The Genetic Code and the Illusion of Control — Katie L.

Hi, everybody. I'm Katie Lord, Simon Alcoholic. Katie! On May 7th of 2015, I was separated from alcohol and all other mood-altering substances by the power of God. And I have since recovered from alcoholism. And when that happened in my life at that time, I think exactly no people expected that to occur, least of all myself. I'm just really excited to be here when Sean asked me to speak he said Katie do you want to speak at PPW and I said yes and then I asked him what's PPW because I didn't know the abbreviation and he told me what it was and it's a workshop that I'm familiar with and the next thing that I said was are you sure because this is the same event that years ago my sponsor would try to drag me to when I was unwilling to take direction and when I was kind of living in a place that precedes step one she would try to get me to come here and I would I would come and I Would hang out for you know 30 minutes and I'd leave as soon as I could because I had better things to do like trying to manage my own life and she would ask me to listen to speaker tapes and including our main speakers states tonight, and I would tell her that I'd listened to him and I hadn't. So it's just really fourth dimensional to be asked to speak at the Primary Purpose Workshop, and i'm very happy to be here. So welcome if you're new. We're really glad that you're here. It doesn't seem like very long ago that I was new, so I absolutely know what that's like. There's a lot that happened up to the point where I recovered, and I'm going to talk about that a little bit. But what I'm most excited to talk About tonight is what happened to me inside of Alcoholics Anonymous because it's a lot more than I expected. It's not what I expected when I first came to AA. I thought that one thing needed to change, and it wasn't a change that I was very excited about. I thought That the thing that needed to happen was that I needed to stop getting loaded, and then everything would be okay. And I was terrified of that. It sounded awful. I couldn't imagine a world in which I didn't drink anymore. And what I came to find out is that everything would change, and, in fact, everything would have to change, or there was no world in Which I Wouldn't Be Getting Loaded Anymore. So when I was a kid, I don't really know that a great deal about my childhood is terribly pertinent aside from one fact which is that I was born with alcoholism in my genetic code. My mom was raised by an alcoholic father so there was alcoholism on her side and there was also some alcoholism on my father's side so it was all over the place and aside from that I had a really average normal childhood. In fact, I had a lot of advantages. I went to private schools. I had parents who loved me, who gave me a lot of opportunities. I was well cared for. I didn't experience any trauma and on the flip side, if I had, the same primary fact would be the one fact that matters. I have alcoholism in my DNA. I has a predisposition to alcoholism that I was born with and that was made manifest when I took my first drink um and you know I prior to taking my first drink I really didn't I didn't really think that there was anything out of the ordinary about me I didn's I didn' really notice much I remember being really self-aware and introspective and I was constantly keep just kind of keeping score on how I was doing in terms of getting what I wanted which I thought was like the guiding force in everyone's life I thought that everyone was governed by this but governed by this one feature like we're all just here to get as much of what we want as possible and as little of what We don't want um and that was kind of like the theme um and it's funny because I can remember like being a kid being you know in middle school and thinking about how fortunate I was I had a lot of things going for me um and I would make these lists of all the things that were going well and like at one point I remember thinking I wonder what the catch is like is there going to be a catch because I'm really set up to have a good life here um you know and spoiler alert um alcoholism was the catch so um which wasn't a surprise to to my mother and um but I didn't know what alcoholism Was all that I knew is that I took my first drink when I was a sophomore in high school and I didn' t know what it stood to offer me and so I don't think I even finished I got maybe a third of the way into a beer, just enough to kind of experience a whisper of what was there, and then I stopped. Because I was also a kid who was really interested in making sure that everybody liked me and that I wasn't in trouble and that things were going okay. And later, the drinks that worked, the first drinks that work, they just really blend into one for me because these were private experiments that occurred in my home. I drank liquor that was in my home I felt the effects and it was In that moment The course of my life shifted into a new direction Because it was just so awesome It was just such an amazing It was so amazing I couldn't believe that everyone who had been cautioning me Against drinking was so full of it Because it Was great news That here's a thing That I can put this in my body The effects are produced and we're off And so it just became About more of that As much of it as I could get while being cautious to limit the consequences. And that would be the number one thing in my life for a very long time. And right away, I noticed that when I drank, I couldn't reliably control how much I drank. That was apparent to me right away. And I really wasn't alarmed by it. I just thought maybe I hadn't figured it out yet. and so on through the years we went and there's a lot I'm going to kind of skip but I started to have problems with interpersonal relationships, problems with my parents problems with losing control and just abhorrent behavior the book's description of the real alcoholic has always fit me to a T it wasn't difficult for me to identify with that. I would drink, I would lose control, I Would drink more than I wanted to I would find myself in a place where I could no longer control for consequences I could no longer decide where the night was going to take me, what was going happen next, what I was going do, what I would say. That started to create problems for me right away. It was a very long time before I stopped to consider the fact that it might not be possible to figure out a way of controlling for those consequences. I just thought there was something that I was missing and that I would learn in time to do what I saw people around me doing which was drink and have a great time and enjoy alcohol the way that I enjoyed alcohol and not have problems um by the time I was in my early 20s it became clear that that probably wasn't going to happen um there was less and less control as time went by and never more and of course at that time I didn't have any framework I didn'T have any understanding of what what alcoholism was what an alcoholic was I thought alcoholism WAS something that you happened into as a result of many different features and factors in your life I thought that it was the result of trauma. It was the result of having things that you needed to escape. Um, I thought that you had to be older to be an alcoholic. I thought that, you know, you became an alcoholic when you were older. Um. And I had a lot of preconceived notions about what that, what that was. And so I really never thought that I had alcoholism. It didn't occur to me. I would start to say things like, I have, I've got a drinking problem. I don't, when I drink, think, you know I get a little crazy and I continued to destroy relationships and I continued to manufacture problems for myself and I tried a lot of different means of getting that under control because I loved alcohol but I was also game for anything that you had that would give me the ability to produce an effect. Anything that you have that would produce that effect I would put it in my body and so drugs are part of my story and I don't think that that matters as much as sometimes we think it does because if drugs had never been a part of my story I still would be here with the exact same predicament because I had I had a relationship with alcohol that normal people don't have um I lacked control and I lacked choice um and it's that second piece that I really struggle with later on um at a certain point I I got pregnant I had children I got married I thought I'll just do well I'll be a good wife I'll Be A Good Mother I love my children. I'll change the way that my life looks and then I'll be able to get this under control and that kind of marked my first attempts at getting sober because it had begun to become apparent that if I were to keep relationships in my life, if I wanted to keep certain relationships in my Life, then I was going to have to do something and I had kind of given up on the idea that I would be able to find a way to get loaded successfully in a way that would be deemed acceptable by the people in my life. So it's the first time. I'm in my early 20s, and I'm trying to get sober. And I could get sober, I could do that, especially given the way that I was free drink and create problems. I would come up out of an experience, and I was demoralized, andI was afraid, and Iwas embarrassed, andi would get soberer. And then what would happen is that no matter what I wanted and no matter how hard I tried to position myself in a way that would make it possible for me to stay sober, I would just not stay sober though. And I thought that that was maybe for a lot of reasons. Maybe I don't want it bad enough. Maybe I'm just making bad choices. I couldn't figure out what was going on. I went to treatment several times And as the years went by And the consequences got more extreme I started to really, at least in certain moments Develop an extreme desire A real desire to be sober But I just couldn't keep it And I couldn't explain that either Because as badly as I would want to be Sober in one moment I would find myself in another In short time where I just didn't though I didn't want to being sober anymore And that was almost unmentionable you couldn't say that to the people in your lives or in your life who had been harmed by you you know that wasn't something that I could turn and say to my to my parents or to my then husband or anybody around me I couldn't couldn't tell them that but right now I don't want to be sober and so I developed you know a mode of secrecy which was very in line with my first experiences with alcohol this was my private world like I didn't need it to be anybody else's I had a relationship with alcohol that was sufficient all by itself as a solution for everything. And I loved it more than I dared admit to anybody around me. And so you know, things started to kind of intensify and I was about 24 and we were living in a small town in Kansas and raising two very small children whom I love very much and uh the threats are starting to get pretty significant i'm you know i'm not able to stay sober i'll get sober everybody's hopes kind of rise everyone's like okay she's gonna be she's gonna do it this time she's finally got it figured out and and i would start to you know put everything back together and everything looks okay and then i would do it again and it was a bigger disaster than before. And so I'm being told, you know, for the first time that you have these children who you love and you're a great mother when you're sober. But if you're not going to be sober, then you're Not going to see them. That's the way it's going to Be. You know, my husband was explaining that he would Have to leave and he would take the kids. And I believed him. And now I really wanted to get It together. I don't know that I ever wanted to be Sober, but I knew that I needed to be because I was, it was, I was pretty clear on the fact that I lacked control. Every time I drank, I couldn't reliably control what happened. Um, and so I made some serious efforts. Like I went to longer term treatments. I tried to put myself in the best position and I believed that that would work, that I could go to rehab like you see on TV. I could go there, they would fix me, I would come out and then I would be better. We would get down to the nitty-gritty of you know my problems and and whatever my my inner workings and I would figure out why it is that I do this and then I would know and then i could guard against it um and that is not what happened um and so I started to find myself into some in some legal trouble and when I talk about the legal trouble I think it's really important to mention that you know the external circumstances just aren't a qualifying or diagnostic feature for determining whether or not we have alcoholism because had I not experienced the external consequences that I had and my story looked very, very different as they all do, I still would be a person who lacks control and lacks choice. And that's the way that we diagnose alcoholism. So it's important to not get distracted by, you know, that isn't what my story looks like. That didn't happen to me because I used to do a lot of that when I would come to AA. I would hear people talk about things that they had done and losses that they had endured, and that wasn't a part of my experience. I was just at home hiding beer cans behind the paint in the basement so that my husband didn't get mad at me, and nothing had happened yet aside from feeling really depressed and really afraid and causing a lot of wreckage. But nevertheless, I continued to relapse despite my desire to stay sober and I thought that I could I could navigate, that I could prevent certain consequences from befalling me and I was wrong because that's the nature of the lack of control. We just can't tell what's going to happen and we won't see it coming because I was a private school kid who would have sworn that my life wouldn't look like it did between 2010 and 2015 and it did. So in 2014 at this time I had been in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous despite deciding that AA didn't have much to offer me. I thought that when I heard you guys talk about God and service and all of that, that it just, it wouldn't, it couldn't possibly be sufficient to help me to stay sober. I didn't think that that's what I needed. I had a lot of ideas about what I needed, but when I came to AA, despite the kind of conviviality and the belonging that I felt when I would be in a meeting, I scoffed at the solution that was presented for a very long time. and my first real entry into AA kind of happened in 2010 I acquired a sponsor she presented me with some work I did a little bit of it and then I left because I wasn't able to stay sober because I never finished the work I was never interested in spirituality or surrender or anything of that nature so for four years I was in and out and at a certain point in there I developed a relationship with a woman who I asked to sponsor me and a fellowship of people who were doing AA out of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And I would come in, and I would comes out, and while they didn't nurse my sprues, they always welcomed me back, and on each occasion, they worked with me. On each occasion I was offered help. I didn't have to chase help down. They approached me. They offered the solution. They carried the message. and it didn't matter that it was going in one ear and out the other or over my head. I would wind up in AA again and again despite my best intentions. Even though I didn't want to be here, I kept finding myself here because it was the only place in the world where people weren't mad at me. So I would show up because everybody's mad and I'm going to go to an AA meeting because that's where people are sober and everyone's mad because I'm not. and so I acquired sponsorship and I was offered the work again and I made another run 30 or 60 days things were starting to improve at home and it was my birthday it was March in 2014 and it was just a passing thought it just came out of nowhere it's your birthday, it would be nice and that was it, we were off and I was getting loaded again and just very deceitful I could not tell anybody the truth these were private sprees so I'm off with whoever nobody else knows and we're doing what we do and I ended up in some very serious legal trouble for the first time I was involved in some property crime and I wasn't able to get out and I got arrested and charged with a felony and that was a problem because I knew that felonies were a big deal and I'm going to be in big trouble here and oh no what's going to happen And what happened was my husband divorced me and took my children and moved to Kansas overnight. So overnight I went from having a home in a place that I lived to being homeless and facing a felony charge. And you would think that that would be enough, now it's time to buckle down and take this direction that I'm being given. But no, I still thought that I knew better and I still felt that Alcoholics Anonymous was going to be like every other venture in my life. I'll take the textbook and I'll read through it And I'll pick which parts I'm going to use So that I can pass the test And then that's that I didn't think that it was something that was an all or nothing I thought that it would be like everything else And that I could cut corners And that it could be an extracurricular activity And that i could use it to my advantage To figure out how to manage my life And get what I wanted And every time I was told That that's not what's happening here It just missed me It didn't register and so matters grew worse and I spent the better part of 2014 in and out of jail every time I would come out I would find myself in the company of people that I had picked up along the way in treatment facilities people that didn't know anything about me aside from the fact that I like to get drunk and I like To Get High and that's what we would do together and I would lie to everybody in my life who loved me I would live in Oxford houses and run those Oxford houses and do drugs in my bedroom and nobody knew and that was kind of my MO was just like I don't have to tell the truth because this is about getting what I want This is about figuring out how to get what I want and about figuring out how keep the things in my life that I want and discard of the rest and do so with the most minimal effort It wasn't that I wasn't told I had so many opportunities to sit with people who were doing their part in the 12th step and who didn't assume that I knew what alcoholism was. They took the time to explain to me what it meant to be alcoholic and to explain for me what that meant for me if I were alcoholic. No one pronounced me an alcoholic even though if ever there were a case where it would have been appropriate, it was probably mine. They left me to my own conclusions. So I knew that the root of my troubles was selfishness and self-centeredness. I had been told that the drinking was a symptom, that that wasn't the issue, and I just couldn't concede to it. I just still continued to try to make AA about getting what I wanted. And so in 2015, things were really intense. I had two pending felony cases, and what had happened was I had made this habit of just telling everybody a lie about what it was that I was doing and who it was that I wasn't and whether or not I was sober and I had lost just so lost touch with the ability to be honest and at a certain point in time in March of 2015 the police elected to put me on the news and it was a really important turning point in my life because I had been just so dishonest and you know this is what I'm doing and this is what I am about and it's wrong that you won't let me see my children. You should let me see children because I have been sober for such and such amount of time and here comes the news report and it is my face and they said this is Katie and she is 28 years old and she's 5 foot 2 and she has been breaking into houses and we would like her to stop and that's what she's been doing um and so everybody knew and and it was like terrifying and at the same time I remember experiencing this strange sensation of relief just that okay everybody knows you know everybody knows and that's that and there's not a lot you can do about that now um andso I tried to run away and they followed me and they put me back in jail where I should be And before that moment and the moment when my life changed, there was another release and another arrest. And each time I got out and everyone said, My God, like it's time. Are you going to do the work in AA? It's time, and everybody was hopeful that I would, but I think that they expected that I wouldn't because I had such a lengthy track record of being offered a solution and just declining it. between the months of April and May just one month, 30 days I had one job I was out on an expensive bond I was not allowed to see my children all that I needed to do was stay sober that's it just stay sober and stay out of trouble if you don't stay sober you won't stay outof trouble so we have to stay sober and that I was able to do that for about 10 days and then I was back at it again each time thinking I'll stop in time I'll you know I'll stop before anybody finds out I will get it together I will figure it out I'll know when it gets too bad and I was involved you know with pretty serious drugs at this point as well as alcohol and I was getting closer to death than I think I knew at the time it wasn't something that I was conscious of but people who knew me were. I have a younger brother who came into AA and introduced me to the group where I found sponsorship and where I found help, and he was, I remember the look on his face. And it was really the only time that it registered. They explained, it had been explained to me that alcoholism was a terminal and chronic illness, and that I would either accept spiritual help or I would die an alcoholic death. And I would have no say in when that alcoholic death arrived for me. and it was right there I mean it was right around the corner it was very very serious and I don't know whether or not I didn't care or whether or Not that was just a level of delusion and just the level of the inability to differentiate the true from the false I just couldn't tell what was real anymore all that I knew was that I needed to get loaded this is what I need to do to be okay and even when I want to stop it couldn't matter less because I continue to find myself in a place where I'm doing it no matter what, and this explanation that the book offers on page 52 about this condition, this thing that's inside me that creates this experience of restlessness and this feeling of uselessness and these problems that won't go away and this depression and this disconnection from everyone and this wanting to be somewhere else no matter where I'm at. I wasn't able to be rid of that reliably with drugs and alcohol anymore. I mean, I could sometimes, but the cost on it was so high that I would come up out of there and the condition would be worse. And the only solution I had ever known was to continue to get loaded. And what's crazy is that, you know, I did love people. I loved my children. I love my parents. I loved my friends. I wanted to be a person who had a life. All that I wanted in the whole world was to get loaded the way that I get loaded and also be aperson who had her real life and those things were mutually exclusive no matter how hard I tried and I was obsessed with making that happen. Somehow, I'll make it happen. I'll be able to go to work and have a job and make a living and take care of my kids and have good reputation and also do this in the basement when I say so and it just never worked um so I had attended a few meetings with the people who I had come to love uh the people Who remained in AA who were there every time I came back who were demonstrating a degree of stability that that I envied and respected um and we spoke and it was clear that I was in a grim situation and uh there was an offer made that that i could get a ride to detox katie will take you to detox and when you get out we'll help you get into a living environment that's safe for you and you can do aa if you want to and so i accepted the offer um and i went to detox on may 5th of 2015 and this the stage was set I had everything I needed to come out and do it. You know, I'm going to do AA now. And I wanted to the day that I went. And I got in there, and I sat, and I smoked some cigarettes for two or three hours, and I just could not stay. Like, I tried to sit on my hands. I tried everything. I just couldn't. My head wouldn't be quiet about let's just do it tomorrow. Like, this is really hard. let's just go let's go back out one more time let's get right so we don't feel so sick and we'll come back in and we'll do it tomorrow what's the difference and so I left um and it was very strange because within 30 minutes of leaving it's almost as if I knew because I can remember taking my sweatshirt and just putting it over my face and just heaving just with hopelessness because no matter how many times I found myself in a situation where we're here we go it's all set we can we can do this now no matter how many times I just kept cheating myself out of it I just keep convincing myself let's go to it again and I didn't know what was wrong with me um and so I prayed it was about all I could do the only piece of direction that was that was available to me in the moment and I remember it I remember my sponsor who had grown just she just didn't know what to do because I kept asking her for help, and then I wouldn't take the help. But she said that I should ask God to make me willing, make me willingly be willing no matter what it costs. And so I remember praying that prayer as we're driving to get high. God, please make me wiling no matter what it cost. And that was all I could do. And later that night, my companion and I went to the hospital to try to obtain some pain medication and that didn't work out so well. And as we were leaving, we noticed that the pharmacy was closed and unattended. So we went into the pharmacy and threw the drywall with our fists. And we took as much medication as we could. We bundled it up into plastic bags and we threw it back through the whole like you know the carnival game with the football except not as fun and um and then we ran off into the night and the next day i woke up very very confused um and lucky to be alive and the cops were there and that was that and this time this time i'm not getting out and this is the moment they asked me questions and i told them the truth i was so tired and I was just so afraid because it was never supposed to go like this. I had a nice life. Everything was supposed to be okay. I was supposed to find my way out of here. How did we get here? How did мы get to a place where we're this person? And so I found myself in Sarpy County with a pretty crazy bond that nobody was going to pay and there wasn't anybody on the face of the planet who would take my calls, except for a few members of Alcoholics Anonymous. That was it. But they would. They would take my calls. And I remember in the first few days, I behaved like an animal. I was terrified and desperate because I am in control of nothing. And they showed me to my room, and my room is like a cement room, and there's a metal shelf. It comes out from the wall. It's a metalshelf. And then on the metalshelf is the blue mat that they give you in kindergarten to take a nap on, except it's been through hell. I mean, it's just shredded and they giveyou one wool blanket, which seems as if it's been purposefully constructed to be as itchy as possible. And that's your bed. This is where you live now. Indefinitely, because I'm in some serious trouble. So I know that after this stay, there's likely to be another. I have absolutely no say on what the consequences will be and I can't get loaded anymore. And it was unbearable. It was un bearable. Like I remember some of the phone calls I made just like howling about like, please, please get me out of here. You got to get me out of her. And I remember one in particular where the AA on the other line, I told him how afraid I was and he threw back his head and laughed because it was just so insane. Here I am and I'm finally safe. I haven't been safe in years. And here I am and I're finally safe and now I'm terrified. Just so afraid. And that was like among the things that I appreciated the most about the people who were working the 12 step in my life. Just this levity. That they could talk to me with a sense of humor that helped me to consider the possibility that maybe we didn't need to take the details of my life so seriously today. Maybe it's not so serious. Maybe we just need to calm down and have a sense of humor, and that did a lot for me. And at the same time, they treated my condition with the deadly seriousness that it deserved because I was a dying person, and it was more likely than anything else that I wouldn't survive. And they did what they always did. They offered me the work. We have one solution. We don't have another. Here's what it is. out of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous nothing fancy and after I had physically detoxed I remember being on my shelf bed and and just considering for a moment what a poor job I had been doing of trying to manage my life I'd been trying to stick to self-sufficiency and the worst I fought to have my own way the worse matters got and that was abundantly clear and I was also able for the first time ever and I think as a result of God's grace to see the relationship between knowing God and staying sober which wasn't something that I had ever seen before that if I'm to stay sober, I will know God I have to know God or I won't stay sober and so it stopped being about doing what I needed to do to stay sobre and it started being about finding God because I believed for the 1st time in my life that perhaps that was the last thing that I had left available to me. It was the only thing that I hadn't tried. I had not tried, and despite whatever preconceived notions or prejudices that I hade about spiritual things, what I felt in my core was that there had better be a power. Like, I needed there to be a tower or I wasn't going to make it. I knew that if they ever let me out, I would do what I had always done. And so I got down on my knees and I begged God to take my life. you can have my life and if you allow me to recover and if you allow Me to feel your presence then I will do everything that I can to make sure that other other people have the same opportunity I will tell everyone just please please help me because I don't know what to do and it was very sincere which wasn't something that I had a lot I had a lot of prior to that moment in my life I didn't have a lot of sincerity going on, but I did in that moment. And right away, immediately, things started to change the way that I perceived things started To change and it was very, very shocking to me. And I remember calling my brother the next day and telling him, I don't know why I feel like this, but I think I might be okay. It was very surprising. And I immediately began writing a fourth step. So I wrote a fourth step inventory while I was in jail. My sponsor took time out of her life to come sit with me through a pane of glass and hear my inventory at like three, four weeks over. And when I was finished with that we talked about steps six and seven I continued to develop a prayer and meditation life. I would go up into my little cell and I would read anything that they would give me that had to do with God, anything. and uh i began to make whatever amends i could um i wrote letters when people would come to see me i would i would talk to them about the way that i harmed them and ask them if there was anything that i could do to make that right um and at about six weeks sober i called my sponsor one day and she told me that uh that there were alcoholics there who were going to need help and so i had done everything else that she had asked and it didn't matter what i felt uh i went to it and lo and behold there were plenty of alcoholics there the first woman that i ever sponsored was there with me she asked me for help while we were there and she's here tonight um i haven't seen her in a while but she's hier tonight in the hallway out there i ran into another woman that I was in I was Sarpey county with we spent a lot of time talking about alcoholism and about our lives and I haven't seen her in a long time either and I mean anybody who came in and indicated that they had issues with alcoholism or alcohol and drug use that brought them in here we would talk about it just out of the book just like my sponsor had done with me we would talked about do you have alcoholism let's figure that out first and if they thought that they did I would ask them if they wanted to read the book with me we'd go and we would sit on the cement floor and we'd read listen like I don't know how to make this more clear but that is that is what changed my life. That took my life and just turned it into a totally different direction and it's difficult for me to talk about because of just how feeble you know it was in the beginning. I just believed what they told me. I wouldn't stay sober if I didn't help others. I wouldn't say so where I would never get well and so I tried and the effect produced was incredible almost as incredible as the effect produced by drugs and alcohol I felt free we would walk around this crappy gym where they would you know they would crack the window and that's the that's the fresh air we would get we would walk in circles for months you know and the faces would change and the alcoholism was the same we would talk about we would go to a we would do a walk around and we would talk about alcoholism and what we were going to do and what we were doing to recover and we would talk about God. Um, I, and I found myself in short order in a place I had never been before that like, it didn't matter what my, my circumstances were. It didn't mater that I was probably going to go to prison. I was free. I'd been let out of a cage that I didn't even know that I was in. Um. That was okay. You know, even though my life was a mess and there was really no indication that it was ever going to get a great deal better because I had wrecked I didn't know if I would ever raise my children again. I didn' t know how much time I would spend in prison, but I knew that all of the sudden I didn''t have that voice with me anymore that talked incessantly about when are we going to get loaded again? When are we going to drink again? That voice had left me and I didn ''t know that that was possible and beyond that I was experiencing contentment and joy and usefulness and that kind of just, that was the anchor. The anchor went down, and I knew that this would be the basis of my life if I was to remain recovered. Because, you know, life goes on, and it doesn't matter how long we've been sober or what incredible experiences we've had in the past. Self will rally, and It'll reinsert itself into whatever crease it can find. And so running right next to self has to be a continuing, ongoing spiritual practice and spiritual work, the heart of which will be working with alcoholics intensively and offering them the same solution that we've been offered. I haven't done a lot of things perfectly, but when I made that bargain with God in my third step, when I told him that if you keep me sober, I will do your work. If you make me well, I will work with others. I've done my utmost to hold up my end of that bargain. And it's done everything for me. And I think that like, it's really cool to talk about that here. The purpose of this conference is to discuss that, what it is that we're going about doing, what we're doing here in Alcoholics Anonymous because it's not what I thought. It's not a self-help program. This isn't about me coming here so that I can get what I need from you. It's não é sobre eu vir aqui para que você possa me mostrar como estar bem e como ficar sober, mesmo que seja parte disso. Isso é sobre mim vir aqui para que Deus possa se livrar da minha autocentrismo através do sacrifício que eu faço em termos de ser disponível para ajudar outros como eu. we started some of the women that I sponsor and I started a meeting that we do on Thursday nights it's not really even a meeting we get together and we read the big book together because it's important and we really kind of just started it so that we would have a place where we could gather all of our new people together and when we started I think it was like three of three or four of us we would we would meet and we would just read together just read to each other would you like a turn lauren and lauren would read and you know there was no one there and we were we were sitting in there last night and i looked around and there were you know There's 30 and 40 of us sometimes and every week there's somebody new and and like we're sure these girls and I were shoulder to shoulder in this and I could not have foreseen this that this is like the center of my life that this is the most incredible part of my life how god works in us and through us and what god has given us to do together um it's it's remarkable it's just i just there's no way for me to over i can't possibly sell it i can'T explain how incredible it is because i always felt so alone you know just so separate from everybody disconnected from god disconnected from others i could be in a whole big group of people and I still felt all by myself not you know and uh I feel anything but that today I feel connected to everything um and that's all because of God and it's all contingent upon the maintenance and growth of my spiritual condition it must continue if it stops I won't get to stay here um and That's okay I just feel so incredibly blessed and fortunate it's just what an incredible what a crazy thing to have a woman approach you with tears in her eyes and ask you for help uh and then to watch her work with so many women um and thento watch those women work with more women and whatever this isn't just for women i'm just i'm old men so i don't work with you know men most of the time um i think that i thought when I first came to AA that the 12-step work and work with others was kind of optional it was a thing that I would I would get to when I get to the oh that's later that's for when I have multiple years of sobriety because I certainly don't have anything to offer anybody um I don't know how to do that other people can do that I'll just you know I'll be here and I'll do something else but that I wasn't given that option and thank God for that I'm very very very blessed that I had a sponsor who put a huge emphasis on work with others, who explained to me that the entire purpose of my spiritual work would be to pass it to someone else. That the entire purpose of my relationship with God would be to enable me to transmit a message to someone else like me. And I found that at five, six weeks sober, I had something to offer, which was very surprising, but it was real. So I'm really glad that we have Peter here. I'm glad to hear him speak. I'm excited to hear what he has to say, and I'm excited for the workshop tomorrow. If you're new in here, we have a solution. If you have alcoholism, there won't be a halfway one. There won't been a three-quarter way one. This is an all or nothing deal, but it works 100% of the time when you work it. Spiritual experience or bust. There's a lot of people in the room who can offer sponsorship. That was a big deal for me right away. I needed to get a sponsor from whom I would take direction. Changed my life. I owe my life to Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm very, very grateful to be here and be sober. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you! Thank you, guys! I love her. I love you.