Third Step for an Agnostic — Just Admit Higher Power Isn’t You — JC B.

We have J.C. tonight. Good evening. My name is J.C., and I'm an alcoholic. Good evening. Sorry for that. I got a direction from the back that I'm J.C. number two from J.C. number one. Look, it's great to see a lot of familiar faces here tonight. I appreciate the opportunity to share my experience, strength, and hope. It's been a little while since I've told my story. The first time I did was a number of years ago, and my sponsor at the time told me to not prepare and meditate and just be a channel for my... My continuous sobriety date is April 22, 2018, and I say it that way because my story and my message tonight includes multiple sobriety dates, and I'll get to that, but I'll start by setting the stage. I'm setting the stage, saying that I am going to share my experience, which specifically my experience with the disease of alcoholism, my strength, which is the solution. My hope is for each of you to connect with some of the things that I share, for that to either strengthen your recovery or to help you find recovery, because it's been the greatest gift that I've received in my life. I'm a child of the 70s. I was born in the early 70s. I was born in the early 70s in North Carolina. I didn't know it at the time, and really until much later, but my parents were having a summer fling. My father and mother, a biological father and mother, were college students, one in Virginia and one in North Carolina, and I'm very grateful for adoption. And I was adopted out of the people that I know as mom and dad are two of the kindest, most loving. They're the best parents that anybody could ask for. My biological father was a college professor at the time, my mother was a teacher. Shortly after I was born, we moved to Memphis, Tennessee, which is where they're from and where I spent my elementary school years. We lived in North Alabama. I think back about my childhood, it was really sort of an idyllic childhood. When I say that they were loving and kind and giving, not good, mother didn't really drink. And my father couldn't. You know, but he was a good kid. He was a good kid. He was a good kid. He was a good kid. He was a good kid. He was a good kid. He was a good kid. He was a good kid. He was a good kid. He was a good kid. He was a good kid. You know, buy a six pack of beer that might last in the fridge for, you know, six months. My memories are like cells inside looking in. It looked like a fantastic existence. You know, I didn't really know it at the time. But looking back, I was with all that not comfortable in my own skin. My earliest memories are filled with, you know, what was, was I good enough? There was some hole in my life that I didn't know how to fill. And we went back to our childhood where I was kind of in six pack of beer that might fill. I tried to fill it by being what you wanted me to be, by excelling at, you know, whatever situation I was put into. When I was somewhere between seventh and eighth grade, my two best friends and I decided that we needed to, we'd heard from our friends at school that, you know, some of them had drank, you know, liquor from their parents, and it sounded fun or something like, you know, we wanted to try. We figured out a way to get a bottle of vodka. They spent the night at my house. We, we just proceeded to get drunk. You know, what I remember of that is probably similar to a lot of kids' first-time experience with. My two friends drank, one of them to the point of blacking out and making a complete fool of himself, both of them getting sick, and me having the best time that I'd maybe ever had. I woke up the next morning, they were hungover, and I couldn't wait to do it again. So I, I did. You know, that was my first experience, but it was, I fell in love with it. It progressed, and by the time I was in high school, I was, you know, drinking or getting as deep into recreational chemistry as, as I could every chance I could. It was just about pretty much every weekend, and that's, that's what I did. You know, somehow I was able to continue to, to perform at school, and it was, it was just what I did, no, no consequences other than, you know, occasionally making a fool of myself. But as it progressed, and I had no idea I had the disease of alcoholism, you know, I was just doing what the people around me, everybody's life revolved around. I wasn't drinking or, again, experimenting. Then I was planning or thinking about or, you know, somehow, probably my third year in college, and I went from being a good student to, you know, being a good student to, you know, being a good student. You know, I, I, even at 53-year times, and it's, it will be into the semester, and drop add may or may not have, have ended. That's the period where you can drop your class, and there will be one or two classes that I'm enrolled in that I haven't been to yet, and I have no idea what to do, and that's because that was my experience. I'd always been focused on school. It was important to me. I knew it was important, yet part of it started to pile up, and I was on the sixth year, plan, and it got to the point where I needed to be able to hit the eject button or, you know, I was going to burn things down, and so I figured out that I could medically withdraw from school and clean up all of the zeros and Fs that I transcript for that semester, and so I came home and told my parents I had a problem, and I ended up going to treatment, and I went to treatment here at a place called, called Ridgeview, and was there for a good long while. Um, and got exposed to this program, and that's where I first, um, we admitted to becoming manageable. You know, I could understand that my life was a complete mess, and, you know, in every other area of my life, you know, figured out how it came to alcohol, and in particular some, some other things, you know, I, I could not choose doing this or managing my money or getting what I needed was, was more important. I could understand that, and that allowed me to have consequences. I was, in some ways, you know, happy to be there. It did not make sense to me at all. A drink or, and so when I got out, people that needed something from me, you know, off my back, um, and I, you know, re-enrolled in school, pretty quickly, I said, you know, and I did, and I did need a geographical cure. I'd been going to school at the University of, of Alabama, and if you've ever spent any time in, in T-Town, there's a lot of partying that, that goes on, and so all the people, the treatment center, my doctor, my parents, they're all, they're all, they're all, they're all, they're all, they're all, they're all, you know, I said, you can't go back there. I was like, all right, I'll go to Athens, Georgia, and I'll finish up there, you know. Um, what was interesting is I found the same types of people there that were in, uh, in T-Town, um, and continued doing what I was doing, and, um, you know, one night, a girlfriend had, had just ended a, a relationship, and, you know, I was, uh, couldn't understand that, and was, was frustrated, knew that I wanted to go back there, and, and, and, and, go, um, you know, change the way I, I feel, and, and go out, and I said, yeah, it's probably not a good idea, and so I went, and I, I worked out. I went to the, the gym, and I got out, and it was about midnight, and I still had that itch, and I said, well, I'll just go down, and, you know, have a drink. Nine drinks later, I needed to get home, and this was before Uber, and so I, I drove home. I guess I wasn't driving very well, because the, uh, the blue lights came, and they decided to help me, um, and I, you know, ended up in jail for, for DUI. I tell myself, I told myself, you know, years later, that that was meant to be, because when I went to Hokie Jackson DUI school in Athens, Georgia, we started dating, and, you know, not long after that, I came home and said, told my parents, you know, I've met the person that I'm going to marry, and they're like, oh, where'd you meet her? And, uh, and I'm like, DUI school. You know, isn't that where everybody, you know, meets, meets their, the love of their life? We, we ended up getting married. You know, my, my dad still remember what he said. He's like, you know, well, at least y'all have something in common. We got married, you know, somehow she had been to treatment. I had been to treatment, but wasn't staying sober. You know, we've been exposed enough of life, you know, beating us up that, that somehow, you know, start burning things down yet, but I lived. I still, built my life and changed in the way I, you know, for the next eight years, what it does and things got, you know, progressively worse. Same time, you know, I was functioning in the world. I guess I truly was a functioning alcoholic, had a couple of kids. I started a career, but again, 20s, early 30s, really right up until it got to the point where I had a daily habit. I was drinking to, to drink, you know, pretty much 24 seven. And that's what I did. If I was, if I was, if I was, if I was, if I was, if I was, if I was, if I was, if I was awake, then I was consuming something to change the way I got to the point. I was doing things that I wouldn't normalize. All of this to, to keep my, I spent a ton of time on, on what it was like, but I want to give you the picture that my disease had completely taken over my life. And it got to the point where I didn't care about anybody. I didn't care about the people that were closest to me. I surely didn't care about that. My wife had had enough, you know, essentially she was going to leave me with the kids. And so I was, you know, facing all of that, but that wasn't enough. She'd been threatening that for, really came down to, because the thing that I had turned to, to fill that holiest point in my life, turned on me and plenty to do. And yet I still, you know, didn't want to be here. And so finally hitting that bottom where I just didn't want to continue, I'd been to treatment before. Some of the people here, you know, may remember me back then. We started going to a meeting. My wife had me, you know, go to a 12-step meeting. I picked up a light chip. I was intoxicated at the time. I didn't mean it. I was, again, just trying to get people off. You know, probably three, four months, I was at least willing to be removed from the situation that I was in. And, and that's what I, I needed. I needed to be completely removed because I, I could not stop. And so I, I went into treatment. Fortunately, also, I got a sponsor. And I think that's one of the most, that is one of the vital things that I did. And in my experience, one of the vital things we need to do in order to get, to get sober. And I got a competent sponsor, a sponsor who had worked the steps, who was working with others to ask, you know, a person that asked me to tell my story tonight. He immediately, this time, to admit that I could drink and, and get away with it. There were times here or there, or maybe have 10 and have no consequences. But there are other, I couldn't predict when that was going to be. And I, I recognized that once I put the first one in, I was going to go on. And, and that was my experience. The night that I got the DUI, the intention of having one drink, eight more drinks later, I'm in jail. I, that is, that was not my intention. And, and the unmanageability, was apparent. My, my wife, my situation at work, my finances, my relationships, the betrayals that I did to the people closest to me, many of them, you know, didn't know it at the time, not difficult for me to get sober. When I first, when I went to treatment, I did not have a high, in my, my childhood, I believed that, you know, if I wanted, if not atheist, and so reading my experience, and I, I've been raised, you know, going to a church, you know, that was very difficult for me. And, and what I, I realized was that after accepting that I'm an alcoholic in, in step one, and I'm powerless, and my life is unmanageable, if you stop there, that's a pretty hope. In order to get into that hope, my sponsor told me, hey, look, you don't have to figure out who your higher power is. You just need to admit it's not you. Use the group, a group of people, you know, with a common, so that's where I started. And then, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, in step three, he had me, you know, get down on my knees and say the third step, but, you know, this is, and, and I didn't believe in, in part it to, it started to make sense. Then I got to initially, which was, was doing step four and step five. And my, my experience with step four, the first time around, I wouldn't recommend it. I took way too long. I used the, the sheets and, and the Joe and Charlie style that I think a lot of people do, and I found it to be very beneficial. And once I got it down on paper, and I actually did a step five. It wasn't a white light experience. It was amazingly through things that I had never told anybody before. I was ashamed. It was very freeing. And at some point, at some point between my fifth step, I started to feel a sense of peace. The gift of recovery for me is I finally felt my own skin. Step six and seven in four and five, I had defects of character. I mean, I think I had well over. I'm a bit of a perfectionist and OCD and everybody pretty much in my life because if I met you, I had a resentment against you. I realized that most of the resentments were I think, you know, yes, there were some people that had harmed me and acted out, but the resentment was really facing some sort of expectation on how you were supposed to act around me. And you fell short and therefore I had a resentment again. It was incredibly frustrating. It was a very freeing experience. And six and seven were, you know, I learned my character to let them go and, you know, then ask him to remove them. That's not a step that I can just character defects. Sometimes I'm not even aware. I identified the people that and made amends. Made none, no, not. Is everything that I was afraid of. The thing that I also learned is it's not about me saying I'm sorry. Me being, I'm making amends. All that weight, whether they forgave me, and so really it wasn't about the other people. It is that the person that benefits the most in my experience. Or you just get contingent upon the sobriety date is April 22nd of 2018. I guess I'm, and it's because what I believe is I have a daily reprieve. And that's been my experience. And it's contingent upon me continuing to do this program. And to me, that's what, you know, step 10 to, remember that I was agnostic. My experience is once I became willing to believe in myself. And my spirituality is the thing that I value most. You know, I have a higher power today that I choose to call God. And it's the most important. And it is the relationship that gives me peace, joy, you know, sort of, and everything. And in steps, if you know me, it becomes apparent. So sitting and meditating is not something that comes naturally. But I've found it to be a tremendous, tremendous, you know, benefit in my life. And then, you know, the magic really happens in steps. And there's lots of ways to do service in this program. Initially, I was, you know, my sponsor and people in meetings had me doing service. I didn't even realize what I was doing. You know, telling my story, just being here, every one of you by being here are being of service in this program. And, but the gift, you know, but the gift for me really was, was when I started taking them through the steps, seeing the magic happen in their lives. It helps me, I think, as much or more than it does the people that I'm sponsoring, because it allows me to go back through the steps. It allows me to see that it doesn't get, and sometimes it makes me grateful that I'm not in accident. The book says that it's not to be missed. And I absolutely believe having multiple sobriety days. And I think my, my experience is, I really have three sobriety days. The first one was 2002. And that's when I came into that treatment that I described. I got a sponsor. I worked the steps and I got all the things that, that I've just, and for the first time in my life at age 31, I had a bunch of guys better than it ever had been before. Professionally with my family, with sort of everything. I did something that, that I don't recommend. I started missing meetings. I knew for me that anything, anything I put in front of, years into the program, I found myself on a business drill and put a drink in my hand. And before I knew it, that evening, over a thousand miles, I didn't know where I was in a, by myself, nobody that I knew, you know, putting my life, everything that I had. And that's how quick, everything going for me, you know, within, I made it back to the hotel and I wish that I'd called my sponsor that next morning, but I didn't. And so the next nine months of my life were upon seas. I had, I had a family. It was a period where, nine months until, you know, the disease eventually took me to a place where, you know, I couldn't keep the secret anymore. Yeah, I didn't come home one night and my wife knew what was going on. Fortunately, then I did call my sponsor. Was that, put me back in with open arms and boy was I, figured it out. Welcome to me back in and I did the steps again. I had the same experience. And so I got, of 2018, I'm 11 years sober this time. I'm, it's more difficult for me to explain what happened this time. Yes, I was not as I needed to be, obviously, but I was still going to meetings. All I can say is that I was in a situation where I was prescription medication that I knew would, it was a stimulant and knew it would give me extra energy. I had been prescribed that medication for ADD before. I knew I couldn't handle it, but I took it to change the way I felt. So, that night. And then I found my, I had been, this time I did call my sponsor. Steps again and it was an amazing experience. My lesson in all of that had never been an active alcoholic. I believe I would still have that. I would be filling it up with, it has given me, again, a sense of peace and serenity that I didn't know was possible. I'm almost at time and I do want to share one more thing and then I'll wrap it up. My experience, it's not difficult things to do. It's not difficult things to go through. A few years ago, my wife, who after 15 years of surprise, a couple of years ago, where I'm grateful in a way because I got to experience what I put my parents and family members and friends through, but I don't wish it on anybody. The reason that I need to go to Al-Anon in a place of complete despair, this is a family disease. Some of us can benefit from an early recovery here, stay here, but once you're in recovery, if you find that, if you think, that's interesting, I highly recommend it because it has been phenomenal in terms of helping me with the family disease. Thank you for the opportunity. Thank you, JC, and I'm not going to call you JC number two. I'm sorry. I can't do it.