The Highest Power for the Sickest Alcoholic – Jeannie M.

awesome thank you thank you so much laura um i really appreciate uh the introduction hi everyone i'm jeannie and i am an alcoholic and i'm so grateful to be here i'm thankful for laura and a woman named michelle she asked me to share tonight and you know it's always an honor and a privilege really to be asked to be of service, to do anything in Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean, we wear many hats here, right? On Monday nights, I'm the greeter at one of the groups that I go to and Sunday through Thursday, I facilitate the big book and I do a lead there. And tonight I get to share with you guys and whatever hat we're wearing, it's all necessary and it's all a privilege. And I come from a lineage where we are required to always say yes. And actually not only just yes, but yes, please. Right. Because somebody said yes to me. And so my responsibility is to turn around and say yes to another person. And you know, I trust in my higher power and I trust, like, I have no idea why I'm here. I don't know why Michelle asked me, right? Like we had known each other at this one meeting on a Thursday night for maybe two months tops. But I heard her share, she heard me share, and I don't know why I'm here tonight, but I do trust that there's a message for somebody. And maybe even that person is myself, or maybe it's all of us. I mean, we're talking about the power of God. We're talking About a power that is infinite and its power and love. And you know, maybe all of Us are going to walk away with something that we need to hear tonight. And maybe we won't even realize it. Maybe it'll be a word or a phrase that we hear it from something I say, or from a share or from what Laura said, right? That we just casually say to another person and it saves their life. And like, that's the kind of unreasonable, unreasonableness that we're dealing with here. Right. Cause like, I don't know about you guys, but I tried all those reasonable things, right. The self-help books, the promises, the, I believe in my own lies, the swearing off alcohol, the rehabs, the 90 and 90, whatever it was that I was trying to use to get me away from the place that I Was that was driving me to drink really. So if you guys don't mind, if you would indulge me, I'd like to throw a little prayer out into the universe. You know, this is a spiritual program. Of course, whenever I say God or Lord or anything like that. It's a, it's a God of your own understanding. But this is a sacred place. You know, women in recovery are sacred. We are sacred and it always cracks me up because like the beginning of the book where it talks about, we are 100 men and women who have recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body at the beginning, there was like one woman, maybe two or three, there wasn't, there's no space for us. Right. There was like marty man and maybe a few others and now all of a sudden present day and we read that in a big book meeting and it's like go to any meeting and we're 50 or more i mean we are a force to be reckoned with so um if you if we can just like take a second to pray that would be great and i'll end with the 11 step prayer too because you know we're in 10 and 11 12 tonight um creator spirit of the universe, God of our own understanding. I thank you so much for this awesome opportunity to come here with my sisters, for us to learn what we're supposed to learn, get into what we'RE supposed to get into. I ask that you would help me to check my ego at the door, to remove the script, to give me the words that you WOULD have me say, and for everybody here to have the ears that can hear what YOU want them to hear. But most of all, for our hearts to be joined, for us to feel and connect with one another and then with you so that we can be in the sunlight of the spirit. Lord, make me a channel of thy peace that where there is hatred, I may bring love that where There Is Wrong I may Bring The Spirit Of Forgiveness That Where There Is Discord I May Bring Harmony That WhereThereIsError I MayBringTruth That Where THEREIsDoubt I May BrinFaith That WhereTHereIsDespair I MaybringHope That where there are shadows, I may bring light. That where there is sadness, I may bring joy. Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted. To understand than to be understood. To love than to be loved. For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. And it is by dying that one awakens to eternal life. Amen. And thank you. for that. I really appreciate it because, you know, for me, it's about getting connected and that's what we're kind of going to be talking tonight about like emotional sobriety and you know, without emotional sobrietty, we're dead. And if we're dad, we might as well drink again, right? We might as, we'll just go back to that miserable state. And one comes before the other and the other becomes, you Know, before that, and they're both really intertwined. And you know I didn't understand a lot of that, especially when I first came to Alcoholics Anonymous, I thought, oh, okay. Drinking is the problem. Stop the drinking. All will be well. But it turns out that when I stopped drinking, I was left with me. And it turns OUT even more that alcohol was my solution. Alcohol was what was keeping me together because it was so hard to feel the way I was feeling. It was so HARD to be living in the fear, the resentment, the self-centered fear, the pity, the jealousy, the whatever emotions that were running rampant inside of me. I did not know how to squeeze those down deep enough where they didn't matter in my life and run my life. And that's why I drank. And That's Why I Drink The Way That I Did. I have a sobriety date. It's December 23rd, 2021. I have an sponsor. My sponsor has a sponsor. I have home group. It is by the book in the United Kingdom. We study the big book every single day. and we are like the funnest bunch of people right before the meeting and after the meeting but when the meeting starts we get right into the solution i've done the 12 steps of alcohol it's anonymous i've been them a bunch of times and um you know i've known them where they got me to a place where i am recovered i'm recovered from that hopeless state of mind and body and i'm not cured and the big book is very clear about it on page 85 it says that we are not cured but what we have is a daily reprieve contingent. And here it is, daily repreeve. That means each and every day that we must do this work. Daily reprieved contingent on my spiritual maintenance. And I learned a lot of hard lives, a lotof hard lessons in my life and in my recovery life. My recovery is not a straight line. I didn't come in 15 years ago and then plop, here I am 15 years later and everything was like care bears and unicorns and everything was fine. And I quit drinking. So it's all great, right? It wasn't like that for me. My recovery is up, down, sideways, backwards, lots of backwards, you know, then a lot of forwards and it's All Over the Place. And that's what I'm here to talk about. AndI have no idea why I'm her. I don't know why. I do know that Michelle, the woman that asked me, is a woman that's connected because I've heard her share. I've watched I can see the sunlight of the spirit coming through her. But if higher power has struck this woman who was connected to ask me, then maybe I have a message and, you know, and sometimes it's the power of a negative message that helps us to realize, you Know, like that's not where I want to be, right? I don't want any taste of that. Like, I certainly don't Want the negative parts of my life, but how do we get to the other side of that? And that's what I'm here to share about what it was like, what happened and what I am now over and over and Over. I mean, this, this deal is cyclical. It goes round and round and around. And you know, listen, we need to, I need to I'm hoping all of us can set aside what we think we know when we come into this space, right? I'm certainly that's What our higher power would have us do right set aside, what we think we know the big book tells us sometimes we miss the beauty of the force because we're diverted by the ugliness of some of the trees and he tells us to lay aside our prejudice it tells us to get away from what self is telling us is the truth and get into what god would have us be the truth and you know i hope that qualifies my the ultimate qualification in alcoholics anonymous is simply this once i put alcohol into my body in any form right i don't have the power to choose I can't remember. I cannot bring into my suffering, you know, a week, a day, a year, you know whatever. I could not trust my mind basically because it cannot tell me not to do the things that are killing me and my brain wants me dead and I don't want to be dead, you know? I want to happy, joyous, and free and that's what this book tells us that we can be. We can be recovered from the hopeless state of mind and body. We can happy, joyous and free. And it doesn't even say that we can be, it says God wants us to be. And so how do we do that? And that's what we're here to talk about. We're here to talk About the things that we conduce that we can be balanced. That's why I chose the 11th step prayer. You know, I've committed the third step seven step and 11 step prayer to memory and the reason why I've done that is because I am an alcoholic that gets in pinches. It could be a beautiful sunny day. The world could kind of be doing what I want it to be doing and my mind will still tell me that I'm in a disconnected place, that I am at a place where I'm in trouble. I can feel it. I can sense it. And prayer really is, pardon me, my only shot, my only defense to get to the place that I need to be. This is about conscious contact. It's about not living the life that I lived before, not feeling the way that I felt before so I don't have to pick up a drink, right? But sobriety is putting down the drink. Like just being removed from alcohol is simply not enough. It isn't for me, right. Because I get worse, not better when I put down alcohol in it. Like I first time I heard that I was like, what is that person talking about? You get worse not better. When you put alcohol down. Well, so here's the thing though, when I, when I don't have something that I can obsess on, get my brain on all of that other chatter, all of That other stuff becomes humongous. And I, I catastrophize every single thing in my life, the fear, the pain, you know, the selfishness, the resentment, the anger, the hurt, the soreness, whatever it is, that's right before me, that is basically dictating the way that I live my life. and um so I want to give you guys a little bit of a background about my story because I mean there's nothing unique about me like I'm I'm a suffering alcoholic woman just like you guys um but thank god Alcoholics Anonymous is a place for relapsers and thank god there's a place for us that don't know how to put the alcohol down that we can go to a place that we can learn how to get well and live the lives that God wanted us to live in the first place happy, joyous and free. I'm from San Francisco, California, which is on the other side of the country. Here I am in Pennsylvania. I mean, if that's any indicator of what alcoholism does, right? Like I started way over here and now I'm way over there. And I'm like, oh, my God, you know, so from zero to 50, uh, you know that geographical and everything in between. And, um, you Know, I did not grow up in an alcoholic home, you knowsome slight, a privilege to the extent of like, you know, we had everything that we needed and, um, you know but there was no alcohol, but my mother was very sick and it was very don't trust. Don't talk, don't feel kind of home. Um, my mom was not the kind of mom that I could go to and talk about my feelings. Like we weren't sitting down at the kitchen table and discussing how we were feeling that day when I was five years old, it was more like a, you Know, and it Was the era too. It was the eighties, it was the seventies and the eightys. And it was like, you know, the expectation is get away. Right. There's like no emotional connection. And so that started me early on with the emotionalism. I grew up in an atheist home. So it was a very atheistic home. There was no God, there was no Santa Claus. There was no Prince charming that was going to come save me. My mom was really like this pragmatic realist and devoid of her feelings. And I suspect looking back not able to look at those feelings. I had trauma as a child. I'm not here to talk about the trauma. I'm here to talking about my alcoholism and really truly, those are two distinct things. I may have drank at times over the traumas of my life, but those are not the reasons why I became an alcoholic, a real alcoholic, A woman that once I put alcohol into my body in any form, I cannot put it down. I literally physically cannot stop. And I don't want to once it's in my body. I'm like, that's the most painful feeling in the world to drink and then stop. Like for an alcoholic of my type, it certainly is. You know, so child was, you know, fairly normal here and there. I did have the trauma. So I did the whole like secrecy thing and, you Know, that didn't serve me well. I found alcohol at 14. I drank, um, maybe like how the book says, like a moderate drinker, right? Like around 14, 14 to maybe 18. I was a moderate Drinker and by moderate, um... By my standards, right. Like I still got wasted. I still blacked out, but I didn't drink daily. Um, I was at a place where, um, I could put it down because I had to go to high school, right, or I had had to go do things or I didn't realize I could drink 24 seven at that point. Um, so I was a moderate drinker and then the, you know, the book big book talks about how we get into a certain type of hard drinker. And so from like 18 to 25, I became that real hard drink room. People started saying funny things to me. Like, can you not start drinking until after the wedding reception or, um, Hey Jeannie, does one seem like too many and a thousand never enough? Like somebody said those words to me and I was like, what the hell are you talking about? Right. Like it didn't make any sense to me because to me it was like I'm going to drink and I'm gonna drink the way that I wanted to. And I probably could. And actually maybe even did because if it was like I was drinking on Friday and Saturday and I had to dry out for Monday and Tuesday, so be it. I still had the power of choice to live my life that way. I had all of the stuff, all of the isms. I still suffered from that spiritual disease that compelled me to drink. It's progressive. I was going to get worse. And one day I ended up that real alcoholic. I went from the cucumber to the pickle. And once we go to that place, we only have two choices. Always from that moment on. the second we cross that line always only two choices and the big book is very clear there is no middle of the road solution when we stand at the turning point we have two choices and we only have those two choices god either is or is not a spiritual life die an alcoholic death and he says it over and over in this book and so you know that fast forward to my late 20s um like, you know, not enough time to go into all of this. I actually forgot to ask how much time I should be sharing Laura. I'm sorry. Oh, uh, nine 20. Okay. Yeah. All right. Awesome. And, um, and so anyway, lots of stuff in there. I mean, like I don't need to drunk a log, right? I don'T need to share the, um the awesome funny stories and the sad, sad, um scary stories. Like, you know, we all have that. We all know what it is. It's relative to us, but it's all the same, same, you know, same party, different day, same body, different alcoholic. It just whatever. You know, no point in that. And we're not here to talk about how I got drunk. We're here to talk about we get recovered. And so I'm in San Francisco and then all of a sudden late twenties, I'm New York city spiraling, right? Because I had passed that point and I can't make much sense of it. And, um, you know, in the space of a year and a half, I went to, um... Gosh, it was so long ago. So it was about 15 years ago. I went two, uh... I went five rehabs, three psych wards, the ER two times, a whole host of stuff that was going on, spiraling. There was other substances other than alcohol involved. You know, because I was doing that alcoholic thing, right? Where I was like, I mean, I hope I'm painting a picture of like how emotionally unstable I was. Right. And that was in tandem with my spiritual disease. The two were so intertwined, but you know, I was doing that thing where I'm like, well, maybe if I don't drink, but I do this other alcohol in another form thing. Right? Or, you know I was during that other crazy stuff. I sat in Starbucks really trying to figure this out. And I believed that I would do this calendar of events, but I was like, okay, I'm only going to drink white wine on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and then red wine. Cause it gets me drunker on Tuesday and Thursday. And the hard stuff is for high holidays and I'll dry out every other week or one week a month or whatever my crazy list was sat alone by myself in a Starbucks and wrote this calendar of events. And like normal people don't do that. And that's also really insane, right? And like that is unbalanced and balance is what I'm seeking today. Andthat's what I was seeking back then, but I didn't know it. See, like my entire life, I was on a perpetual quest. I was always looking to get away from the way I was feeling in that moment because I didn' t have a defense. I didn''t have a way to get to it. I didn'' t have the tools. Remember at five years old, we weren''t sitting at my table talking about my feelings. I had no way to learn how to live. And whether I was five, 10, 15, 25, looking out into the world, it looked like you guys all knew how to lift and that you were in some flow, some rhythm of life that if I could only just tap into it a little bit, then, then you guys, if I can convince you guys that I was like you, then I would live in that life too. And I couldn't get there. I just couldn't, I didn't have the emotional awareness. I didn't have the tools. And most importantly, I was shrouded in this spiritual disease and, and it was, it was bubbling up and there was more and there Was more. And the more I had that disease, that malady, they call it in the book, the more, I had to drink. So in that year and a half and all that spiral, and I was in New York and then I somehow ended up in PA and my last rehab that I went to. You know, my very last drink at that point, that point in my life ended up in a suicide attempt that I did in a blackout that, you know, I came within minutes of my life and I, my family got really involved at that time. And I was whisked away to primary care and secondary care. AndI came out and I started doing the 90 and 90 and I was bringing cookies to the meetings. And I was, and you know, I got a sober boyfriend and I got some sober friends and, and I was hanging out at meetings and I wasn't doing anything but the 12 steps and what happened for me. And this is how I discovered that I get worse, not better when alcohol is removed. AndI don't have that spiritual defense because somewhere around eight or nine, And it just got to be too much somewhere around eight or nine months. It was like rubbing tinfoil together whilst scratching a chalkboard at the same time. I mean, the feeling that I had on the inside was just awful. And it's like, I'd rather drink and feel awful than feel that and feel awful because it was just too much for me. And so after those nine months, I relapsed and I ended up in the hospital again. nearly dying again. And I came back out and I got a new sober boyfriend and I got a knew sober home group and friends. And, and before I was bringing cookies, but now I'm bringing like cookies and donuts. Right? And I'm like, like I'm going to have, I didn't have two sober boyfriends, but I had lots of sober friends. But here's the thing. No steps. Nobody told me there was nobody there to tell me that, you know, listen, if you want to get well, you've got to get the steps in your life. You got to do the program. I was doing all the fellowship stuff, but I wasn't doing the actual work in the program, and when we don't do the work, we don'T get well, and it's not like people were trying to kill me, but they were because nobody was telling me I have to do the work. I just didn't know, and so after that second time, it was like nine months had come around again. And that tinfoil feeling was coming back. And so what happened was I ran into an ex boyfriend, his name was Josh and Josh was really cute and he was a total jerk. So of course I dated him and I dated him for like four years. This was out in California. I mean, this is how I handled Josh. When I was 23 years old, some friends threw me a surprise, like a masquerade party. And he was there. Um, and he needed all the attention and that really, really ticked me off. So I went around to about nine different, uh, girlfriends and said, Hey, go ask Josh to do a shot with you. And, uh、 about 15 minutes later, he was wasted because he did nine shots in 15 minutes and the rest of the party, he wasn't there. He was in the bathtub passed out exactly where I needed him to be. So if that's any indication of the sickness that we were in at that point, um, so anyway, Josh re-enters my life in my early thirties. He's, you know, travels with famous bands and stuff. And he comes to New York. He looks me up a week reconnect and he's sober and he is not the same person as he was. And so here I have eight or nine months genie with the tinfoil rubbing together and that feeling from the inside out. Um, and then here's Josh, a completely different person, not somebody that I tried to get passed out in the bathtub, right? I'm not suffering from road rage, not being at the jerk, just being pleasant and a completely Different person. I could see the psychic change within him. And so, um, you know, what happened was he asked me, he goes, so Jeannie, you're sober. That's great. How's your program going? And I was like, oh, it's great, I go to a meeting every day. You know, I have sober friends, this, that, and the other. That's the fellowship, Jeannie. How is your program going? Well, I bring cookies to the meeting. I have a commitment here. I do this. I do that. I mean, like those are all great things, guys. So I'm not trying to diminish that. But he literally was the one person in my life. It was like God spoke through him. And he goes, no, Jeanie, how is your programme going? And I wasn't well enough. I wasn't balanced enough. I wasn'T emotionally stable enough to receive that and the message that he was getting. And I was like, oh, there's the old Josh trying to tell me what to do, trying to put me down or this, that, and the other, right? Because, you know, I'm dead on the inside. I've been removed from my only solution. I'm not at a good place. I have this big plastic smile on my face. Everything's fine. I'm fine. I'm Fine. But I was not fine. And maybe he knew. I'm Not Really Sure. But I was like, self, right? I was, like, oh, there he goes again. But something happened. It was, Like, my head cracked open, my heart along with it. And then these words came into my head and it said, what does he have to gain to tell you to do the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous? And from that moment, my life changed. I said, well, I've never done the steps. Well, I don't even have a year. What do I do? there's no women in Pennsylvania that were, you know, that are doing the steps. They all just get to gather in women's meetings and talk smack about their husbands. And you know like I didn't have what I needed to get well at that time. And he said here's a woman's phone number and she will sponsor you. And her name was Trinity. And she was my very first sponsor and she took me through those steps. And as a result of doing those steps, so the steps didn't get me sober. The steps got me to conscious contact with my higher power. And that kept me sober for 12 years, 12 years of living in the sunlight. I might add of continuous sobriety and not of my own doing. I didn't do any of that Trinity. Didn't do it. Josh didn't doing it. Nobody that was in my life was doing that for me. I made a decision to do those steps. And in doing those steps, I was put in a life. I was rocketed to the fourth dimension of existence where I was to know happiness and peace and all of the things that I was looking for in the alcohol, the alcohol promised me that I would feel better, but recovery was delivering that. I got better and life got great. And so let me share a quick story about Janet. I'm sorry about Trinity. Trinity was an amazing woman. She was my sponsor for a really long time. And, um, I would call her and complain about my boyfriend and, and people not doing what I wanted. And she would dutifully listen. And then I would complain some more and complain some More. And I was balking on my fourth step. I was almost done with my fourth Step, right? But I'm just not doing it. I'm taking it too long. The tinfoil scraping together. And she goes, you know what, Jeannie, I want you to get a Swansea. And I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm not even done with the 12 steps. She goes, I think it's time for you to get a woman to carry this message too. And I said, but I'm not done. She said, then find a woman that's sicker than you. There's no shortage of sick people in Alcoholics Anonymous, right? Find a womanthat is sickerthanyou and show her the work that you've done so far. And there's a book called AA Comes of Age that Bill Wilson wrote. And on page 21 of that book, they talk about how they had such a demand for people that needed to get well in AA that people that only had a month or a week of sobriety were carrying this message and sponsoring new people so that they could get to the next place that they needed to get so that они могли сделать эти шаги. And я не знал, в то время, что Trinity меня провела так. Вы знаете, но это был Билл Уилсон, один из соотношенных основателей Alcoholics Anonymous. Он написал большой книгу на пять лет собран. Он написала эту книгу, о которой я говорю на 21 или 20 лет собра. and he had been sober for 20 years which means and he'd also been emotionally well right talking about how we can get recovered and that everybody regardless of where the you are where you are on time continuum should help the next person and that's what trinity knew i mean i don't know if she read that part of the book but that's What she was doing to me and i didn't want to and she said well will you pray on it and i said yes i will and because i had had enough of the steps and enough of the program and enough of the direction and enough of that icy heart cracking open and the light coming in. I kept my word and I got to my knees and I prayed that night like I had been doing. And that night I asked, I said, will you please bring a woman into my life for me to sponsor? I didn't believe it was going to happen. I didn'T think it was gonna happen. So I did it. And the next day I was chairing a meeting and a woman walked in and her name was Janet. and um janet was a wreck and she had been sober a couple days and she was bawling her eyes out and she shared that she would just gotten sober and she Was scared to death and I shared during that meeting I guess I was asked to qualify or something like that and I must have said something I don't know what I said but God had me say whatever I needed to and that woman came up to me and she said will you please be my sponsor and these words came out of my mouth and I don't know where they came from. And I said, you know, yes, I will. I said I'm not going to keep you sober. You're going to Keep Me Sober. But I'm going to show you this work and then you're going to show another woman and that woman is going to keep You Sober and that is how we do this. And so remember that name Janet because she's part of my story, right? She's a really big part of my story. So I got sober. I was sober for 12 years but somewhere around the 10th year I had, you know, a baby at the 8th year. At the 10TH year My daughter was a toddler. Um, I have a business, my business started growing and essentially recovery started giving me, God was giving me it's always God giving me all of these gifts. And, um, I was trained while I, you know, I did that. I I've taken well over 75 women through the 12 steps of alcoholics anonymous. And in that period, because there was no, you know, my sponsor was in California. So I had a responsibility and there was a whole crew of us and we were making a difference you know we were all in the fourth dimension right um but as my life got busier and and shiny things got shinier and my ego started to re-emerge and it happens and maybe that's the message i'm supposed to have how do you go from double digit sobriety and living in the sunlight of the spirit to a three-year spree where you nearly die my emotional well-being was the first thing that went because i got super duper well in Alcoholics Anonymous. And then this is, I was recovered. I was recovered from that hopeless state of mind and body. But as quickly as we can be recovered, we can do it. We can be recovering, right? Because when we're disconnected from that higher power, it happens in an instance. And the good news about that is we can go from recovering to being recovered in just as quick an instance, because this is the power of God. This is where we're at. This ist what we're dealing with. But I didn't know any of that because self started coming back. The ego started coming back and the shiny things were more important. And this is what my life looked like slowly, but surely from year 10 to 12 other things were taking a priority over my recovery. I don't need to go to that meeting. Oh, I don' t need to sponsor you. Let me give you to one of my sponsors. I don''t need to sign up for that commitment. I mean, don'' t you know me? I'm a facilitator, you know what I mean? Oh, I read the big book. I speak at in front of 200 people or whatever it was that my head would tell me. And, um, and, uh, it was subtle though. It wasn't, it wasn't a big in your face thing. And so as time went on from 10, the 10th year, the 11th year of the 12th year I was without defense, without a drink, you know, my emotional wellbeing was starting to be shattered because all of the things that come along with the ego start coming back self, the fear, the resentments, the pettiness. And all of these things started consuming me once again from the inside out. But I had a head full of AA. I had an ego that said, oh, not me. It won't happen because I didn't have an obsession over alcohol. I didn'T want it that morning that I, that day that I drank, I woke up recovered, but I wokeup recovered emotionally bankrupt and without a spiritual defense. And so when the stuff hit the fan, and when I was at that turning point, remember, I'm an alcoholic with a chronic disease, right? It will never, ever, ever go away. It was arrested. And then it came back. I was without a defense and I was out there. At that middle of the road. And I made the wrong decision. And I didn't even realize it was happening. And that was on a three-year spree. and I don't want to go into the details of the spree, but I do want to say this. It was a long, hard fight to get back here. I have five months today and not today, like five months and five days or something like that. I had five months of recovery and guys, I am more sober at five months than I was at 10 years because I'm here and I'm suiting up and I get to have the daily reprieve. And that's where step 10 is. The spiritual life is not a theory. And if we're here to talk about 10, 11 and 12, then what we're here to Talk about is how to stay emotionally stable, how to get balanced and how to stay here. So we did all of this work all the way up until nine and 10. That's about keeping the channel clear. That It's about not letting all that stuff that was inside that tinfoil that's rubbing together, not letting that add up to the place that my only option is to drink. It tells us on page 43 of this book, it says we are 100%, not 90%, not 80%, a hundred percent hopeless apart from divine help. And if we don't have that in our lives and he doesn't mince his words every ever, he says every day is a day that we must be the good Samaritan daily reprieve in step 11. It talks about how we wake up in the morning. We get to God before our disease can get to us. We go to bed and we think to God, um, we, um、 get connected to God. Right? So in the morning, in the evening and throughout the day, and the word that he uses is constant. So in step 10, we're keeping that channel cleared. That's not about a gratitude list. I mean, the gratitude list is great, but keeping the channel clear is about as those things that pop up that I drink over, that I am emotionally unwell about that drive me to get to this place. They cannot, they cannot build up. And as the resentments come in and it tells us a very simple formula, and it's a formula that works for all of our problems. If a problem crops up, we take counsel, we pray, we go be of service every single time. And we have to often write it down. I come from a lineage where we write our 10 steps down. If somebody pisses me off, I write down what happened. I write out what my fears are behind that. I look at my part in that and I look out what I should have done instead. And then after I do all of that and I take counsel with my sponsor, I go out and do God's work because the book tells me to, and the book doesn't have lies. This book helped a hundred people less than a hundred years ago. And now it's helping millions of people, right? We went from two people, two hopeless drunks to 20 million in 80 years. I mean, that's a power that I can get into. It's not like it's accidentally happening. Like this is the real deal solution and it works for a real deal alcoholic like myself. If you drink like me and you need a solution like me, then this is what happens for us. And so 10 is about clearing the channel and 11 is about that conscious contact. Remember I told you I picked up and I did not have a spiritual defense that day. I didn't wake up and go, Ooh, I feel like a drink. It was the furthest thing away from me, but my disease was there ready lurking. It Was subtle. It WAS insidious, you know, and looking back, God, it was baffling. Right. And then my mind played tricks on me in those three years. It was like, well, maybe those AA-ers weren't right. Well, maybe you're, maybe it did go away, but like, I know we all know never cured. That's what it says, you know, but the disease is so strong. And what I needed was a higher power. I needed a power that was greater than the alcohol. I need it. A power that was greater Than the spiritual disease and not just any old power. I needed the highest power. That's how sick I am. My friend, Colleen, she's also my sober sister. We have the same sponsor. She says those words, the highest hour, let us get to the highest power that will take care of all of our problems. I'm here to learn how to live a life. I're not here to stop drinking and stay stopped and be happy in between. And so we have 10 clearing the channel we have 11 all right 9 16 guys four more minutes we have um step 11 that helps us to have this conscious contact and it gives us the 11th step prayer right where instead of seeking the love we're giving the love rather than trying to get people to understand us if you only understood me let me pause and get away from myself and get into understanding you this is maturity this is emotional maturity this is something that we have to work from like listen you guys I grew up in a when I was sober for those 12 years that's where I did my emotional growing you know and it was stunted I went from recovered to being recovering to being on a three-year spree right that's the that's The Zig Zag and the up down of my recovery but you know my sponsor tells me she goes Jeannie you are uniquely qualified to talk to another person, another woman about your journey and to help them not have to live that way. Listen, you guys, the last time I drank, you know, I look normal, but the last Time I drank I was taken to the hospital by ambulance with a point for nine, which is enough to be in a coma or dead. Somebody was at my house that's never at my house and found me that way. If she wasn't here, I wouldn't have gotten to the hospital and I would be dead. I have a nine-year-old daughter, but that's the kind of thing that it takes for me to stop drinking. Those are the things. And my eyes wide awake all of the sudden, because now I'm as desperate as the desperate can possibly be. And I'm willing to do this work. I mean, I came back out, guys, I did a 30 hour fourth step. I did a nine hour fifth step. I do not want to die. I don't. And you know what? All of that growing up I did in AA, it never went away. What happened was I just started going backwards. I just started having the ego take precedence over the things and the gifts that Alcoholics Anonymous had given me. And so we clear the channel, we get to God and then we go out and we do his work. And I have my big book right here and I got to read this because this is my all time favorite line in the book. And at the top of page 77, it says our real purpose is to be of maximum service to God and the people about us. To be of minimum service to God and his kids, to be a maximum service to god and my sisters. That's what I'm here to do. what's not about me. I don't know what I said tonight. I don't if I make sense. I do know this. I am here to give at least one person a message, connect with one person about we now have a choice when we make the decision to get to God. Suffering is optional. Growing up in Alcoholics Anonymous is the way to go. It's not always easy. It tells us it's not easy. A price had to be paid And it meant complete self-destruction, you know, destruction of self where we have less of me and more of God. Right? And that happens, that magic happens when we work with another person. And I have to close with this because I have to share this story. I relapsed. You guys know this, yeah? The woman, my very first sponsee, her name is Janet. She never relapsED. she believed every word in this book and she did it. And she stayed emotionally well. And one night she, I was in a desperate place in a dark place and I called her and she 12 stepped me and it's not an easy place to be, to call somebody that you used to work with, right? That you were her very first sponsor. And, um, she came to my home and she12 stepped me and she works with a woman named Amy. And um, and you know, I, I wasn't done that after that 12 step. I had to like literally end up in the hospital, but when I got out and I got to detox and I did the things and I didn't want to die, Janet sponsor, Amy became, she's my sponsor. And when I was making my ninth step amends, uh, to, to Janet for putting her in that position for, um, putting her at a place where she had to 12 step me, right? She's like in my town. What happened was she looked at me and it was the most healing words in the world. Because you know what, you guys, if I had never said yes to her all that time ago, and I didn't say yes to Her because I wanted to, I said yes To Her because somebody else did. But she said to me, Jeannie, you know, it's an honor and a privilege to be a part of this thing that God is doing with us where He brings us all the way full circle. Because my first sponsee today is now my grand sponsor. And it's like, if none of that happened 15 years ago, I wouldn't be here before you guys. It takes a lot of work and it takes the right people being put in our life. And that's what we are here to do. If we don't know how to do it, we take counsel. We ask God for the help and we stick together. And I love you guys and I'm so grateful for this opportunity. Thank you so much each and every one of you for being here.