Why He Stopped Judging His Insides by Everyone’s Outsides – Adam A.

I'd like to now introduce our guest speaker, speaking on his story, steps 1 to 12, Adam from Harrison, New Jersey. That's right. Hi everybody, my name is Adam Mandrick, I'm a recovered alcoholic. Very interesting week this week. I don't know, last week I thought I was fine. I thought everything was cool. Everything's going smooth, work is going good, all my relationships seem to be doing well. And a really weird thought came Friday, but it went away. I went into a meeting and it went way. I woke up Saturday morning stark raving insane, you know, and I did what I needed to do that day, you know, that afternoon I went and spoke to some friends I have and I started to write some inventory on it and what I had realized is that I had been slacking off on my inventory, which I kind of knew you know i knew it because i hadn't written anything you know but i didn't realize the uh the consequences of that you know at the time i was doing it um i uh somebody actually jamo said a line recently to me and it it sticks with me all the time now and it's uh being powerless over alcohol is not my problem. My problem is my addiction to self-will, and it just slammed me right between the eyes because that's me. The problem with alcohol has been removed. The 10-step promises have come true in my life. I've ceased fighting everything and everyone, even alcohol. I'm restored to sanity. I recovered from a hopeless state of mind and body. But you know what? I ain't well, um, you know, that area of my life is okay. It's great. You know, it's not an issue. Um, that's not to say that it couldn't become one someday, you now tonight, tomorrow, whenever, but you know the, the everyday problems in my recovery are really not alcohol-related. But that's just where I'm at today. I find that if I have to speak, get current first. I'm the oldest of three boys. I am a byproduct of the 60s. My father's only 20 years older than me, I was born in 1969. I lived in a teepee, I lived on a commune, I live in the back of a school bus. You know, I got pictures of me when I was five years old with blonde hair down to the middle of my back running around butt naked. You Know, my mom seemed fit to show every girlfriend that I've ever brought home you know you know um being a small child and my house was awesome you know it was a lot of fun um because my parents were kids you know they knew how to relate to kids you You know, it was normal in my household to party. You know? It was acceptable. You know. It was the 70s. You know living in Northern California. You know it's probably the only time I'll say this throughout the whole pitch. But I drank with my father and I smoked pot with my mother. You know that's my only drug reference. But that just shows you where I came from, you know. And my mom is in the, she's in the rooms today. My father belongs in some kind of fellowship, you Know, probably Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, but I can't really, you Now, he doesn't think he has a problem, you You know, he lives under a bridge somewhere in Alaska, you know, or Hawaii or California, wherever he is at this time of year. I don't know. And he believes he's reliving his childhood and he's having a good time. You know? So, whatever. None of this has anything to do with me being an alcoholic. You know. This stuff may have contributed to my unmanageability, my inability to function in life. You know, and have healthy relationships and get a job and pay bills and all this stuff. But it really has nothing to do with my alcoholism. Yeah, they taught me a lot of things. But you know what? I'm an alcoholic because when I put booze in my system, I can't guarantee when I'm going to stop. I may be able to go out and have two drinks. I've done it. you know but then i can go out and say i'm gonna have two drinks and drink 30 you know i don't know what's going to happen damn earlier this evening i uh i thought of a great story from my past related to craving and it just like flew out of my head you know but whatever oh there it is okay it flew back in yeah um i was about uh i guess 19 years old and um at this point in my life and uh my drinking career i i thought it more um more efficient to live on the streets you know it was much easier to drink the way that i drank and and do the things that i like to do if I didn't have a house to go to, that I didn'T have to pay bills and waste my money on normal society-oriented stuff. So I go out this one night or this one afternoon actually and start drinking. By that night, I hit the bar. I bump into my dad. We have a couple of drinks together. I hit another place that I liked. I ended up eventually at this keg party. And I grew up in a college town, so it was normal just to walk into a stranger's house, pay two bucks and get a cup. You know, it wasn't that strange. I end up at this keg party. I don't know anybody there. And the last thing I really remember, I was sitting at a table playing quarters for tequila. and um i remember briefly wandering into the backyard towards my bicycle um i thought that if i rode a bike i wouldn't get a dwi so i i rodea bike i never got my license until i was like 25 but i got on my bike and it was the last thing i remember i wake up at seven o'clock in the morning in the drunk tank okay and they you know they made me blow into the tube to see if they could release me because you got to be legal limit before they release you and i blew a 0.20 at seven in the morning they kept me for another couple hours or whatever until that wore down and i got to 0.10 or whatever the legal legal limit was at the time and they released me the first thing that crossed my mind when i hit the sunlight was where's my bottle it was the first things that hit my mind i stuck my thumb out i'm 40 miles from my house out at the county jail, stuck my thumb out, I hitchhiked home, and I hit that bottle. First thing, without question. That's the way I drink. When booze is in my system, it does to me. I don't choose it. I don' t decide when I'm going to drink. It takes over. The mental obsession, on the other hand, is a little more wacky for me. you know um living on the streets i i did a lot of things that you probably shouldn't do and one of those things landed me in uh in state prison for about two years and the entire time that i was locked up i uh i wrote letters to rehabs to judges to lawyers to my girlfriend to anybody who would listen you know i got a problem with alcohol i got a problem with drugs here i need to go to a rehab you know i said it in court you know don't send me away i'm an alcoholic i'm not a criminal you know i got busted you know for my own stuff you know it was my own personal use it wasn't because i was this you know hardened criminal or or whatever for 19 months i'm locked up i'm writing letters constantly i was released and within 20 minutes i had a six-pack within two hours i was exactly where i was when i got locked up and that night i slept under a bridge now um what does it say um that we can't remember the pain and humiliation of even a week or a month ago well i just got lockedup you know i just get released 20 minutes ago and I forgot. That's the way my brain works. It says it in the literature, we don't have the same defense from keeping our hands off a hot stove. That is me. That It's the way I relate to alcohol. One of my favorite speakers, Earl H., always says that... Oh, God. Brain fart again. Oh, geez. Oh, forget it. It wasn't that important then, trying to steal a quote. Well, back to where I was. Okay. I picked up my first drink when I was about 13 years old. Well, my first conscious drink to go out and party with my friends. I had many a drink before that. My dad gave me beer in my bottle and watched me stumble around and everybody thought it was funny. But my first unconscious drink was at 13. And I blacked out that night. We got a gallon of wine and five beers And I drank all five beers and as much of the wine as I could. Nobody wanted to drink the beers they said it tasted like crap. And I was like, so? I'm not drinking for taste. I don't drink for taste, I drink for effect. I blacked out that night. I woke up with the most wickedest hangover you could imagine in a puddle of red wine and Doritos. and my first thought was, wow, I can't wait until next week. I had to move at that point. That week, Wednesday, I moved and so I didn't get the opportunity to drink the next week because when I moved to this new town I didn' t know anybody. I didn''t know how to get it. I'm 13 years old. But as soon as I found it, I drank again um by the time i turned 15 or 16 or whatever it was i had made my way back to california to my old friends and uh all the people that i grew up with and from that point on i drank on friday and saturday nights and fridayand saturday night within a very short period of time became friday saturday and sunday then thursday because thursday is the beginning of the weekend, you know, so Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Then I have to drink on Monday because it's the end of the week. And then I have a drink on Sunday because it's on the weekend. You know, and so we've got Thursday, Friday, Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday, that's hump day. You know, the only problem was with this, I don't identify with daily drinkers because it took me another three or four years to find an excuse for Tuesday. i did i came to new jersey and hartley's in north arlington had a 50 cent mug night on tuesday so eventually i became a daily drinker you know um i became around the clock drinker you know but i also was i also didn't believe myself powerless you know i believed myself an alcoholic But I didn't understand what that meant. I thought it was some kind of a reason for the way I drink or a badge. It's like, I'm an alcoholic. That's why me and my buddy get a case of beer before we go to a keg party. It's some kindof cool thing or some shit. And I had no idea what it meant. So for a long time, yeah, I said I was an alcoholic, it, but I didn't understand what powerless meant. I didn' t understand that the booze was dictating it and that my warped brain was dictated it. I thought I was having fun because I never tried to stop. I was one of these people who never really tried to control it. I just said why work when you can drink? It made sense to me. I like waking up in the morning and going down to the park laying out my blanket turning on my radio and proceeding to party you know that's the way I lived you know so so the whole job in the apartment and none of that stuff really really made any sense to me but fortunately you know they say the geographic cures don't work for me it did for me because it didn't work the way it was planned but it did work. Because I had to leave California. Because for me, the lifestyle in California, it was too easy for me to do what I was doing. You know, I'm a local in a college town. I know where to get anything. You Know, I don't have to work. I Know all the places to crash where I can be safe, you know, and not have any problems. I Nowhere to get food. I now had a drink i'm fine i could have stayed there forever you know or until i died you know i moved to the east coast and people here did something weird they went to work you know they had apartments and they paid bills and i didn't know how to function in that kind of society and it didn't take very long for me to kind of bottom out i i wasn't able to live the type of lifestyle I was living. Fortunately, I found a girl who had a car accident settlement and $100,000 to blow. So that lasted me a little while. But it didn't last long enough. And in May of like 92, I guess, or 93, I was on parole. I had gotten like two, maybe three dirty tests. I had got a shoplifting charge and a DWI. And so I'm like, oh, well, I'm in trouble. I go to my parole officer and I say I need help. I got to go to rehab. I got a problem. And deep down inside, I believed this. You know, I knew I had a problem. I just didn't really think it was the alcohol and the drugs, you know. Or I did, but I didn't, you Know, and it was all twisted. So I ended up eventually making it into the Salvation Army, after a long, drawn-out thing with the TC program that I wouldn't go into. And I ended up in the Sally. And one of the first things that was said to me, and it saved my life, was you've got to get God to get sober. You've got a higher power to get over. And at that point, I'm a raging anti-Catholic, anti-religion. I hated religion with a passion at that time. I believed from the time I was in the third grade I was going to hell. You know, so I don't want nothing to do with this. But for some reason it registered. I've got to find God in order to get sober. And so what I did is I'm in the Salvation Army and there was like 50 to 100 guys in there or however many there was. And I walked from bunk to bunk and I seen people that were reading spiritual books, reading literature. And I asked them what they believed. and I asked them what particular brand of religion they were prescribed to and, you know, I asked him what it was about and what I ended up doing was taking a piece from this one and a piece form that one and a peace form this one and I put all the principles together and took away the deity and the principles became my higher power at that point and it gave me a starting place you know it says that if um you know if if you're willing to believe and at that point i was you know at that time i was pretty mangled but um and and my mother my mother's boyfriend or husband or whoever he was at the time um started bringing me to meetings and i started to see that there was other ways to live other them what I knew. Because prior to coming to New Jersey, I thought it was perfectly normal to get married, have kids, smoke dope, grow old, hang out on the porch with a beer and a bong, and this is what a 70-year-old person does. It was not abnormal. And here people were doing something different. And I started to see that there was another way. My perception started to change a little bit. And I went to meetings, and everybody said, you've got to share about these reservations you've gotten. You can't have any reservations. And I did. I'm a stone-cold pothead. If everything else disappeared off the planet, I would have been cool smoking weed. And I never had any external problems as a result of it. And I shared about this. And I shared about this, and I shared about this. And I said, I shared my way right out the door because I constantly kept it fresh in my mind. Nobody ever told me to share about it and get rid of it. They just said keep sharing about it. Well, I did. But the one thing that was said to me early on was don't drink and go to meetings. But if you do drink, go to a meeting anyway. So I never stopped going to meetings I'd smoke dope in the morning and go to a meeting at night and I'd find people in the rooms that got high and we'd go out the back door and smoke a joint out back and come in for the meeting I did this for a good year and a half and I share I've been around I know the solutions I know all the slogans and the catchphrases and all this shit, you know. What happened? My mind was so twisted at that point that I truly, honestly, give me a stack of Bibles, I'll swear to it, I didn't believe I relapsed because I have a desire not to drink and pot is not a drug. It's a natural herb. God gave it to us. I'm going to be a Rastafarian and I'm gonna be spiritual, okay? I'm go that route and it'll work for me. You know, and I truly believe this at this point, you know The guilt got me You know because I guess I must have heard it somewhere that you're not supposed to smoke weed and go to meetings and share And you know and try and 12-step people, you now But again this this perception on on Not relapsing was there So I needed to go out and drink so that I could come back to the rooms and say, I'm coming back. Because I never relapsed. I never went out. You know, I kept going to meetings and I didn't pick up alcohol. I picked up booze and I couldn't put it down. I picked it up thinking, I'll go back tomorrow. I'll drink tonight and I'll come back and I will say, I relapses, I am back. You know what? I couldn' t get back. I could not put it done. For about two years, I went to meetings every single day and I couldn't put together more than a week. Most of the time, it was about two days. And the only way I can describe it is I felt like a hollowed out egg. That if you touched me, I'd shatter. I'd just crumble to a million pieces. that unmanageability was so, it was vivid. It was vivid I even tried writing an inventory at that point and maybe this will fix it because I didn't know anything about it. Nobody had ever told me to work the steps. They said just keep coming back. Make 90 and 90. Get a home group. Get a bunch of phone numbers. Get a sponsor. Call your sponsor. Call your network And I did all this stuff. I made probably 180, 200 and something meetings in 90 days. I was making a minimum of three meetings a day, sometimes four. And still drinking. Yeah, yuck. And they're telling me you don't want it bad enough. What do I got to do here? You know, so for two years I was in and out and in and out. And I got to the point where I just stopped raising my hand. I just couldn't do it anymore. I couldn't raise my hand and say I'm coming back. Even the last time that I got sober, I didn't raise My hand. I damn near didn't celebrate my 90 days because I wasn't sure. You know. It was an old guy. A guy named Bill Adams. He's died a few years back. Actually died about nine years ago. and he used to bring people up from Bayonne to the Kearney Candlelight Saturday night meeting. And he used to share about reading the big book to newcomers and dragging them off the street, putting them on his couch, reading a book to them. I had no idea what he was talking about because all the big book meetings I had ever been to and anything that was ever referred to the big books was a bunch of stories. Nobody ever pointed out that it was a text. Nobody ever said there were instructions. It was all about stories. And you read the book and you identify with the feelings and you identity with the jaywalker and that kind of stuff. And Bill used to say this, and it must have stuck with me. Because the last time that I came back, I picked that book up and I opened it up and I started to read it and it clicked something made sense for the first time in two and a half years something made since there was some kind of hope in there and to be honest I don't know what it was it was just something it was a moment of clarity it was the moment of seeing the truth at that particular point I had no guidance I told my sponsor I needed to write a fourth step and he goes no you're not ready for a fourth step you'll drink if you write a fourth step and I said I've been coming here for two years drinking every day what the fuck does it matter you know what could it hurt me what could it hurt me you know and I proceeded to break out a little memo notebook and carried it in my pocket for like two and a half weeks oozing and wanted to kill everybody in sight and I had like 150, 180 resentments because for two weeks I'd write down names and that's all I'd do is write down I hate this one and I hate that one and what I would do at night is I was actually taking care of because I was house sitting for this guy Mark he was in rehab and I offered to clean his house while he was on the road while he wasn't in rehab and I could crash there as a result of it until he got out you know I had to get rid of all the needles and all the stuff and everything and I could crash at his house. And what I would do is I would review my day every night and I'd look at where I screwed up and I'd ask myself, am I willing to have God remove this? And I'd say, hmm, yeah, this one, yeah yeah, yeah. This one, nah. But this one yeah, okay, God please remove this. So I was doing a 10 step, I was dealing with 11 steps, I'm doing 6 and seven i was doing it all ass backwards but i was doing it you know um in the middle of writing this this really shabby inventory and i bring this three column inventory because i seen the book and i looked at the picture and i seen a three column inventories so i wrote a three column inventory and I brought this to my sponsor and I start sharing it with him and he's pointing stuff out to me you know and and for the first time in my life I wasn't the biggest piece of shit on the planet and I wasn't a nice guy who drank too much. I was somewhere in the middle. I found some balance for the first time. I moved again. I've moved like six times since I've been sober. But I moved. It was my first year of recovery. Oh, wait. No, let me back up though. So I was about, my first two months back, I wanted to drink all day, every day, 24-7, constantly. And I'm running to meetings and I'm grabbing this new guy. My first sponsor did save my life. And what he said to me is I call him about some stuff that's going on in my life, I can't even remember what it was now. And he's like, Adam, you know what to do. You've been around long enough. Grab a drunk. And I was like, but I only got two months. He goes, so? He goes grab somebody with a month. You know, grab somebody with a day. It doesn't matter. At that moment my house became AA Central and some people can attest to this it still is today. You know it's never changed from that moment well it has changed it's gotten a little healthier but in that first year we had an amp set up in the living room we had live music You know, we were part of the Alcathon for Christmas in Kearney. We'd basically go to the meeting, grab the wet ones and the guys who were stinking and hungry and everything, bring them back to the house, give them a shower, feed them, bring them Back to the Meeting. You know? It was AA Central, you know? And the only requirement for membership was a desire to stop drinking. Anybody was allowed in our house. You know. Since my children have been born, we've kind of modified that rule a little bit. But back then, that's the way it was. I didn't care if you were wet. As long as you wanted to get sober, you were allowed in my house. And I've had some bad shit happen in my house, but you know what? It's all right because it kept me alive. But somewhere in about my first year or so, I got offered a job with the Board of Education in New York and I didn' t want to do it. I do wood floors and I love my job and At that point, I was doing that. And I was learning the trade and I was really digging it. And people would tell me, oh, you're crazy. You know, this is a union job. You've got to take it, blah, blah. Benefits and the whole deal. And I'm like, all right, whatever. I'll give it a shot. And this honesty thing that we're supposed to do here in this program kind of bit me in the ass because I'm a convicted felon. And I made it to my 89th. days of trial with the board of education and then they fired me and i'm trapped in staten island it's funny because for the for the three months or almost three months i'm living in new jersey but staying in staton island at a friend's house during the week coming home and we finally find an apartment we get the u-haul and the night before we're supposed to leave i get the call and say i'm fired so i moved to staten Island with no job barely know anybody And you know what? It was okay. It was Okay because I knew something was going down. I didn't know what it was going to be. I didn' t know I was going get fired, but they ran my prints and they did my thing and I knew this was coming down and I was praying on a daily basis, God please help me to accept whatever happens. Not what I want. Because what I wanted that particular moment was to keep my job. But in reality, I was in a much better place by losing it. because I ended up working with a guy in recovery over there. I got hooked up into the meetings over there, and I found a job doing floors. Taught me a whole new angle of the trade. So when I did eventually come back to New Jersey, I was ahead of the game. But I met some people over there that were doing house meetings, and they were doing big book studies out at our house, and I proceeded to go through the book with somebody, and we made it to about the third step and he drank but you know what that doesn't matter because what I did what happened with that experience was I learned how to read this book I learned How To Transmit This Information because prior to that I was doing it all whichever way I didn't know how this book was intended to be done I didn' t know how the work was intended to be done and um and i was doing the best i could but i could have been more effective and i learned that from this guy and ultimately when i came back to new jersey i was pretty much ostracized from my home group because they didn't want to hear about this sick hippie you know no shoe wearing you know tie-dye wearing youknow freak walking into the meetings talking about god you know when you know just a year or two ago i was you know in and out and in and out and in and out, and they couldn't help me. I found a solution somewhere else, and it was right there in the meeting, but they didn't have it. And I walk in there, and plus I was also a rabid thumper, which didn't help at all. But I was pretty much ostracized from this meeting. Nobody wanted to hear anything from me. People were pushing newcomers away from me because they were saying stay away from him. He's a fanatic, you know? Um, so what I, what, what I had to do and I couldn't find, I didn't have anybody, no network of people to bounce my stuff off of. Cause every, every time I'd go with a problem, they say, Oh, just keep coming back. It's like, I need a solution. I'm here to get a solution, not to hear, keep coming back, you now. So what I did is I grabbed the sickest drunk in the room and I brought him back to my house. And that's where it started. And I just went from meeting to meeting to meeting, finding the chronic relapsers, finding the people who could not get it. And I kept bringing them back to my house and you know what? I don't think any of them are sober today, but I am, you know? Um, and to be honest, I, I don' t like that whole selfish angle of it. I really don't think that's a good thing, but you you know what, it's true. It worked. I wish they would have gotten sober. I really wanted them to and I wasn't doing it with that in mind to keep me sober. But I became involved in a clubhouse over in Clifton and that's where I met Mike actually right around that time. And And we were trying to bring a message of recovery to this place. And I don't know. I think clubhouses have a tendency to be breeding grounds for really, really, really bad therapy, you know. Not all of them, but, you now, the ones that I've been to can be really harsh. And this was one of them. You know, this was on of them and nobody wanted to hear a solution. And we'd try and set up these workshops, and like three people would come. You know, it was horrible. So we set up the dances, you know, because you've got 300 coming to a dance. Three people come to a recovery workshop, 300 come to A Dance. What are we going to do? But at this dance, I had the set-aside prayer posted to the wall just because it was a meeting house. and this girl Meg, some of you know her, seen it. And she's like, I know that. And I was like, my ears jumped right up because that's the Big Book Thumper secret handshake. It really is, you know. And I'm like, wow, somebody else who knows this. And I said, where did you hear that? And she said, oh, you've got to go to this meeting. It's on Tuesday night, it's up in Bernersville. And I thought, yeah, give me directions. The following Tuesday I was there. Because I'd been running around the rooms of AA for four years not having a fellowship, not having a home group, not having anybody that I could really truly bounce shit off of. You know, I had a couple guys here and there spread around but nobody that I can go to you know constantly and I walk into this meeting and I believe Cass was speaking and and I met the guy who became my sponsor at that point and it was the first person I ever met that had any considerable time that was doing the steps and it was amazing to me it blew me away because even the guys in Staten Island, none of them had more than two years they were all the same as me we're all pretty much brand new at this doing this deal and I walk into this meeting and this guy is celebrating at the end of the month or something 22 years or something And I was like, wow, cool. You know, somebody with life experience and the steps. You know? This is great. So I asked him to be my sponsor. And over the next couple years, you know, he helped me along this path. Fair warning to anybody new to the steps because I made a really, really, really bad mistake. what this guy said to me was um he says throw out everything you think you know and we're going to start with something new you know and so i did you know guy's got 22 years and he's doing the steps and okay cool you know so i become this blank slate you know it's like feed me you know but what happened was is i threw away all the good shit that i knew and all the good stuff that was working for me for almost five years you know all the stuff that worked got thrown out along with the stuff they didn't and what i was supposed to do was learn the new stuff and then incorporate the old stuff with the new stuff and find a balance and find out who i was instead of being a clone you know and and it took me a lot of pain to realize that because you know i went through a new process of the inventory and i did another fifth step and you know i did I did some sort of, I don't remember which exercise it was at the time, a six and seven step. It was an unbelievable experience with the six and seventh step that year or one of those years in there. And I made amends for all that current stuff and now I'm trying to live this deal but I'm not feeling it. I'm listening to everybody up at the podium and they're all sounding great and life is wonderful, life is beautiful and I feel like crap. What's wrong with me? What's the problem? And it was two things. One, I was judging everybody's... Judging my insides by everybody's outsides because people want to sound good up here. And over the past couple of years I've made it clear that I am not well. Just for that new guy who hears this perfect friggin' message from the podium. We're human. You know, we have our bad days. We have our good days. We have great days. We have horrible days. Saturday was a freaking horrible day for me. We're human. But I started judging my recovery based on this. Plus, on the other side of it, I had thrown away a lot of good stuff. A lot of stuff that was really beneficial to me. And what had happened is somewhere between here and here it didn't connect. And I'm going through the motions. I'm doing the work. I'm going to do it. I'm not doing prayer and meditation on a daily basis. I'm coming down the list. I got all the 12 questions and I'm checking everything off and I am doing this shit by the numbers and it ain't working. Something is wrong. And what I came to realize was that I was relying on the process. I was dependent upon the steps. I was depending upon the book. I was dependant upon, you know, I wasn't dependant on God. Everything but God. And it damn near killed me. About three years ago, I guess it was. Was it about three years? Three years ago? Yeah. It was the end of August. The end of August and I'm sitting in front of my computer and my wife walks in and she says, I want a divorce. And I was like, what? Where did this come from? I had no idea. I was totally clueless. I really was I knew we were fighting but I was clueless that it was like this and I was like holy shit what just happened and I proceeded to do a nightly review and my sponsor came up my wife came up and something else I don't remember what it was but there was four names on this resentment inventory so I figured I might as well go through the process here and I went through another round through the steps but also at the time You know, that open AA or that AA central house? That evolved into a book study pretty much once a week for the past eight years. And I was doing one at that time. And we were just starting it. And that first week, I'd break out my book with all its highlighter notes and all the little dates on it. And, you know, after going to one of Bill's workshops with all the history, it's got to be exact, and I've got to transmit the perfect message. You know what I said? put that book aside and I grabbed a brand new book. No marks in it whatsoever. I'm going to use this. And I read this book and I read it to the people that were in my house and I talked about my week. And I talked About how this book works in my life this week with all this shit going on in my Life, with my life collapsing. Everything that I thought was important to me was just getting stripped away and how this works and um it was the most powerful experience i've ever had in my life you know because it was new it was alive it was you know yeah it's a textbook but it's also more you know it's got a life of its own you can read it one day and see one thing and read it another day and it's something totally different, you know. And it's just, it was, I just can't, it's hard to describe, you now. But by throwing away those highlighter notes and going with the blank pages and I was able to be more honest. I was able to more truthful and more in the sense of experience not in a, how is it? Abstinence as opposed to experience. It was more about, it wasn't about the method anymore. It wasn't a method anymore It wasn' t about the stuff. It was about the experience. And I went through the process. I had four resentments. I had like 28 fears based off four resentment. And I thought I was okay just a couple weeks before. I did my fifth step. I proceeded to make some amends, and something happened. I don't know. I got to this place where I went home one night. I was crashing into a friend of mine's house in Summit because me and my wife had separated at that point. And I was really pissed off at AA, and I didn't want to go back because it was tough because me and her, our lives were so intertwined. you know it's like there was that's how I met Chris R. it's because I called Chris to deal with this stuff because there was nobody here that wasn't connected you know it was scary and but I hated AA I went home and I got quiet and I wanted to get out of this place and all of a sudden this prayer came to mind and it was God please help me to be unattached to that which I think I am You know, I'm not attached to being a father. I'm Not Attached To Being A Husband. I'm NOT Attached TO Being A Sponsor. I'M NOT AttachED TO BEING A MEMBER OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS. THESE ARE JUST ROLES I PLAY ON ANY GIVEN DAY. WHAT I REALLY AM IS A CHILD OF GOD. I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE IT CAME FROM. I KNOW WHERE It Came From. It Came from God. But It Didn'T Come... You Know, It Came Off My Pen. It Was Because I Was Open To It. I was telling a guy tonight, he's trying to think his way through this unmanageability exercise. And I was like, dude, it's not about that. Shut down the brain. Let the pen flow. Let God go through you and do this. Because this stuff ain't about the method. It's about the spirit. And it's... When that prayer sunk into me, when that belief, and I started to practice that. All this stuff out here didn't matter so much anymore. Yeah, I was still concerned about it. I still wanted to get back with my wife but you know what? If she didn't want to, okay. I knew I was still going to be a father. All those fears attached to all those fears attached to that weren't there anymore. The AA thing? AA is going to do what it's going to. I'm just a member. I lost that I gotta fix everything I gotta change everything because I was no longer dependent upon how other people viewed me you know I wasn't dependent upon how I was dealing with these particular areas because all that mattered was me and God and it's it was a very profound experience for me because I'm really up here way too often you know and I at that moment or at that particular period of my life I wasn't you know. And I strive to get back there on a regular basis you know and and I'm getting I'm going there I do get there and it's a I was probably there for like the past two minutes you know it's good you know I feel it but But, so was I sequential at all? Where am I at? My 10th step. My 10st step. I don't write, you know. If I have issue, I write. But on any given day, I don' t always write. I stop, you kno. If shit goes sideways during my day, I stop. I pause. I think out the fear inventory. I don't sit and write it down, but I go through the fear inventory in my head. I ask God to remove the fear. If the fear continues, I call somebody. If I've done harm, I try to make amends right then and there because I don' t want to carry it over. I don''t want to make amends anymore. I'm tired of making amends. I review my day at night. I don't always sit down and write it out. I'd probably be a little better off if I did. It came up on my most current four-step that I don' t do that enough. But what I do find is if I have an issue during the course of my day, if it continues, if it's here today and it's there tomorrow and it' s here the next, I deal with it. I write it ou,t I go through the motions of the method because I go back to my basics, I go black to my roots. One of the things though I'm going to actually I started last night or the night before I started going back into the consistency. That's the word. It's not rigid. I need to get rid of that word rigid because I believe that the rigidity of it for a long time, I believe the riginity of the steps and the method that I used to know is what caused it. I know it's not true but the fear tells me it is and so it keeps me from doing it and the other day the word consistency was substituted for rigidity and and I've started to come at this from a different angle. I'm starting to write out my stuff again. Meditation and prayer I pray every day I'm actually fortunate because I don't deal with people very often during the day I deal with customers and such but I pretty much work in my head because I sand floors I put on the headphones and the world goes away and what's left is me and God and I get to pray all day long and some days I don t some days i crank up the tunes and I put the little headphones inside my headphones but when I'm not well or when I am well. When I'm not well and when I am well, I talk to God all day long and it makes my day better. When I have any pressing decisions to make in my life I use Oxford Group Meditation because that's what I learned early on and I know it works. Anytime I've made a major decision in my life, I've used the four absolutes. I've using the free flow writing exercise and the four absolutes and bouncing it off somebody. Unless it came up four. Four out of four is great. And I've used that with every single major decision I've made over the past ten years now. Actually, I learned it at eight years. But... The twelfth step. Carrying this message. i find that we live in an area that's actually it's awesome it's growing it's changing and it is starting to be receptive but for the my experience i still have that baggage of being in the carny group and being told i'd drink if i did the steps and you know being labeled a fanatic and a nazi and all kinds of shit like that i left bernardsville after about three years or so and um and what i did was i went to nothing but quote-unquote fellowship oriented meetings you know that don't drink and go to meetings kind of meetings because in my mind at that time was what am i doing am i preaching to the choir or am i carrying the message you know so i went back to the trenches i went Back where the people needed the message. You know, back where the people are saying just don't drink and go to meetings, you'll be okay. And I started carrying this message there and in the first couple weeks I got labeled a fanatic and a Nazi and a thumper and all. I had to step back. I was like, what am I doing here? How can I carry this message to people who don't necessarily want to hear it? They want the solution. But what you've got to do is you go into a meeting and you don't use the word big book key number one don't the word Big Book use the world literature the literature you don t use the words steps use the word program or process okay this is this is manipulation 101 here I did this for two years I went into quote-unquote dark tunnel meetings I don't use that word very much anymore but you know so you know where I'm going I went to these meetings constantly and I tried to carry the message and you know what I was able to do that I was able to carry the message there you know because I just eliminate a couple key words because as soon as somebody hears the word big book they shut down because all of a sudden they've got all those ideas about me being a fanatic and a Nazi because I was you know I'm the guy who walked into the 12 and 12 meeting with my big book in my hand. We're on the second step, so I open up We Agnostics and I start pointing out where they're doing it wrong. I was a fanatic. I was an agnostic. I was just a step Nazi. I freely admit this. But you know what? I was so on fire. I was such a fan of this book that I was excited that I found this solution after damn near dying in the fellowship. So I have to remember that. You know, I've helped create this. I've help create this antagonism that the fellowship has towards me. So what I do is I try to ease it in there and they don't even know it. I learned it from my wife. She used to do it all the time. I don't know how she did it. She used walk in there, be all soft spoken, bring them back to the house and then beat them over the head with a book. You know, it's much more effective, you know. Take a kindly, tolerant view, you now. What I also found out over those couple of years is I don't need to give this message to everybody. There's people in the fellowship who are happy. Who am I to screw that? Who amI to mess with their stuff just because they're not doing it the way I think they should? You know, if he's happy, why mess with him? You know. If he's not, I'm more than willing to help. You know? I also learned that I had to speak about alcoholics like me. Not alcoholics like you. Alcoholics like me. Because I'm a twisted one. You know! I didn't drink for a long period of time but when I drank I did it to the extreme. My role models were the winos under the bridge. That's who I aspired to be. I used to see those commercials about the guy who said he never dreamed of being an adult fan when he grew up. Well, I did. These were the guys that I aspird to be like. Hey, they were 50, 60 years old. They were alive. I thought I was going to die. I'm amazed. I just had a birthday this week. I never thought I'd live. I really didn't think I'd life. I don't know how old I am yeah, got to be like 35 right? September 5th my sobriety date is September 6th it's an interesting month no wonder I had a wacky Saturday You know, all this stuff comes down all at once. It's just back to carrying this message, you know. I'm a fundamentalist. I believe in what this book says, you Know. For me. Maybe not for you. And that's what I need to remember, you Now. I don't need to shove this down somebody's throat anymore. I felt I needed it two years ago. Everybody's got to have this. Because you know what? I've got to save AA. you know I found that out in my fear inventories AA is going to fall apart and I'm not going to have nowhere to go if I don't shove this down somebody's throat and get everybody doing it right you know I'm that powerful where's God in all this because that's what this is all about you know and I like that what you said is it about abstinence or spirit well I've changed it today is it is it is it about the method or is it about the spirit you know because is a living, breathing thing. Practicing these principles in all our affairs real quick. How can I do that? There was a period in my recovery where I wasn't capable of making very many meetings at all. Very busy. I was doing side work. I had a day job. You know, I was dealing with a lot of things. Doing all kinds of stuff. And what I found I needed to do was go back to what the original manuscript said. Having had a spiritual experience as a result of this course of action. We carry this message to others, especially alcoholics who practice these principles. Well, what is this message? This message is not about not drinking. This is not a message about coming to AA meetings. This is a message of dependence and reliance upon God. And I can share that with anybody if they'll listen, if they want to hear it. So when I walk into a house and I go to sand your floors, if I see a meditation book in the bathroom, I'm going to bring it up over coffee you know I'm gonna drop some lines I'm gunna drop some statements I don't have to say I'm in AA but I can talk about God if I see a serenity prayer hanging from the wall and I've done this because I can't make at times I've not been able to make meetings where do I get my meeting I gotta sit having coffee with Mrs. Murphy while I'm doing her kitchen floor you know and you know what it works it works granted it's much better to sit across the kitchen table with another drunk but when one's not available I can carry this message to anybody and I can live this program out there I'd much rather sound like an asshole in here and be good out there than to sound great in here and be an asshole out there that's just been my experience and I want to thank you guys for having me here and that's all I got Thank you.