Untreated Alcoholism in Sobriety – Retreat/Workshop – Part 2 of 4 – Beth

Hi, I'm Beth. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Beth. I'm Dan. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Dan. Just real quick, we may or may not split this chapter into two weeks. There was a lot of stuff that Beth had to say. So, but yeah, we'll get right into it. And the first thing that Beth wanted to talk about was we hope we have made clear the distinction between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic. So we're on page 44 in the very beginning of We Gnostics and we've spent 44 pages talking about the problem as we see it, the problem As Alcoholics Anonymous sees it. If you've gotten to this part in the book and you're going forward, as it says in the rest of the paragraph, if you honestly want to and you find you cannot quit entirely or when drinking you have little control over the amount you take, you're probably alcoholic. And that was for me. Those were the two big ones. to qualify my alcoholism going forward we're not going to talk a whole lot if at all about alcohol we're going to start talking about the rest of the disease and symptoms are and the solution um to get free and there's no more important chapter to me than the one that talks about god or higher power so if you've gotten to this part of the book and you're not 100 clear on your own comfortability with your alcoholism, I suggest you get with a sponsor or somebody to really figure it out so that going forward your foundation is solid. That's what I needed to do. It may be worth really quickly touching on what exactly an agnostic is. And we actually looked it up earlier today and essentially, I think Beth's going to get it out, but essentially it's somebody who doesn't really know one way or the other whether God's there. It's like being in the middle, being on the fence. And I think there's a lot of times where that's even worse than believing one way or the other. I mean, I'd almost rather be a complete atheist than not be sure either way. A person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause as God and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable. A personal who denies or doubts the possibility of ultimate knowledge. A a person who holds neither of two opposing positions on a topic. So, you know, maybe God is there, maybe God isn't there. You know what I mean? I don't know either way. And that's rough, especially as a newly discovered alcoholic who is seeking a certain spiritual experience. I know for me that my personal definition of agnosticism is understanding that God is, right? Because it's so blatant through the book that either God is or he isn't. And for me, my agnolicism is I know that God is, I just don't believe he plays a part in this part of my life. Um, so it's a, it's a, I believe he's there, but I've got it, which I'm prone to do. And I think we'll hit, we'll put that in a couple of spots in this chapter actually, especially with, um, untreated alcoholism in sobriety. You know, it'S one thing to be there when you're first coming in, but you know, I know for me in, uh, in places it's throughout my sobriety where I've been in untreated alcoholism for either a short period of time or an extended period of time, it really at its root has to do with the fact that at some level I don't think God's going to take care of me if X, Y, and Z happens. You know what I mean? And it all just stems from, grows from there. Second paragraph, to be doomed to an alcoholic death or to live on a spiritual basis are not always easy alternatives to face. Yeah, I just, you know, it's very black and white. when I first got sober, or when I went through the book, it was very black and white when my sponsor put it to me that those were my two alternatives. And in fact at some points she'd be like, well then just go drink. If you don't want to do X, Y, and Z, then just go drink and get it over with. It's not always, when we start to look at not being a newcomer and start looking at being in untreated alcoholism, it's not always easy, and it's not as black and white. I can choose God, or I can choose my way. To be completely honest, there are things in my life where I am constantly choosing to do it my way until I paint myself into a nice little corner, and my only alternative then is to go to God. And what we were talking about, I guess we'll talk about it later in the chapter too, is that in the beginning, we exhaust absolutely all of our other alternatives, other avenues before we go to God. But later on in recovery, it really does come down to it's easier for me to choose God today because I have a certain amount of experience of what happens when I go to god. I also have more experience of what happens when i don't go to got. And it's not as black and white. You know, if I don't involve god, I start, you know, didn't involve God in the house that we, you know, we pushed. I was like, I'm pregnant. We have to buy a house. I don't care. Just buy ahouse and not having a baby and a rental, which is just the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my life. Didn't include God in it at all and hated the house the entire time we were there. Ask God to get involved and help us decide where we're going to wind up living now. And I'm happier than we've ever been. I wake up every morning and I'm like, I love New Jersey. I love our house. I love everything. Like, I'm so happy. So it's like, it's not as black and white anymore as far as, well, if you don't get God involved, you're going to go drink. But my experience is that I can either choose a spiritual life and do the work or I'm not happy with the results, which is interesting because when I'm not involving God, I am only interested in the results. So you would think it would be easy, but enter an alcoholism and it gets a lot less easy. But after a while we had to face the fact that we must find a spiritual basis of life or else. Yeah, so again, anything for me, we were talking about this, And it's not exclusive, but all of the musts in the book going forward are, in my opinion, principles that we need to live by. So this is a spiritual program, and whether you have a higher power that's based in science or you have an higher power based in literature or religion or whatever it is, we have to live on a spiritual basis or else, right? So it's not, already just one paragraph down, it's not quite as black and white. But that's it. We've painted ourselves into a corner. We beat the dead horse of being beyond human aid for the last 44 pages or 43 pages. And the alternative is that if I'm completely beyond human aid, there's only one alternative, and that's a power greater than myself. Because I'm beyond my health, I'm beyond your health. I'm Beyond the medical center's health and the rehab's health, and all of the other stuff. and I only have one alternative. Oh, and then we move on to the last paragraph on 44 where it says, if a mere code of morals or better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us, no matter how much we tried. Again, human power, if I'm trying. We could wish to be moral. We could wish to be philosophically comforted. In fact, we could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn't there. Our human resources, as marshaled by the will, being all about me and me controlling, were not sufficient and they failed utterly. So I decided to look up the word moral, and I thought it was a great definition. That's Cornerstone. moral, of pertaining to or concerned with the principles or rules of right conduct or the distinction between right and wrong. Me without God I can't differentiate between the truth and the false so there's no way that I can and I don't have the needed power to make this happen. You know, I can'T make myself be on time all the time. I can' t make myself pay my bills all the time when there's, you know, I want to buy a toy. These are the things that I need help from God with. You know, it's also worth noting that the idea of this code of morals or a better philosophy, you know? I mean, the tools that we see in this book are really a better code of morals or philosophy. You know? Amends, inventory, pausing when agitated, spiritual and morning meditation, nightly prayer, all these things are things that are wonderful ideas, but if we don't actually put them into actual practice, they yield no results. The power isn't there. You know what I mean? So I can know this book backwards and forwards. I don't. But I could know this back backwards and forward, but that doesn't make me a spiritually living alcoholic. You know What I mean. In fact, I know several people who do know this backwards and forwards and seem like they're suffering from untreated alcoholism. The idea that the needed power wasn't there, the whole point of this book, and that's probably the next thing we're going to cover actually, but that's exactly what this book is about. Its main object is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself which will solve your problem. That power greater-than-ourselves, that's what we're trying to tap into through having a spiritual experience. That's what we try to avail ourselves of when we, you know, we'll see it in the next chapter, I guess. But when we take the third step and we come to a place where we're, you Know, willing to believe in a higher power in any form, you Now, when we see that a lot of that in this chapter, just that simple acknowledgement that there is a power greater than ourselves which can help us, You Know, irrespective of what the definition of that power may be, almost immediately we begin to see a result. we see a change. You know what I mean? I think it's also from my own personal experience when I was living in untreated alcoholism when we lived in Charlotte and I knew this book. I know what's in this book I've taken people through this book I've been through this books and I'm living in untrated alcoholism. I would get texts from people in Charlotte saying Beth where is this in the book or where is that in the book and I could give that information to them but this entire book became frothy emotional appeal because I didn't have a connection with my higher power. And that's scary, because the whole purpose of the book is to get a connection and a working relationship with a power greater than ourselves, and we can have all of this knowledge, but if I don't have that connection, and when I don'T have that connexion, this is useless. This is just a dust collector on my... or taking up space in my back so that I can look like a good alcoholic, sober alcoholic. you know I've got look at me I've got all the highlights, I've got all the right stuff outlined but if I'm not actually having a connection with my with the power greater than myself who I choose to call God then it's just useless. It's not the book that gets us sober, it's God that gets this over so Now we're going to jump down to the bottom of page 45. Bill spends some time in the next few paragraphs talking about the idea of being able to put aside prejudices that we may have coming in here. And this particular line, actually, we wanted to look at it in a couple of facets. To others, the word God brought up a particular idea of him with which someone had tried to impress them during childhood. I know for me, my own personal experience, that I grew up in not super religious, but a religious enough Jewish household. and by the time I was 15, 16 completely really lost the sense of identity I may have had with the religion at some point because I thought that the people in my life that emphasized it were really overbearing and their experience that I had the experience that I have with it wasn't a personal experience I was experiencing someone else's spiritually they had a very legitimate spiritual experience being a Jew and essentially what happened is that they were so eager to impart that experience onto me that they were trying to force me to have their experience. And it wasn't, that's not how it was for me. And I really disassociated with that religion for a long time. When I came in here, you know, this was a big line for me, the word God did just that. I started to immediately think about being told what I was supposed to believe and for what reason, what I Was supposed to do to express that belief or prove that belief. So I had some difficulty for a while Getting with the idea of a loving and benevolent God, that would be personal to me. That was something of a hurdle to be overcome. Thankfully, it was easier than I thought it was. you know and we'll see why in a couple minutes if you want to talk with it yeah i worked with a girl a number of years ago who was a devout born-again christian there's nothing wrong with that it's wonderful religion um but she was very well versed in the literature that comes with that and she went to church every sunday and her kids went to sunday school and she did all of the practices that belong with that religion and so she told me when we sat down to do agnostic she's like, well, my relationship with God is fine. So I'm good there. And I kind of looked at her and I'm like, then how come you can't stay sober? And I said, if that were true, if your relationship with God was fine, then you should not have an issue being able to not pick up. And so we went away on a retreat up to Skinny Atlas and I told her that for the weekend that she was to do the set-aside prayer, but in reference to her idea of God and her practices of God. To lay aside everything she thought she knew about that entire arena, God, religion, and the spiritual connection, and to have a new experience. And she had an overwhelming weekend for her. She began to experience God. She kept coming over to me repeatedly, kind of just like she went for a walk. Isn't there the Stations of the Cross up there? She did walk on the Strations of the cross and had a fundamentally different experience than she'd ever had doing that before. So she was able to have that personal. So everything that she had learned didn't get wiped away. It just got pushed aside so that she could examine it and have a new experience with it. And that's what's required, right? It's a conditional program. You know, God loves us unconditionally, but this is a conditional problem. It comes up numerous times in this chapter that we need this. This is the essential core of how we get to stay sober is by allowing God to connect with us. And in that first sentence, we have shared this honest doubt and prejudice. That mention of prejudice I think is one of seven or eight times that it gets brought up. And the theme here is that we have a preconceived notion of something and we want to try to get away from that. And that is another heavy undercard in this chapter is contemporary investigation, sweeping aside prejudice, trying to let it go of old ideas. And, you know, in terms of longer-term sobriety or, you know, issues after alcohol, right? You know, alcohol gets removed. I still have a boatload of other issues that I need to deal with. And this concept of old ideas that Beth was talking about, you know, letting go of those can be just as important as the idea of letting go of alcohol, you know? An old idea in my own experience is basically one where I think that if I don't live by that old idea, whatever it is, I'm not going to be okay for some reason. And like we said that before, that's just another side to my own agnosticism, another side of my own belief that God is not going take care of me. And that's the kind of stuff that needs to be extracted and gotten rid of. And we do that with these tools. Right, in order to have spiritual experience. Right, continue this. Right, to grow in understanding and effect. We found that as soon as we were able to lay aside prejudice and express even a willingness to believe in a power greater than ourselves, we commenced to get results. Even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that power which is God. And then also throw in the next paragraph, as soon we admitted the possible existence of a creative intelligence, the spirit of the universe underlying the totality of things, we began to be possessed of a new sense of power and direction, provided we took other simple steps. We found that God does not make too hard terms with those who seek him. So, again, those two, I think, kind of speak to the same thing. This idea that as soon as we get to a place where we believe, that we really believe that there's a higher power and then he can help us. Whether it's with alcohol or a defective character or developments or the unmanageability in our lives that we start to be we start zu see results. When we first get here, the alcohol problem just gets lifted. And not drinking ceases to be a struggle. For me, that was the first time that I really experienced the power of God in my life is the day I went to sleep and didn't wake up drunk. You know what I mean? Twice in a row. Three times in a row. When it became, oh maybe I'll go get to drink, oh that's a bad idea. Like a sane reaction to the idea of drinking given my condition. And then also the idea a new sense of power and direction. I know that this again I think can speak to issues in sobriety and longer term sobriete and untreated alcoholism and old ideas. When I get to a place where I believe God will take care of me in whatever ratio I'm doing, I do begin to be possessed of a new sense of power and direction. And the more, the longer I stay sober and the more I have those kind of life issues, the more direction becomes important, a new set of directions where I begin to have an intuition about the way a situation should be handled. I'm not freaking out and calling my sponsor and going, oh my God, what do I do? You know what I mean? The idea where given almost any set of circumstances, I can with a sense of peace and comfort confront the situation and move through it and get past it and move on, you know? And there are times when I don't have that. And when I again, get to a place where I'm, where I believe that God is the answer, God is everything, you Know, then that sense of direction comes back. You know, I have that personally, I have That kind of situation all the time at work. You Know, if somebody yells at me for something or something ridiculous like that, anything really, it's usually work related, but I kind of think to myself, I don' t know what the hell I'm supposed to do. And those are the times where I pause, I'm agitated. And I think, you go, where am I agnostic? Why do I think that I won't be OK if X, Y, and Z happens? And I go, I will be OK. And all of a sudden, I know what I should do. Even if I don't know the whole course, I know the next step that I could take. I think I've sat with a lot of women who when we start talking about this part of the book, the fear wells up inside of them. And it was the same for me, where I feel like if I really lay it out on the table that God will judge me or God's not going to forgive me or God is going to be mad at me. And what was told to me and what I tell to the girls that I work with is that we put human emotions and human reactions onto God, and God's non-human. And that was mind-blowing for me. That was completely mind-blowing for me because I was so afraid to make that initial contact and to make that initial connection where there would be a give and take between me and my higher power because then he would see all of me and be like, oh, this chick's done. Just get rid of her. And, you know, for me it's important for me to become willing to set aside that old idea that God has human emotions because God's not human. And then further down where it says, we began to be possessed of a new sense of power and direction provided we took other simple steps. I can tell you, we hear about people, and I did this for six years, where it's the one, two, three walls. Where we do steps one, deux, and three. One, deux and three, yeah, oh, yep, my life blew up again. Self-imposed crisis. I'm powerless. I believe in God. I turn my will and my life over to him. And then I take it back. and then we have a self-imposed crisis and I've made a mess of things and oh, right, God. This is letting us know that we need to keep moving forward, that we needs to finish the entire process. For me, I kept... And I shared this last week or the week before where I always felt like I was starting over. I always thought that I would get to a certain part, I'd blow everything up, wreckage, wreckage ,wreckage, oh yeah, I'm powerless, oh right, god, oh yeah turn my will and my life over, okay start over. And ever since I finished, since the first time that I finished going through the work, I guess I finished somewhere around seven years at the end of Seven Years Sober. I've never felt like I'm starting over anymore by actually finishing the work. And so it lets us know, again, it's a conditional program. We get the freedom and we get the full spiritual experience by continuing to the next step. I mean, I know we're not there yet, but when we get to inventory, it says next we launched. So it's like this constant movement forward of doing the next thing that is in front of us. And then the last sentence of that last paragraph, or the second to last sentence really. To us, the realm of spirit is broad, roomy, all-inclusive, never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek. And we were talking about this, and I think there's actually two ways you can interpret that sentence. I think the more automatic way, it certainly is for me. that if you seek God, the realm of the Spirit will be broad, roomy, and inclusive, never forbidding. It won't be scary if you are the seeker. The other way to interpret it, and this speaks to what Beth was talking about, I think last time or maybe the time before, I don't remember really, I'm sorry, but that as a seeker, I ought not be exclusive or forbidding to anybody else regardless of their level of seeking. that everybody is already on this highway with me and it's my responsibility to let them be there without passing judgment on them. It's really none of my business what level of relationship they have with a higher power or what their higher power is. I can just as quickly turn around and say, well, God either is or he isn't, he's everything or he's nothing. If he's anything, why do I doubt where other people are? you know it's really none of my business no i just i love that um never exclusive or permitting to those who earnestly seek uh for me earnestly seeking can sometimes be laborious and i have to go and do inventory or i have to do something but most of the time and i'm thinking like 95 percent of the times earnestly speaking for me means get doing my utmost to be in the moment right here, right now. I operate under the understanding that God doesn't exist anywhere in the future or anywhere in the past. He only exists right here right now, in this moment. And so for me, most of the time, it's earnestly seeking to be in the moment with my eyes open, looking for God. That's all it requires. When we first moved here, moving sucks. You get ripped up from where you're coming from, and we were down there for seven, almost seven years, and, um, and, you know, and when we're coming home, you would think it would be easy that we were coming home to New Jersey, but we get up here, and I was just jammed up. And um, I remember, I have a hard time letting people in my house. Like, it's my sanctuary, it's the safe place, so it's like a big deal. And I remember uh, just being jammed up, and it was hard. I was having a hard connecting with God. I had a hard time being in the moment and trusting that the stomach flu that my son was going to have, was having would eventually pass. And he would eventually go back to school and I would find a preschool for my daughter. And I was just, it's big, it is heavy. It's a lot. And I went outside and I sat on the back porch and I was only able to sit there for about 10 seconds and I Was able to connect and I walked inside and for whatever reason I opened the basement door where a like, I don't know, 20% of everything we owned was to like a foot of water in my basement. And I was easily able to call the landlord, have her come into my home, which was destroyed because it was just boxes everywhere, and let her deal with the issue. Like on a good day, that's a challenge for me. But in that moment, thank God I had said, well, God got me to the place where I connected. I connected and then I very easily was able to deal with the situation. So when they say that this stuff's going to solve all of their problems, that's my experience. Having an open connection with my God has solved all of my problems. So earnestly seeking is... Cool. Yeah, there's a range there. Right? That's the word I'm looking for. I don't know. I should go to college. uh on page 47 do not let any prejudice you may have against spiritual terms deter you from honestly asking yourself what they mean to you and again that's the idea of contempt prior to investigation you know it says it somewhere else be quick to learn from some from from anyone really anybody speaking in spiritual terms you know you want to talk about that well again it relates back to that sponsee where she needed to push everything aside and and i get the same way you You know, I don't know any other way to comprehend the power that is God other than to put him in a box. Right? A nice, neat, human-sized box that I can wrap my little human brain around. The box that he was in when I got sober is not the box that I put him into now. The box is a million times bigger now, but if I were to say, oh, my God's not in a Box and, you know, I understand God that would be my pride and that would think right so he's infinite I'm finite he's everything I'm just this little speck so for me the box has gotten bigger but every single time I go through anything or random Tuesday afternoon you know something comes up where I'm challenged and my idea about what I think God is or is not or what he does or does not do is challenged and I can either continue to live by the idea that I'm currently working under and God can stay the same size, or the box can stay to same size. Or I can start living by the new idea that's being presented to me and allow that box to get bigger and my understanding to get more broad. That's how my experience is. And then a little further down on page 47, that simple question, one short question. Do I now believe or am I even willing to believe that there is a power greater than myself? And then as soon as a man can say that he does, he's on his way. It has been repeatedly proven among us that upon this simple cornerstone, a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built. Audrey, read it slowly so she can get to the definition. I thought this was beautiful. Chris talks about the architectural terms he puts in the book. They're all over the book, the architectural. There's the cornerstone and the keystone andthe foundation. He uses these terms. And so I looked up the current definition for cornerstone. A stone uniting two masonry walls at an intersection. A stone representing the nominal starting place in the construction of a monumental building, usually carved with the date and laid with appropriate ceremonies. something that is essential indispensable or basic a cornerstone um and that gives me chills that's how important this is when we talk about a building a structure it's so important that that's where they put the date that this started um and i think honestly if if i know okay so i know honestly for myself that the first time that i connected with god was the day that i got sober Did I know I connected with God? No clue. Did I knew that this was going to be a limitless load of awesomeness? No idea. But that's my sobriety day, and we do the exact same thing. We literally celebrate that date. Sometimes we celebrate it every year. Sometimes we celebrate it every five years, whatever. But that date is so important to us. It's the cornerstone. It's the first connection between me and my power greater than myself just enough to get me not drinking. So I thought that was awesome! That is awesome. And this idea, that short question, do I now believe or am I even willing to believe that there is a power greater that of myself? Again, in problems inside sobriety and issues with my own agnosticism from time to time, that's the question. Do I now belief or am i even willing to believe that there's a power more than myself? Yeah. Usually. Usually? Yeah. When I'm painted into a corner, yeah. Yeah, exactly. I'm sorry, when I paint myself into a quarter. Right, and as it says, I'm on my way. Page 48. Many of us have been so touched that even casual reference to spiritual things made us personal with antagonism. This sort of thinking had to be abandoned. And faced with alcoholic destruction, we soon became as open-minded on spiritual matters as we tried to be on other questions. It finally beat us into a state of reasonableness. Sometimes this was the tedious process. And I think that that's huge. I think it's important both looking at it when we get sober and we first get through the book. When we first go, we get sober, we've essentially painted ourselves into a corner. We have exhausted, when we come in here, right? Welcome to AA. We've exhausted every other avenue possible for us. I did. I just, there was, I mean, I didn't have a whole lot of resources. I was 17. But literally every other option, you know, and it talks about it earlier in the book. We drink beer instead of wine. You know, we drink on holidays. We make sure that we have 24 hours before we go to our IOP and get urine. And, you Know, we do all these different things to not have to stop drinking. And so when we paint ourselves into that corner, there is no alternative. This is the last one. After we've been sober for a while and we've done this work, it's not as black and white, right? Because it's Not As Black and White, like, oh, if I buy that toy instead of pay my bills, I'm going to die. That's just Not As Back and White as if I don't go to AA and find a god, I'm gonna drink and die, right. So it gets rarer as we get longer in recovery. But that's those little things that start to cut us off from the connection of God. And again, like I was talking about before, the longer I stay sober, the more of a good option it is, and I understand walking in, and I'm still agnostic, hugely agnestic when it comes to parenting. It's a huge block for me. When we moved here, moving and setting up camp, I was hugely agnostic, afraid that I wouldn't get it right, totally negating the fact that God never gets it wrong. And so these are things that we deal with later in recovery when we get scared and things come up. But for me, I think I just went off track. Did I just go off track? Nah. He's a good husband. Anyway, go ahead. Well, the only thing that I think I'm going to pick up the track that she was trying to get back to was sometimes this was a tedious process. Oh, right. There you go. And that speaks to a couple of things. Obviously, it speaks to sometimes we just have the crap beating at us before we even get in here. You know, I think and again, going back to untreated alcoholism and in sobriety, you know, sometimes that can be a tedious process too. Sometimes that untreated alcoholicism takes longer to see, you You know, I was telling somebody a couple weeks ago, like, the longer I stay sober, the longer the window where I go without living spiritually can � that window gets longer and longer where I can live in untreated alcoholism without feeling in danger of a drink. You know? The last time I did it, at no point did I think I was going to drink. At no point was I fearful about alcohol. But my life was completely and utterly unmanageable. And that was the walking embodiment of the bedevilments. You know what I mean? No control over my emotional nature, no real sense of personal relationship with other people. I could make a living, but then I got fired. And then you know what it is? But that's what my life was in sobriety without living by the tools that we have that we get in this book. And that was a tedious process. My untreated alcoholism, it persuaded me eventually. But it was a tedious process. And ultimately, if I really look at it, the idea that it was a tedious proces stems directly from the fact that I was living by old ideas. I was looking by, I think that these things are supposed to be this way. And if they're not this way, then I'm not going to be OK. And I did everything I could to try to make sure that things stayed that way. Well, that's the thing too. When we're on untreated alcoholicism, we're living in a delusional line. right? So we're right back into that insane thinking where now we're living in a delusional lie. We're living by an old idea and anything that happens around us, we have to make fit into that delusinal lie because the consequence then is having to wake up. And when you're in untreated alcoholism, you don't want that. You know, your alcoholism doesn't want it. You just don't, you know, you just don' t want that you want. You want to just keep continuing down. And that's I think that's why it's a tedious process is because you have to literally have another, you have to have God step in and have that moment of grace again and hope that you can get either woken up from the outside, which is almost and virtually impossible to allow somebody else to tell you you're an untreated alcoholism. It's a process in which you can either choose to seek God or continue down the path and hope you get a moment of grace. For me, it was my best friend dragging me back up to New Hampshire to see Cass and then getting a woman to take me through the work again is what brought me out of it. But that was a relationship that I had with my best friend who was like 13 years old already and I trusted her with my life and so when she said, you're messed up. And that's not the word she used. You know, I flew up to Jersey and we drove up to New Hampshire to see Cass. And then I came back and then we went to a workshop in, I think in Vermont. And dann I got this woman to take me through the work. And thenI woke up. But it was thank God that I had a period of sobriety in my life where I was connected. I did have a sisterhood. I did have a fellowship and people that I did trust with my life that we had the agreement that if I need to slap you upside the head, I will. And we gave each other spiritual license for years and years and thank God when it came time that I needed to be slapped upside the head, I allowed her at least to take me for the ride. Does that make sense? Yeah. What does it say? We used to amuse ourselves by cynically dissecting spiritual beliefs and practices. When we might have observed that many spiritually minded persons of all races, colors, and creeds were demonstrating a degree of stability, happiness, and usefulness which we should have sought ourselves. Yeah, that just makes me sad because this is what we do in Alcoholics Anonymous. We do it outside of AlcoholicsAnonymous. We do inside of AlcoholicAnonymous . We judge people. We judge their process. We judge God. God. We judge their sponsor. We judge the home group that they have. We judged the brand of sobriety that they have. And what that ultimately is, is me playing God. And I've seen people leave these rooms, not come back and I don't know what happens to them because they feel judged. You know, I am, I can only speak from my own experience and I can tell you that I have absolutely no right to judge anybody's program. I walked around Alcoholics Anonymous for six years before I was ready to go through the book. I walked round, I did the 1-2-3 walls, I did The Don't Drink and Go to Meetings, I did Diners and Bowling, and I would watch softball but not play, and picnics and all of that stuff, and I did not pick up a drink. The grace of God is the only thing that kept me sober. Now I've been through the book, I sponsor people, I have a sisterhood, I have fellowship, I had a connection to my God and you know what? The only thing that keeps me sober is the grace of God. And when I find myself doing it, I have to stop because I am going to be the one who pays the price. When I start to think that I am any better or any worse than any other human being in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, it's my disease trying to trick me, subtle foe, all of that stuff, trick me into untreated alcoholism to get me somewhere other than right here right now and to get away and separate and different from the people that are saving my life. I was just thinking that's, you know, I've had that experience and that's effectively what happened to me. I went down to North Carolina thinking that North Carolina is never going to be like New Jersey. It's not. And it wasn't. Thank God. You know what I mean? And I made sure that I pointed that out to myself every opportunity because, you know, there's no way that I could really, you know, live a sober lifestyle by those standards. So why even bother? You know what I mean? And there I was three whatever years later living on untreated alcohols. It just happened just the way she said it. I think it's fair to say that, you know, because this alcoholism thing, it doesn't just relate to my life in AA. It relates to my wife. You know, my best friend asked me 48 hours ago, she said to me, would you have ever moved to Westfield if you didn't live in Charlotte for six and a half years? And it stopped me dead in my tracks, and I said no, absolutely not. It took us two years to acclimate down there. But once I started to embrace Charlotte, North Carolina for being Charlotte, North Carolina and not being different from New Jersey, I got so many facets inside of myself changed in so many ways that I have become a different person. And I choose to live in this town partially in large part because I learned how to be a part of a community down there, which was not something I learned ever in New Jersey. And so, you know, it's that, yeah. Did I explain that? Yeah. Right? So, yeah. I wouldn't be the person I am today had I not seen where the Southerners were way better than we were. Way better at a lot of stuff. And I spent a lot in there. I love looking at the differences. Like, I wish I could just go study culture for the rest of my life. But there are things that we're better at, and there's a lot of things that they're better at. And by learning how to be like them, I get to carry out God's will for me in a much more full way. Going on to the bottom of page 50. they flatly declare that since they have come to believe in a power greater than themselves to take a certain attitude toward that power and to do certain simple things there has been a revolutionary change in their way of living and thinking in the face of collapse and despair in the case of total failure of their human resources they found that a new power, peace, happiness and sense of direction flowed into them this happened soon after they wholeheartedly met a few simple requirements you know we wrote down here principle and promise I don't know how better to promise what can happen as soon as you start to get on that journey with a higher power as soon As you start to get towards that level of belief that there is a higher powerful or willing to believe it you know we talked a minute ago about the sense of direction but the revolutionary change in their way of living and thinking you know my approach to life has fundamentally and completely changed as a result of having a spiritual awakening as a results of going through the steps and doing all these simple requirements simple conceptually practically speaking but you know and it's every now and again the difference in my life now to my life before I had these awakenings is so stark that I cannot believe myself that I'm the same person never mind what everybody else thinks it's always nice to say hey you seem so different you seem content, that's great but the thing for me is that I see it in my own life I see the effects of the power of God I see after that We were talking about it before, and I may be bringing it up prematurely here, but we were talking About It Before. Somebody asked Beth where it was like the question was, if someone gave you indisputable proof that God didn't exist, would you still believe in God? The proof of God for me is not external. You know what I mean? The proof Of God in my life is my life. The fact that I live it the way I live It, the way that I engage In life now as opposed to the way I didn't engage In Life then. That's the proof Of god in me. You know What I mean. I got to a place early in sobriety and again over and over throughout sobrietry as I got imperfect where I became willing to believe in a power greater than myself and that belief that simple beginning led to growth the likes of which I would never have even thought about let alone actually done it's not the same guy I married sorry no I'm glad out of doors that guy no judge so I just want to jump a little bit because here it says they found that new power, peace, happiness and sense of direction flowed into them for me when I'm not feeling those things I need to go directly to page 52 and look at the bedevilments the bedivilments is one of the best diagnostic tools, did I say that correctly? For me in the big book and what I do and what i have the girls that i work with do is where is it why can't i look right at them and i don't see them goodnight so i need to ask myself and what we do is we put each bedevilment on the top of a page and then every night for five or ten minutes, we look at them and we write about them. And it starts with, where am I having trouble with personal relationships? Where can I not control my emotional nature? Where am I prey to misery and depression? How do I feel I'm not making a good living? When and where do I fill useless? When am I full of fear? When I am unhappy? And where can I not be of any help to other people? Because the promise here is that when we have a connection with our God, that we feel that we have new power, peace, happiness, and sense of direction inside of us. That no matter what happens around us, this is how we react to life, with these attitudes. If I'm not reacting to life with these attitudes, I need to use this diagnostic tool to figure out what's going on and then go to inventory. Did I step around too much? No, no. All right. I don't know what even I want to do next. I guess, again, you know, page 52, right before the bedouinments, it says it's not our age characterized by the ease with which we discard old ideas for new, by the complete readiness with which we throw away the theory or gadget which does not work for something new which does you know yeah that is uh that that is essentially you know me finding out that something in my life isn't working and trying to get to a place where i realize that it doesn't work and try something new you know it's it's as it really is as simple as that um i've been trying to think of an example for since we started talking and old ideas come up all the time though You want to find out what kind of old ideas you're living by? Have children. They will ask you why you do everything. Everything. Mommy, why do you drink coffee every morning? Or, Mommy, do you know how to make coffee? Because Dan makes my coffee in the morning. Actually, I actually have an old idea, actually. So we have a five-year-old healthy, very attitudey daughter. and there's a certain level of me as a parent that wants to try to keep the attitude to a minimum so she doesn't run right over us and get killed but there's also a certain amount of parent in me that wants not to encourage it but at least not completely squash it because that's part of who she is as a person and with her as a daughter I've gotten into a lot more feminist reading. And it's changed the way I see the world. You know, even with my own thoughts, stupid things, like things that I never would have even thought of it, but just clue me into the way that I, at a conscious or unconscious level, think about certain things, you know what I mean? And being awakened to those things and seeing that they don't work. now it's on me to go to a place where I look at that appreciate it for what it is make the changes I need to make and move forward as hopefully a better person or at least a more effective father and I think also in the last couple of years our whole culture has been challenging what we think of certain things I know this is going to sound off face but it's not I saw this video of the narrator asking a whole bunch of girls of different ages to show me what it's like to throw like a girl. And every single one of them threw like a little wimp, you know, oh, you throw like a girl and then they went into this whole explanation of, you know, what does it really mean to throw like a Girl, right? Because I can tell you when it comes to, is that Dorsha? When it comes to athletics, my daughter puts my poor son to shame. You know what I mean? So if you were to ask my five-year-old how do you throw like a girl, she would throw like Rockstar. So it's like it's challenging these old ideas. What do I think of women in society? What do i think of religion in my life? What don't we think of stay at home moms? What did we think up you know career people who spend their whole life making money? What I think the people who give up their lives and do Doctors Without Borders. These kind of things, although it seems beyond the scope of what we're talking about in Alcoholics Anonymous, it's not because this is about our life. We get connected with our God. The old idea comes up. We challenge it and we get to live the life we choose to live instead of it being dictated by parameters of our alcoholic life. You know, it says early on in the book that our alcoholic lives seem the only normal ones. But it's not just the alcohol. It's how we respond to relationships. It's the jobs we choose. It'sthe cars we drive. It'sthetowns we live in. It'sthe people we spend our time with. It'show we treat our parents and how we treatour kids. It'shower we respond. It'swhether we payour bills or we don't payourbills. These are all the different things that we learned when we were drinking and now need to be challenged now that we're sober. God brings these things, right? I get that connection with God and God's going to bring each one of these issues up for me to make a decision about a current idea of whether I'm going to choose to continue to live by this idea and it's a rule in my life or I'm gonna discard it for something else. Yeah, I mean the other thing to think about is also that when we think about what are we supposed to do we're supposed to grow an understanding and effectiveness this. We're supposed to fit ourselves to be of maximum usefulness to God and others, you know? I don't actually... I'm the last person that knows how I'm supposed to do that. You know what I mean? So when these things come up, these old ideas come up and I see them, it's on me to change them so I can fit myself to be at maximum usefulnes to others. I don' t know how that change is going to lead to that. All I know is that that change is going to lead to that and I'd better do what I need to do to make that happen. I can also tell you that when God has brought old ideas to the surface for me, and I've been too afraid to challenge them, they start to wreak havoc in my life. Which is a surefire way for me to step even further away from God because now I've just stepped into a delusional lie of not right. My sponsor told me when you take the third step, your life is no longer any of your business. And so you're not allowed to lie anymore because if God brought you to it he'll bring you through it kind of thing. And so there's no need to ever lie or make up something that's not real, because if God brought you to a situation and you were blatantly asked a question, you tell the truth understanding that God will take you to better places. I forgot where I was going. Wow, I'm really not here today. So let's reel us back in right now. On page 53 it says, When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or he is nothing. God either is or he isn't. What was our choice to be? What is your choice to do? When I got to a place when I was beaten into a state of reasonableness, and it was time to say, God either is or isn't, what was my choice to beat? Had I said, he isn's, I'm probably not as reasonable as I think I am. And the same thing goes for problems in sobriety and living in certain degrees of untreated alcoholism, or just trying to get past an old idea. You know, God God either is or he isn't. Stupid things. I have to give notice so I can go to a new job. I'm worried about what they're going to do. Why? Basically, I'm an independent contractor and I'm worrying that they're going to tell me to get out. I've got to give my notice. Leave. And then I'll be out of work for two weeks until my next job starts. And that terrifies me because I don't have a lot of money. But why am I so worried about that? Why do I think I won't be okay if I don' t work for those two weeks? Personally, I think two weeks ought to be fucking awesome. But, you know, so why am I so worried about that, you know? It's God either is or he isn't. So God is either bringing me to a place where I'm going to be of maximum usefulness to him and others, or I'm not, or he is. You know what I mean? And I believe he is, so at any given point during when I feel a sense of doubt or cynicism or skepticism about that situation, God neither is or isn't, and for me every day he is and as soon as I remember that, all those feelings of doubt just go away. And then we're going to jump to page 55. Yet we had been seeing another kind of flight of spiritual liberation from this world. People who rose above their problems. They said God made these things possible and we only smiled. We had seen spiritual release but liked to tell ourselves it wasn't true. Yeah, well that's just I've already kind of talked about it but when we're in that untreated alcoholism or when we come in here and we haven't taken these steps yet we could be living in a delusional lie and anything that challenges that you know, I talked about that before anything that changes that delusinal lie we have to get rid of that we absolutely have to go to any lengths to get out of that to get right of it so when we see we're living in Alcoholics Anonymous and I'm sober and I'm seeing people talk about I'm starting to see people talking about the book and my stepbrother comes home from a I don't know some pa thing and he's all fired up and he has got a big book of Alcoholics Anonymous on him and he is like look at all this stuff in here and you know this that and the next thing and I remember distinctly being like oh it doesn't mean anything it can't be real because it came from one of those young people conferences like and I hate young people's conferences nothing against them Dude, I'm sure they're a lot of fun, but there's like too many people and it's just not my thing. And I don't like grown-up conferences really either, but it was this whole thing. Like I saw this light inside of him. He came home and something was different, and I needed to push it away. I neededto just negate it. I neededt to say, oh, it'sjust probably because he met a nice girl at the pub, the PG version. So, you know, and that's what it was. That's what I needed to push that aside because I was not ready to do this deal. I was living in a delusion that I was keeping myself sober. I was live in a dilution that if you don't drink and go to meetings, that if I didn't drink or go to meeting, that I would be sober. And so, you now, I would tell myself that this couldn't be real. This just couldn't really be real." He came home, and he basically disturbed us. You know what I mean? Oh, he disturbed us? He came in and said, and he was showing us a way of doing things that was different from our own and appeared to be maybe more effective. And ah, that's not okay. I don't want to change what I'm doing. I kind of like what I've done. So why am I disturbed? And here's the cool thing. He came back, and he came home and he wasn't just excited. You know What I Mean? He didn't come home telling us that we had been screwing things up the whole time. He came on and he's just fired up. Talking about, you know, whatever speaker he had heard or whatever group he had heard, and he was just fired up. You know what I mean? And it was on me to either go get offended, or I talked about that briefly on whatever page 51 with Columbus and Galileo. Am I going to be those people's, hit their contemporaries and just sit there and tell them why that's not true? Why am I disturbed? Why do I feel so defensive about it? Oh, and then I think the last thing that I wanted to talk about, Maybe Beth has something else she wants to say. Nope. But we were talking earlier about the realm of the spirit and is roomy and all-inclusive. And then as we were going through, we realized on page 55, if our testimony helps sweep away prejudice, enables you to think honestly, and encourage you to search diligently within yourself, then if you wish, you can join us on the broad highway. That's essentially the instructions for how to seek. Think honestly, encourage youto search diligentlywithinyourself, and sweep away prejudices. I mean, we've already talked about all those things in and of themselves, but that's... But those are direct instructions, right? It talks about join us on the highway, and that's how we do it, right. That's what's required, and those are the instructions, is to search and to think honestly, right, we can't do that without God. Search diligently within yourself, right, inventory, and join us, you know. Here's the thing. I promise girls all the time. There are a couple of girls in Charlotte that came to me for sponsorship that said, this is my last-ditch effort. I've been in and out of AA for X amount of years. I've done this X amount times. I've don inventory. I've d amends. I've never been through the book. I've n ever done it this way. I tell them all the same thing. They say, this i my last ditch effort. If you can't help me, I'm quitting AA. No pressure. I'm like, all right, there's no pressure because it's all God. It's not me. And I tell him all the samething. And it's actually, now that I think about it, when this work was presented to us, I called a guy named Pat. And Pat got sober with Mrs. Delaney and Mrs. delaney got sobered with Bill. Right? And I got sober, right? So this is where I got sober. This is where i got sober. And so as far as I was concerned at the time, of course, I waited till like one o'clock or two o' clock in the morning to call the poor guy because I wasn't selfish. And I called him and I said, Pat, they're telling us we're not sober. They're telling uns that we're doing AA. They're tell us that the instructions are in this book. I'm not hearing this. Why have I never heard? You know, and I'm asking them all these questions. And he said to me what I say to the girls that I sponsored in Charlotte or girls that this is their last ditch effort. Try it. If you get through the entire process and it doesn't work for you, go back to doing what was. And that statement immediately wiped away every bit of fear. I was under the impression that if I, I was unter the delusion that if I decided to admit myself into this process, that whatever I was doing that I thought I was keeping myself sober would be completely washed away and erased from my memory. And I would be lost and alone out in the world with all those bars and liquor stores. I mean, that's literally the delusional lie that I was telling myself out of fear of doing this process. And so that's what I tell the girls. I say, do it. Do the whole thing. Don't skimp on anything. And if you're not 10 million times happier and more useful than you were before the process, you can go back to doing what you were doing. And so, yeah. And now the real last thing. You know, on page 56, you know, the guy who says, Who are you to say there is no God? And then the presence of God pours over and through him, and he really gets to that place where he wholeheartedly believes in the power greater than God. Thus was our friend's cornerstone fixed in place. No later of this institute has shaken it. His alcoholic problem was taken away. That very night years ago, it disappeared. Save for a few brief moments of temptation, the thought of drink has never returned. and at such times a great revulsion has risen up in him God had restored his sanity what is this but a miracle of healing exactly you know alcohol question aside all that is absolutely absolutely true for me you know what I mean when I think of alcohol and I think oh that might be good the next thought I have is but I can't drink you know as an alcoholic as a recovered alcoholic that is as sane a thought as I can get with respect to alcohol taking a drink apply the same principles to any other issue that I have face an AA outside of alcohol, let's use the same example of having to give notice at my job again. When I turn back to God, all those fears and all that sense of relief just flows in, and it ceases to be a problem. It's still an issue that I need to go and deal with and be an adult about. I still have to walk into the office and actually have these conversations, but I'm not afraid of it anymore. You know what I mean? God has restored me to sanity with that problem. That's not taking up space in my mind. I don't feel it in my gut that It has to be done. You know, it's just something that's got to be done. And exactly, what is this but a miracle of healing? That's all I've got for tonight. Well, for me, I just wanted to also say it's like, you know, it's real easy to read this book by yourself or with a sponsor and blow by that line that says, who are you to say there is no God? We all kind of shluff and laugh. But for those of us that are in serious agnosticism, need to sit with that statement and figure out exactly why I don't think that God is there. Right? Because it's easy. My alcoholism and the beast wants me to just shluff that off like, yeah, yeah. Whatever. And then just keep continuing to think that there is no God. But actually write that question down on a piece of paper and challenge yourself to actually write down why you don't think that there's a God or why you do not think that God is going to help you in this situation. And you have got more inventory. You have got exactly what is keeping you from your connection with God. You know, so many things in this book, right? The book is completely just filled with things, and if we stop and look at them for what they are in just a raw sentence and answer the question, it always exposes my current alcoholism. My untreated alcoholism, my agnosticism, or whatever it is that's standing between me and freedom. You know, the freedom where you get up in the morning and you're excited about a cup of coffee. You have coffee every single, whatever you do in the evening, like you're exciting, you're brushing your teeth, like that kind of freedom. Like, you know what I mean? You open your front door and you're like, look, it's my car. I love my car, but that's not a good one for me then, my unreasonable obsession with my truck. Anyway, but you know What I mean, it is like kids walk into the room and you are like, oh, my God, they are awake at 6.30 in the morning. You got to be really free to say that. So it is just, you Know, when we look at these things, you know, who am I to say there is no God? Who do I really think that I am that I could make a judgment call like that? And that, for me, holds true with any judgment I have. Who am I to say that they're not working in a program? Who amI to say they're raising their kids right? Who ami to saythat they shouldn't go out and make $10 million? Who doI think I am? So, okay, we're done. Thank you for listening.