The Five Big Delusions – 5 Big Delusions Workshop – Part 2 of 2 – Harold

Good evening and welcome to Journey to Freedom, an open big book experience meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. My name is Catherine and I'm an alcoholic. We are hybrid now. We're at Trinity Coveted Church in Livingston, so please join us there. Do note that our meeting runs until 845. Our speakers will share until approximately 830 and we will open the meeting for discussion after that. And before we begin, please join me in a period of meditation. you you you thank you everyone so i'm very happy to turn the meeting over to our leaders tonight harold l from missouri and i think and jimmy a from uh the shore so let's give them a big welcome and guys take it over well good evening everybody my name is harold i'm an alcoholic can you hear me yeah all right fantastic great to be here uh with you all from i'm from the show me state the big what we call big mo here in st louis and uh it's chilly in st louis tonight but i'm glad to be here my sobriety date is april 7 1987. my home group is a on the rocks which meets in st louis city and it's meeting right now as we speak a strong free legacy group in south side of st louise if you're ever in st louis you know please look me up and i'd love to uh bring you down if you let me know early enough we'll put you to work somehow some way we'll get some mileage out of you i can promise you that's how we flow here in big mo but uh it's great to be here i come from a great line of sponsorship um that's made a huge difference in my life so welcome to all the people that are requalifying here for the first time they're in sober living environments or they're in treatment center environments i know we have a vast array of people from all over tonight and so welcome alcoholics anonymous and uh you know and and hopefully this this whole experience over the next four weeks is an adequate demonstration of Alcoholics Anonymous. That's what we want it to be more than anything, and hopefully meet you where you're at and help you take the next steps on your recovery journey. I mean, that's really ultimately what we're here for, I know. So I thank Journey to Freedom for inviting me to come and Jimmy for rolling me into this thing, and it's good to be here. And so we're doing a workshop over the last four weeks, which typically we do in five, but we're going to do it in four And because of the time where it's going to be an abbreviated version, but we'll get I think we'll get to the meat of what we're trying to cover over the course of these four weeks. And so the title of the workshop is called The Five Big Delusions. And how did that even come about? And the way that came about is through the Department of Corrections. I came to AA through the Department Of Corrections in 1979. I can't remember the name of the department, but I I came to my first AA meeting through the DOC, and when I came back to AA for this last time, I came through the DoC in 1987. And so I started my journey into AA from that context. I came AA the same way I did everything else in my life. And what I'm sharing with you, especially new people, is about as much what not to do as it is to do these first three years. But I came to AA with a really rotten attitude that I had my whole life. And I'm going to do AA how I want, when I want the way I want. If you don't like it too bad, because that's how I'm gonna do it. It's how i did everything in my life. It didn't work out too well most of the time, but that's why I came here. So I just want to set that straight. And I came Here and I didn't want a lot to do with a lot of things that were going on here didn't wanna sponsor because I had a probation or parole officer my entire life since the age of 11. I had to grow off serve some some fashion in my Life so I just wasn't interested in authority or anybody telling me what to do i just wanted to take i just want to come here i really didn't want to be here but i had nowhere else to go and uh and my life depended on me being here i had a little bit of that in my in my dna i knew that was the truth but i really didn't wanna be here and i thought and i resisted but i came and through the process of keep coming back um you know the magic that's here the miraculous power that's in these rooms and in these steps and in these traditions and then these concepts finally got into me and it transformed my life um and so through that um and through sponsorship which came you know in 1990 after i was can you hear me now yes perfect somehow or another instead of i was being logged out and uh so here i am but anyway and so i i so to catch back up i i got started really working the stats and with a sponsor after i was here three years and that happened for me in 1990 and in 1990 sponsorship said you know if you really want to have everything that this fellowship has to offer then you need to make sure you have a new guy you're on this journey with all the time for the rest of your life and you need go somewhere once a week where you don't want to end up and that started for me the skid row missions here in st louis and i did that from 1990 until 93. and it was in 93 i got an invite to come into the department of corrections and start doing aa in a maximum security facility here in the outskirts of st louis and i've been in that context ever since doing aa but but out of that came a relationship with the eastern half of missouri probation and parole division and and the lady who was in charge of eastern half of missouri's probation and pro division um is a lady who's an alcoholic trustee for us right now in this you know in this generation so a long way from where we met her and i in st louise in the early 90s to where she's at today and where i'm at today but as part of her journey as being the head administrator of the department of corrections our probation and parole for the eastern half of missouri and a 500 bed facility in st louis i sponsored her brother who was an aa and anyway she called me up one day and said hey would you come down and do some facilitate some workshops for our probation pro team to help them better understand alcoholism better understand the alcoholic especially an offender based alcoholic can you come down and do that so i grabbed some friends and we went down and we started doing these series of workshops out of those workshops and out of that time finally came what we're doing tonight called the five big delusions and um now there's many more delusions but i just i just framed them into five um and and built it from that and and so that's you know 100 of it's out of the big book it's are out of our literature so there's no no new information here it's just the way it's framed and so just to give a little background where did this workshop come from um and and so we when they asked me to do it on zoom when this kobe thing first took off they asked me i said well i really if i'm going to do that i'm gonna bring somebody with me and i and i and i reeled in jimmy and uh jimny's done this for me a few times and uh and so when he invited me to come back and do it again now jimmy always makes me go first uh because he's got nine days more sober than i did so just so you know that that's why that that he pushes me in out in the front of the gate so i make sure he will he will promise you he will make that known every single week for the rest of this time together but so let's dive into it the five big delusions but i just want to give you a little context of where this all came from and so the five big delusion is we're going to do one tonight we'll do two next week two and three we'll do four the fourth the third week and number five on the fourth week so number delusion number one is i'm not alcoholic that's it i mean that delusion by itself destroys more alcoholics than than anything um you know that from your own personal experience and if you've been around a you watch this delusion wipe out multitudes of people some of them you got to witness with your own eyes some of them you went through the funeral some of you watch suffered till the end um it's a brutal illness alcoholism is um we toss a word around in a denial we throw this word around a lot you hear this a lot it came i think it got really popularized in the 80s this word denial uh we've made coffee cups and now it's not a river in egypt and all these different things but that's a word you only find twice in the big book you find the word denial and uh on page 10 of the big book in bill's story and you find the word denial in the spiritual appendix in the back of the book in both times it's talking about denying a power rather than ourself but our but our literature really never speaks to alcoholism on the basis of denial denial meaning that i know the truth and i'm going to lie about it obviously there's an element of denial in our alcoholism and our character defects and everything we do, say or think. No doubt about it. But the way our book describes alcoholism, this malady, this illness that we suffer from is on the basis of delusion and illusion. Meaning I can't see myself for what I really am and I can't differentiate the truth from the false. And it's that dilemma that destroys most of us. I'm not what you say that I am. I'm what all the evidence says that I'm. And I'm willing to die for it. I am willing to suffer a lot of consequence and go on to the bitter end to the gates of insanity if necessary to prove i can drink like other people because the desire to drink and the euphoric effect that king alcohol has on our life is so powerful it's so cunning baffling that this delusion that you know that i'm going to be able to somehow someday drink without problems is you know as the book would say it's a great it's a great illusion of every alcoholic and unless that's smashed on page 30 unless that smashed you know there's little hope that we're going to recover so what does it take well you know your guess is as good as mine i mean we have to come to the end of ourselves obviously we have to concede their innermost selves that were powerless but so many of us self-destruct or burn our life completely into the ground before we ever get to that place and so the fact that we're on here tonight whether we're 34 days sober or 34 years sober or somewhere in between or somewhere farther along the journey whatever we're at on our spiritual journey here in recovery the fact that we're here tonight and we have a desire not to drink is is a tremendous gift and i hope none of us take that for granted i hope we can hang on to that for everything that it is um and and do everything we can to protect it because here's the reality if it slips through our fingers there's a good chance a very good chance that we'll never draw a silver breath again and because of this delusion and so as we unpack this delusional bit i'll share my own experience with that and and and talk about the alcoholic mind and the relationship with the alcoholic mine and kind of give you some scenarios how it played out in my life that hopefully you can connect with i'm sure you do and uh and then and then and then segue into that to how to break free from that and then ultimately pass to torch over to jimmy and let him share his experience drink with that but this delusion i'm not an alcoholic you know to be labeled with that i mean i can remember you know when i in 1971 when i was introduced today in derrick county detention center a couple guys brought the meeting in i was just a young juvenile delinquent and uh i had no idea what was going on and that's the reality of Alcoholics Anonymous. There's three types of people that come to AA. There are those who make it happen, those who watch it happen and those who don't know what's happening. And I've been all three of those cats. I didn't know was happening when I got here. I sure watched AA happen for the first three years, which I've already laid out. It wasn't until I got into the Make It Happen crowd, which there's many on here tonight, that my life got transformed and changed forever. But I didn t know what was going on. And so I just had to be there as part of the thing i was in a pod they brought the meeting in and there it was i bailed out of that charge i just got out of booneville correctional center and i and i was out on bond and i got a plea bargain deal which was go back to boomville correctionals center for another two and a half years or going to treatment center so i went into treatment center in 1980 for the first time the big buzzword in treatment back in those days was chemical dependent you know alcoholic chemical dependence you know we didn't have all these other words and uh and i in my delusional mind was i was you know other other substances street drugs were more of an issue for me than king alcohol that was where delusion really sat in for me and it would be you know so when i left there i i made us oath to myself i want to quit doing some of these things but you know that's where my drinking took off and escalated from there and became the dominant force of my life But when we talk about delusion, you know, and we get into this, the delusion goes way past our drinking. It goes back to the root of the problem. The root ofthe problem being extreme self-centeredness, as our book would lay out. You know, spiritual bankruptcy, being spiritually bankrupt, bankrupt in a lot of ways, being emotionally immature, mentally immature, spiritually immature, all the way down the spectrum. But when we peel back this onion, I think far enough in our life, we find that there's lots of delusions. And the delusion that I know that I suffered from the most, I didn't know it in the beginning, I know it today very well, is what I would call, and this is my terminology, but I call it the dellusion of inequality. The delusion, that I'm not enough. The delution that I need to be something other than I am. and that delusion plagued me as far back as i can remember this delusion of inequality and and it's our culture it's just context and i believe it's any context you live in but definitely here in the west the context puts this identification it puts you into a box it puts you in the category and says this is what you're supposed to be you live in this you make you have these amount of zeros you live on this zip code you drive this car you wear this clothes you wear let's make it where this you do this yeah you know whatever You know, they call it keeping up with the Joneses was terminology they used back in the day. You know but but it's this delusion that I'm not enough and our culture vomits that on us every single day of our life. And reality was if I'm honest with myself and what you thought of me paralyzed me. And if I're not careful spiritually I can still fall into that delusion of inequality and I'm not enough. I don't even qualify to be here with you tonight. You know that's how powerful this delusion is. And I've made a lot of really poor choices in my life based off that delusion alone, and I can promise you, you have to. And so many of them are at a subconscious level. So this delution runs deep. Andso what I wore, how I dressed, howI changed, I mean everything about me was driven by this delusional. It didn't really manifest at least to a high level until I moved when I was somewhere between eight and nine years old. I was raised by a single mom had, you know my mom was married to two different alcoholics ended up in a state mental hospital met another alcoholic it was my dad um i came out of that marriage she ran him off and then she turned her will life over to god not through recovery through her own religious terms but but but it was through that that surrender that she changed her life and she never wavered on it and she went on to be an amazing woman and died in 2015. but through her reconciliation process trying to make it in the world as a divorced woman twice in the sixties with no education, no family. And I came on that journey with her. And so we lived in some pretty tough times. I mean, we shared a bathroom with the lady next door until I was seven years old. And then somewhere right around eight or nine, my mom says, look, we're going to move to St. Louis. I said, why? We lived in a little country town on the Kansas-Oklahoma border. I went to a Catholic school with less and 100 kids. I lived a very sheltered life. I didn't have a lot of this delusion eating me up at this time that I can remember. I probably did, I just don't consciously remember it that much. But I can Remember it well when we moved. And we moved, she said, Well, we're going to move to St. Louis. I said, Why? She says, Because you got a brother and two sisters, you don't know. And I'm like, What? You know, this is like, Who are you? You know, there's this whole story about my mom, I don't even know. And so we make this major shift to St. Louis so she can begin her eighth and ninth step work, her reconciliation with this family she walked away from, and was gone 10 years, and they didn't know if she was dead or alive, and she resurfaced in a state hospital in Nevada, Missouri, so she had that dark past to deal with, but I came along for that ride, and we moved to St., and I went from a school of less than 100 to a school with thousands, and I just didn't look the part, you know, I looked like a little country kid. And so immediately this delusion of inequality jumped on me and what you thought of me, like I said, paralyzed. And I had this spiritual battle going on between my ears. And this is kind of how the battle worked. I'd walk into a room with people and I want everybody to pay attention to me. And i'd also want everybody to leave me the hell alone. And the kicker was I wanted you to do it at the same time. That was the spiritual battle on it. You just come over and say, Harold, we think you're freaking awesome and never talk to me the rest of the night, that would have been great. But that's not reality. So my mind would just be going crazy with all kinds of stuff. And this is that delusion of inequality. And so what happens is, what do I do? I start growing my hair long because this is the 70s now and I don't look cool. So I started growing my head long. I take the thumbtack out of my kiss poster and pierce my ear. I start wearing a Billy Jack t-shirt, a black Billy Jack, because Billy Jack was a badass back in the day. And I got me a blue jean jacket, tore the sleeves off it. Got me a big peace sign and USA patch, but I started wearing big bell-bottom pants and got me some red boots or some brown suede boots with red shoestrings. And I made me a headband out of a piece of belt. I grew my hair long and I had gap teeth. I had freckles. I had pimples. I looked like a freaked out Howdy Doody, man. That's what I look like. But I thought I was pretty cool at the time. And so this is how this delusion is driving my life. I haven't met King Alcohol, but this is what I'm talking about. When they talk about being driven by 100 forms of fear this is what they're talking about this is driving my life but the delusion is i don't even say it for what it is um and uh and then along comes street drugs along comes tobacco along comes sex along comes king alcohol before i'm even 11 i'm already doing this i grew up on the streets my mom was never home always working minimum wage jobs to keep a roof over her head so the time i was 10 i was on the road doing whatever i wanted to do going and coming as I pleased led to a life of crime, led to started my journey in the Department of Corrections at the age of 12. And I would, the DOC would have its teeth in me until well into sobriety. And so that's my life in a nutshell. But through all that came so much delusion. And so these delusions, as when Nancy asked me to come and put this workshop together for the Department Of Corrections, and I thought about it, I said, well, how do I explain the alcoholic to probation approach so they better understand the alcoholic. And so this is how it all came out. Andso these five big delusions are just, I frame them this way. Delusion number one is I'm not alcoholic. Delusion. Number two is I am alcoholic. I can finally own that truth, but it's not my fault. You know? And so that's victimization. And we'll talk a lot about that next week. The next delusion is that I can come to the rooms and can tell you that i am alcoholic i'll take full responsibility for my life but it's the delusion of impossibility there's little hope my life's ever going to amount to anything i've burnt too many bridges i broke too many hearts time has passed me by the older you are when you start this journey the bigger this delusion ends that the mountain is too high there's just not enough time the impossible there's no way the impossible is going to become possible in my life and so that delusion is very powerful so we'll talk about those two next week and then on the on the third week we'll talk about the delusion of what i call spiritual disqualification um and we'll spend some serious time there because spiritually being disqualified in the illusion around this idea of a higher power god as we understand god um all that stuff atheism monasticism all that stuff will unpack that um in in week three and then week four is the delusional that there's no real purpose for my life other than i'm just not going to drink it because of my checkered past i mean what value is there really to my life you know i mean let's just be transparent so those are the the five big delusions in a nutshell there's many delusions and each of those categories i just framed them that way for the context of the workshop but that's how it comes out so this delusion number one that i'm not alcoholic i took my first drink at the age of 11. now my mom drank her whole life my mom always had the cheapest beer on sale my mom was cheap we were poor and so whatever is on sale to the day she died even when her life got better financially she always bought what was on sale so there was nothing great in my mom's refrigerator hands like milwaukee's best you know some really cheap beer and she always had a fifth of old crow underneath the sink some of the old-timers call that the dirty bird but you know this is the liquor my mom always had and uh she smoked virginia slim's now i'm sure more times than not that i got into her liquor cabinet and i got in to her cigarettes i know i was a young catholic boy altar boy i know i drank some ultra wine but i don't count any of that stuff as the first drink i just don't for me personally my first real drink my first real intoxication transforming life-changing experience with king alcohol came between age 11 and 12. you know i told you i'm in st louis i'm a rock and roll drummer i started playing drums when i was five i grew my hair long i'm into jazz band i'm playing in some street cover bands you know you know and i'm gifted at it and so i was invited into circles i really didn't have no business being in growing up on the streets and my buddy steve that was i played music with steve was about 17 or 18. i'm 12. and and here's the part that baffles me bro when i see somebody who's 12 and they're just a normal kid. It's like, how could I be doing what I was doing when I was your age? It just don't make any sense to me still today, but I was. But I went to this guy's house and I've never been to a party before. And he invited me and I went there and he was behind the bar, his dad's bar, parents from Florida. He's playing the big shot. And He asked me the all-important question, what are you drinking? Well, nobody had ever asked me that. Nobody. and i had no idea what to say i said i guess whatever you're drinking is what i'm doing and he made me a big glass of slow gin and coke and i went over on the couch and i sat down with and i finally got the courage to take a pull off it and it tasted like cough syrup it wasn't that big a deal and uh so it's not that big a feel and uh but as i drank some more of it i started to get that sensation in our skin that we get from king alcohol and it felt really good and i drank some water and i started to get a smile on my face and i drank somore and the smile got a little bigger and i drank some more eventually the smile wrapped all the way around my head and touched back here and it changed my life forever that was the effect alcohol that had nothing i'd ever done that playing music playing drums none of that stuff ever did that and that was the beginning for me i turned my will and life over to that not only the effect alcohol out of my life but everything that went with it the lifestyle and i chased that with everything i had it was an apocalyptic moment apocalyptic meaning something's been revealed unveiled to you that you never experienced before in your life and that's the the transformation that happened for me with king apple and i dreamt off into the abyss of that and that and the delusion that comes behind king alcohol started to mean i got as thick as i've ever been off alcohol i probably swore off alcohol for the first time that night i'm sure i lied to my mother about what was going on that night night i didn't drink the next day the next morning or the next week or probably the next month but but my life shifted it was a major shift in my life and i would never return to that ever again you know in recovery circles sometimes they use this illustration they say you know at some point in your life you were a cucumber and somewhere you went to becoming a pickle and step one is the full acceptance that you're never going to be a cucumber again but the delusion is yes i will and i'll prove it and uh and it's that delusion that kills most of them when all the evidence says man you are a pickle brother i mean i don't I don't know how else to sell it to you. You are a picker, whatever, man, and whatever. And so that delusion is powerful. I want to give one illustration of how that plays out the alcoholic mind, and then I'm going to pass it over to Jimmy. But this is how it plays. I was 19 years old. I was living in Akron, Georgia. I lived all over the South. I left home when I was 15 years old, and I lived All Over Texas, Tennessee, and Georgia. Now I'm in Akro, Georgia." Some of you remember the late, great Charlie Daniels, right? He wrote a great song back in the 80s. maybe the 70s i think it was the 70's called the devil went down to georgia looking for a soul student well he found me in atworth georgian red barn trailer he found me right there on that trailer park and uh and he came and met me full swing and now i drank had a lot of consequences up to this time i'm 19 years old i drank in the bars i loved bars love the i loved the honky tonks loved it loved it and i was a blackout drinker caused me all kinds of problems i had a big mouth that was rowdy more problems, but I never had any times that I can remember. And since that moment, I told you when I took that first real drink to this moment, that I had any time that I sat down with any concession that I'm alcoholic and I'm powerless or that I want to do something different in my life. Never. And the first time that happened was at the age of 19. I'm 19 years old. I wake up on a Saturday morning, been out drinking in the honky tonks all night, woke up with a big tomato head. That's what they call the hangover in the South. Woke up with this big tomato head and i was fully dressed had on a flannel shirt had on blue jeans had on boots and i had on this this beige vest and i woke up with this big tomato head and as i wokeup i had blood all over me had blood splattered all over my jacket all of my hands and of course i couldn't remember what happened to me and to this day i can't remember but i went into the bathroom because i figured somebody just kicked the dogs not nasty out of me which did wasn't uncommon and as I went in there started to try to figure out where i was bleeding from i realized after i got my shirt off that somebody sliced me all the way around my arm and then stabbed me in my rib cage now that's not the part that's important what's important is that i went out on the front porch of that trailer and i sat down and it's the first time first time that i ever ever got had any kind of honesty with myself, any kind of truth in my mind about what's going on in my life and any kind desire to live a different life. And I sat there and I said, man, I got to do something different than I'm doing. I'm very emotional. I got tears in my eyes. I get tears running down my face. I am scared because I don't know what happened to this day. I can't tell you what happened. But as I sat there, it was just like the authors of our book, they took an old English character john barleycorn they personified alcohol and they threw them in our literature we even find him in our traditions excuse me it was just like king alcohol was sitting right next to me with his arm around and this is the delusion this is how this delusion plays out this is the alcoholic mind if you're new on here which i know we have a lot of new people when you hear people talk about the alcoholic minor the cunning baffling nature of alcoholism or this peculiar mental twist or the stinking thinking or there's lots of stuff that's all synonymous but this is what they're talking about and it's this mindset it's just delusion that destroys most of us you couple that with a mental obsession and a physical allergy to alcohol it's a deadly combo um and so here it is and so i'm sitting there in very motion and the problem is there's nothing between me and king alcohol and then there's something between you and whatever it is in your life whether it's drugs whether it sex whether it foods whether it food it doesn't matter if you're powerless over and there's nothing between you and that force that's greater than more powerful than you then you're going to succumb to that every single time well there was nothing between me and king alcohol sure and so as i sit here but i call king alcohol the great compromiser this is where the delusion comes in as i sat there full remorse kind of with a solemn oath that i'm ready to do something different this is what king alcohol said to me why he's got his arm around me he said you know what kid you're right you do need to do something different but before you do anything drastic go grab your old army jacket and let's walk up here to the magic market and get a quarter beer in a pack of smokes and it sounded like a really fresh idea and if you're alcoholic you know What I mean I mean it's insane and it's dark isn't it twisted as delusional and as illusional as it is that sounded like irrational idea and I walked in then got the army jacket i didn't even wash the blood off my hands and i started walking up to the magic market and that sense of ease and comfort came over me before i ever got there and if you're like me you know exactly what i'm talking about and i got to the liquor store i bought the quart of beer i popped a pack of smokes i come outside it twisted that cap made that noise we all loved when it comes off and that spirit come out of that bottle and it took a mighty pull off it i made that face we always make and that was the last time i thought about not drinking for a couple more years that's alcoholism and that's the delusion that i'm talking about and that's why most people that have alcoholism unfortunately will go to the bitter end will go to gates of insanity just like our book says most of us the first three words on page 30 most of us are unwilling to admit we're real alcoholics and this delusion is so powerful that many will pursue it to the gates of insanity or death and unless this illusion is smashed this illusion that i can drink like other people without problems is smashed we're dead people walking and so i'm grateful today as i sit here that that delusion has been smashed and i can go on to tell you that it was a mighty dark place for me a fatality drunk driving accident a 40 wi 50 wi failure guys pro violation 21 going on 22 on my way back to the penitentiary this is what brought me to my knees finally in department of corrections in a jail cell in 1987. and somewhere in that context i was able to get past this delusion and get enough truth in me that i was unable to conceive that i wasn't powerless over alcohol i didn't need you to sell me on any of that anymore i was able to get past that delusion and thank god i did it from that day till now i've never had a drink of alcohol from that date to this day but it was everything and it cost me everything and it almost cost me my life to get to that place so again if we're here tonight and we're free from that delusional praise god for that and i and i truly do but that was only the beginning of all the other delusions that would plague me that i would face throughout there especially the early years of my sobriety that really caused me a lot of hiccups and hang-ups and problems and so we'll share about those in the weeks ahead so with that that's a kickoff to this thing it's a powerful delusion i'm glad i was able to find victory over it by the grace of god i'm glad you were too with that jimmy i'll pass it towards you thank you thanks harold hi everybody i'm jimny i'm an alcoholic grateful to be alive and sober and uh and i have a home group too and it's called design for living group uh down in neptune new jersey on the shore i have sponsors service sponsors sponsor a lot of guys and uh uh i've been sober since my first meeting of alcoholics anonymous and that was on march 28 1987. now i was so proud of myself today because i had thumb surgery two weeks ago i was still proud that i was able to tie a tie finally and to close that top button but i have to say i am nine days sober more than harold and i've been paving the road for him for 34 years so just keep following me how we'll be okay but uh thank you harold for having me here with you and thank you karen in the group for having us um you know it's really amazing i'm sitting here i'm just man i feel like i'm in my living room just a bunch of friends that's what it feels like we all a lot of us know each other we've been to a lot of conferences together and parties and meetings and diners and all that stuff and it just feels great to be uh looking out you know this this aa community that we've been uh given it's truly unbelievable like how would i meet a guy like harold he is nothing like me his story is completely different from mine but we are exactly the same that's a that's a nice paradox completely different but we're exactly the same and i met harold in uh kansas city what would a jersey guy be doing in kansas city if he wasn't in a witness protection program well we were at a conference and i heard harold speak and we eventually became friends and uh you know and and then in 2016 we uh we did a retreat together up in upstate new york and uh And, you know, I remember sitting at that retreat and I remember how we weren't talking about this stuff. But he Harold included this stuff in a lot of the talks he was talking about. And, uh, you Know, I sat there next to him and I'm like, man, he's putting words to the stuff that's going on in my mind. Like, I just couldn't, like, put a word or a phrase or a feeling to these thought process that was going on my head and why i felt the way i felt at times early on in sobriety and sometimes now in sobrieta you know so that was really uh an amazing uh weekend we did because that really started to build a friendship that we have right till today you know and uh and so i'm so grateful i mean the way I got involved with Harold with this was uh he called me up on a Wednesday and he had his manuscript and he's he emailed me and says you've got four days to read it we're doing a workshop in scotland so that's how i started so this was and boy was i nervous at that first of all i couldn't even understand what the guys from scotlands were saying and then uh you know and then me and harold are going but uh but it's really been a you know a really great thing for me to uh really look at this because you know one of my biggest delusions and like harold just said you know we'll we'll focus on five but it it's almost like a centipede you know there's these five but you know there's a thousand legs that come out of that there's a thousand other delusions that we all have and we all you know don't even know we have it we believe them to be truth and you know and i guess one of the biggest ones i had was that physical sobriety equates the soundness of mind uh not drinking uh is a solution to a spiritual uh dilemma and for years in alcoholics anonymous you know i believe that too to a t uh you know and the best way i like to i like to tell a story or not a story i'd like to tell you and i tell this story a lot but it's it's about two guys i know you know joe and bob you know and i remember one day joe went to a meeting and you know joe came to the meeting like he always does right at the last right at you know right when it was about to start you know he walked in he went right to the coffee pot he started making a lot of noise around the coffee pot complained that there was no milk left in the milk you know all that stuff you could hear him shuffling you know he sits down in the last row and you know the meeting opens up and uh one of you fine folks starts to read how it works and you knows joe starts complaining or you could hear his breath because some of you guys were mispronouncing some of the words you know as the meeting started and the introduction started to go on when some of your guys said that you were an alcoholic ender you know and enda you know uh joe got really upset because you know this is just aaa you don't say you're anything else you know as the meeting continued and the sharing started and some of you guys just went a little bit long and talked about a lot of things that had nothing to do with anything you know you could see the body language of joe and you could hear him huffing and puffing you know at the end of the meeting joe god up and he didn't get into that circle that we all get into and hold hands and say that prayer you know he just went right to the threshold of the doorway or the meeting hall and then when the meeting was over he just looked in and said what a waste of time i should have never gone to that meeting tonight now bob on the other hand bob comes to the meeting like bob always does about an hour before he does all the things that we do we set up we break down i mean you know puts out the literature he makes the coffee you know when the meaning starts where's bob he's right up in the front row you know one one of you guys starts reading how it works bob's eyes well up with tears because he's so grateful for what we have as a fellowship you know when some of you guys start to share your names and who you are bob is so excited because he hasn't seen you in a while he can't wait to talk to you after the meeting you know then when some of you guys thought to discuss some of the things that are going on in your life bob's eyes are really welled up because he so happy that he came back to alcoholics anonymous at the end of the meeting bob does what bob always does he breaks down he cleans up he puts stuff away says goodbye to everyone you know and when he gets to that threshold of the doorway he turns back and he says a prayer thank you god for the fellowship of alcoholics anonymous and thank you for my sobriety and he goes home now why i tell you that story is because joe and bob were at that same meeting what that happened so the question always is or the real spiritual matter of the spiritual mirror is who's sitting here tonight joe or bob and i'm here to tell you because of this delusional mind that i have i've been both and i am proud to say that you know i used to like no i don't i've done both you know I'm a guy uh you know my sponsor always says we're all human beings on a spiritual walk and sometimes we're going to lose focus of that spiritual walk you know so some of us don't adhere to these principles at all times so it's been a while it has taken me a while to see that when i'm in this delusional state of mind especially with you know the ones we're going to be talking about what i don't see is how dark my life really gets when i live in that that thing in our head our good friend that's on here now he says it all the time my alcoholism doesn't come in a bottle it comes in my mind and the crux of the problem is the thinking mind and my mind will always bring me down a different pathway you know my mind will always blame somebody for the way i feel i mean i always you know a lot of you guys have heard me speak and i always make that little joke when i start off but you know i was born perfect and i was quickly handed over to these two character defects called mom and dad so right from the get-go i've been always blaming people you know I've been blaming my parents eventually someone the first girlfriend the boss you know the ex-wife the neighborhood i mean it's always been someone's reason someone's fault for the way i feel inside you know so this delusion i'm not an alcoholic well here's a question what makes me think i'm mad you know um i like to read something i read this morning which i think was really applies to today comes out of daily reflections he cannot picture life without alcohol someday he will be unable to imagine life either with alcohol or without it Then he will know loneliness such as few did. He will be at the jumping off place. He will wish for the end. Only an alcoholic can understand the exact meaning of a statement like this one. The double standard that helped me captive as an active alcoholic also filled me with terror and confusion. If I don't get a drink, I'm going to die. Compete it with if I can't continue drinking, it's going to kill me. Both compulsive thoughts pushed me even closer to the bottom. that bottom produced a total acceptance of my alcoholism with no reservation whatsoever and one that was absolutely essential for my recovery it was a dilemma unlike anything i have ever faced but i found out later on a necessary one if i was to succeed in this program so i think we all get to that place or that jumping off place you know dr bob talks about that in his nightmare you know being stuck between that rock and a hard place i don't want to drink but i need a drink and see i grow up with like a lot of us you know i grow up in that neighborhood i grow open that family i grow up where the only requirement for membership in a neighborhood is five or more kids there's always parties there's always things going on there's always there's always king alcohol at every event that i'm that i've had as a young child and we hear that statement quite often you know that alcoholism is a disease of perception and the way i see drinking is that drinking equates to fun drinking equate to you know problem solved drinking equated to freedom and why i would tell you that is because i would watch the elders as they sat in my house or in the backyard or out on the front stoop you know and they would have their drinks they would have their beers and what i would witness is you know the magic that comes with drinking how could drinking be a problem right it's fun look at my dad look at my uncles you know but then there was those days you know i had that guy dad too like a lot of us we all have those daddy issues you know I have one of those guys too in my life and he's a tough guy and he said rough guy and He's the guy that you know, I feared growing up. And I internalized a lot Of that fear and I internalize all the insecurity and the fear that I had. You know, more importantly, I internalised all the secrets that were going on in my family. Because that's the kind of stuff that never left that left the house so no wonder why when i come into alcoholics anonymous i'm filled with all this darkness in my life and i'm being driven by a mind that you know i can't talk about this stuff i've been programmed not to talk about the things that are going on inside me so i drink over this stuff and i just stay in the middle of that rock in the hard place i don't want to drink but god i need a drink you know and again you know uh growing up in his family you know and seeing the the ease and comfort that comes at once by my dad you know he would take a drink and he would be a different person so how can drinking be a problem you know uh the city i grew up in there's a bar on every corner you know and i'm walking up to the bar i would look in that bar and you know well i'm going to the schoolyard to play ball but i'd look in at barn who did i see i see you guys you're playing pool you're watching a ball game you know your your girls are in there your girls are trying to pick up these guys again disease of perception the way i see alcohol it's going to be a great thing and i take that first drink at the age of 13 years old as my friend peter over here says you know i got right on i stepped on a path that goes straight to hell because over a 16-year period you know I lost I lost everything you know but the problem was it was this alcohol wasn't my problem it was everything else was my problem I'm not an alcoholic you know i'm hanging with guys that are like me i'm doing things look with guys that are likely uh i'm living this criminal activity like guys like me i'm just living on the streets i'm livin in this life that you know the life we live you know and and i don't see anything wrong with it i justify my drinking i rationalize my drinking um you know if you had my life you drink too what's this have to do with alcohol alcohol alcoholic that's a guy that's living in the in the dumpster that's the guy that's you know under the bridge i mean i have this deluded thinking what an alcoholic looks like when i really don't even know what an alcohol it looks like you know and uh and my life just gets worse and worse and more and i don't understand why my life is getting worse you know it was so important to never leave a party i know that sounds ridiculous it was important never leave the bar never leave a party no matter what i remember i remember once i was we were at this place called roosevelt stadium you guys in jersey might remember that place it was a small stadium in jersey city and there was like a 25 000 venue they had concerts and minor league baseball and we used to hang out down there right on the newark bay i mean we used swimming in newark that's why i lost my hair but uh you know we said we used the hangout down there and uh you know and i'll never forget this day i was loaded and i leaned back laughing and a bottle went right through my back and i was gushing like a pig and there was blood everywhere but i wasn't going to leave that party because i might miss something that sounds so delusional with an alcoholic does an alcoholic do those kind of things well apparently i did on that day you know and then the next day when i was luckily or gratefully uh you know woke up in a pool of blood i mean i had to go to the hospital the next thing but that's just i mean a million and one stories like we all have of the insanity of the thinking mind that says you know there's not a problem here you know just keep drinking you know and and over those years you know uh you know i'm the guy that has tried everything to fix my external my internal condition and i don't know what that internal condition is but i think there's something out there that could fix me in here now i'm walking around with all this anger i'm rageful at everything i have a resentment i'm afraid of everything but i'm a street guy i'm not going to tell you all that stuff so again i internalize my emotions and i'll share the way i feel and uh you know uh so what happened to me was you know being a double-edged sword guy you know i i decided to get married because i think mary will solve getting married will solve my problems and then four months into their marriage i walk out of the marriage i woke up at marriage because drinking is more important than being a married man being a friend being anything i don't understand words like responsibility i don t understand words like trust and affection i don' t understand that word intimacy that you guys talk about you know i'm a raging alcoholic but i don't think i am so i blame her for the marriage i blame my parents i blame anyone i blame everyone for the way i feel deep down inside i can't take stocks honestly that's why most of us have trouble when we come to the program and we're asked to do a fourth step i can look at that stuff can't we just pull a blanket over it and just hide it away but here i am you know and i'll never forget it was the super bowl 1986. the giants who were playing the super bowl new jersey was completely crazy because we were they were in the superbowl and i remember walking into a bar and i had this hearing i got this job i don't even know how i got his job and i was working for this company and uh they were going to fire me the day after the super bow now i go to the bar and again the mind says just drink soda and you'll be okay what i don't see is the power of alcoholism because my mind was standing in the bar that day and i was standing behind a couple of people and as i was ready to get my 27th club soda i saw the bartender put a probably a 50 cent tap beer down which was about eight ounces in front of me or in front of the guy that was in front and i looked at that beer and i said to myself how can that hurt me and i ordered a beer see i had no idea about the first drink i had an idea i thought that was the most ridiculous thing i ever heard when i came to Alcoholics Anonymous is that the first drink gets you drunk but here I take that first drink and I go on an all-night run where I show up the next morning at this hearing and I think because I have this delusional mind that if I just put a suit on they'll keep me on the job but I walk into this meeting and it was five people sitting up at a table and uh they looked at me and the one the manager looked at and said Jimmy if we light a match you'll blow up the alcohol was pouring out out of my pores. Now I tell you that story because what happened in the next five minutes, the woman who ran the employee assistance program came up to me and she said to me, Jimmy, she broke around anonymity to me. She said two words I've never heard before in my life. She goes, I'm a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm 13 years sober. If you just said that you had a drinking problem i could have helped you and you could have kept this job and i can tell you that the look i had on my face looking at her a drinking brown are you kidding me you think i'm an alcoholic are you killing me i mean the denial the delusion was so strong my life was crumbling and falling apart and i looked at this woman with such disdain i'm not an alcoholic my problems uh Her, the job, he fired me. And not too long after that period of time, you know, to fasten this up is I found myself at Newark Airport. Many of you guys heard that story, you Know, and I could never put words to how I felt. What happened was two guys, a guy in a bar said, Jimmy, you need to go to Newark airport. They're hiring guys like you. i was living on the streets for a long period of time and i went to newark airport on this particular saturday because they were hiring guys like me and i can't put into words at that time or how i really felt the only time i've ever knew about how i felt was when i came into the rooms of alcoholics anonymous and finally picked up that book alcoholics autonomous and i opened up to Bill's story when I read page eight. And Bill puts words in my first step experience like he probably puts words to a lot of us, our first step experienced. When he says no words could tell the loneliness and despair I felt in that bit of morass self-pity, quicksand stretched around me in all directions. I met my match, been overwhelmed. Alcohol was my master. And in that airport that day stone cold sober i finally started to realize that maybe alcohol is a problem and in that next couple of moments a complete stranger sat next to me and he asked me a question very important question what's your problem then i spit up my life story and he said to me where do you live and i told him and what happened was he picked me up that night and he brought me to a meeting of alcoholics anonymous and at my first meeting and i've been with you guys ever since and i tell all that is because i had to be shattered circumstances how to really make me look at the truth and i couldn't see the truth for many many years of my alcoholism my mind would always put that fence up or that wall around the reality of what i'm suffering from and i didn't even know what those words were but looking back man how was that smashed how was that thought process that i'm not an alcoholic smash well for most of us it takes a couple of events it took me a couple events you know you know uh you know walking out of that marriage uh losing contact i mean you know living on the streets losing contact with my family being at that airport you know and then eventually you know um finding out the truth of what i'm really up against and finding out that the first drink does get me drunk why because i have no idea that i'm suffering from something that nobody ever talked about and it took me a while in the rooms of alcoholics anonymous to find out what i really suffer from this hopeless condition of mind and body i had no idea about the physical allergy i had an idea about cold craving i didn't know that i had this obsession an idea that's so strong it over can overcome it overcomes all other ideas i didn't know any of that stuff my mind just kept on blaming and this is in my early sobriety four years five years of sobriete not been through the steps crazy as a bed bug stark raving sober as we like to say but justifying my behavior that i'm a member and i'm doing stuff in my home group i'm making coffee i'm setting up i'm breaking down but i'm dying of something i don't even know i'm dino or i even understand and that's untreated alcoholism my mind wouldn't allow me to look at that stuff and five years without a drink you know i hit that you know second surrender where i found out some truth you know and when i got into that chapter we agnostics you say alcoholics anonymous doesn't say we're going to quit drinking it says quite the opposite you can't quit lack of power is your dilemma you have no mental defense against the first drink and see what i found is that when i was brought into that chapel we agnostic you know AA is designed to do one thing and only one thing. To introduce us to the great reality called God. And when I started to open up to that, my life changed. Because if AA is not designed to bring us to a power greater than ourselves, guess what? We're all dead and walking. So the wake-up call for me was William Gnostics. and when i was open-minded to see some truth about my life i was willing to move forward and make that decision and as i always say you know walk into that hallway of darkness because really we have two goals here if you know i'm going to tell you right now we have two goals in alcoholics anonymous one don't drink the first drink the obvious one but the second one is something i think we all want to attain and that's to step into the sunlight of the spirit but in order to step out into the sunlight of the spirit we've got to walk through the darkness about life and we have to uncover discover and discard especially the thought processes that lead us to where we are the things that create my resentments the things that create might fear the things that create my harms i know today i'm an alcoholic i know to the to my core but that doesn't mean i i take the might take my foot off the gas you know we all have clay feet i know that i know many of you know people who have drank with more time than me and how that's for sure i do so every day is all we really get is a daily reprieve contingent upon our spiritual condition so you know over the next course of weeks with harold i know where we're going to be going there's so many things that really block us from freedom so many things that block us from a real relationship with god so many things that we don't even know we're thinking about until we really get it down on paper or talk to a sponsor and really start inventorying some of this stuff because these delusions or as you know again pete always says you know my alcoholism is not in a bottle it's in my mind and i really got to recover through my mind you know and we have the program of action that allows us to start looking at this stuff at a level that you know most of us have never looked so it's just i i know we're at the end here and ramble a little bit but it just feels great to be back with harold it feels really good to see all you guys i mean happy new year i hope everyone has a great year hopefully we get past what we're getting past around here but um you know be safe and uh thanks a lot for letting me share thank you thank you jimmy and harold