The Spiritual Experience of Watching a Sponsee Wake Up – Adam A.

The views expressed on this broadcast of Speaker Monday with your host, the Monty Man, do not necessarily reflect the opinions of KHLT Recovery Broadcasting or its affiliates. KHLt is not affiliated with any particular Twelve Step Fellowship. All you talk's in a row, life takes a spin. It happens again and again, it seems to me that when I take my will and let you go. Without the blues, I've been living, that's a fact. Without the booze I've been making my way back Without the ooze I've learned day by day To let it go And stay out of my own way Welcome to Speaker Monday with the Monty Man. Each week, Monty brings us speakers from a variety of 12-step fellowships. Now here's the Monny Man with this week's speaker. Well, welcome my friends and family to another fine episode of Speaker Monday here at Take12Radio.com on your internet dial We bring to you each week a different speaker from around the globe, Circuit Speaker that is 12-step focused, solution oriented and is willing to share their experience, strength and hope with y'all. Before I introduce you to this week's speaker, I do want to remind you that we have a new show, Step by Step Towards Emotional Sobriety with Dr. Alan Berger. That show airs on Saturdays. If you've missed the Saturday show, and it's like Sunday or Monday or Tuesday or whatever, you can still click on the Saturday link at our website at taketowellradio.com, and the show will play because every show has an assigned day and they're up all week long for your convenience. And if you miss the show, you Can go back and listen to it. They update on their assigned days. If you want to download the show to your hard drive or whatever, you can click on the Download MP3 link below the Play button. If you do not see the Play buttons because you're on a smartphone of some type, you want tap on that Download MP4 link. You can right-click on that as well, Save Target As or Save Link As, and it will download to your Hard Drive. All right, this week's speaker is Adam A. from Tannersville, Pennsylvania. He's speaking at the Kirkridge Group in Delaware, Water Gap, Pennsylvania. And I'm sure you're going to enjoy this as well as I did. Here's Adam. Hi everybody, my name is Adam. I'm a recovered alcoholic. Thanks, Rob. I'm sitting there listening to him. and the one thing that kept jumping in my head is a line out of We Agnostics it says when we were faced with alcoholic destruction we're posed with the proposition that either God is everything or God is nothing God either is or he isn't what is my choice to be? I walked into these rooms and I was down with that gave everything to God but the problem was the only thing in my life at that point was booze and drugs. I was able to get a little bit better. The alcohol and the drug problem were addressed and I had a means to not get loaded on a daily basis. But I was stark raving insane. Didn't know how to live. You know, I was never one of these people that, you know, went to work every day and stopped at the bar on the way home and 2 o'clock rolls around and bars close or 3 o' clock rolls around, bars close and get up the next day, go to work, go to the bar after work. I wasn't one of those guys. You know? I picked up a drink and shortly thereafter moved into the park. You know. That's the way I drank. I got sober at 25, or 24, I'm not quite sure. But the reason that that was is I was living under a bridge at 19. My role models growing up were meth cooks, alcoholics, pot growers. I was raised in Northern California and I drank with my mom and I smoked pot with my dad. And it was perfectly acceptable to live this way of life. So by the time I hit my high school years, I'm like, I ain't going to school. I'm going to go hang out in the park with Keg. By the time it was time to get a job, it wasn't about getting a job. I can deal drugs and live in the Park or eventually I'll get a place. I'm camping out under the stars. That was my thoughts. I had my bedroll and I had myself a little clothesline set up and I was right next to the creek and I could wash my clothes and I thought I was living large you know I'm enjoying life you know and I'm laughing I was talking to two friends of mine last night we're sitting on my back deck and they're talking about how you know they persist and they strive and they want more and you know and they always had this attitude and my attitude was when I hit an obstacle I just lowered my expectations I'm not about to work for it I just want to hang out my vision of life the greatest day in life was to be sitting in an inner tube floating down the river with a keg behind me that was a beautiful day sounds good but I wanted to do it every day fortunately or unfortunately however you want to look at it. I hit it real hard, real fast and I bottomed out quick. And I didn't miss a beat. I was homeless. I went to prison. I was hopeless again. I got violated. The way to get out of trouble was I got a problem. I need to go into treatment. I got an DUI of heady theft in two hot tests and I said I need rehab. Didn't necessarily think it was a problem but I didn't want to go back to jail. Somewhere in the middle of all that something kind of registered. I remember being clean in rehab or it wasn't really rehab, it was Salvation Army but still same thing. Somewhere in there about 30 days in or 60 days in, whatever it is I started to feel good. I started to enjoy being sober. I was getting that kind of glow and that buzz and that real you know real good feeling because I started going to meetings I started to find people I started to see that there was a different way of life which I never really knew. You know I always thought those people who didn't drink were like Mormons or something. You know no normal person doesn't drink you know and I've come to find out that you know there's a lot of people out there who don't drink. There's a lot of people out there who drink normally. You don't have to get hammered every time you drink. I wasn't like that and I thought the whole world was like that. They were all like me and I started to see that there was another way and so I started going to meetings and I got really, really into it and I was really wanting to get sober but I walked into this group that was all about meeting makers making. That was their message. Meeting makers make it. Make 90 and 90. Get a coffee commitment. Get involved. Go to the barbecue. Go tothe diner. Go bowling. Do all this fellowship stuff, which is really important. But they never did anything beyond that. You were supposed to stay sober for two years before you even attempted to do a four-step. Making amends was saying sorry to your family and that was about it. And helping others was driving somebody to a meeting. And for me, that fellowship message was nowhere near enough. Because I drink and I use other stuff, and I'm okay. The noise stops in my head. You take that away from me, I get worse. I don't get better. The noise in my head just gets really, really loud and I can't function. I'm so jammed up in my own stuff and in my own fear and my own self-centeredness that the guy in the back of the room who's thinking at me is just killing me. And the only thing I knew how to do to stop that was to get loaded. And I went to meetings for three years and couldn't stay clean for more than a week or so. I think I did two months one time. But again, it was just like I couldn't seem to grasp it. And there was this old guy out of Bayonne who used to talk about grabbing drunks off the street and bringing them back to his house and reading the big book to him. And I didn't know what he meant because I had always read the big books and it was like this book of stories and you're supposed to identify with the stories in the book and identify with The Jay Walker and whatever. And I didn't get it, but for some reason the last time that I came back I heard his voice in my head and I started to read the book and right in the preface of the book it says that this is the basic text of Alcoholics Anonymous. And that clicked. For some reason I had a moment of clarity and it made sense to me That a textbook is something that you learn. You read this and it's like a recipe. And I started to read it and I started to take the action in there that it tells me to do. I did it all ass backwards and I did it all for crap because at the time my sponsor didn't believe in doing step work so I didn't have any guidance but I was still trying. I'm walking around with this little memo notebook with all these names of people I'm pissed off at. I'm writing my inventory, and he's like yelling at me, put that away, you're going to drink if you do that. And I was like, but I'm drinking anyway, what's it going to hurt? This is the only thing that I haven't done. I've been here for three years, I've done everything you've told me to do. This isthe only thingthat I haven' t tried. I wrote this inventory, and I shared it with this guy, and I went about making these amends. and like I said, I did the best I could. 90% of it was all bullshit and lies but it was as honest as I could be at that moment and I got some freedom from it. I got a release I stopped thinking about getting drunk and high it took that away because of my lack of I don't know if it's because of or if it is intended that way or whatever it is but regardless Because of that lack of guidance through this process, I went through again rather quickly. It was within a couple months of finishing these amends. I found somebody out on Staten Island and he brought me through the book. And he explained stuff to me and he gave me some information. And I did it again. And then I did het again. And again. And I kept going through at least once a year. I would go through the process of the 12 steps the way the big book lays it out and at some point I remember, and Rob brought this up and it really brought back my experience I had this experience with step 6 and 7 that was just amazing the guy I was working with at the time had told me to go home and take my quiet hour after my 5th step And I told him I couldn't. I got, you know, two squalling kids at home and they're screaming and my house is chaos. I probably got a wet one sitting on the couch. You know, I just got a crazy home. And all sober crazy, but crazy. And he said, well, there's a hunter's trail right up the road. So I went for a walk in the woods for an hour. and I came back and I got down on my knees and I said my seven step prayer and I drove home for an hour and I forgot to turn on the radio and I didn't realize it because I was quiet the hamster fell off the wheel for the first time in my life I had this peace and it was amazing you know and just like Rob too, the noise came back eventually, you know but it didn't come back as loud and it didn' t come back as consistent every time I do this spiritual work I get a little bit longer periods of time of that peace and the times that I'm psychotic are a lot shorter I have better control over my emotions. I don't know today when was the last time that I was to use a phrase in the book, driven by fear. I've experienced fear. Fear of financial insecurity creeps in all the time lately for the past five years. But I'm not driven by it. My actions aren't defined by this fear that I have. I don't do stuff anymore the way I used to. And that's a really, really amazing thing to me because everything I did for years was driven by that fear. Driven by all that stuff that was going on inside my head. A way to alleviate that uncomfortability. And what I found was that it's okay to feel that stuff. I'm supposed to feel that stuff. A friend of mine years ago said, at any given moment I fall victim to the delusion that I'm opposed to being happy. I'm not. I'm exposed to be happy. I'm posed to be sad. I'm proposed to be angry. I'm postponed to be, you know, I don't know, blah. I'm suppose to experience the range of human emotions just like a human being. that need to always be happy that's the alcoholic in me that's what I did for years I drank so that I could control the way I felt and today I don't have to I can experience the range of emotions and it doesn't drive me anymore I've got this amazing life today and it's funny too because I had stuff. You know, I came in the rooms. I had nothing. I kind of built this business and I got stuff, you know, and I was making money and, you Know, we had this, in our mind, the picture-perfect life for us, you know? My wife was a housewife. She was going to school. We got kids at home and, You know... And I've got this business and we're supporting it and we are living good. We are not rich but we are okay. Then all of a sudden and everything goes away, you know, about five years ago. And now both of us working, we make like a fraction of what we used to make, just me. But you know what? I'm happy today. I'm okay. I don't care about that shit. Because I know, I know in my gut that if I get up and I do my job, everything works out. Everything gets taken care of. It's, like Rob talked about, it's not my life. My life is not my own. I made a decision to turn my thoughts and my actions, my will and my life over to the care of my God. It's not mine. So whatever God's got in store for me, He's going to give me the tools to work with. My job is not my employment. That's just something that I do. My job is to fit myself to be of maximum service to God and the people around me. That's my job. That's what I wake up in the morning and how do I do my job today? I talked a lot about going through the 12 steps. It's not so much about going through the twelve steps today. I don't even realize I do the work because it's become such a normal occurrence in my day. It's what I do. I wake up in the morning and I talk to my Creator. It's the first thing I do, I don't think about it. And granted there are days that I don' t and I recognize it. But most of the time I wake u and I talked to God. I don''t pray the way I used to as a kid. I was raised Catholic also. For me, I found that there's still the Catholic in me, so I do this whole sit, kneel, stand, sit, knee, stand. Say the response. Nothing's in here. It's all up here. It's a whole repetition thing. What I had to do was I had intentionally mix it up. Intentionally change stuff so that I couldn't do that ritual. because it needs to be authentic to me. It needs to be real. I went crazy at about seven years doing the steps. I was dotting the I's and crossing the T's and making everything right. It's exactly the way it is, laid out in the book and if I don't do it just perfect I'm going to burst into flames or something. And I went nuts. People were calling me a step Nazi and whatever. And I was. I was this rabid big book thumper that would walk into a 12 and 12 meeting with my big book under my arm and tell you how you're doing it wrong. And that's not being effective. That's not fitting myself to be of maximum service. And part of the reason for that was this ritual that I had. I had gotten into this very ritualistic type method of recovery. and so the simple thing I did was I stopped doing my nightly review and I started doing it in the morning you know and somebody said to me God doesn't give a shit when you talk to him just that you do so it doesn't have to be at a certain time of day or when this is going on it's just whenever and it's become very natural now you know It's become very, almost second nature. We moved up this way, excuse me, we moved up this way I don't know it's been about four years now, something like that. It actually feels like always, I fit it right in and it was nice. Everybody laughs at me and my friends that come up from Jersey or whatever come to my house and say yep you belong here. You see the fire pit in the backyard and the half built sheds and all that. you know I love it I really do I'm definitely a hillbilly at heart and you know it was a weird shift because I didn't know who I was when I came up here I didn' t know who I wasn' t supposed to be I thought there was this role that I was supposed to play because I was the big book thumper and in New Jersey it's us and them they're big book thumbers and then there's these dark tunnel people, you know. And when I come up here, I'm like really confused because everybody talks about the steps. It's like, oh, what the hell, you mean? I do it the same way that I do, but everybody talks about the Steps. And I was like, it was really strange. But what it did is it really helped me. It really helped because it allowed me to be part of the whole rather than somehow separate, you You know, I never really got that fellowship thing when I was in New Jersey because my experience with the fellowship part not working in the beginning and then the us-and-them mentality, they came later when I found the steps. But then I come up here and it kind of brought all three sides of that triangle together for me. Because I found that, you know, when I'm just in the steps, I'm just as crazy as those other people that we used to call the dark tunnel people, you know, the ones that are meeting makers make it, and I've got to make a meeting every single day or I'm going to drink. I was just as Crazy as them. You know, I just wasn't thinking about drinking. I was thinking about being an asshole, you know. So by finding a way to integrate myself into all three sides of that triangle, I've become balanced Bill Wilson used to use the reference of the three-legged stool you take away one of the legs of that stool what happens? It falls over but if you're equally planted on top of all three you can live and be comfortable and happy and useful probably the greatest blessing that Alcoholics Anonymous has given me is the ability to do 12 step work I've been really fortunate I've never ever wanted for sponsees I actually want less sometimes you know and it's really amazing because I remember thinking, oh, this is the new experience. This is that experience they're talking about in 12-step. This spiritual experience. And it was all the way through because the book gives me a God shot, what I like to call a God shoot at the end of every step. You take an action, you get a result. The third step says that we have a new employer being all powerful. He provides what we need. That's a promise. That's a spiritual experience as a result of making that decision. The fourth step has one, the fifth step has one. They all have them. And I was thinking that those were the spiritual experiences I was having along the way and they were. They were God shots. But when I sat down and I worked with other people and I seen them wake up it's something I can't even describe. It's really amazing to see somebody who's broken you know half dead just desperately trying to grab onto something and all of a sudden they just get this look in their eye like I got it you know I'm okay you know and to see that happen is is just an amazing thing you know. And like I said I've been blessed because I seem to I don't know and I attract some of the sickest ones of all you know probably because I was. I was that chronic relapser. I was that gutter drunk who was in meetings drunk. So one thing I actually got to give credit to my old home group. They told me don't drink and go to meetings but if you do drink go to a meeting anyway. So I went to meetings for three years drunk. Started lots of shit in the room and made lots of fuss and you know but I never stopped going you know and And those are the guys that I tend to come across. I've also been getting a lot of these relationship issues lately, and that's probably because I didn't know how to have a relationship when I came in the room, so I made every mistake in my relationship along the way. And we fortunately made it through it. I have no idea how. The last real fight I've had with my wife was probably 10 years ago. We've had disagreements, we've had minor arguments and whatever, usually about kids or how to pay a bill or something like that, but no real fight. It's been 10 years and I had no idea how to have a relationship when I walked into AA. You know, I dated the same woman over and over and over again. You know she just had a different name and a different face. And we never dated. You know. She moved in or I moved in. Or you know. You know we hooked up and that was it. You know and it was extremely codependent. You know I didn't you know I don't know how to function in life. And they didn't know How to function emotionally. So we fit real well. You know because I had no emotions and they had daddy's money. You know, so we had a good symbiotic relationship. But when you put those two kind of people together, it's just crazy. But today I have an amazing relationship with my wife. My kids want me to come home. Right now my daughter is watching my little ones. She's going to be 18. And she's been raised in the rooms. She's been Raised Around Recovery. she's been raised around the 12 steps and she don't get high you know I've yet to meet an 18 year old kid that don't get high or hasn't at least tried to do something she doesn't she could do better in school but you know, she's an art kid you know and she's awesome my 13 year old is damn near a genius and my little guys are savages but They're wonderful kids. Well, they're six and four. They're supposed to be savages. No shirt, no shoes in the backyard. It's all good. Sometimes no pants. It's a beautiful thing, man. If anybody in here is new, find somebody who's done the steps and give it a shot. It can't hurt. It can only help. That's all I got. Thanks. Well, thank you, Adam, and thank you friends and family for tuning in to this broadcast here at Take12Radio.com on your internet dial. Remember, we are listener supported, and we appreciate your emails and your encouragement. We also appreciate any donation that you feel like maybe God is leading you to donate. There's a donate button at the bottom of every one of our pages, our main pages, and you can click on that. No amount's too small. It helps us to keep on the air. Nobody gets paid here. This money always goes to keep us broadcasting. All right, until the next show, this is the Monty Man. And I've got a little saying that I want to read to you before I close off with my regular one. This came to me from an old high school colleague, Dale Johnson. He says, do something now that will make the person you will be tomorrow proud to have been the person you are today. I like that. Until our next show, this is The Monty Mann, and I'm wishing God serenity for you. Bye-bye. I've been learning day by day to let it go and to stay out of my own way. Stay out of your own way, stay out. This has been a broadcast of KHLT Recovery Broadcasting.