The Physical Allergy and Spiritual Malady – Herb K – Workshop – Part 10 of 25 – Herb

Good afternoon, good evening, good morning, wherever you are in this world today, actively participating in our big book 12-step workshop. My name is Herb, I'm an alcoholic. Welcome and please join us in the set aside prayer, prayer for an open heart. God, please set aside everything that I think I know about myself, my brokenness, the twelve steps and you for an open mind and a new experience of myself, brokenness the 12 steps and especially you join me in the serenity prayer God grant me the serendipity to accept the things I cannot change courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference we've started step one in earnest my experience over a 12 year period 1984 when alcohol was removed and then I came into AA to about 1996 when completed the work for the third time with a third big book step guide I had three different experiences with the step one in the first four years there was no real experience. It was a conclusion based on misinformation. I was an alcoholic because of drama. I didn't know and nobody corrected me when I claimed to be an alcoholic, because of all of the 502s blackouts and other embarrassing and costly events that first time I went through the steps in 1988 with a man who knew what he was doing himself had been taken through the steps and himself had had a spiritual awakening a brand new experience even though at that point he had been in AA for 25 years and he brought me through the doctor's opinion like we're doing it where I had an experience for the very first time of one ingredient that makes me an addict and that is a defective body at four years of sobriety i went through this work that we're going through here and will finish today and i realized that i had a biological problem which made a lot of sense because i'd had some background in academia so i knew about the biology and i knew about dna and i knew about genetics but that was it i went through the balance of the work during that journey 1988 and i had a very powerful spiritual experience experiential awakening i had both mostly the awakening part which meant that i was changed despite the fact I had a very limited experience and understanding of step one. Three years later, I went through the steps again with another step guide and he introduced me to the next assignment which I'll be giving to you next week. I'm not giving you that assignment this week. I want to finish up with the body assignment as the follow-up assignment for next week. The assignment on the mind, obsession, and delusion. That's the second part of the complete understanding of what an addiction is. in the body when I start I cannot stop and in the mind when I stop I cannot stay stop no cannot not will not cannot stay stop dash that my life had become unmanageable the first half of the first step contains what dr. Silkworth says we have a body problem and a mind problem the second half of the first step unmanageability is unpacked in a variety of places in the big book none of which were the intentional structure by Bill Wilson to take a look at unmanaged ability but the third journey through the step work at ten years of Sobriety revealed to me that unmanageability is the spiritual malady. Addiction is a problem. Unmanageable is the problem. But unmanagability isn't just a problem for addicts, it's a problem for human beings. More about that later. But that's the full panoramic view of step one. There's an illustration in the way of life document I think it's on page five or six or seven right in there of the body and the mind and the will in a triangle and Then toward the end of the material in the Way of Life document, it might be page 13 or 14 That I think is 13 that has a triangle again but fills in the part of the three parts of the first step and that might be a helpful roadmap for each of you to take a look at not that you try to understand it please don't try to do that but look at it like a road map oh now that I've gone through the material on the body I can see the words as listed here in this diagram and they make a lot of sense to me and now that have a roadmap I can see where I'm going even though I don't understand some of the words I know that as we unpack the big book I will be able to flesh out those words and have a complete understanding and experience. I make a distinction I need to know it, understand it, and then connect it to my own history so that I can have an experience the doctor's opinion was very clear he has a primary opinion that we have a body problem he he uses a metaphor he says allergy not because he's a scientist diagnosing it with critical research no not at all he's a psychiatrist that is trying to help people but with his medical background he says it looks like it operates like it has all the parallel dynamics of an allergy a regular allergy when you're exposed to cats if you have a dander allergy your eyes water your throat closes you find it very uncomfortable to breathe it just happens because of the biological exposure to dander some people have a similar reaction to ingesting shellfish although actually some people can die from that it's that biological negative so he's making a comparison of what he is observing once an alcoholic takes the drink he loses control and drinks more than he intended that's just simple as I can put it and And you'll note in the several places that we pointed it out, the chronology, the way the doctor uses craving. The craving never develops until after you have the first drink. when you put the alcohol into your body, and the body begins to process it, the cellular structure converts the alcohol chemicals into the body chemistry. And that's a trigger where the cellular infrastructure demands more of that chemical. It's a biological imperative, a biological mandate. Those are not words in the big book. I use them intentionally to give you a new understanding and a new experience with the power of this and the point of this step one comment that we're powerless, meaning no choice. Once I put the chemical in my body, I lose the power or choice. My biology then takes over. Now, we've used that similarly to understand drug addiction. Whereas alcohol is probably a dysfunction of alcohol and the liver. Drugs are probably a disfunction of the brain. Some sense of reaction that the scientists really haven't got a descriptive handle on at this point but there's lots of speculation that that's the source of the genetic reaction similarly to the alcohol liver reaction it appears that food might be a combination of the some body part that doesn't process sugar properly or flour properly in the same way the alcohol creates an allergic reaction using that in the broadly metaphoric sense some foods do the same thing to some people I don't have a problem with sugar or flour so it doesn't happen to me other people have a problem with sugar and flour and they may have problem with peanuts or they may problem with dairy products where they may have problems with quantity both over quantity and under quantity very tricky very tricky addictions and then there's the process addiction there's no substance involved at all gambling pornography work exercise religion once I start I cannot stop is the only criteria here of the problem with the body bill tells his story pages 1 through 8 that we looked at in terms of watching his spiral disintegration, bottoming out on page eight. That's where we stopped. We'll pick up the balance of the story in step two. But we go on because the book has more to say about the problem of the body and the mind in general terms, pages 17 to 23. Bill makes the comments on page 17 the chapter is entitled there is a solution the feeling of having shared in a common peril is one element in a powerful cement that binds us one element common problem but now he's saying down below in the next paragraph we also have a common solution that's the other element for identification a way out join us in brotherly and harmonious action great news the term gospel means good news on page 18 he describes a little bit more of the bottoming out experience addiction along with it goes annihilation of all things worthwhile in life it engulfs all those who lives touch the sufferers it brings misunderstanding fierce resentment financial insecurity discusses friends and employers warped lives of blameless children and sad wives and parents Anyone can increase the list. He gives a description there of what might look like somebody who could help. He doesn't use the word sponsor, but he could have from my standpoint. The paragraph in italics, you can read that on your own. A great description of saying that you can't really help somebody till you understand yourself. my sponsor said doing steps four and five is how we get to understand ourselves and he said it was his opinion it's just an opinion that you can't be a sponsor to somebody until you finish your fifth step because you're communicating the disease rather than the good news and the next paragraph really profiles what a legitimate helper sponsor step guide would be read it in that context no rules just the desire to help as he says page 19 we feel the elimination of our addiction the abstinence is but a beginning the real truth is we need to deal with our unmanageability and live by principles I'm summarizing in my own words how shall we present what has been so freely given to us page 19 we have concluded to publish an anonymous volume setting forth the problem as we see it We shall bring to the task our combined experience and knowledge. This should suggest a useful program for anyone with a drinking problem. Most of us sense that real tolerance of other people's shortcomings and viewpoints and our respect for their opinions are attitudes which makes us more useful to others. Page 20. Notice it wasn't about becoming happy and serene and useful, I mean, and successful. It was about becoming useful. On page 20, our very lives as ex-problem drinkers depend upon our constant thought of others and how we may help their needs. Bill projects that the unmanageability is the spiritual malady and the nature of that is selfishness and self-centeredness if that's true and we'll see it as proposed in the big book later on if self-centeredness is the problem then other centeredness is the solution and that's the turning that Bill suggests we commit to in step three and implement by completing steps four through nine. Our desire to turn and our experience of being turned. That's my experience with this work. I made the commitment, I prayed the prayer and I did the work because I wanted to change. I wanted it to be a part of my life. I wanted my life to turn my life around. when I finished the ninth step and I looked back over my shoulder I realized that although I had been willing to turn the reality is that I was turned here the spiritual awakening here the power other than myself I did a lot of work absolutely I got a lot information absolutely I had a lot of experience, absolutely. But the outcome, the change, the transformation was disproportionate to my contribution to it. That's why Bill calls it a spiritual awakening and not just a psychological transformation. On page 20 he says, so what do we have to do to recover from this hopeless condition of mind and body? Bam in that second paragraph. It is the purpose of this book to answer this question specifically. We shall tell you what we have done. Please hear the vocabulary. He doesn't say we're going to tell you What we know We're going To tell you What we thought We're Going To tell You What We Discussed We're Going To Tell You What We Wrote No That's Not What He Said We're Going To Tell You What We Did one of the more famous elders here in california died in 1984 when i came into the program chuck chamberlain and he would say action is the magic word i just love that It gives us lots of looks at what an alcoholic looks like here on page 20 and 21. If you want an additional look at that, pages 108 to 110 will give you a very deep look at the four stages of deterioration as Bill outlines them I believe it's in to the wives pages 108 to 110 four stages he delineates the deterioration you can see for yourself whether any of that relates to you and at what stage you might be if you're still in your addiction or where you were when you got the freedom from your addiction with the gift of abstinence the key is on page 21 the real alcoholic he says loses control once he starts hear it allergy craving once i start i lose control a senseless series of sprees on page 22 and we try different things like not only with alcohol but trying drugs this was bill's experience this was bob's experience i'm not saying they were drug addicts but they certainly use drugs both of them to attempt to deal with the problem they were experiencing with alcohol very clear on page 22 our behavior patterns vary why does he take the first drink common sense and willpower not effective we are equally positive that once he takes any alcohol whatever into his system something happens both in the bodily and mental sense which makes it virtually impossible for him to stop reinforcing the doctor's opinion and he says the experience of any alcoholic will abundantly confirm this of course that's where the assignment stops because Bill then makes the observation well if that were the only problem then stop it if that we're the only then stop well every one of us has had the success of stopping for a day or a weekend or a week or a month or a year or ten the definition of stopping is stopping not having a period of abstinence and relapsing that's not stopping the definition of stop is stopping without relapse a real addict cannot stop on their own power and cannot stay stopped on their own power that's the whole point here and so he says so obviously the mind is the crux of the problem and that will be the subject of our next time together I want you to complete that questionnaire on the body if you haven't already And we'll talk today about that as well as looking at it again next week. Because it's really important that those who want to share their actual experience with the phenomenon of craving. Because as you share your experience, other people measure theirs by that and or have a new information and or even a new experience with their own experience. and it's certainly the knowledge is important every one of you have expressed their gratitude about having new information or at least a clarification of the information in the big book concerning craving and allergy and phenomena the problem of the body and that knowledge was important to me but it was much more important for me to have my experience and this man had me write out specific experiences where i lost control i did not intend to have a second drink i did not intent to stay in the bar till closing time i did not intend to get drunk to the point that i blacked out i did not intend that and yet that was my cyclical periodic experience over a 20-year period and i was never able to see it the cyclical problem was the problem of the body they're not able to see it was the problems of the mind we're being very arbitrary by separating them but i believe it helps us get a deeper grasp and have a deeper experience with our no choice concept so i'd like to chat with some folks today about their step one body experience interpretation of the doctor's opinion or Bill's commentaries from his story pages 1 through 8 for his commentary 17 to 23 you can talk about the highlights that I've talked about in your own way or you can about material that I didn't make any comment on it's rich with lots of questions and comments and experience my experience was that I did answer the questions a few times so I did kind of work through them after discussing them I came back to them and you know the first question for me was you know very much that thing of my experience of addiction is that it's it's instant that my life becomes just food sensation I lose all connection it engulfs me and it's a cycle of death really it's like a living hell that's right yeah and it it's real yeah and a slow a slow way to death and then it leads to like suicide and suicidal thinking or eating walking across the road and want to be hit by a bus. What happens when I indulge in it? What happens when I'm indulging in this, in the addiction? Those things, that's a slow way to death. I lose respect. I lose dignity. I lose- See all that is just story now. The real answer to the question after you take the first bite, what do you do? Oh, I just want more and more. I take the second bite. the only answer totally it's pretty no but you have to hear the simplicity of it yep got it got it i take the second bite and it becomes a chain reaction that's it okay and see if the hope is that you can the words are so simple but the hope is that You can connect it to a whole chain of events over a long period of time and you can see oh my god that's crazy and yet it's my personal experience yeah i can see that there's there's no story there's you don't need many lines in this book there's everything after the first bite is just drama totally predictable now it may not it may not happen every time and there are some people here like myself i i was able to take a drink and go back to work take a drink and go home at home have a drink and have dinner i was able to do that even in the last year or two before i stopped but of course the periodicness of it was more frequent go ahead i'm sorry go ahead that's okay yes and with that i mean sure i could go on a diet for a short amount of time or do something and you know get away with it but it didn't come without mental obsession or thinking about it yeah that's the that'll be the issue that we'll begin to explore next week so once you have this information that you lose control once you start then the real question is well why do you start that's not a question that we're going to explore today but bill bill is trying to keep us focused on the body problem that once i start once i star the doctor's opinion is i'm lost once i start now that sets us up of course to have a new experience with then why do i start in the first place because i know or at least i experience suffering every time i do that but the real question here is what happens when i start Things like I'm looking at why I haven't been in a relationship and some maybe behaviours in my thinking and I'm waiting kind of to talk about the unmanageability that I know you said we'll get to but the things that I want to work on in my life today aren't so obvious at the moment. I'm excited to look at that and I'm a bit anxious to go, what is it now? I want to fix it now. Well, but see what you're doing is wonderfully creative, is looking out. So what else in my life is a source of suffering? And is it in the category of addictive behavior? Exactly. codependency is an addiction i'm merely supporting you and dropping in a new word that a lot of people know about but may not be exploring and the way you talked i felt that it might be a symbol that represents many of the dynamics that you were talking about that you're not in a relationship that you have other issues that are sources of suffering i don't know what that is but i want to support you and everybody else on the line that opening up your entire consciousness to these questions not just with regard to your addiction i'm so glad you pressed my button on this that you're looking at it in any area of your life that's creating suffering and asking yourself is the source of this another addiction yes a process addiction is really what I'm referring to which is in fact more difficult to identify yes yes and perhaps it's addiction perhaps it who knows what level of addiction well it may not be an addiction it might just be a way of thinking that's habituated and it's just unhealthy because addiction addiction and unhealthy habits are quite different okay great you can readily change an unhealthy habit with self-knowledge self development and a little therapy yeah but you cannot change an addiction through that and the other thing I was going to say yes because you know there was part of me that thought oh i i don't i when i chose to do this um i was like oh i should do sla uh or something um i'm gonna go and start a whole new program yeah and then i chose because i thought perhaps i don t need to do a whole new programme i just need to have a look at some of these things and so it may be i'm not saying it first of all i'm endorsing your questioning but i'm not supporting going into another program at this point but i am saying it's an alternative i explored al-anon after 10 years in aa i'm married i was married to an alcoholic woman as i mentioned she died three years ago but um at 10 years of sobriety because i'm married to an alcoholic woman in recovery i thought maybe alan and for six months i was serious i went to two meetings a week etc etc but i decided like you're anticipating here yeah i probably need to just recommit to my program my primary program get to work in the steps and i did that and i Did the steps again and I found out what the problem was me i was the problem oh oh crap not the answer i was looking for i was looking for a new wife i'm pretty sure i'm the problem um and i too have been in fa since you know 2005 and started in al-anon both parents alcoholics and um did the steps in fa and i did them in al anon in fa And I've also done, you know, DA because what comes from alcoholic parents, dysfunction, unmanageability around money, sex, love, relationships. Right, right, right. I've just been looking to fix. And so your intuition concerning unmanagability is spot on. Because that's where the underbelly of all of this is, is in the area of unmanangeability. and I'm still not completely sure what you mean by that you're not because we haven't done any work there yet and we will spend the concluding time today on the body then move into the mind for next week and for a month and then we will move into The Will and spend two or three weeks there and that's about unmanageability so all i'm doing is saying your instincts are good you're very engaged you're asking wonderful questions hold them okay be prepared to just hold them and allow the energy of an asked but unanswered question very uncomfortable if you like closure like i do but hold it to let it percolate and take you to a place that you don't even know exists if you can hold off on any substantial decision changing partners changing homes changing jobs whatever any substantial if you Can Hold Off until you finish at least your fifth step maybe and more preferably your ninth step you will be making a better decision because it will be more you that is making those decisions based on more reality that you will see by that time there are some decisions that can't wait that's just between you and your sponsor what I am saying is the first decision that I had to make that I was doing when I was doing this work was about my job and I made it after I finished my ninth step and it turned out wonderfully the second decision was but about my marriage when I worked the steps the second time it turned out wonderfully both opposite what I started the steps for I started this steps to keep my job and I lost it the second I'm I started two steps to lose my wife and I kept her that's what I'm saying III don't even know who I am until I finish the ninth step and what the nature of the problem is until I finish the ninth step yeah okay thank you thank you brilliant discussion thank you um I wanted to talk about the body and wanted to talk about that because it's interesting to me that's okay the worksheet yes please perfect um the question is what is my experience with addiction you know I've caught myself because I put complete powerlessness and I think well you didn't even know what that word meant prior to this so i waited and i asked myself because it says what was my experience and what i came up with was i mean as as a lot of people know i got sober really young but i came out with i i got mad at somebody and i was like i'm gonna go have one kamikaze and there were those little shots back in the 80s right and i Was like I'm going to have one and i met my girlfriends and we had i had one kamikaze i do not remember the rest of the night and i got a dui that night did you have more than the one kamakasi one would assume that i did based upon the fact that my intention literally was to be late for this date and have one kamukazi it's like i'm gonna go to the grocery store and get some bread and i'll be right back that was seriously my intention but the powerlessness over my body once i had that one kamikaze and then i thought okay well that's a great because i could i didn't remember that and then the other one was i could drink a whole bottle of wine and be completely sober and then one glass of wine i would be completely drunk so it was already completely unpredictable by 21 when i ingested alcohol what the outcome was going to be and that was it's really um your body was becoming intolerant actually completely and so my purpose i couldn't figure out why and i couldn t stop and i just felt like a visitor in my own body i did things that i had no intentions of doing that were completely off my moral compass the minute i ingested alcohol and i still am baffled by that well alcohol chemically is a depressant but what does it depress it depresses our inhibitors that's why we use it at parties so that we can be more free with our emotions and our body and our everything all right so it's yes when we drink excessively alcohol it really suppresses those moral compasses that we would normally even common sense use and we do things that we wouldn't otherwise have done and sometimes we realize it and sometimes don't yes i uh i was a little more humbled by this than i thought because i didn't even know i didn again i hear people saying they tried to control i never drank to control anything it was on so and and i had a different experience and you were very young um i started drinking at 24 because i was in the monastery before then but at 24 i began to drink alcoholically immediately picked up where i left off at 17 which means that periodically i would pick up a drink intending to have one and i would have way more than one but regularly regularly in the beginning i could have the one or two and then do whatever it was i was going to do i didn't lose control but the vicious part of this is you never know when you're going to lose control when you're a periodic or if in fact you're having a different experience you don't actually know that it's going to happen like you said uh you had the kamikaze now after the doi did you quit drinking or did you go to aaa or what was your experience yeah so this was in 1980 yeah i did i did get sober they told me statistically that if i didn't i'd get my second dui within six months and so i started going to the bars trying to drink diet coke and i did one night i would see people at aa i actually loved when i first started going to aa i just thought it was gritty and gross and i thought oh i love it i love it because you could smoke and but um it would take me another month to to fully succumb that the the the song of aa overpowered my wanting to continue to feel crappy all the time so i gave it a chance yeah well let me ask something because you just raised something a question in my mind so you had the kamikaze you had the DUI you had be embarrassing experience between your DUI and your abstinence did you drink during that time yes yeah did you lose control during that you know I think my body was so sick at the time I couldn't overindulge yeah yes I don't recall again it's all really fuzzy but i don't i think my body was just so sick by then that when i tried to drink i would get physically sick interesting interesting you must have really done a job on yourself right well you know you were protected then because if in fact you had processed it successfully you might never have gone to or stayed in aa so that was a real gift um but I guess the power of the one incident where you intended to have one drink and ended up in the DUI that's a sufficient example of what we're talking about in terms of the biological imperative right yes yeah yeah once you start you cannot stop well I almost feel like too I just kept getting caught after that so when I went to the court you know this guy is like he's like you know what you might be cute and you have great eyes he goes but you're a fucking i mean sorry he was like you're drunk and as a result of that young lady i not only think you're not cute you put five people in i mean like that's how i kept being talked to it was like thank you that i finally got caught people told you the truth rather than save your feelings yes yeah and after this year now finally understand my addiction I've been in food programs for two and a half years and because I've never done any disgusting things I kind of didn't feel like I relate or my addiction isn't that bad and I have some kind of control so I would think yeah I'm an addict but I am NOT so I don't know why and now I understand because even me trying to to find evidence that I'm not a I don't have a food addiction is part of the addiction yeah you're trying to save your face here right so let me ask you you have a suspicion at least that's why you're here that you have an addiction is the addiction in the food area yeah yeah and what what was happening to me like when i read that um you know that example that we try different strategies like switching from wine to beer this is what i did in terms of food i switched from high calorie food to low calorie food and because they do that but but let me ask this why did you even switch what was motivating you to switch uh in order to to keep my weight in a healthy range why were you having a trouble with your weight were you losing control when you ate yeah tell me about that specifically what would happen what would you be doing eating what particular food and what would happened uh so i would i would try not to eat until i get very very hungry and then I couldn't stop so let's assume you're very hungry and you sat down to eat what would you be eating oh it didn't matter like it doesn't matter what what did you intend you you created a plate of food for yourself because you're really hungry and you're gonna eat that food that that plate of was what was your intention when you sat down to eat that plate of food what was your intention to stop when the plate is empty and how did that work and then i got a second plate no i knew the answer yeah of course that's what did it happen only once no you but you did learn after the second time yeah I've been doing this for a while I know the answers I'm trying to kind of bring it out of you know and it happened the third time in the fourth time and well now I need to change my calories tell me how much yeah I'm just shocked that i couldn't see it for the whole year and it's now just coming to me that knowledge you know and it's so so so obvious and not until you see it it's not the shock that i had at age 43 with a graduate education in philosophy theology and psychology and i had trained to be a psychologist i had lots of therapy i was trained to be a therapist the biggest shock was not that i was an alcoholic the biggest shocked was i had never seen it i had ever seen it and i'm i'm sensing that you're having some of that new awakening now yeah and it's kind of a big relief because now i don't need to understand i don t need to control it i can just surrender it and my my higher power can take over yes in fact you can't control it yeah on your own power this is i cannot control my alcohol it's not not because i'm a bad person but because i have a genetic predisposition once i take alcohol i can't control it and here's the really nasty part we'll look at that next week we'll begin to look at it is even stopping for 90 days and committing to stopping i start again did you ever have a period of control of a weekend or a week yeah I had control for four two years and this is where my mind goes back all the time and it doesn't matter how long ago those two years were so we'll be exploring that with you when we look at the mind part problem You had two years, so you were successful in doing your diet. But this isn't about diet, is it? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much. And what this exercise brought up for me actually, Herb, was a lot of sadness and, I mean, mixed feelings of shame, sadness, compassion as well. you know that's nice that's great when you get the compassion because you connect to the to the powerlessness of it that you were self-defeated before you even started and you didn't know it and that's why you tried so hard yeah yeah and um and i mean for me my food addiction was present as a child i'm not sure at what point i crossed over from being a little girl that loved food to a little girl that used food like i can't pinpoint that doesn't matter yeah but i've been there it's been with me for as long as i could remember yeah yeah you know i hear people talk about crossing the invisible line and i understand that my wife had that experience she had no alcohol till she was 21 good catholic irish girl that she was and um and that was her experience progressively by the time she was 30 she was in fact probably addicted and an alcoholic i was 12. my very first drink was a blackout drunk wow yeah yeah so there was no invisible line for me so he's once again bill just said it i read it our behavior patterns differ yeah yeah and i was a binge drinker too as a teenager um i was a binge anything right i was i've been to everything that i did and the trick here is distinguishing between age appropriate experimentation and peer pressure on the one hand and legitimate addiction on the other hand that that's a tricky one yeah i just know that my primary um addiction the one that i had the most trouble with was food like anything else i did was in order to stop the food so for example you know like where it's like what is my history of attempts to deal with it to stop after i start well the most extreme thing i did wasn't develop an addiction to methamphetamines yeah because that was a power greater than my food i love the energy right i just didn't like what i felt like after that it all worn off i literally took the methamphetamine for a little while but then i didn't Like the feeling afterwards so i just stopped it see i'm not a drug addict i would take a little cocaine during my drinking time so that i could drink longer but i never went looking for cocaine yeah i was a top-up addict in that in the in that sense i don't think i know what it felt like to come down i was always like that yeah um but yeah but that was something that i did that sounds like that's your your your uh dna personality just listening to you here you have a lot of wonderful energy so i imagine you apply that to everything that you do sometimes successfully and sometimes a little bit erratically the truth yes that's right looking at unmanageability because that's the resolution to managing and containing that energy yeah a fire on the prairie is devastating a fire in the stove is wonderful unmanageability dealing with it allows us to contain the fire and make it productive yeah yeah the wonderful picture uh one of the purposes of meditation is to channel the fire into the fireplace yeah once I start I can't stop I'm a person of extreme how long did that go on I seriously I'm the youngest of seven of a food addict family yeah hands down I had a brother who died of Pickwick Ian syndrome that's where the weight of your body crushes your respiratory system my gosh it's an extreme form extreme form of sleep apnea so I mean there's just hands-down DNA and and I'm a biologist with an emphasis of human disease I totally get the body I totally got the allergy yeah when you talk alcohol it's alcohol is sugar in a grain fermented yeah I can't eat sugar and flour and flour in my body turns into a sugar I'm sure there's a correlation yes there's a strong correlation i have no problem with the body you put it in me and yeah i can give you the drama but i won't well so but but how long were you conscious of the cycle of taking it and losing control yeah i mean i started young and i was conscious that i couldn't control it i and also conscious and unconscious i knew once i stopped i started i I couldn't stop but would be how long how long was it one year or 20 years or oh I didn't come into program till the age of 42 my question but okay my question my question is how many years were you aware of the cycle of once you began you couldn't stop at least 20 years thank you let's just go with that I mean I'm not keeping records so I don't really care but I want I want you to answer it so that we can explore it with the balance of the group so that they can answer it themselves asking themselves this question so for 20 years you were conscious that once you began you could install did you try to stop after you begin yeah I tried to control it I couldn't good control my eating and it was very progressive with me and that was obvious so here's the next question then did you have a time where you were conscious of the cycle and with your willpower not start for a while no i always started there you go all right i already started all right see that's my life that might that was my wife's experience she was a chronic uh that wasn't my case i quit for a weekend i quit för a week i quit für a month I quit for January, I quit from Lent. All through a 20 year period, I was able to quit regularly for long periods 90 days at one point. But I always started again. Yeah, no doubt. I always started. I'm glad we pursued that because there are people on the call but had both experiences. Some had the chronic. No, I never stopped. I was never able to stop starting. And others will Yeah, stopped regularly during a diet period I stopped and but I always started again because I'm setting us up now for the call for next week okay yeah keep doing the same thing over and over again that's I understood that part that's the nature of addiction but what was the theme that you said was the reason for your recurring cycle the dishonesty yes yes the big book is absolutely right chapter five as he begins he spends several sentences and a couple paragraphs on the importance of rigorous honesty right yeah right yep with ourselves and with others yeah and i only i always thought it was just around the food well I was talking to my sponsor one day and I mentioned to her that I had gone shopping but I had left the bags in the car because I didn't want my husband to see them and she said to me well that's a form of dishonesty you know and one of my teachers you've probably heard me say it before and you will hear me say it before our time is up in the year-long workshop one of my teachers says what we do any one place we do every place yeah now you may not be aware of it but you're beginning to be aware that dishonesty is one of your core mechanisms for coping with getting what you want right right yeah and yet sometimes it works what you want does it yeah no no no not always no that's wonderful i feel like i've really resonated with what a lot of other individuals have shared in terms of this idea of like i'd ask myself okay looking back at my experience when did i have control i'm like hmm okay yeah no i'll really ask myself the question when did I have control but I realize um i've i've never had control um and the last sentence you've just had about the fantasy of having control that's what i've had my whole life and it's funny how right now i kind of feel a little bit like dumbstruck because i'm like but but but this what about that what about but i realized like um i i've substituted yeah and it's those moments of substitution where i've gone oh i've been able to control it but it hasn't it's when the food hasn't been an issue relationships have been the thing that's been holding me together and then relationship doesn't work back to food and then i find creative exercises that i'll just get obsessed with and then when i see that that's not working anymore i go back to phoenix there's always just been this cycle um and it spent the movement between those cycles that i've confused for having control over but i don't know the idea of have i ever controlled food i or when did i when did I realize i didn't have control i i i've never realized until i found 12 step like it was when i was doing my fourth step in a different fellowship and I had one of my trigger foods next to me eating whilst I was doing my fourth step. I was like, it's been food. It's been good. I'm 35 and it's been food my whole life. I've never seen it. But then suddenly I realized how all my thoughts have always been about food, always been a diet mentality. And then also how i can't get rid of that lens even even now like with abstinence like i i say i'm abstinent because i'm abstaining but even then it's like every single day i have unmanageability and i i see it and i can do anything about it you know um it's it's not as bad as it was but it's there you know yeah I don't know one of the moments that I had just like yours was when I was very clear that I Had a drinking problem I was 43 years old and the hospital had asked me to ask myself some questions and to write out a little autobiography of my relationship with alcohol which i did bullet points and then i read it to a group in that hospital program my wife was in the hospital program for her alcoholism i was there to support her and they were trying to help me help her they said they tricked me and um and as i wrote it out and then as i read it out i became aware that i had a drinking problem and i wasn't shocked that i had a drinking problem it did explain an awful lot of my past and my behavior what i was shocked like you i was shock that i had never seen it i'm 43 years old i have a graduate education in philosophy psychology and theology i have spent my entire life reflecting on me with professionals and i had never seen the real source of my problems i was like totally embarrassed but in a state of shock yeah yeah and and and it's a moment of grace when we wake up to a new truth like that yeah just this voice in my head that has impatience about it yeah as well you know yeah it's like um yeah well that helps a lot doesn't it no it doesn't at all but then yeah that's right yeah but i guess you know you have to see it first and accept it before moving forward well see and that's how we're built we need to know something before we can do something that's the order of things that's why we do need to get information about the problem the real source of the problem then we can take effective action to deal with the problem but if I don't know better I can't do better but just because I know better doesn't mean I'll do better yeah so next week we're going to look at knowing better and realizing that even knowing better we're powerless to do better and that's why step 11 is so powerfully structured and it was what gave me the insight concerning the brain structure in the structure of the steps because it ends praying for the knowledge of God's will and the power to do it in the doctor's opinion on page 29 is it 29 it says as strange as this may seem to those who do not understand once a psychic change has occurred the very same person who seemed doomed who had so many problems he despaired of ever solving them suddenly finds himself easily able to control his desire for alcohol and um i want to say that because one of your questions was what's your personal experience with addiction and i want to say that i came into the program you know to 12th step as a marijuana addict and i can 100 say that that obsession was lifted years ago and um same with alcohol and it just baffles my mind that this ism has found its way now and I know a lot of people are talking about food, but it's there for me too. And if you look at me, I'm not very overweight. It's very hard for me to say I'm an addict, even though I haven't gone to the extremes of like with my hot smoking and the awful things I did or with my drunks. so but yeah but the the question it's really important to ask the right question okay addiction addiction is not about the behavior addiction is not about feelings addiction is NOT about the thought addiction is about the engagement with the substance or process so there's only one question that we're looking at here what what do you see as your primary I'll use the term addiction what is the why are you in a 12-step program my primary addiction was marijuana all right absolutely did you ever have an experience of losing control using more marijuana than you intended every day tell me about what was your thinking how were you going to control I would put it off in the morning to make it as late as you know I would say not yet not yet not yet eventually smoke which was usually late morning and and the first thought I had as the substance reached my brain was note to self don't wait so long next time all right all right yeah so what but once you started what was your intention what were you going to do were you gonna smoke one where i don't know exactly how you would you you deal with it is it smoking yes smoking all right were you gonna smoke wine or were you're gonna smoke six or what was yours what was your criteria of what you were going to do i was just going to smoke a little the rest i would hide in different places yeah and i had it i had a toddler so i had that were you able to smokea little and then stop nope did that happen more than once or twice or three times yes over what period of time was it a regular failure on your part i would say over a two-year period of time when it was at its height and um how often did you smoke every day from morning till night and you lose control every day yeah wow so that's a chronic ad addict yeah it was um you know they say wake and bake and you know until i would fall asleep no i have never heard that so because i'm not in the drug world yeah yeah no no um and when it wasn't around me too yeah yeah when it wasn't around it was alcohol you know so well okay so let's go there for a minute then yeah so um did you have a problem with alcohol yes yes um tell me about what you how do you determine problem Because I couldn't stop. I would put that one off till evening, till like making dinner time, and pour a big glass of whether it was tequila or vodka or something added with sugary juice, and it was never just one. Did you have a second one and then stop then? tough to say because i was smoking pot at the same time so it was a balance and then oh tell me about the balance of fine art tell me tell me about the ballads how often did you achieve balance no herb i was miserable i was miserable i know the answers yeah you see you said i i was attempting to achieve balance did you ever achieve the balance that you wanted no no and one more thing huh one more thing i was working at that time and i couldn't go more than one hour without smoking but i had these five-hour shifts and i used to smoke in the spa and then try to hide it and then work on my massage clients and finally they fired me no no you were very relaxed trying to relax them I was a long time ago yeah it's all right but but you have the you have now though a connection between what I'm talking about in terms of this is biology yeah and I never got that really until now they'd always turn me off the thing about the allergy and I don't like because most people just don't spend some time unpacking it it might be very tedious to some people but these are the kind of questions that i i was asked myself and i had to come to it so that i actually had a visceral experience oh my god i was four years sober yeah i didn't know until the man spent the time with me like i'm spending with you i mean he was a real drill sergeant you know just pounding on what's your experience herb what did you drink when did you dream how much did you think what was your intention and i had to write it out i had talk it out and eventually oh my god i regularly lost control i mean literally my intention was never to drive high with my son and his little friends in the car sounds like my wife and when she started then driving high and drunk she finally put herself in a hospital because that was that had gone over the edge for her i never knew any of that i was busy living my life thank you very much i maintain abstinence from flour sugar quantities as well as from artificial sweeteners which for me caused me to have problems so i look at them also as i have an allergy and i know that because i once had been abstinent from artificial sweetness this is before i was in the program um when i was messing and trying to control everything um i tried to be abstinent form artificial sweetners for probably about nine months and i did a really good job i went to a party went out on the deck opened the cooler up reached in pulled out a diet pepsi drank it and then didn't stop the whole rest of the night and just was appalled ashamed i went home i ate the entire house um and i just i mean that just always strikes me it pulled the trigger it pulled a trigger and i couldn't stop i couldn' stop my car couldn't start my car had the same problem i did um you know i couldn''t drive past a wawa or a it's like a fast food place without stopping in the morning to get a sandwich um even though i'd already had breakfast you know um and i didn't want to i didn t want to do it but i still would do it so you know that kind of specificity that really helps you have an experience but it helps other people all to get more specific the more specific we get all right i can remember a luncheon just before Christmas in a business meeting one-on-one and the guy had asked me a vendor if I had time for lunch. I said, I'm really busy. I've got lots of deadlines, but I do have an hour and 15 minutes. Let's go to the local place. We'll have lunch. We sat down. He said, should we have a Christmas drink? I go, okay, just one though because I've gotta be back in the office in an hour and 15 minutes he said great we had our drink we had our lunch we had coffee and he said you know it's christmas and you've only been here an hour you have 15 more minutes how about an after lunch christmas drink i said okay 15 minutes good good i've got to go i've gotta go we were there till eight o'clock that night and then we went to an after hours place until two yeah now i mean isn't that what you were just describing yeah it's funny how you're like your priorities get all re-arranged you know i get a complete amnesia right the drink the drink hijacks me it's just sad when it starts to affect your family and your kids and your job so you know yeah absolutely no no control thank god i mean i don't have control but thank god with with the practice and the measures that I take and the spiritual condition which I firmly believe that you know daily reprieve based on your spiritual condition you and you create habits of perception you create halves of behavior and consciousness part of this is good psychology and just good training also but there there's a component an X plus mysterious component that I can't explain yeah it keeps us in the in the in the abstinence i mean even with tons of behavior and tons of you know reinforcement and tons like years you still i mean i'm still today i was thinking you know i was making something for my husband i would love to have me if i couldn't you know and i'm thinking you know i'm always just that that close you know but i'm glad that i can make it for him and be okay doing it um i couldn t have done it years ago because that's the freedom that comes i have cold beer in my refrigerator i have since i got sober my son who doesn't seem to have any problem likes a cold beer when he visits but i don't give it any thought it's just there now some people don't do that for lots of good reasons i have no problem with that either yeah thank you the process of figuring out how my sex addiction works with the physical allergy has been very informative, and I have been, because it's a process addiction, identifying the physical components of it is definitely, at first I was completely resistant to it and was like, it's completely mental. There's nothing physical happening, but I have been able to identify um with with my addictive behaviors there are points where there are physical sensations that they're similar to sort of a manic episode that where I get tunnel vision and there is a physical sensation that takes over the body so well you're really uh digging into it that's wonderful what what what did you feel is the trigger event like when i take a drink that's the trigger of it what's the triggering event for you i've had a harder time identifying that aspect um there are i have there's several different bottom line behaviors i have that would constitute a relapse and i and um so i think that one of them involves being in my in my car and so obviously being in my car at any time is not relapsing but when i do when i when i make the decision I don't know if you're familiar with the circles that we use in escalation. Yes. So, I guess when I am in the middle circle and I say I'm driving aimlessly and I don�t know where I'm heading to, that's a major middle circle behavior. But there's a point during that behavior where something physical does flip flip and I become and I and I lose the ability to redirect my actions and I completely lose the to change my direction and it's all in it then becomes inevitable that I'm going to enter into the inner circle behavior yeah see and I think that's a articulate way of describing the trigger yeah for you yeah mm-hmm not so much as clean as taking a drink but there is a sequence of either thoughts or feelings or actions that create a sequence at some point where you have no control yeah yeah I'm glad you're here I'm glad you're taking it attempting i encourage people like in a process addiction to try to get the words and the experience that parallel the drug and the food and the alcohol trigger event so i just wanted to add i don't need to dig into it too much right now but it's something i'm working through that someone had mentioned last night uh i have a lot of experience in aa as well i was sober for two years in aa about eight years ago and have and have i thought i identified that it was more of an unhealthy habit and sex addiction was really the core for me but that's i just wanted to put that out there as something i'm still working with working through so you've raised a question because you've now been drinking between today and six years ago then Right, but I don't drink anymore. I've kept it as simple as that it negatively affects my ability to stay sober in SAA. A lot of food addicts have the same attitude, a lot of alanons have the have the same attitude and that is both from a substance standpoint that's not alcohol or from a process standpoint that it's not a substance they find that alcohol depresses their inhibitors which then allows them to be uninhibited which then leads to trouble and so nothing good comes of it even if you only have a habit or as you said an unhealthy habit it still lowers your defense mechanisms which is the point of alcohol of course yeah all right but stay open to it and see what your experience is as we get then into the next piece of work on the mind because that could actually be more revealing to you than even the body chemical part well i'll share number five how honest have i been about my food addiction with others or myself my efforts and failure i've wanted abstinence for 30 years and the 30 years i've been in food programs but i've and dishonest telling myself i can get away with a little extra food you know it's just like i can have that i won't have to tell my sponsor but it's that one green bean that gets me in trouble every time and i tell myself that lie but it's not the green bean is that anytime that you think the thought i won't tell whoever i won t tell the moment you have that thought you know that you're doing something that in your heart of hearts is not in alignment with your commitment correct now how does that fall into the we don't we don'T know what we DON'T know and we DON't see what is that what I'm doing that's the right that's right question also and that's why we do prayer and meditation to improve consciousness this okay because in fact we get hijacked by those thoughts that's what we're going to see you know the mind work that we're going to be doing next week is the beginning of really unpacking that we have no choice and we are powerless because we actually believe that it's okay as long as i don't have to tell on myself because it's no big deal i believe that even though it's a lie and even though it never has worked and i think you said for 30 years it may not have been that entire time but over a long period of time it never works but we don't learn from that yeah well it's been a dishonesty thing all my life for sure maybe not maybe not with food you know my amends in my alcohol and drug program were financial amends to people i had stolen from and it was just shameful because you know you always hear i hate a thief and then here i am a liar and a cheap thief and uh maybe i need to just sit set aside and go with an experience and continue to do the work for sure there you've heard me say it but i don't believe it's been in the conversation that we've had so it might have even more sting or meaning in bringing it to your attention right now but one of my teachers says what we do any one place we do every place so it's no surprise to me if you lie with your food if you're dishonest with your food that you're Dishonest in many other areas of your life this little shading get away with it i can get away with it that that probably has saturated your very being yeah and it's just being of good moral and and raised by a good grandfather and it is not in alignment with my belief but yet here i am actor that's where prayer comes in and that's where accountability comes in we pray in the seventh step because we're powerless but the man said you call me every day and tell me how you're behaving with regard to that character defense it's very powerful very powerful combination prayer because you're powerless accountability because you're human i've been transparently honest with my sponsor and that's very freeing but i just i'm a work in progress aren't we all that's right and and there's a humility in a wonderful sense that comes with that all right it you're just a work in progress and it's okay to be who you are today with the hope that you'll be a better man tomorrow yeah yeah okay thank you well i was going to talk about uh some of my writing that i did on pages 17 through 23 okay and it talked about the fellowship and how that's such a positive strong friendliness and intimacy and understanding this indescribably wonderful and I agree and I have had a lot of relapse as food at it and i have stayed and mainly because of the fellowship and um i've never looked at a sponsor as really being someone to help me you said in one of the workshops get a sponsor that will help you and i was like are you kidding uh that's just a person for me to lie to you know they're trying to control and I I'm adult children of alcoholic and you know authority figures are big trouble and abandonment is another issue so they're gonna tell me what to do and if I don't do it they're going to leave me and a lot of stories don't you I do and just let me sit hear me through so well I will thank you so um I'm almost as old as you so anyway I I made you achieve it yeah anyway I call my sponsor and I said look because I don't ever see her and she doesn't know how fat I am and so um i said I'm 40 pounds overweight and I need more help because i'm only talking to her 15 minutes a week and so i was shocked she said i don't have more time for you but i will find you a food sponsor so she did and i've been i gave up all caffeine all the stuff on wednesday and i thought i was gonna die i mean die i wish i could have died it was so bad and then the next day a little bit i mean caffeine the withdrawal the the sugar so caffeine is horrible that's right it was nasty and i felt like the flu i took three naps a day i'm now on my third day and i um i just don't want to ever do this again but i'm already like you were talking that gentleman on the first go around about when you start to lie and I've been lying since kindergarten um you know and cheating and uh I'm good at that um so I uh but I can't believe how many times I walk around wanting a hit I want the dried fruit with the nuts I want uh I want a piece of fruit i want anything to pick up my energy or my mind or my boredom or anything and it's just nasty and i don't know if this is recovery you know well i guess no this is no what you're experiencing is detox yeah that detox comes before recovery and it can be short or long and it's always painful by definition you're having withdrawals in your cellular structure from something that it's been habituated to physically so paint a picture of the vision and the benefit so that you have something visceral that you can kind of like hold on to knowing that see today is friday i bet you it's a lot better than Wednesday it is and Sunday's gonna be a lot better than today yes and and when you make it visceral and you create the vision of the benefit and value of why you're doing this it's like surgery I've had three major surgeries I I don't like surgery, but I really like the results. I do feel enormously hopeful and I feel so in love with my sponsor. I just wanna have her till I die. She's kind, but she's very strict. It's an amazing combination and she is helping me just like you said. And so that part is just extraordinary, really. i am so delighted with this conversation because i don't believe i've had any conversation that's put some color into the sponsorship relationship that's been quite as effective as this and i'm i know that it's helped a lot of people thank you yeah no thank you very much for that so i was thinking about the examples you know uh in the body i asked for three examples and um i was thinking way way back about the examples and one of them was on my wedding day and there was cake as always is and i remember having a nice bit of cake with the the guests and then the hotel staff cut the bottom tier and put it on the table on the buffet table and i remember going back and just eating the cake like head my back to the guests and eating cake and then i'll pretend to have some chicken and then eat three or four pieces and then come back and i was thinking yeah i just like cake the cake is really nice so you know it's my wedding cake and it's really nice cake how many times am i going to get married i'm going to eat some goddamn cake right and then we went up to the hotel room and i put cake in my handbag because it was my wedding cake it was really nice and um but at that stage at that state i already knew that my eating was uh different and um it was weird and there was shame around it because i'm a closet eater and so nobody really sees me eating um and i always thought it was from trauma it was like yeah if you've had that and it may be and it maybe so what well that was the thing when i joined the program i noticed that people with trauma have food issues and people without trauma have food issues so that is not that's like the liar I tell myself if you had my past you to eat you know to make yourself feel better absolutely if you heard my father and my wife your drink too so it was interesting having to do the events and I and then I was looking for the symptoms what happens what actually happens to the body and i know a big one for me is disassociation so i literally leave the body and i have this thing looking down on myself and that is you know in fa we say we gotta pause we pause before we take the best bite and me and the paws have been struggling for a year and a half because how do you disassociate and how do you pause there's just no connection there well and i you're going to have a different experience i believe with this journey through the steps in the next assignment with the mind because we're going gonna address that it's nice and it's wonderful suggestion about the pause all right but it doesn't work it doesn and that's i get frustrated because you know they say did you pick up the phone to call a fellow yeah well i did and then i still went to eat oh no i didn't uh did you pray if you had see here's the flaw the misunderstanding if you have the power to pause and call a sponsor you're not powerless right so what you're having is a thought not an obsession but i don't want to get too deep into it right now but let me just say you're raising some wonderful questions for yourself that will give you a whole new experience with what we will unpack on the mind and then when you're sharing your experience it will probably be very helpful to other people okay because my issue is the pause issue um and i really like the sharing on the tunnel vision i i i thought oh yeah that's also a tunnel vision thing that happens to me so yeah one of the lines just to maybe help capture the spirit of what you're talking about it's it's the main issue with regard to addiction what you were talking about in Fred's story in the assignment he uses a phrase the strange mental blank spot see there's no pause if you had the power to pause you're not powerless yeah I wanted to share this whole process addiction it it has me fascinated and I was a little bit confused by it I actually had to look up the definition the body part of process addictions I looked up process phenomenon addiction and I was looking at my history I was as a young girl just always drawn to crisis you know give me some trauma drama crisis situation I'm your girl you know you know I'll mediate I'll control I'll organize I'll do whatever it takes to be busy busy busy and that's you know my adrenaline kicks in and what I'm seeing is is you know all of these behaviors are processes that I did because I didn't know what to do with feelings you know with situations with relationships you know took the focus off of me and and then what happens is you know I find myself with this behavior that you know 60 years old of you know people-pleasing codependent obsessive compulsive behavior and then I try to control it and I can't because I don't know any different and I develop fear and resentment and anxiety and then that's where the substance addiction comes in you know whatever it might be the cigarettes the food the alcohol but that that substance addiction took me to being a hundred pounds overweight and suicidal and I'm just so grateful to to be a part of this and to learn something new, and to even be able to think about and take apart a little bit what process addiction is in the body. So thank you. Well, but see, you gave a really colorful chronology of the development of addiction, starting with the tension that came from this codependent and whatever else terms that you used at a very young age, and then in order to help you reduce that tension you got into some substance addiction kinds of things. I mean, that's why I suspect and I haven't actually done enough work to know that it's true, but I suspect that codependency is the underbelly of an awful lot of addiction. Yeah. So, I was just saying at a young age I knew that food was problematic but I didn't really have anybody to talk to about it. And everybody thought I was a weird kid because I would do things like refuse to have a birthday cake, refuse the foods that everybody was eating and little kids look forward to and stuff like that. Yeah, because you knew that there was some devastation on the other side of it. Right. And I just remember hating holidays because there was all that kind of food around that was going to make me crazy. And I remember actually when I got into my 20s not wanting to go home for holidays and my mother just being devastated, but I just couldn't manage myself around the food and stuff like that and alcohol by that time. So I definitely, so why did I keep going back to the food and stuff like that? I think it's because even though I just didn't have enough confidence in my analysis and I didn't enough support. And it was like trying to fit in and sometimes certain types of food, I ate addictively but they didn't make me sick. So I didn't know, and I sort of did kind of control that I never had a weight problem to speak of. Maybe at one point I was 20 pounds overweight, but it was the consequences of my eating, the depression, the feeling out of control and all that kind of stuff. And it definitely made my life unmanageable. And now I've come to see that there's a lot of things, I don't know if they're underlying causes or whatever it is, but there's lots of things that make my life unmanageable. And if it's really causing me lots and lots of pain, sometimes I'll just go through the whole 12 steps on that one particular situation. All right. Yeah. Yeah. say i'm powerless over my son and uh my life is unmanageable and i'll just take it through the whole 12 steps that that sometimes gives me some relief but um i definitely you know i was also an alcoholic so i was never able to drink volumes of alcohol it was really clear to me that i couldn't drink in safety without causing problems and i still continue to do it i'm not quite sure by that time i i know why i kept doing it then i guess because when i had knowledge about you had knowledge by timers in my 20 late 20s they had knowledge of alcoholism and i had a knowledge of food addiction and um but uh you know all kinds of denial wanting to be like everybody else and um being young when you know if i go to a meetings they were back all back with i was back in the 70s it'd be like a lot of older men and you know just me this little 20 something you know young person stuff like that we're glad to see you so it was kind of odd and then the codependency issues too so i'm a big 12 stepper i've been i'm in three programs and i'm not afraid to go to another program maybe not to go to meetings regularly but anytime i have a problem with something i can't figure it out i know that 12-step groups have figured it out like are you let me ask a couple questions then thank you very much for the broad view um are you abstinent from alcohol yes how long have you been abstinent form alcohol 40 years there you go um are you abstinent from food yes for how long about a year nine months there you go now can you see any parallel between uh alcohol and food once you start you cannot stop oh yeah i definitely definitely did so even though i didn't have a big weight problem i would know it i i can remember what my brain was telling myself okay you've got that in the freezer you want to have some so i have some then i say well i might as well just eat the whole thing right now when you quit uh drinking 40 years ago was it because you went to aa yes well first i went down on okay all right you went to al-anon and then you're in a 12-step program and then you went and um how long have you been in aa or um i'm assuming you were in aa at one time and whether or not you are still is irrelevant yeah how yeah how long ago did you engage in uh aa well 40 years ago oh okay all right so despite the fact you're in aaa you couldn't deal with your food problem using the tools of aa right well you know i did for a while because i went into oh no you see but you're just confirming my my question because i said you couldn't apply the tools to your eating problem i didn't mean for a week i meant for 40 years well i did it for years i did do it for you but how many years let me try this how many years i think i had at least two years of absence from flour and sugar okay so that's hardly major success in contrast to 40 years of sobriety right well the other thing too it's a progressive thing and if i don't have specific support for that substance um you know what like what happened a couple years ago i was just like i just couldn't handle it by myself anymore our patterns of addiction and our patterns uh of recovery are so different and that's why i wanted to kind of ask those other illustrative questions and and again reinforcing that you need to know something before you can do something and you really didn't understand the nature of the food addiction well I don't know if I didn't understand it or if I just didn't it didn't seem to be as serious as drinking and since I could control most I could control it most of the time, but it was progressive in the insanity of it all. Mine is an unusual story, I think, I don't know. You know, it's different, but I don t think it's unusual. So I appreciate though the detail because it probably was helpful to a lot of people for at least them to be asking questions. And if not for themselves, people either in their family or people that they sponsor. And so all of our experiences are valuable in our lives to be applied either to ourselves or to others. So thanks very much for sharing that. All right team, that was really good. Begin looking at assignment number, well finish the questions as you've been doing on the worksheet on the body but also begin looking at assignment number four i think it's time for us to go into the mind part pay attention to assignment number 4 item number 1 but only a part of that and the reading part page 23 to page 35. page 23 to page 35 in the big book because it it there's a lot of substance in that material and then there's a lot of substance in the balance of the reading which we'll take a look at the following week please join me in the serenity prayer god grant me the serendipity to accept the things i cannot change Courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference