The Inventory That Saved His A** – Sandy B.

Well, good morning everybody and welcome to the Saturday Morning Live group of Alcoholics Anonymous. My name is Sandy Beach and I'm an alcoholic. How are you all doing this morning? Well, it's good to see everybody. In spite of the bad weather, here we are. Just like we show up at the bars, we're showing up at some meetings. And we would like to extend a very special welcome to anybody who is at this meeting for the first time. If you haven't been here before, why we certainly hope you get something out of it and hope you enjoy it. And if you are new to AA, if you were just arriving in this fellowship, why everybody in the room wants you to make it. They give you their best wishes. They've all been in exactly the same spot you're in if you're just arriving. And AA probably have a lot of fears and not sure you want to be here. wasn't your idea, what the hell are all these people so happy about and you don't like the prospects of not drinking and you just are sure that there's been a big mistake and you're hoping that somebody will come up with an alternate plan to get the hell out of here. And if that's sort of the feelings that you have why everybody had those then we just urge you to stick around, ignore your better judgment and stick around here because there's a lot of wonderful things that are in store for you if you follow this path and there's an awful lot of awful things that are stored for you if you go back to the drinking path so please stick around give yourself some more time and just sit back and you are in charge of judging whether this works better than your old plan and we're convinced if you will just give it a try you're going to have a wonderful year It's customary to start our meetings with our preamble, Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of men and women who share their experience, strength, and hope with each other that they may solve their common problem and help others to recover from alcoholism. The only requirement for membership is the desire to stop drinking. There are no dues or fees for AA membership. We're self-supporting for our own contributions. AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization or institution does not wish to engage in any controversy neither endorses nor opposes any causes our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety so what we're talking about today in the fourth step we have two steps on inventory so inventory ends up being a very important spiritual principle made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves so what are we inventorying for and what is the purpose of an inventory well the purpose of all of our steps comes from the first step where it said we're powerless over alcohol in order to understand the rest of the program we always go back to powerless that is the heart of the problem and it's the doorway in to a spiritual way of life is powerlessness And alcoholics get a real extra benefit because powerlessness is portrayed for us in spades. We get to see what it's really like to be powerless when you're powerless over alcohol. And that is what is necessary in order for anything else to work, is to totally accept and admit to yourself that you're powerless. Not almost powerless. Not almost powerless, but powerless. See, a lot of people come in and they go, well, I have a problem with alcohol. You know what I mean? And you start redefining things so that you're kind of semi-alcoholic compared to the gal next to you who's obviously a complete alcoholic. You know, you know what I'm talking about. And your case is similar, but different. And it's that difference that will kill you. Trying to hold out some claim to unique alcoholic ground is a sure way to not succeed. And each one of us feels that we have a tremendously unique background. Maybe you came from a normal home and it's driving you crazy because no one else did. There appears to be no one from a normal family in the entire planet. They're all in some program because of a unique problem. Rich Parents Anonymous or something like that. In any event, this sense of being different is what has to be hammered down and powerlessness is what helps us do that. We finally ran into something that with all of our resources we're unable to do anything about it. And that's staying sober. That's being powerless over alcohol. And when we say we're powerless over alcohol, we're talking about being powerless when we're sober. It's not the fact that when you drink bad things happen. That's only a small part of the problem. Because if that's all it was all you'd have to do is stop drinking and everything would be fine. But we all know as alcoholics when we stop drinking is when things get bad. You know what happens when you stop drinking? You're sober all the time. All the time, in the morning, in the afternoon, at night, and you're going to be sober tomorrow, and you're gonna be sober the next day, and suddenly it becomes too much, and you go, what's the matter? I'm sober all the time! I'm just... And you go into the bar, and you ask the bartender, have you got anything back there for sobriety? I mean, if a guy's sober, could fix it. You want to become un-sober? You're damn right I want to be un-sober. I need help. And so we get alcohol in our system to take care of some problem. So you can see that the alcohol, it may cause problems, but its primary function is to solve a problem. That's the primary function for this alcoholic. I couldn't stand being sober. Life was too much for me. I needed help getting through life. And for me, alcohol did it. That's what makes me an alcoholic. Other people, they try to use alcohol to help them with life and it doesn't help them. It doesn't change anything for them. They are non-alcoholics. For you and I, it was the answer. It was like a magic bolt from heaven. It gave me all kinds of resources. It changed the entire world that I lived in. It changed everything into a wonderful place. And it changed me into a totally functioning person. How do you learn how to dance? Three drinks. One, two, three, boom! You're on the dance floor. How do I get rid of a depression? How do we go to sleep? How do they get energy in the morning? How do decide whether to go here or there? Easy! You just have a drink. And it becomes a tremendous power in our lives And without it, we are incomplete as human beings. And then we come to AA and people say, just don't drink. And we say, you don't understand. Drinking is my whole act. You're taking away my entire lifestyle when you suggest that I don't drink. So that's what being powerless over alcohol is. It means even when you're sober and you understand completely what your problem is, you're still going to pick up a drink. and it's going to kill you. That's the irony and a lot of people miss that in the outside world. They think that they only look at the alcoholics while they're drinking and watch what happens. Look at their liver and look, they're having a blackout. Look, he's puking. Look, we're drunk driving. But they never look at the alcoholcs when they're sober and they haven't had a drink in a month and they walk into a bar and have a discussion with the bartender and they say, you know, I'm an alcoholic. If I drink, I'll probably go to jail tonight. I mean, I've learned this. I went through treatment and they showed me all of this information about that. Could I have a beer? And I'll tell you what else will happen to me. People just watch us. They think we're crazy. But we're going to... We have no defense against the first drink. All of a sudden, we need it. And it's in there. And then the rest of the rat race starts. And we go to psychiatrists and we talk to our friends and we go To a workout club and we try different medicines and we do everything and we still keep drinking. And so, we come to AA as a last resort not believing that it could work for us and we are taught that it will be useless for you to continue to find ways out there to not drink because there's no way that you will ever be able to stay sober on your own. So the first thing you have to do is surrender. You must give up the idea that you can ever on yourown not drink. And if that's the case you're powerless over alcohol. So the 1st step is how we get into the rest of the program is absolutely essential to take 100%. if we don't totally surrender. The first step is kind of frightening because it's just saying it's absolutely hopeless. There is no way that I can... That's the end of the first step. But if you aren't reduced to a state of hopelessness, it's very unlikely you will turn 100% to the pursuit of a higher power. There will always be reservations because the next thing you're hit with in the program is that we came to believe than a power greater than ourselves to restore us to sanity. And then we made a decision to turn our will over this entire power. And our eyes jump ahead to those two steps which have to do with God. And we run back to the first step and go, I'm not totally powerless. Because if I am totally powerless, I'm going to have to deal with all this God stuff and I don't want anything to do mit that. And so it's essential that we say in AA we don't try to prove the existence of God our specialty is convincing you of the need for God that your situation is the same as a person who fell out of a plane without a parachute it's hopeless and somebody said the one shot you got in this situation is to ask God to help you and it's amazing what our eagles will do Well, I don't believe in God, so I'm just going to splat. There's an alternative. On the way down, you could change your mind. I used to not believe in god. But under these conditions, what the hell have I got to lose? That's the second step. but in order for it to work you have to see that you've already fallen out of the plane that you are that's where you are if you're an alcoholic you've only fallen out it's just a question when you're going to hit that's what being powerless is so we once we understand that then there's no debate about the rest of the program the program is easy it's the fact that you're gonna debate every damn one of these with your sponsor I don't need to go searching in fearless moral inventory. I don' t need to make amends, go back and see those people. That's the hard part of the program. Doing this stuff is relatively easy. It's overcoming your reluctance to do any of these things because you want to stay in charge and you're in charge of your life until I figure my life out. You don' T want to follow another plan. I don'T. Nobody does. That's what our ego wants to take back over And the things that save us, this is why the first step is so important. We just keep reminding each other, Helen, you still don't have a parachute. Oh, yes, I see. Maybe I better continue to rely on something other than myself. And so we always go back to the fact that we're powerless over alcohol. That's the wonderful advantage that alcoholics have. they can totally surrender and alcohol is always there in case we decide not to move on and it just holds a gun to our head and says, oh you're not planning on taking the 10th step? Well, maybe I'll change my mind. So it's that wonderful threat of dying of alcohol that keeps pushing us along this AA path and in the end when we get there or wherever that may be after you've been around a while, and you see that you are moving in a very wonderful direction because alcohol is pushing you that way, then you take credit for it. Well, I decided to become spiritual, and it's quite a wonderful life after all, and I really have serenity now and peace of mind and a sponsor standing there threatening to choke me if I don't keep on going. And so that's more or less what's really happening, but we don't like to portray it that way and in AA we will often say and I decided to take a searching and fearless moral inventory as if it was an intellectual decision rather than save your ass decision. You know what I'm talking about? But if we want to pass it off that way that's fine. So the point of all of this is if we're powerless then we have to find a higher power. That's the only antidote for being powerlessness. There's no other way out of this and the steps are designed to do that. That's the whole point of the 12 steps is to enable you to find a power that will keep you happy and sober. That's The Promise of Alcoholics Anonymous. And it turns out we don't have to go anywhere to find this higher power. We don't need to go to Tibet or any place like that. It has been born inside of us the fundamental idea of the higher power as Bill writes in the big book, was born deep down inside of us much like the idea of a friend. The problem is we have, through our own free will, the power to block out this power. We can, through willfulness and self-centeredness, totally keep this off to the side and run our lives all by ourselves and just be me against the world. Now, when we do that long enough, it feels like there is no such thing as a higher power. I don't see any evidence in my life. I don' t see anything. But we do have. I'll tell you what the evidence for a lot of us alcoholics is. At least I think it is. You live in this life and your people are saying, well, why don't you straighten out? Why don't You stop saying, hey, I'm having a good time. You know, I am out there. I am moving around. It is my life. I am doing what I want and I am having this wonderful time. And you say all these words just to keep everybody away and then it comes late at night and you are sitting on the bed and there is part of you that is thinking of committing suicide. There is part if you that can't stand the way things are. And the question is, what is that part of you? What is that within you that keeps causing this pain when it looks at the way that you're living? What is THAT part of YOU? You can call it a million different things. Your soul, your conscience, your better side, the God inside of you, whatever you want to call it. But it's a rare person who doesn't know what we're talking about when we say there's a part of me that feels something is missing. There's a heart of me that feels I'm still not on the right track. There's part of my that just can't stand the way I'm living. I remember that extremely well and I'll tell you what I was trying to do about it. Now I don't know if any of you went this far in insanity but I saw that this part of me was never going to shut up and that my way of life, because I was an alcoholic, couldn't be changed. I sort of caved in to the fact that I was going to be the way I was for the rest of my life always in conflict with this other part of myself and I was trying to figure out a way to kill my conscience. if I could just quiet that little part inside of me that wanted me to be a good person and just straighten out and do all these things then I could have peace of mind that was the only way I saw since I knew I couldn't change that I could ever be comfortable as a human being if I Could Just Kill My Soul Then I Could Be Happy Now if that is an insanity but I remember it if I can just do that and we come in here and what AA does and what this whole program does, it goes after that part of you that wants to be a better person. That part of us that just wasn't satisfied with the way we were. That part if us that said there's something missing and this is where the higher power is. That whole area has been blocked by our way of life and by our character defects which was on inventory in the fourth step. The fourth step said, made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. And what we're inventorying is our standard issue human character defects coming from human emotions, coming from the raw instinctual drives that make us human beings. This is handed out to everybody when they arrive here on this planet as babies. raw, instinctual drives. The drive for survival, the drive for food, the drive for a place in society, the drive for security. I need security and the drive for sex. And all these forces are just placed in there. Everybody has them. So there's no buddy who escapes this because those raw forces give us the energy to propel us ahead as human beings. That's what causes us to get out of bed in the morning and to go take risks and togo out and do things and those instinctual drives are like the steam, the fire under a steam engine locomotives that used to run by steam you'd build up the fire to give it the raw energy to produce the steam and then they harnessed the steam and it took the train on a trip and it could pull a tremendous load and it could not operate without that raw energy. Could not operate. But if that energy wasn't properly controlled, it could destroy the engine. And you had to have a gauge on there. Now watch it. You can't let the pressure build up this much and if you just disregarded that and allowed the raw energy of the fire to heat the steam up too much, it just exploded. So the very energy that was necessary to run the train could also destroy it. And the same thing with us human beings. The raw energy of our human instinctual drives, which are absolutely essential to propel us through life, if not controlled, can destroy us. And certainly they were destroying us as alcoholics. When you think about it, the whole deal of putting in balance the instinctual drives inside of us so that we can be comfortable with them and have them in their proper perspective is a very complicated process that's extremely foreign to alcoholics. It is called growing up. It is a Very, Very complicated process. AA is not... People who study AA... I've never seen anybody who said, Well, I went to a lot of AA meetings, and one thing that really impressed me there, everyone seemed so grown up. No, no, no. That's not what they say. We're trying to move in that direction, but that is not the adjective that describes alcoholics. Grown up. So we start this thing from an extremely self-centered position as a baby. Think about babies. They have these instinctual things that hit them, their diapers are dirty and they're hungry and they are lying on the wrong side and they got to go over here and they've got to do that. And their way of living is to scream that something's wrong and wait for a grown-up to fix it. I've seen some of us at 43 that are still basically operating from that perspective. We run home, find our wife and go, what's wrong? I don't know but I'm hurting and we want someone to fix this and our problem or our main function is to communicate what the problem was. I thought communication was telling people more about me. You see what I'm saying? with the hope that eventually they could understand and adjust to me or straighten the world out so it could adjust to my life. And I saw communication as a very one-way thing. You ever go in relationships and they go, well, we've got to communicate more. Okay, I'll tell you more about me. I need my eggs cooked this way and I need to... And I thought that was, you know, communication. Well, that is communication from a purely self-centered perspective. And when we start looking at our literature, and the fourth step made us searching a fearless moral inventory, we see that self-centeredness was the root of our problems. We saw everything from a self-centred perspective, and it causes what we call our number one offender in Alcoholics Anonymous, resentment. Because from a cell-centre perspective, we look out, we're still the baby, we have these problems we're yelling and screaming to the world I've got these problems and nobody's adjusting nobody is changing and it's causing a lot of resentments this person isn't there the person at work isn't behaving properly the people in traffic aren't behaving correctly I've Got Tickets to the show and I'm going to be late and this jerk is blocking me and this isn't happening correctly And I'm in a lot of pain, and when I'm in a Lot of Pain, somebody must be doing something wrong. And that's the way I saw the world from a self-centered perspective. And so these character defects were what made me self- centered. They were driven from a Self-Centered Perspective. I think we talked about this last time. How do you become un-self-centered. If you come here to AA and you go, you know, now that I listen and go to meetings, I start agreeing I am self-centered I really see that. And you know what a self- centered person says? I'm going to fix that. I'm going to fixed that self- centeredness. I am going to, and then there you are, fixing self-centeredness all by yourself and when you think about it, that's pretty hard to do so you go how do you get out of self self-centeredness. How can we do it? How can we become un-self-centered? And it turns out, we become higher power centered. That's how we get out of being self-centered. And it's an amazing thing that happens when we go from self- centered to higher power centered or God-centered. Turns out that's the real center. We aren't the center of the planet Earth or of Washington D.C. or of the universe or anything and when we look at everything from us being the center nothing looks right because that isn't the real center it was probably like way back when astronomers were trying to understand the universe and they started with the assumption that the world is at the center and the more they studied it the more it didn't make sense because the movement of certain things couldn't be that way if the earth was at the center and it caused a lot of confusion. And when I look at the world with me as the center, it doesn't make sense. But when I learn how to look at it with a higher power as the centre, it starts looking wonderful because that is the way it really is. So the problem that we have in sobriety is getting a higher of power, getting this power to flow into our lives and it's blocked. That's the deal. These character defects, these instinctual drives that we have been trying to live with in our lives are totally blocking anything from coming into our life. We have the power through our self-will to block out our friends, our family. I don't know about the rest of you drunks, but I didn't want people contacting me. My family, I wouldn't even give them my phone number sometimes. I just didn't like them, that they bothered me. And they were always mentioning, why don't you stop drinking? And I didn' t need that. And so I blocked them out. And true friends, if they got too close, cut them off. So we have the power with our free will to block out friends, love of friends, The concern of the community, the concern of our neighborhood, and a higher power. We can block all that out. The problem is we go beyond that and we claim when we block all this out that it doesn't exist. And that's why we get so cynical. There's no love in the world. I never saw any in here. There's not such thing as good people. I never seen any in there. There's no such thing as God. I never saw him in here. Where was God when I crashed into the tree drunk? You know what I'm saying? And so, just since we don't have any evidence of it, we claim it doesn't exist. And there is no such things as nice people and all of that. And we come in here, alcohol forces us to come in her and reconsider all this. And let's inventory our lives and see if, in fact, our real problem is self-centeredness, fear, resentment. We are totally choked up. I love that word. Emotions got us so choked. It just chokes off any supply. If you could choke hard enough, you can choke off your oxygen supply. And when we choke off the supply of love, the supply OF friends, the supply OF a higher power, we start dying. I mean, that's what the worst part of alcoholism is, is to choke off the spiritual lifeline that all human beings need. So inventory is... You know, when we say immoral inventory, people get uptight about it. They go, well, what did I do wrong? And this makes me a bad person. And we end up with two types of people who are trying to come up to this inventory, made a list of all these character defects, defects whatever things we want to list them as pride greed envy we can use the big book i'm resentful at i'm fearful at and we look at various things that are choking us up or blocking us and we don't have to make it that i'm a bad person i am simply being blocked out from a lot of good things that are waiting to come into my life and if I don't remove these blockages I'm a stupid person but I'm not neither bad nor good it's just why would I leave these stay here but I remember just feeling that I couldn't take an inventory there's two types of people that generally arrive here you're either driven by pride is much more powerful or guilt is much more powerful and the guilt person says inventory me no way I've never inventoried and I'll tell you why I'm not going to go in there and take a look it's going to be so horrible it'll get me drunk I am so uniquely bad this is that guilt thing I caused the hurricane in Los Angeles last week by not living right you know i am responsible i mean this is what the self-centered guilt will just get and we're absolutely terrified to see what might really be there on the flip side of that is the arrogance and pride we come in here and we just go inventory what could be wrong with me? Why inventory now? I've stopped drinking. All of my problems were caused by drinking. Now that I'm not drinking, I'm wonderful again. And then we call the family in and say, tell us about Mr. Wonderful. That son of a bitch is worse now than he was when he was drinking. We're secretly praying he goes back to drinking. he's obnoxious so we find out there's no Mr. Wonderful none of those things they're simply people and that's where we are we are deprived of a lot of wonderful things because we are reluctant to let go and ask for help our egos or insists that we can figure this out. And it'll just carry us right to our grave. And so the fourth step is just saying, let's look at the standard character defects that human beings have so that you can see these blockages in yourself and the disharmony that they're causing in your relations with other people and in the world about you so that wecan set about to get them removed. and the main reason for getting them removed is so this higher power can flow in. It doesn't that when they're removed, we don't suddenly become a better person, but we have this wonderful force that comes in and changes our perspective on the world. The spiritual solution is very similar to the alcohol solution. Nothing really changes out there except when you look around, everything looks wonderful. the power to see things as they really are. And so in our fourth step, when it says make a searching and fearless moral inventory, this is a very emotion-disturbing activity because Phil has a line in the 12 and 12 where it says instincts balk at investigation. They don't really want to be inventories. You're going to find tremendous resistance resistance as you sit down well i think i really will look at what's wrong what's blocking in me and our intellect just goes don't do that go back and look atwhat's wrong with the world that's smart and then you almost get comfortable with that because that's what we specialize in don't take your inventory take his inventory you know that sort of feeling because we don't want the spotlight on us because we've maintained this illusion to ourselves that basically I'm a pretty good person and I'm not and I don't want to become a victim in a lot of things that's happened to me and we just maintain that and this thing is it's actually a very simple process all we have to do is go I am going to go ahead with this I'm going to get a pencil and a piece of paper I'm gonna follow the suggestion in the big book where if you look in the Big Book under chapter 4 It says, list all the things you resent. All the people, principles, and institutions that you resent and just list them down there so that we start acknowledging these forces. More people come in here and claim they're not angry. A lot of alcoholics are. In their class, they almost deny the rage that we have inside of us. We deny, I'm not resentful. If you don't stop bugging me and to acknowledge this is a very hard thing But once we start, we start getting free from it. It's a wonderful process, this inventory. And so all that's required is a decision to do it. There's no great deal. It's not a very complicated thing. If you get your 12 and 12 and your big book, you just sit down and you're going to be listing the same thing the person across the street is listing. That's the funny thing. There aren't unique character defects. We just have to see them in ourselves. That's all we have to do in the fourth step. finally see, oh, this is what the deal is. It's not that China won't trade with us that's causing me my problems. My problem is a resentment. I mean, we finally start bringing the true reality of the situation and what's blocking us from some wonderful things. The last thing I'll make, because I notice it's five after, is this is done by ourselves. and when we get to the end of this we've done the best thing we can we took a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves worked real hard on it we have this piece of paper with all this information that we put down best of our ability and at the top of the list on many of us is character defect of rationalization rationalization we tend to come up with all kinds of explanations and fool ourselves and do all that. Well, if rationalization is at the top of your list, how do you know the list is worth anything? How do you Know It Has Any Value Whatsoever? And that's where the fifth step comes in, which we'll be talking about next week, where we take this and share it with another human being. And this is what really puts the fourth step in. So if you do a fourth step and you really don't feel that you made much progress in terms of change as far as the human being is concerned there's not supposed to be many results there the results come in the fifth step and that's the one we're going to talk about next week we're at the end of the time we have a great way to wrap this meeting up with the Lord's Prayer how are you doing this morning? who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever Amen keep coming back it works if you work it