm used to living that way. I'm a fast dancer, and I'm a fast buck artist, and I'm glib. And that's the way that that works for me. And so it's taken me forever to understand what our book is really trying to say, and what my sponsor is trying to saying in that very powerful and short phrase. And it's characterized. I'm characterized in the book where there's a guy, and I love this guy, our buddy Fred. On page 39 says Fred is a partner in a well-known accounting firm. And it goes on to give Fred's bio, and he's extremely successful. You know what I mean? He's got a life that anybody wouldn't envy. He's got a nice life, nice kids, works for a big accounting firm, and they have business with the government. Fred's my kind of guy, okay? Fred's my kindofguy, because I'm the person who is most at risk right here on page 41. It is the end of a perfect day, not a cloud on the horizon. That's me, man. I'm at risk right there. And so Fred, you know, I just walk hand in glove where I walk in his footsteps when I look at his experience because on page 40 when he's talking to or kind of giving his reminiscences of his first couple of encounters, his first close scrapes and being hospitalized and talking to AA members. He says, let him tell you about it. So it starts with a quote. I was much impressed with what you fellows said. And then it goes on to say, and I frankly, and I rather appreciated, and I was confident, and I reasoned, and I had been... Get the pattern here of old Fred? Right? I mean, the operative word there is I did not pass go, go straight to page 62. Selfishness and self-centeredness. He's dying from alcoholism, whether he's drinking or not, and doesn't know it. Can't live in the solution, need to live inthe solution. That's one of the great dilemmas. And that's what segues us to the second step, is how do we get out of this dilemma? Because Fred does talk about when he does get sober and he finally acquiesces and he says, I understand I have an alcoholic mentality, you know, that perverse mental twist. And he says the process snuffed out the last flicker of conviction I could do it myself and so on and so forth. Good for you, Fred. He says but the moment I made up my mind to go through with the process. That ain't two weekends in a ten-day follow-up. You know what I mean? The process. that's trudge you know and trudging is not like I used to envision the song of the Volga Boatman or something it's not like some dirgy thing, it just means walk with purpose that's all it just mean focus focus Steve trudge, walk with us so he says the moment that I decided or felt that I made up my mind to go through the process, I had the curious feeling that my alcoholic condition, not my drinking, my alcoholic conditioning was relieved, not removed, relieved as in fact it had proved to be. I love Fred's story. I identify with it so much because I followed that path, both drunk and sober parts of it. So what does this all mean as we sort of wind our way to the end of the book's treatment of the first step, it concludes with this. It says his defense... I love this part because this is one of the characteristics of my alcoholism. It says once more the alcoholic at certain times has no mental defense against the first drink. Now we all talk about the phenomenon of craving. That's important. But what the book says is there are times, Steve, remember this? There are times when you're loaded before you've even crossed paths with the booze. Meaning, my head's already predisposed to getting there. It's just a question of when I pick up. Right? I have no mental defense. I'm at risk. And by the way, I'm not at risk right now. I'm in risk right and I'm an alcoholic. How could I not be? My friend Kenneth says, The forces that brought me here are still with me. If they weren't, why would I be here? I'd be at a movie tonight. Wouldn't I? I'm unalcoholic. I'm still at risk I'm susceptible to my own mind which is what I need protection from. Truly, except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a higher power. Oh my goodness, how do we do that? Well, we're invited into this very interesting chapter to explore that. It says, we agnostics. And so we're transitioning from the first step to the second step, which is where we're going to attempt to begin to both understand and hopefully build this defense, which is to say, we're hopefully going to build this belief construct. Now, I don't know about you, but I had a lot of wacky ideas about the second step. You know, part voodoo, part New Age, part... And I'm looking for, at times, sort of this felt sense of it. And at other times, I'm Looking for sort of esteem, cognitive clarity. And Bill talks about that, right? Because on page 46, he talks about feelings. It's what I just described when I said a felt sense. He talks about feeling and he says they're fine. Look at a starlit night. Say who did that? Isn't that good? God probably did. But it's transient, which means they're not reliable. It's not a reliable basis for my sobriety. Good to have feelings.