The Stage Character and the Defect of Character – Barry F.

Hello, everyone. My name is Barry Flynn. I'm an alcoholic, and I've been clean and sober since January 10th of 1999, and for that, I'm very grateful. I want to thank Colin and anyone else who invited me to come up here to speak. It's always an honor to speak and do what Henry just did so well about carrying the message of Alcoholics Anonymous. Now it can really change your life. This program really is about getting sober, not getting somber. I've seen a lot of stuff in this program that's really glorious, and it's always wonderful to be up here. I only tell my story about once or twice a year. Normally what happens is that some group needs proof that nerds can get sober, and so they send a message over to Bolden. I take off my gimp mask. I come over here, and I share experience, strength, and hope for a little bit about what it was like, what happened, and what it's like now. And I'm a school teacher, and I work at a state correctional facility. And there's a young man that I've grown rather close to. And I see him almost every day. I was teaching social studies this last semester. I'll be teaching math this coming semester. and his story about what it is that got him there. He was with his cousin one time and they were getting drunk and they took more and they had enough they decided to start playing Russian roulette and that's how it is he's a manslaughter, man one charge I teach him what's called the capital offender unit young men who have been convicted of homicide, convicted of manslaughter, convicted of sexual assault. And I listened to that story and you know there's a part of me that says you could never get so bad that that would be your story. That you would not do something that stupid, that senseless, that out of it. But then I look at my place in Alcoholics Anonymous and I look at the way that I have endangered people over their lives and I looked at some of the abusive behavior that I've been part of and I look at it and I do what it is that I have to do if I'm going to have humility inside this program. I think about the person that has the worst bottom in AA and I understand that I could get there too under the right circumstances. If I went out there and was the right combination of drugs or it was the correct combination of alcohol or just a bad night because there is such a thing as bad luck i could really get there and um i've just known that i sat there and i looked at him and i'd known this kid for a while he's not he's no especially stupid or anything it's just that that's what it is that this program does you know and i sit there and I look at him in the other kids and they'll be taken to programming which is some of the 12-step meetings that their social workers and counselors that we try to give them, and I see their reactions. I sit there and I think to myself, you know, what does it take to actually change someone? What is it that changes someone and gets them to accept it? And I wish that I could sit here and say that like I'm a great example of this program, that I've done it perfectly, that i have a bazillion sponsees and they're all sober. Actually, that's though not my story. My story is that I'm up here tonight and I'm going to talk to you all about the fact that um something that i had to learn the hard way inside this program which is no one in alcoholics anonymous has ever hit bottom until you have hit bottom in sobriety and uh just we're just going to spend a little bit of time illuminating what that's like you know my story starts off i was born i took it personal um i wasborn to two really nice people who were very very allen on and had a lot of anger inside of them you're sitting there and you're knowing about what it is that happens to a child and i think that a number of people raised in certain households are getting identified with this when you're born into an alcoholic childhood you grow up with certain defense mechanisms a child that grows up in a house full of anger always feels guilty doesn't matter what is it happened to mom and dad when they came in doesn't care how it is why it is that the power has been turned off, why it isthat that chair is broken. It's always your fault. Even if you know it's not your fault, you know that there's something you could have done. It is somehow your fault and because I was growing up in a household like that with two really wonderful people who unfortunately had the same problem with anger that I have, I developed a lot of defense mechanisms and the main one was lying. I lied a lot. If you're a child in an alcoholic household, you lie for a lot or reasons. You lie because you're afraid that the truth just is not good enough. You lie, because you are afraid that if there's a conflict at any time, it could permanently damage the relationship. You lie. Because you have a lot of experience with simple arguments, suddenly getting physical, you know, you've got all this stuff going on and I'm doing all of this stuff to try and control myself and to control the household that I grew up in. and it was really hard a lot of times to do that because I would be angry and resentful at my parents about stuff but even at that age I knew enough about emotions to know that they were sort of haunted by these things also my dad would lose his temper you know swing on us a little bit and then just a little while later he would come up to us looking like a beat dog I'm sorry not going to happen it was going to happened again but he would say and mean it at that moment that it wasn't going to happen again. And so, and I'm not going to go too much into this, but there was actually someone in our household who was predatory in their behavior. They were in my house and around my house a lot. And, uh, so basically I had to grow up sort of aware of things around us instead of just talking about the usual AA story tonight. What I like to talk about is step six in step seven, how it is that we develop defects of character, what they do for us to help us survive and how it isthat we keep going. I'm gonna read something from the 12 and 12 and since a certain person is not present, I know that no one's gonna throw a book at me for doing that but All right, practically everybody wishes to be rid of his most glaring and destructive handicaps. No one wants to be so proud he is scorned as a braggart, nor so greedy that he is labeled a thief. Noone wants to angry enough to murder, I'm going to skip that part, gluttonous enough to ruin his health. Noon wants to agonize by the chronic pain of envy or be paralyzed by sloth. Of course, most human beings don't suffer these defects at these rock-bottom levels. We who escape these extremes are apt to congratulate ourselves. Yet can we? After all, hasn't it been self-interest, pure and simple, that has enabled most of us to escape? Not much spiritual effort is involved in avoiding excesses, which will bring us punishment anyway. When we face up to less violent aspects of these same defects, then where do we stand? What we must recognize now is that we exult in some of our defects. We really love them. Who, for example, doesn't like to feel a little superior to the next fellow or even quite a lot superior? Isn't it true we like to let greed masquerade as ambition? To think of liking lust seems impossible, but how many men and women speak love with their lips and believe what they say so they can hide lust in a dark corner of their minds. And even while staying within conventional bounds, many people have to admit that their imaginary sex excursions are apt to be all dressed up as dreams of romance. Self-righteous anger can also be very enjoyable. In a perverse way, we can actually take satisfaction from the fact that many people annoy us, for it brings a comfortable feeling of superiority gossip barbed with our anger a polite form of murder by character assassination has its satisfactions for us too here we're not trying to help those we criticize we're trying to proclaim our own righteousness and the situation i had to do with was that i came up that right there the way it's describing how it is that i'm trying to protect my ego by putting up all these lies, all these false basades, how it is that I don't want to be vulnerable. I'm trying to cover everything up with these defects of character. That's not me at rock bottom. That'S actually me on my best day when I'm not having this program. That stuff that's talking about how it IS that I just have to live inside my head. I love what it says that about anger. As an alcoholic, anger feels like strength and power. I got that from the early on. I loved it when it said what it says in there about just feeling a little bit superior to the next person. I'm addicted to that kind of adrenaline. There was a lady in my first AA meeting who used the phrase, my brain mistakes the adrenaline for joy. That's chemical and that's emotional, okay? My brain mistakes the adrenaline for joy when I finish off the entire 12-pack by myself and when someone else has genuinely acted wrong. And I can sit there and I can commiserate with others or just daydream and rehearse the fight in my head. Either way, I'm hooked in with that. That little chaos that it described there, that's what it is I need to drink. There's a friend of mine and i'm not saying that like this is textbook that this is true but this is a very interesting idea that a friend of mind once proposed if we're talking about the threefold nature of alcoholism we know that there's an allergy that alcoholics physically react different i mean dude tequila just does something for me it does not do for the average person and then there's the obsession of the mind and those are things you know the obsession of the mind is the fact that I cannot recall a sufficient force of memory, the pain, suffering, and humiliation of a month, a week, or even a day ago. I'm without mental defense against the next drink. There's a friend of mine that says that if you just have just those two, then possibly willpower could surmount alcoholism. The spiritual malady, this thing of how there's just never enough. You know, I got exactly what I wanted for Christmas, but it wasn't the right color. there's 20 people in the room, 19 of them adore me. And then there's that one asshole, you know, that insatiability. One of my best friends in Alcoholics Anonymous goes to OA, Overeaters Anonymous. And you're like, look at her. She's very physically fit. She has been physically fit the entire 22 years that I've known her. And she says, you know I go there because those people they talk about insatiable ability. The fact that there's never enough and I relate to that and when she said that then I saw it that there's never going to be enough love never going gonna be enough money never going be enough of that of anything all of this began with a little boy being raised in the household who was scared and now to this day this is what that adult looks like scared I'm sitting there and I'm tracing things out you know um I'm trying desperately to like relate to people as I go on. And at first, alcohol is a wonderful way to relate to people. It really is. I've always told people that I owe a debt to my alcohol. If I had never found alcohol, if that chaos had just went a little bit, man, I would have tied a noose up in the garage at some point. Alcohol did something for me. I mean, I get it. Dr. Silthworth calls it an elusiveness. He calls it a temporary feeling of ease and comfort, but man, it's more than that. When I take the right chemicals into my body, I am relaxed and empowered at the exact same moment. On one hand, I'm at ease. I look at everyone around me, and I genuinely love all of them, and at the same point, that energy and oxygen comes up through my chest, and the blood gets going and i feel like i can do anything there are moments in which it wasn't like that you know but especially in the first few years of my alcoholism there were moments when i drank and i was pretty sure that i could punch through walls if i had to it gave me that you know and um you know just cutting the fuss i would i would sit there and the thing that that you need to understand about my alcoholism is that I really loved that person that I became when I was drinking. He was able to talk to people, he was able to make a joke. I mean, that guy was the guy that I wanted to be on page 72 and 73 of the big book, our basic text when it talks about how it is that some people have gone out and drank again. And it's a why is it that they went out and drank again? Well, it says that they only thought that they had done a full disclosure on their inventory. They only thought they had been it. It says specifically, they only though they had lost their egoism and fear. It says that that stage character, the stage character there was self-hatred that came from knowing that that stage character was not the real them. A person who isn't done with the fifth step is not done with that stage care. Do you see a lot of times we talk about steps six and seven, like six and seven go together. Six actually goes with five with five. I'm sitting there and I'm listing off. Okay. This is how it is. I got myself in trouble. These are the actions I did. And in step six, I'm asking to have it removed. It's like when I got in trouble for things. It was not an isolated event. It was not like that. I mean, if I'm sitting there and I'm in a work problem with my boss, and the moment the boss says something to me, I turn around and I explode with defensive anger. You know, how dare you accuse me? I've also done that to every roommate. I've done that to pretty much every family member. I mean, there was a learned behavior in there. When I was a little kid, it was good to sometimes get angry and be too much of a problem from someone else to work with but now i'm still bringing that stuff up that's still how it is i'm dealing with things and um you know as an adult i'm sitting there looking at this stuff on my fifth step all these times i've lost my temper and there's gotta be a point at which i look at and say you know what is it that i get out of holding on to this a dear friend of mine um i think i was like two years so right i'm not sure if i should say his name and i passed away a few years ago i'm not going to say his name um he was a really good guy he was from bowling he um he actually worked himself in the phase of the correctional system and um one day he was sitting there and he told uh he was talking with his sponsor and there's just this resentment that he couldn't let go of he just could not let go of it his sponsor sits down with him asking what's going on and uh his sponsor his sponsor is this old jewish lady and he tells her about what happened and he says you know when i was a little kid i was molested by one of my cousins and i asked my mom if i if this was my fault if i'd done anything to bring this on and my mom said yes and so i want to know what it is that my part in this is and his sponsor looked back at him and said man given how angry you are about this your part in it is that apparently some part of you believed it when she said that you're still holding on to this and it's like you know once again the anger feeling like strength and power i sit there and i can build this entire story around stuff and itselfishness it's self-centeredness, but I think that I have to have it. I think that I'm going to be weak and defenseless when I don't have that anger. I'm afraid that people are just going to come out of the woodwork to tear me down. I know for a fact that every time that I do something wrong, that everyone around me automatically remembers it and checks it in. I know for a act that that happens. And so I've got to have that anchor on me. And you know, when he said that story I finally started to really get to the heart of it. There were a lot of things on my fifth step that I was having trouble forgiving, and it was because of that anger. It was a great excuse for how I acted sometimes. The ways that I could think about myself first, and by thinking of myself first I actually mean thinking of yourself only. I'll think of other people after the adrenaline is worn off, but it's mainly thinking of oneself only and just refusing to forgive, refusing to forgive. The paragraph right before the ninth step promises page 82 it talks about how it is that we can ultimately get free of anything even if it's a person that we feel we cannot approach with our amends then if we can tell ourselves honestly that we would never do this again then there's still a pathway in there for forgiveness. it's um it's something about how it is that forgiveness is something that gives more to the person who gives it than the person that receives it you know and that that was just a hard lesson for me to get through and i was going to learn that every resentment that i held on to there was something that i was getting out of each and every one of them each and everyone of them whether it was that this is a resentment against someone who looks worse than me so i don't have to you know i'm not the worst guy in the room the guy who's actually the worst guy inthe room secretly every alcoholic's best friend you know or just gave me an excuse for behavior but all that stuff was going on earlier when we were talking about the stage character these different stage characters i was developing all of them were based on resentments against myself you know page 66 says that sometimes the resentment was against ourself in this case we called it remorse and a lot of my remorse in here i'm going to check the timer because leaving me without a timer is very dangerous and um i had all these resentments against myself and for each one i had a stage character that came up with it i'd never been a um really popular kid in school and so i started adopting this persona of having these one-liners jokes that i could say sometimes putting myself down sometimes putting others down i mean saying really mean stuff at times that was a way of dealing with the fear you know i love the way that katie parker says she says you know we hear this word triggered a lot that's not the word that appears in the big book in the Big Book it's driven we're driven by fear and um a lot of those fears drove me. And, you know, this stuff was just starting to come out. I'd come in to the program. I done my fourth and fifth step. And a lot of times I'll tell people that fourth and fifth steps that I did when I first came in, that was almost the only thing right I did my first year in sobriety. I didn't drink. I went to meetings sort of often. And I did the fourth and fifth stuff. I mean, my first year and sobriete is like proof that half measures can to value something i mean it um and when i went in there i had honestly given i gave my sponsor gary an honest account of what it was and when we were going through i saw what i think a lot of people see in their fourth and fifth step a lot of time it's just the same thing again and again and again because i hated being vulnerable that translated in sexual matters to an intense fear of rejection and an inability to even approach women that I was actually attracted to so that's a story that keeps on going um another story that comes up is I feel people of respect should these other people I feel that they should act this way this is how a person respecting us you know when I'm talking about um justice for you but mercy for me that type of thought. That was a big defective character that I had. Another really big defect of character I had was this fear that if you're ever seen as stupid, that's like a death sentence. When I was a really young kid, I was riding a bike along and I saw some gentlemen on the side of the road and they were a different skin color than I am. And so I asked my parents who they were And my parents just started laughing. And I could tell from the way that they laughed that what I had asked was a dumb joke. What I had ask was something dumb. And from then on, a lifelong terror of being disrespected when I'm trying to be serious just comes in, you know? And there are other outside programs I've tried also And I don't mention most of them because everyone in AA hates at least one of those programs. But the one program I had that really emphasized that we have these stories that we carry for our life, I want to say that I did find my stories in that. I found how it is that I have managed fear. In our book, it says that, you know, selfishness and self-seeking. Selfishness, self- seeking, self center behavior. No, selfishness is not just I want what I want. Selfishness is I want what I want at the expense of someone else. Self-seeking behavior is because this happened to me, I deserve this. And that's a real problem for me as I'm trying to come into the 12 steps because I have a lot of because this happened to me, I deserve this. The biggest defect of character I have after anger is self-pity. you go through certain things in life and because of the way that i was raised up because i was raised in a home in which like i said there was a predator in there and they absorbed all of the attention i mean the entire house sort of went based on what they what they wanted and because of that because there was not a lot of affection in the house i viewed love as a form of currency You have to compete for and earn love. And if you have problems in my house, then you needed to make sure that those problems dialed up from 1 to 10 or else you weren't going to get noticed very much in that household. You could go up to mom and dad and you could ask for help when it was a dire emergency. And I carried that forward into my life. i carried it for you know whenever i had a problem at work it's like man you gotta understand this kid fucking came at me across the room and pinned me against the wall in reality that's not what happened in reality the kid did swing at me but i had to convey to my bosses that i feared for my life or something at that moment um just to give some context i spent most of my life as a special education teacher. I worked with children on the autism spectrum, and because I was often the only male special ed teacher, if there were restraints that had to be done, it was done by me. And, you know, I am sitting here, and I'm coming up with all these stories, and you say that, and you feel disgusted in the pit of your stomach, because you know you're lying. You know for a fact you're line. There's just that wire getting tighter and tighter. All of these defects of character, if you're ever doing your 10th step and you find yourself resenting yourself for your behavior, it's a defect of character. A properly worked 10th Step will send you back to Step 6. You know, maybe you have something that is a one-off, a one time behavior, but what I find is that all of this stuff, all of it I've done before and it keeps coming back. You know, there are people in AA and they'll tell you, man, I've got this disease. It's out in the parking lot doing push-ups. It's getting stronger and stronger. Forearms, biceps, everything. I don't have that disease. My disease is taking acting classes. My disease Is out there making up excuses, rationalizations. What's the other one? not rational justifications about my different attitudes and actions and that thing pinning around inside my head it once again is another part of that chaos which ultimately is going to drive me to drink i sit there and i go through it and one of my one of the greatest honors i've ever had in my life was that clancy spoke at the birthday of Alcoholics Anonymous at the Doubletree I think it would have been it would have been 2008 or 2009 because I remember who I was dating at the time and I went up there I sat down I listened to him and one of the things that he really said that has always stayed with me was he was up there and he was talking he said you know there are these psychologists back in the 1950s back when like treatment centers are really becoming a thing and it says these mental health for those these psychologists so they said that alcoholics are people who find everyday life so troublesome that at some point they have to drink in order to preserve their sanity and that's sort of what is going on with me you know i've got this stuff going on i see someone and that triggers a memory from five years ago all this stuff is going on i can't stay sane unless i can take chemicals and force a period of rest onto me generally my experience as an alcoholic is that i drink two times i drink when it's going to feel good again like the first time and i drink what i'm thinking to myself i don't give a damn you know i don t care about consequences i just somehow need this world to pause and let me off i need to hit a pause button not just on the device i need to hit a pause button on my life those are two times i drink and those are also the two times I indulge in defects of character I sit there and I go through this stuff and um you know I'm dealing with some sort of problem in my life and it could be a problem that's real or completely imaginary it doesn't work doesn't matter but I need some way to pause that restless irritable and discontent inside of myself i need something to take care of that and to give me that that brings me to another defective character i have which is daydreaming and fantasizing all the time once again it wasn't bad at first when i was a kid i didn't have a lot of friends you know later on i realized i didn'T have a LOT OF FRIENDS WAS ACTUALLY JUST BAD LUCK I JUST DIDN'T HAVE THE SAME INTERESTS AS A LOT OF KIDS AROUND ME They weren't being mean or bullies or anything. I just didn't have enough in common with some of them to talk. But after a while, it became something I could do every time that life became stressful. I could sit there and just sort of zone out every time there's a hard decision to make. A really good friend of mine is a smoker. And he said that when he quit smoking, he realized it was an incredible emotion suppressor. He was a lawyer. He ran a big office. every time that there was a hard decision to make let me go take a smoke break and then i'll come back and deal with this and when he stopped smoking he noticed how often he did that at his work he noticed How often he Did That With His Wife How Often He Did That with His Kids It's Just This Oh This Small Problem That Actually Is Quite Big When I Bother To Sit Down And Look at it and so that's it it's the defects of character if it's a resentment against myself it becomes a defect at some point something if you're not good enough and it becomes something in which there is always something you're getting out of it and um you know to this day that's that's the way it is that in my life i try to go ahead and to clarify these things the way that we perform the 10th and the 11th step in the big book of alcoholics anonymous begins with a look at when is it that we were angry, afraid, selfish, or dishonest? That's what it is that shows up page 84. But actually I like to still use a lot of the fourth and fifth step inventories to do it because I love the wording and it's asking us why it isthat we're in this position and it uses self-seeking and frightened, inconsiderate, dishonest. When I'm looking at my resentments the biggest thing that comes up under there is dishonest . A lot of times I've had a resentment against someone and as i'm looking i realized that i've actually resented this person before and i didn't do the work on it this is a person that i resented before and instead of going forward through the work on it i decided to sit there i did a little bit of work around it and now they're back in my life and so i bring it back up when i'm angry at them i'm not just angry about what is it just happened the entire movie reel starts going you know as an alcoholic those resentments are so fatal and you know i love the way that charlie put it one time we're at the primary purpose group we were reading about resentment it says resentment is the number one offender from its stem all spiritual illness it kills more alcoholics than anything else and charlie stops and he looks up at the room he says you know if i'm reading those words if I'm just reading the black and white, then that means resentments kill more alcoholics than alcohol kills. And you know, there's something to be said for that about the power of resentment to take us out of these rooms. And so I'm looking at these defects of character that I have and I'm living through them. And the first thing that I had to do in order to really get into this was understand that I Had to fully give myself over to step three. I love the way that Chad P says this i think he's actually quoting someone else but he'll talk about step six and seven he'll say that they are taking the third step and putting teeth into it all these defects of character are defensive right i get something out of all them but in the big book it tells us very simply that my higher power is going to give me immunity from alcohol but what i have to do is to carry his word and do his work well that's required for it you know 12 step work is not extra credit it's something that i have to be doing and so that turns me around because i hold on to these defects they're defensive and now this program is telling me i have got to be concerned with other people i have God to be thinking about how it is what is it that could happen i go into step seven and i say the seventh set prayer my creator i'm willing that you should have all of me the good and the bad. Please release me from all these defects of character, except when they're in service to you or my fellows. And as I'm sitting there and I'm listening to that prayer, I'm thinking, well, that tells me the defective character is useful. It is useful if I'm sitting there, and I's struggling with something that I'm really ashamed about, like I've had some sexual behavior or something that is really just tearing me to pieces. That's a nice thing to sit there and pray about right before I listen to someone else's fist up because that person might be in real pain about something also. And I might actually have some humility and some concern for what it is that they're going through. I might have some ability to look at another alcoholic and say, man, first off, you're not the only person that did this. Many alcoholics have terminal uniqueness. You know, if, if there's a word for what you did on your fifth step, someone else did it. If there's law against what you said on your first step, that means a lot of people did it. You sit there and you take that into every situation. Every time that I can sit there and I'm in front of an alcoholic and this hasn't happened to often, but every once in a while they will say something that really shocks me. And at that moment, I can remind myself, Barry there's stuff on your fifth step that you desperately wanted to be forgiven from when you came in and I sit there and I do that moment of realization and I say that sick man's prayer and we continue on so that can give me it another thing that it gives me that these defects of character give me is that once again they're gonna come up in my 10th step I'm having to keep doing my 10th step. I'm having to keep doing my 11th step and the 12 and 12, it says that prayer, meditation and inventory all go hand in hand. If I'm sitting there at home and I'm trying to go into prayer, eventually I'm just going to be praying for a winning lottery ticket and the supermodel. That's all it is that I'm going tobe praying for. When I sit there and I go over my 10 step and I see something that's been bugging me in the past, then suddenly I have something different to pray for. Instead of praying in my circumstance, I'm praying for something that's actually going to change me. I'm really, really, really oversensitive. I go to an AA meeting and when I'm talking or so, either a joke doesn't go off right and immediately my mind is just going into this anger spiral. about you know if i do 10 and 11 as i'm going into prayer i'm suddenly not praying for selfish ends like more money or anything like that then i'm asking my higher power genuine questions like god why am i so oversensitive i'm sitting there and i'm writing out my 10 step i look back and something like that over sensitivity shows up every day that week then i have to sit there going to have to ask myself, have I really prayed to have this removed? Or is there some sacrifice, you know, I've got to sit there and ask myself what is it that I'm getting out of holding on to this, you know. And those are hard questions but I have to do them if I'm going to get prayer for them or if I am going to relief from it. You know one of the favorite parts of the 12 in 12 is in step 10 when it tells us that many alcoholics have a perverse desire to hide a bad motive underneath a good one. That's a hard one for me to deal with. I want to do good. I want to help people in my life, and I want every ounce of credit I can get for it. Even in the worst days of my drinking, I will literally loan you the shirt off my back, and i will not ask you for any repayment but until the end of time i will remember who owes me what it maybe doesn't come out to anyone else but in the back of my mind that's how it is you know i sit there and i look at that and that brings up some real issues about self-worth that brings us some real shoes about the love of the higher power because what kind of person does hold on to stuff like that. A person who doesn't feel they own anything. You know, a lot of my conduct towards women over the years, talking to them, offering things, trying to be of help. You know I have to sit there and look and say man, a person who really doesn't feel he has any value to others as a human being would do a lot of those behaviors. It really does. I can sit there, I can tell you oh every human being is valuable, every human being has value. But then I look at how it is I'm walking around trying to curry favor with different people around me and suddenly i'm left with a hard question to ask myself about the 11th step and have i really been putting these things into prayer like this and so all this stuff comes back and it all comes into the service work because i can sit there and i can say things like that but when i say something like that and the alcoholic across from the table from me knows the same thing in other words both of us being honest then there's a real moment of unity right there that's the moment that a lot of times the sponsor gets more out of it than the sponsee does at times that's when it is you know i wasn't able to come up with an idea of god's perfect love because once again lotto ticket supermodel but i was able to sit there and to experience something with my brothers in this program that I would not have felt normally. Love as a verb, and a lot of times maybe it's God as a verb also. Remember that the phrase faith without works is dead, that phrase only occurs twice in the Bible, but occurs three times in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. When I'm sitting there and I'm doing step 11, I then have to follow it up with 12. I have to be going out there and um these things really get through us and the last thing i'm going to say is just this story um well actually no i'm not going to tell that story because i don't think we have enough time but i do want to tell you this one of the most important pages in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous to me is page 124 um and page 126 is the first page of the book 124 in the paragraph that starts off with Henry Ford's quotation it says at the end our dark past is our greatest possession with it we hold the key to alleviating the misery and the suffering of others. And in Alcoholics Anonymous none of those problems about defective characters I've had have been magically lifted away but I've been able to talk with someone about each and every one of them when those defects are coming up and they're absolutely hammering me down i know exactly which alcoholics to call up to in a few weeks we're gonna have a speaker at citywide and one of the things that caused me to draw to that made him attracted to me was that one day he was sitting there and he shared that he had not written about resentments in about six months and so i started thinking about that and the next thing he says and i haven't because i go home every day and i write about fear no matter what. It doesn't matter how hard I have to search or how minute and how granular I have to get. That fear inventory gets written every day and suddenly I had that connection. That lifelong problem with anger yet again there was another thing that could possibly get me relief and get me grace off of that. In Alcoholics Anonymous There's nothing that promises you That you're never going to have bad times That the evil is going to stay out Or anything like that But There is hope in it We don't promise you That you'll never go through tough times again What we promise you Is that you never have to go through anything alone Ever again There's always the fellowship And always the stuff The egoism and fear That we didn't lose in step 5 If you can lose that egoism if you can be honest and vulnerable, then you can find incredible relief from things. If you can do that, then there's always a promise ahead of you about what it is that this program can really do for you. And so once again, I want to thank you all for letting me come up here and share. Thank you.