Why the Fifth Step Is the Threshold of Awakening — Sandy B.

All right, turn to page. Let's get to the fifth step. So the fifth step for me was for me probably the most powerful experience I had because I had not felt the presence of God and I did my fifth step, I was about three and a half four months sober. I had not really felt the presence OF GOD. I'd been praying every day but I didn't really truly feel the presence Of GOD. I just didn't feel it. And I don't know why that was for me, but that is truly what it was for me. And it wasn't until I did a fifth step that I felt God's presence. Now I'm going to talk about a few things. Just so you know where it says at the bottom of the first paragraph, this brings us to the fifth step in the program of recovery, so there you know you're at the fifth step. And it says in the next paragraph, right in the middle, they give you a little warning. The best reason first, if we skip this vital step, we may not overcome drinking. So failure to do this step may result in your death. That's the third step, right? Self-assistance will kill us. Fourth step, resentment will kill us. Fifth step, failure to this step will kill you. I think you should take notice. Time after time, newcomers have tried to keep themselves certain facts about their lives trying to avoid this humbling experience. They've turned to easier methods. Almost invariably they got drunk let me just i'm just gonna i'm not gonna talk about the i'll talk about the promises but i want to tell you fifth step stories because i think fifth step story is for me i did a fifth step my sponsor came and got me i was in rehab he'd come get me on a saturday i'm less concerned with the mechanics except that you can do multiple fifth steps with more than one person you can do two if you want three it doesn't really matter because it says we think hard before we pick the person or person to share it with so i'm a fan of multiple fifth steps if you feel like it, right? I did it with just my sponsor. So he'd come and get me, and I had some secrets that I wasn't going to share. One was sexual experimentation with another boy when I was in high school. We were 14. Full of shame. So full of shame around that. Didn't know what it meant. And it's not like I was confused about my sex orientation because I was real clear on that, but it still was just confusing to me. I thought it meant way more than it did. I wasn't going to share that with anybody. I just wasn't gonna share it. And there were some other things I did, right? But let's talk about that one because that was the key one that really got me free. Now I remember sharing everything. I shared all my, basically I read my inventory to my sponsor. That's what it was. I just read my inventory. And he was making a list of my character defects for me because I couldn't see them. And I got to the very last day. It was the third day and he said to me, he goes, is there anything else? And I just said, yeah. And I shared on this thing. And he just looked at me and he said, yeah, I've heard that a thousand times. Because I had a similar experience. Which totally changed me, you know. Because I'm thinking, you're 30 years old, I've been holding that for years. Since I was like 14, 13 years old. I mean, I'd like, for a long time, like that meant something. And I've hurt probably 300 fifth steps and I think maybe out of 295 of them, I've heard that same experience. In fact, when I don't hear it, I always ask, is there no experimentation with another guy? What do you mean, dude? I'm like, I'm just asking, you know. Well, I did this one thing with my cousin once. I'm Like, all right, what is it? And he said, oh, I said, oh, dude, whatever. Move past it. Because I want you to see me as a certain way. and it's not until I really get real and just give everything that I get free and so what happened for me was I did all that and he drove me back up to Eagle Crest which is where I was outside of Tucson and they used to have this thing called the Prayer Rock it was right above the house and the Prayer Rocket was a place we would go and see that Arizona sunsets are like miraculous they're like beautiful desert and for as long as I've been there you can never go up there at the sunset and not have multiple people up there it was never a good place to meditate because there would always be people up there, who and all. And I got back and he said, look, I want you to be alone for an hour because the end of the fifth step is the hour. It's not six and seven. The end is the time that you're going to be and it's the hour I spend with God that's closing out the fifth steps. And he said to me, we're goingto read it in a minute, but he saidto me, get quiet with God for anhour. Do what it says to do. Look at the first five proposals. Make sure that you've been solid, you haven't skipped on anything and get quiet. And Igot quiet and I knew and first I went up there and nobody was there. Nobody was up there. that day. I had the whole mountain to myself and I got quiet for an hour and it was the first time in 30 years that I felt at peace. Really the first time ever that I felt like my mind shut down. I wasn't thinking about anything but God and where I was at. It was a really peaceful moment. I felt truly the presence of God. I'll never forget that day, I'll Never forget walking down the mountain that night knowing that I was going to be okay, that my life was about to change. As it has. And I had no proof other than the feeling within me. I didn't have any experience of it would be any different than what I was feeling and it's totally changed my life. On the flip side, I don't think you really get to finish a fifth step until you listen to a fifth steps. I think the completion of a fifth step is sitting and listening to someone else's fifth step. that's not written in the big book but that's just been my experience and I'll tell you my fifth step with Ronnie was probably the most and he's not even sober today but it was the most profound experience I ever had with a guy so my friend Ron the guy who wanted to kill the guy that killed his sister I mean he's a hard man he's like neck to toe tattooed inside lip tattooed you know I mean he's he's he's he's he's he's he's crazy guy. But he's a really sweet guy, but he's crazy. And I'm sitting in my office at my house and we're reading inventory. He's reading his fifth step, reading his sixth step. And I'm listening to it and he gets to this part where he starts reading about the guy who murdered his sister. And he reads it, you know? He reads it. I read that so-and-so, he murdered my sister. Affects this, this, and this. This is where I'm selfish. This is what I'm dishonest with. Pretty much about the same as mine. selfishly use it to stay drunk and stay angry a lie I tell myself is I can't get free I can never forgive him anyway he gets all the end I said and he's crying and he is a tough guy he is crying and I am crying I am looking at him and I'm like I have a question for you I said if I get you clear to go into main state prison and we go in and this guy walks into the A meeting what are you going to do and he says to me I will welcome him to Alcoholics Anonymous. And it wasn't like, you know when someone's saying something that they think you want to hear? Like, I know that. Nick, you can't pull that on me. Intuitively, I knew he meant every word. That he had got truly free from something that had owned him for almost 20 years. At least 15 years. Someone that ate at his soul. He was free. And we went on and I asked him if there was anything else and he told me some horrendous things but he didn't tell me he kept a secret and I didn't know about it until later so I said why don't you go get quiet I was tired it was like 3 in the morning and I said I'm going to lay on the couch just go get quiet for an hour and he went out into my field I live on a blueberry field big 15 acres lots of wildlife and he got on this rock down there and about an hour later he woke me up and he was white like a ghost and he goes Brian I got to tell you something and I said what and he said I was just down there and I was sitting there and I wasn't going to tell him and I looked around and I look around and there's a great big buck just sitting there he just came around the corner he was just sitting here like 10 feet from me And he was just huge. And, you know, it was like a cold, you could see the coming out of his nose, you know the breath coming out his nose. He said, he just looked at me for like 10 seconds. We looked at each other and then he just, boom, he was gone. And he goes, and I knew at that moment that if I didn't tell you I'd never be as free as that deer. And he ran back up to tell me this thing he needed to tell him. And he told me it. And he got free. And he was truly an awakened spirit. He was truly a changed man. Did you ever see him, Chandler, on the back end? He was surely a free man. And he did what I've seen so many do. He put the brakes on his immense. He wasn't willing to go to that length. And he got sick in Alcoholics Anonymous again. And he moved to Florida and started drinking. And I still see him. I don't see him but I still hear from him on Facebook occasionally. He's doing his deal. But I'll never forget this feeling that truly watched a man transform. And the fifth step that I did with those guys, and maybe become a foster parent, that was another experience. I've listened to so many. I sponsored a guy who killed his wife in a murder-suicide. He killed her and then tried to kill himself, and he lived. And he was doing 30 years. About his 28th year, well, about his 26th year I started sponsoring him. he got his bachelor's degree in prison and he was a counselor he was the only inmate counselor in the main state prison and all the guys that I sponsored would go to him and they convinced him because he was an alcoholic that he needed to come to the 12 step group and go through the steps his clients convinced him so I started coming and I challenged every belief he had around AA and the knowledge and he asked me to sponsor him and I sponsored him I took him to the steps and I got to this thing his fifth step around his wife. He had so much shame and guilt and so much internal pain he felt like he was nothing because he destroyed this woman because they had a daughter and his daughter was raised by her sister and he hadn't seen his daughter in, you know, 20 years. And I watched this man who was a hard man but I watched him And he literally cried in my arms for hours to forgive himself. He just was so tortured. And he was a guy who I sponsored with a different hand. I didn't need to be hard on him. He was hard on himself. He was a truly tortured soul. And I asked him if God thought that, I said, do you think God really wants you to be tortured? Do you really believe that's what God has in store for you? Or does God want you to free? His fear was that if he was to be free, it would disrespect his wife. Even though they were going to let him be free. I said, you paid your debt to society. Like, that's just the way it is. So at 30 years, he got out. And when he had to make amends to his wife's grave, I was with him. Like, we can do that. He became a licensed substance abuse counselor in the state of Maine. and the turmoil, that took a long time because you've got to get licensed through their agency. They've got it approved and he had a murder conviction. But he had so many people standing up for this guy. And he had such a story and he could reach people at such a level that they licensed him. He's an active substance abuse counselor in the state of Maine. So you want to be part of that because if you don't get to be a part of it you don'T get to experience it. If you don' t make yourself available you DON' T get to EXPERIENCE IT. And so the fifth step for me is truly an experience you don't want to miss. And I'm like amazed at people like burying their soul. I'm, like, amazed that people do that. So it says at the top of 75, there's eight promises. I just want to read the promises and then we'll move on. It says, we pocket our pride and go to it. I'm on 75. Illuminating every twisted character, every dark cranny of the past. Every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past. Once we have taken a step with only nothing, that means nothing. Number one, we are delighted. That's cool, I like that. Two, we can look the world in the eye. And that's good for me, I'm a shoe looker. I walk in, I don't like looking at shoes. You know a newcomer when they're not looking at eyeballs. They're looking at a newcomers girl's butts or they're looking at the shoes, that's it. That's how you know a new comer, trust me. Three, we could be alone at perfect peace and ease. That's a good one. Be alone at perfect peace and ease. Four, our fears fall from us. Five, we begin to feel the nearness of our creator. That was my experience right there. I began to feelthe nearnessofmycreator. Six, we may have had certainspiritual beliefs, but now we beginto have a spiritualexperience. That was another problemthat happened to me. Seven, the feeling that the drinkproblemhas disappeared will often come strongly. That's another onethat happened for me. These allhappened for meat this step. This is the beginningof the spiritual experience. This is juicy stuff, man. Eight, we feelwe're on the broadhighway walking hand in hand with the spirit of the universe at three months sobriety I didn't know what that meant but it sounded cool whatever that means walking hand with spirit of universe like okay whatever but that's really how I feel I feel my journey is walking hand in hand with God and the only person that's let go of God's hand is me God's never let go of me I tend to let go once in a while and sway a little bit try to work you know live in the waters and see how it works live in itself I always come climbing back we return home we find a place where we can be quiet for an hour carefully reviewing what we have done we thank God from the bottom of our heart that we know him better taking this book down from our shelf we turn to the page which contains the 12 steps carefully reading the first five proposals and then it talks about you know we skimped on the cement we shall walk a free man I mean this is solid work ask yourself those questions am I being solid am I solid so far go to the next page we must stop for dinner probably huh It ends at 5.30, so whatever you want. Okay, let me finish 6 and 7. Are you guys okay with that? If we can answer to our satisfaction, I'm on page 76. If we an answer to your satisfaction, we then look at step 6. See, it's italicized. There we go, I wasn't lying. We have emphasized willingness as being indispensable. Are we not ready to let God remove from us all the things which we've admitted are objectionable? You know, 6 and7 weren't hard for me either. They're like step 2 for me. Like really? Like if you've done an inventory and you've done a thorough, honest inventory and you've really looked at your flaws and you've looked at how much you've destroyed your life and you looked at your character defects, why would you want to hang on to them? Well, dishonesty is working for me. I think I'll run with that for a while. Like really? Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things which we've admitted are objectionable? Can He now take them all, every one? If we still cling to something, we will not let go. We ask God to be willing. It's in the willingness. it's the whole key in this step is willingness so I'll tell you how I did a 7th step and then I'll show you and I'll give you a 7 step story that's just, you know like I'm such a knucklehead I can't even tell you I can tell you so many 7 step stories about how I operate out of character defects and I always end up poorly when ready we say something like this so I was to make a list my sponsor basically would make a listen here's how it worked for me so I got a paper And he had all my character defects. So he had, like, intolerant, judgmental, dishonest, selfish. Give me some other ones. Go on. Unforgiven. Oh, unforgiving is a good one. Free. Lustful. Okay, lustful. Control. Impatience is a good one. Okay, so we've got a lot, right? You can go on and on. He goes, I want you to do this. He goes I want to draw draw the opposite of each one. Right? These are flaws. What's the opposite of intolerance? It's pretty simple. What's the opposite of judgmental? what's the opposite of dishonest honest selfish selfless unforgiving forgiving what's opposite of lustful pure you can go there but I want to get too pure well I mean you know like pure in the sense of lust first of all God gave us that lust It's a God-given lust. That's how we procreate. That's part of our makeup. That's just what it is. You can't deny it. Now, when you take lustful to the level of selfishness, where I just want to get what I want to give when I want to get it, lustful in its right way could be pure, right? Respectful is good. Everyone got freaked out with pure. What pure? What's the opposite of controlling? Kind of accepting. What is it? I said open-minded. Could be open. Let's say open. And I like accepting of the situation. I like compromising. Who compromises good? Relinquished. I spelled compromise wrong, but so what? Okay. What about impatient? Impatient. Now here's the exercise. The exercise isn't written in a big book. It's just something to do. Because what he said is, he said, look, this is the old. This is the new. Who do you want to be? What side of the page do you want to live on, Brian? I mean, who wants to have a... Who wants to be friends with this? An intolerant, judgmental, dishonest, selfish, unforgiving, lustful, controlling, impatient freak. Or a tolerant, accepting, honest, selfless, forgiving, respectful, open, accepting, compromisable, patient person. I mean no wonder you had a hard time in relationships, dude. Who wants to be friend with that? I mean how are you going to have any kind a relationship if this is how you are now does this mean i was 100 this way no i mean there's like a spectrum i mean that's a grade i mean sometimes some guys it's zero to ten ten being like really dishonest and zero being completely honest some guys start here with dishonesty like that was me right i was probably on 11th right i remember my sponsor said a guy asked He said, are you dishonest? I said, not really. He said what? I said well, not really. He says, are you kidding me? This is before I did the steps. I was so blind to my dishonesty. He said dude, you rob banks. Well, you know, short of that, I'm a pretty honest guy. I said you're an honest bank robber. Okay. Everyone's different. I mean some people like selfishness for me, I may have been here. Some people, you know like way over here. Some people are only this, you know. So it's not like this defined exactly who I was, nor will this define me. And if I'm telling you right, the legacy that I leave is going to be a lot different than this. There are people in Tucson, Arizona who only know this guy right here. There are People walking around town right now, if you ask them about Brian Perkosch, they'll have some really colored comments about me. They're usually guys that I want to make amends to that I had no amends to make that I just wanted to go tell them how cool I am now. Then my sponsor stopped. He said, you don't know that guy, Immense? He says, what, you want to go let him know how spiritual you're living now? Like, yeah. He said. Yeah, I don't get to do that. He said really? He said no. Of course you don' t get to that. You only make amends to people you owe amends too. You don' T get to run around and tell people how cool you are. That's why Facebook is like the old yay me. They should call Facebook yay me Yay me Summer 28 years Yay me I'm going to go serve like whatever I'm gonna go feed the homeless Yay me I mean, we do that, but it's a self-seeking platform. Seriously. And don't everyone say, like, we all do it, trust me. I've done it. I try not to do it. But occasionally I do it because it's kind of fun. I really do try not to do them because I find it, you know, like, really? I don't think I need to do that. Like, let people know what a wonderful guy I am. I don'T think I NEED that. And so, I'm okay with people how they view me because I live differently. So I really wanted to get from this side of the page to this side. And the thing is, I could never get from here to there. I couldn't do it. I wasn't able to do it, I didn't have the power to do It. And so I was to take all these things into prayer and then do the seven steps. I gave them all to God, I gave it all. Help me be the man you want me to be. Help me to the son you want to be, help me be The Husband you want me to Be, help me to The Brother. Do you know how many titles we have? I mean, I'm a husband, I'm father, I am a brother, I'm a cousin I'm a boss I'm an employee I'm a friend I'm a sponsor I'm a sponsee we wear many hats and who do I want to be I want to be the same person in all those hats I want to be as tolerant accepting honest and selfless with my wife as I am with the employees who work for me I want to be forgiving, respectful, accepting, and patient with everybody. With my kids, with my kids' friends, with mijn neighbors, with mein cousins. Can I do that? Can I take this guy into all my relationships and be the man that God would have me be? That's a tall order. But I don't think he expects anything less. I really don't. You think I... Believe me, I don't meet that all the time. Usually when I'm driving. I'm pretty patient now, but man, when I was traveling in Southern, I was like pretty impatient. I have one going right now. In Texas, they merge. I merge two freeways. And then they merge into a big freeway. And so everybody coming this way is coming from Austin. And so there's double lanes. So when you come on this way, the line's usually backed up to the turn. When you come down my way, which is coming from the country, there's no one on the right side. It's pretty open. And so the way I think it is you should be able to drive all the way to the end because the lane's open. That makes sense. I mean, the lane'S open. Anyone coming down this line? Now, the guys on the left could switch over and go down, but they don't because they're respectful. They're Texans. That's the way they operate. So I'm driving, and I've been going all the Way to the End because there's No Other Way to Go. Otherwise, I don't know where I'm going to merge into. They're bumper-to-bumper. So I go all the The Way to The End where it then goes two-to one. I find people now will step out, and they don't do it only against me, they do it against other people. They'll go out into the right lane, they'll stay in the middle to keep people from going down. I find that disrespectful. I don't like it. But I've learned to accept it. I mean, I think it's wrong, but so what? So I've had to learn, like I want to honk my horn and flip them off and say it, but it's like, I can't do that. Well, I could, but I don' t want to. Yeah, I mean they're pretty violent out in Texas. I don't have a gun. I'm not allowed to own guns. I'm not. They don't let me. Federal government says you cannot own weapons. And I actually like the Second Amendment. I think it's fair. I mean, we should be. But for some reason, oh, convict of felon, whatever. So, let's talk about the prayer. I really don't have any resentment. Trust me, I'm the one who robbed the banks. I am real comfortable. You know what? That's the way it is. If I want to get pardoned by President Obama, I could write him a letter. And I thought about that. I'm serious. I thought when Bush was in, I was like, you know, I should probably get pardoned. Why not? I could ride a little bit. Where's the other man? He had a gun. That's overkill. That's like, really? So let's talk about the prayer real quick and then we'll go. So when I'm ready, so I was to take all these and say, am I willing to have God remove these? And here's the thing, it's not whether I'm waiting, and what I think is like, can he? But I leave that up to God. That's not my business. My business is to give him up. And so I give him up So he says, my creator I'm now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad So that means I give all of you, the good and the bad That means there is some good here I'm not all this. I'm not 100% intolerant. I may be 60% intolerent, 40% intolerate I just want to strive for better We're looking for spiritual progress, not perfection But the key word is what? Progress See, that's an out. We're not saints, man. Where does it say that? I'm looking for spiritual progress, brother. Where's the spiritual progress? So as long as I'm growing, that's all I care about. I'm now willing that you should have all of me good and bad. I pray that you now remove from me every single defective character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows. Even then, in the seventh step, it's not even about me. It's not about take away my difficulties so I can get a better job or get a bigger job. a better looking wife, or get a better house, or whatever. It's in my usefulness to you and my fellows. Grant me strength as I go out from here to do your bidding. Amen. Let me tell you, if you're this guy, who's going to ask you to sponsor? Who's goingto ask you? Look at your sponsor and say, why did I pick that man? Why did I take that woman to be my sponsor? I guarantee you it's because they live over here. If you're living here, it's a good bet. You're probably not sponsoring anybody. And if your real purpose is to be of maximum service to God and his fellows, how can you do that here? So I want to get here. I've never been able to get there. I'm still so far from the man I want To be. But I'm so far removed from the Man I was. But I know God's not done with me. Like I'm real constant. Like I have lots of room to grow. And I don't live by this delusion I've grown so much. Like so what? I was sicker than most. Big deal. There are things people do. Here's my last seven-step thing, and then we'll close. Some people know this story. I know Chandler does. My thing around honesty was so it took me three years before I would give money back at the cash register. Three years sober. In the book, sponsoring guys. Before, if you gave me money at the catch register, if I gave you a five and you gave me change for a 20, my motto was, I didn't steal it. You gave it to me. I'm not proud of that, but that's where I was at. And one day, because I was constantly in check with myself, I was constant in prayer, I didn't feel good about it. I felt really crappy. I was eating pizza and a guy gave me change for a 20. I gave him a 10. And I knew it when he gave it me. In fact, part of me wanted to say no, but I couldn't do it. And so I was out eating my pizza and I'm like, the pizza sucked. So I went in and gave his money back. And then I called my sponsor and bragged. I did. My sponsor said something like this. I don't know if verbatim, but he said, that's really good. He said, maybe next time you won't have to leave the cash register. So you wanted to tell me about it. No, I didn't say that. That's coming. So I said, whatever. You know, can't you just be happy for me? Not even two weeks later, I'm getting keys made at this key shop. And it's the same situation. and I gave them like, I don't know if I gave them change. I don' t know what it was but it was definitely they were giving me more change and I stopped the transaction. I remember I stopped the transaction What's that? How many times has this happened to you? It's not twice. Well this happened it's only happened twice. I mean I don''t know how many times before I got there but I know I got some money back and I remember saying no, I didn't do that. I didn''t give you a 10 I gave you a whatever and I called my sponsor exactly it was actually two weeks later And he still laughs to this day. He's not my sponsor anymore, but he still laughs at this story. And he said to me, he said, yeah, that's really cool. He said, next time you don't have to brag about something that people just normally do. And it was true. So for me, this honesty was really, really ingrained in me. It was just like selflessness was easy. I've got busy doing work with guys. I don't know. I sponsor guys who have, it's like pulling keys to try to get them to do any service work. And I'm like frustrated. And I realize this, when I was doing the service work, I used to call Don Princip all the time, nobody's coming to district meetings, nobody's doing this, no one's going to jail, blah, blah. He says, well let me ask you a question, what do you get out of working with others? Like when you go into the prison, what doyou get? Oh, I get amazing stuff. He said, well what doyou get? I get spiritually fed, I grow spiritually out of it. I named all these things. He said so you're mad at people because they're not getting that? And it clicked for me. Like I was mad at people because they weren't helping. But the truth is, I was getting fed spiritually. And so now I was harboring resentment because people were... He goes, you should feel sorry for that. And I flipped from anger to empathy in a minute. So if you're not doing service work, you're just cheating yourself. You don't go into a detox. You don'T go into some hospital. You DON'T go under the prison system, county jail or half my house. If you don't do that, you'RE selling out on YOURSELF. And it changed my whole outlook. I didn't care whether people came or not, I went. So for me, selflessness wasn't even a big deal. But lots of these, man, I'm telling you. Now honesty, I am neurotic around honesty now. Like when I do my taxes, I have a child that sells me and I set my own miles, I don't even mess around. Like I never used to keep a mileage log, I just guesstimated and if I ever got audited I would fill it in after I got the, you know, I do not play that. I keep a log on everything, every receipt. Now, not everyone has to do that, but I'm just really clear that dishonesty will take me down a path I don't want to go. So I just don't do it. I don'T want to sell out. And any time I've gone down and lifted one of these character defects here, I start to lose my contact with God, and I DON'T want TO do that. All right? So let's stop here for the night. We'll do 9, 10, 11, 12 tomorrow, okay? All right, 76. Everybody go to page 76. We're going to talk steps 8 and 9. My goal is to get through step 12 today. Okay? It's a daunting task because some of the meat of the program is... I mean, this right here. Well, you know what? Eight and nine doesn't even really mean anything. Let's just go to step 10. But I'm just falling in line with what a lot of people do, so... That was a judgment. I apologize. But if you go to page 76, I will say that my experience has been for the last 20 years, I've seen more people put the brakes on this step than any other step. And there's that lie that goes around that you can't complete the list. It's never. I've heard that before. Like, well, you may never get them. And I believe that if you have a list of amends, the goal is to get them all finished. That's my opinion. You should try to get em all finished, shouldn't you? And what happens is, and I can go from my own personal experience, there have been amends. I'm going to share a few amends that came to me I didn't even have on my list. and because I was awake to the presence you know being present I heard something in a meeting that triggered something like oh my I didn't even make amends for that I mean I heard about an amends I had to make I stole when I was in Terre Haute Penitentiary I worked in I was working in the commissary and one of the things about working in the comissary in prison is it's a place to steal but they have really good systems to keep you from stealing like they strip search you when you leave But I figured a way to get cigarettes out through the chute where the guards basically, people come up, they put a sheet, we fill the sheet up and then they, we fill it up and we fill up the basket up and they scan it and they drop it through a chute and the inmates put it in their bag. And so I found a way of putting cartons of cigarettes in a similar package of pastries that cost 99 cents. And I would just throw the pastries in the trash, put the cigarettes in, glue them, and my friends would come by. it was a slick system I did it for almost a year but I did and so one day this guy was talking about and I never put that on my list I never had it on my lista and then one day I was at the prison doing some speaking thing and somebody was talking about making amends for stuff he stole from the commissary it was like six, seven years later and I realized oh my god I owe the Bureau of Prisons the BOP an amends and there was a guy who was a trustee I can't remember his name he was a big shot politically he was with Clinton and he was the trustee I can't think of his name anymore but Tom I anyway he came in did a workshop for us he was class A trustee he was non-alcoholic trustee and he came and did a work workshop for my corrections thing and he hooked me up with somebody in the Bureau of Prisons and I was able because you can't just send a check to the Bureau of Prisions they just don't you know and the guards I really needed to make direct recommendations to the guards that were on the shift that worked in that thing they were all gone it was one of those daunting trying to find out and finally I ended up having to just send money and I don't even know where it went but I sent the money to this guy he's somewhere distributed it somewhere so you're going to find amends if you're really open you may not have it but I believe you need to finish amends that's my belief an amend is to fix I mean the word amend like if I break a window I break my neighbor's window I go over and say hey I'm sorry I broke your window dude my bad and then I walk away that's not really making amends That's just saying I'm sorry. But a true amend is to say I'm sorry and fix it. There's another thing in the book, North Torres for this. It's not, you don't even say sorry, but there is a line in here where it says we're sorry. We say we're sorry. So I'm a fan of saying, hey, you know what? I was wrong. I'm truly sorry. And this is what I'm going to do to fix it." I'm gonna walk you through the mechanics of amends that I do, and then I'm gonna lay some ideas out and I'll share a couple amends that had an impact on me. I'm not going to share, I already showed you about my mom's amends, but I'm going to show her amends. Both of them, well one of them happened as a result of me coming out, I was speaking at an alumni conference, I went to Token AA and I made a comment one time about something, about a family member and I really was dismissive and it hit me that night, like I've never really honored this person so I had to go make amends to this person. But I'm gonna get to that in a minute. But let me talk about some of the mechanics first, and I'll tell you how it was done for me. So when I got on this step, I was to make a list of all the people that I owed amends to, that I thought I owed Amends to and when in doubt put them down. And so I had a list. And then I was take cards, index cards, a little 5x9 index card and I was write the name of the person who I owed an amend for. So, I got my list over here and let's take each name and put it on the card. And then in this corner I was to write either one of two things willing or not willing. So, I was going to write one or two things there and then over here I was write one or three things and one was no I wrote no and don't know but it means know where they are so I know how to get a hold of them don't-know So for simplicity I would just write know or don't now right here So I ended up with almost potentially four stacks of cards Stacks of cards with I was willing and I knew where they were at and I was willingly and I didn't know where they're at or I was not willing No, not willing. I don't know. That's what I had. And then I was to take all my cards and I sat down with my sponsor. And I believe that sitting down with your sponsor is probably the best thing because I didn't have a clue on what I was going to make amends for. I said yes, I wanted to make an amends for things I didn' t really owe an amend for. My motive was impure. And other times there were amends I needed to make that I needed some real good directions. So I was write what the person is and then what I did. stole and then put a dollar amount you know like 585 dollars so whatever it was we come up with a dollar never called never called when I was on the streets manipulated and dot, dot, dot, dot. So pretty much the list. Just quick, what do I own the meds for? My mom. Now this isn't going to be, it was never mechanical but it's mechanical on the front end but it was never really, it's too organic to be like really robotic. I wasn't to take my card in and read it. Dear mom, I was really wrong. That's not how it is and it's never the way I think it's going to be. Most of my meds completely, and I can tell you this, I was afraid of every single amendment I ever made. There wasn't one amendment that I went into that I wasn't nervous, I wasn' t anxious and I wasn''t afraid. Because there's a piece of me that is completely against saying I was wrong. In fact, saying Iwaswrong is probably the hardest thing alcoholics do. I could actually say Iwasorry a lot easier than IcouldsayIwaswrng. And I think that's why people say don't just say sorry like don't even use that word because we are notorious for saying sorry, sorry, sorry,sorry, sorry. But to say I was wrong has impact, all right? So when I make amends, and I'm just giving you how I make an amends. I'm going to walk through the book in a minute. So I'm gonna tell you how i do it. How I used to do it was, because I did it differently. And I had a really cool experience one day. I used make amens like, so there's a little lesson I do. I'm not gonna remove this word, not because I don't like it, just because it's in my way, okay? so the first thing i do is set up an appointment right and that's that could be many different ways calling people up and say hey you know this is brian certain people no problem hey i want to come and talk to you i have some things i want other people like i had to make amends to a drug dealer who really didn't want to see me You know, he was a guy that I robbed drug dealers with, who I stole drugs from, who I was crazy with. And I knew he was one of those guys that wasn't a danger to me. I mean, it was safe, so I needed to make the amends. There's other drug dealers I didn't need to make amends, that was too dangerous. But this guy, he Was an old friend of mine from high school. And so I knew it was a safe environment, but he didn't want me to know where he lived. He was not comfortable with me coming to his house. Because he didn't know, the new me, all he knew was the guy on the left side of my six-step list. That's all he new me as. He didn't known me as the other guy. And so he was like, yeah, we can meet, but we'll have to meet somewhere public. And I'm like, okay, I'm cool. I didn't want to know where you live. I'm good. But I knew exactly what he was thinking. He didn' t know if I was going to rob him or not. Other people are like, what do you want to meet for? That's a fun one. Then you're like... And so the way I would word it is, look, so I don't know if you know, when I'm in Alcoholics Anonymous. And part of my recovery is to go back and make right all the wrongs that I did. And so when I made my list of people that I wronged, you're on my list. I've done you some harm and I want to clean it up. I want it to be good. I want what I want to make good. And I've had people say, you know what? Not interested. Okay. Not interested, I hear you. Well guess what? If you are ever interested, here's my phone number or here's my email address. If you ever are. And I'm sorry to impose upon you. Now, I have never had anyone really say that. But that's what I would say. Because you know what? You may run into somebody who doesn't really want to hear it. And it's not fair to me to impede upon them for my own freedom. Because really the key in this step is the willingness. That's the freedom. Because I sponsor guys in prison who can't make direct amends. And so am I to say that they can't get the freedom that I got because they can'T make direct Amends? I don't think so. So I set the appointment. And once I make the appointment, I talk about... This is not like... I try to do this in order, but it's never going to be always like this. I mean, this one obviously has to be in order. Then I say... I tell the wrong. And when I say tell the right thing, I just explain the wrong thing. So this is what happened. I stole $400 from you. Or that one time when this happened, I did that and blah, blah, bla. And we start having a discussion. Now I used to say This is what happens To a lot of people Is there anything You'd want me to do To make that right And I don't do that Because that Putting it on them And that's a common thing Happens a lot A lot of times You'll hear people Talk about So obviously If I stole the money You're going to get The money back But if it's one of those Kind of emotional amends You'll say Is there something Is there any thing That you would want me To do that I could do To make this right What would that be I'm willing to do anything And then one day I was eating At a restaurant I'm about two years sober. And I've made a lot of amends like that. And I thought they were fine until I was at dinner one night. And I'm eating dinner, and my wife, it was the last time she ever ate meat. They served her raw chicken. It was breaded chicken, and it was raw. It was still purple. And she ate a piece of it. She goes, this seems rubbery. And then she ate the piece, and she was gross, right? And so I called the owner over, and he came to the restaurant. And he looked at it, and said, wow. He goes, yeah, I'm really sorry for that. And he goes, what do you want me to do about that? He goes, What would you like me to do? And I said, Oh, well think about that. And he left and I thought, That's the way I make amends. And why is it my responsibility for fixing your problem? Why is that my responsibility? Like, why are you putting that burden on me when you're the one who served us raw chicken? And so when he came back, I said You know what? What are you going to do? He said, Well, you're not going to pay for that meal. I'll give you a free meal if you want it, and free dessert. So then he did what he should have done. But I had to ask him for that. And I realized from that point on, whenever I made an amends, I basically laid it out. This is what I'm going to do. This is my amend, for lack of a better word. But this is what i will do. So this is when I'm gonna do to make it right. I did this, and this is where I do to do to me. To make it write. Now, I do ask later on, beyond what I said I'm going to do to make it right, is there anything else that you would have me do? Because I may sell them short so I want to give them that opportunity. But I come up and I tell you, when I put this burden on sponsees, like you don't get to just ask them what to do. You need to put it on because if you ask a loved one, you ask your parents or your loved one well what do you want me to do? Here's what they're going to say nine out of ten times. You don't need to do anything. We just love you so much. We're so happy that you're sober. Because they're going to sell out on us too. So I, you know, like if you have been absent in your parents' life and you want to fix that, then be present and show up and say, I'm going to show up on all events. I'm gonna call you once a week, whatever it is that you're going to commit to and make sure that you can follow through on the commitment because otherwise you'll have to make another event. So I do that. So I set the appointment. I tell them what the wrong is. This is what I'm doing to fix it, okay? And then I ask him, is there anything you would like to share about how my behavior affected you? Now, I'll tell you why I do this. I think it's very important. because it gives people the freedom to get off their chest what they've been wanting to say. And I learned more about my first step in this step than any other step, much more than studying the book because what I really got was some friends who really told me how really scared they were for me and how my behavior frightened them. And so they were like saying things that were blowing me away. I did not know that I had such an impact on people's lives in a negative way. So I ask him that. And I've got to shut up. Like, you ask someone who's got an opinion, you may take some heat on this one. But I'm like, bring it on, let it on. This is when my mom told me about my brother Chucky. I'm going to tell you right now, if I hadn't asked my mom this question, I would have never really truly learned about my Brother Chucky and how an impact it had, how about her writing that letter in prison, how much that had an impact. Five. Okay, so is there anything you would do? Is there anything else I may owe you an amend for? Just in case I forget stuff. Because guess what? Sometimes I'm in a blackout and I don't remember. You know, I look at the haze of my drinking and using and there's some things that got pulled up like, well, you know, and sometimes it's like something I don't even think is an issue, and they'll bring it up and say, well, that really had an impact on me. When you said this isn't this, I'm like, wow, I did not know that. Okay, I'll fix that. And then the last one is beyond what I said I'm going to do to fix this, do you need anything else? Just in case I didn't come up with a good fix. It allows them. It's two-year-old handwriting, so it's just better than this. I can repeat it. Beyond what I said I'm going to do to fix this, do you need anything? Anything else? And this is healing. I can't even tell you Because the whole purpose of an amend, well there's two purposes. One is to set me free, obviously just repair the damage, but really set people free. And you don't even know what impact you're going to have on people's future when you do that. And so I don't go into amends like really lackadaisical. I mean I talk about this as some serious spiritual exercise here when you can get past. And what stops most of us from really going full throttle on this is pride. because the word I'm wrong and making amends to people that you don't like. So I'll share an amend that happened to a guy. I hated this guy. And he was on my not willing list. Don't know. Not willing, don't know so what I was to do is I was take all my not willings into daily meditation and prayer and ask God for the willingness to make amends to them all. Now I started with my willing and no. These right here, these are the easy ones. So I started with those. But I was to pray daily for these. And I started praying for this guy. His name was Johnny. He was my roommate. Hooked up with my fiance when I went to prison. That's rule number one. Like we're buddies, you know, we're roommates. You don't do that. And so what I did is I slandered his name all over town. I accused him of ratting me out to the feds, which was a total lie. But nobody knew it. I would call him and say, you know, I think Johnny's the one who dropped the dime on me. And then I even went so far as to say I got paper on Johnny. So now I've got this guy who's a drug dealer and friends who now think he's the guy who called the FBI on me? So he moved out of town. He moved to Vegas. Not because and that. I think he just needed work. He's a drywall hanger. And Vegas was hopping. And everyone was doing well in the building. So he went there. But his reputation around town got slandered. And so I made basically friends pick sides. That's divide and conquer, you know? And so I got my posse to be anti-Johnny. So I was to make amends to all those people that I slandering his name. I had to go to every single one of them, and say, you know what I said about Johnny was a lie. It was a lie. I was wrong. And not say, but he deserved it because he hooked up with Carrie. I couldn't say that. I just said he was wrong even when people say, yeah, well, he was a scumbag for hooking up with Carrie. Even when they brought that back in the mind, I would say, whatever he did to his business, I was going to prison for six years. So to really expect Carrie to hang out with me for six years, she was 22 years old. It was just ridiculous. Like I really harbored no ill feeling at this stage. When I got clear on this guy, I was ready to do it. I still didn't know where he was at. So here's the thing. This is how God works in my life. I was completely willing and I even started asking some friends, hey, you know where Johnny? And they were hesitant to let me know where Johnny lived because they thought my motives weren't pure. Some guys thought I was going to go kill him. They're like, you know, I know where he's at but I'm not really comfortable giving you his phone number. I'm like, all right, well, here's my number. If you talk to him, give it, you know. Just I want to talk to them And after a while, probably three or four months, people started realizing that I really wasn't going to hurt them. I just really wanted to make some right. And they didn't really know what I wanted to do, but one of them told them what I was doing for work. And so what I Was Doing for Work, this is in my first year of sobriety. There's a guy in Tucson called the Neon Sculpture Guy, and he sold these neon sculptures on the street corners. They're kind of like lights. You see them now all over. But at the time, this was back in the early 90s, it was rare. I mean, they were like little light fixtures, and they plugged into the light. It would be like a cactus or a guitar. And it was neon. It was kind of cool. You'd put it on your desk in your office or, you know, in your room. And they were just neon sculptures. The guy would blow the glass and then they'd run neon through them. You know, it was kindof cool. And so I would sell them because, you now, I was desperate. So I'd sell anything, right? So I would work on the street corner. And at nighttime, and you only do it at nighttime because then you'd light your hole. I'd have a table with all these lights. It was like a spontaneous drunken vibe. People would pull up when they're drunk. Hey, 180 bucks, okay. So one day I'm working. and I've been hustling. It was like December and it was near Christmas time and it's really busy for me and I'd been working and I, and I had been willing to make amends to this guy for eight months. I'm leaving in like April and I'm, it's December so I'm going to be leaving in four months and I really want to make a mess of this guy. So I'm just sitting there but I'm not really thinking about him this night. I'mjust selling, selling, selling, hustling, hustling and all of a sudden on nine o'clock at night it gets dead. Nobody comes around and it is kind of cold in the desert and in the desert and it gets cold at night. So I got in my truck and I'm sitting in my car. I get in my cart and I got the heat on and I've just sitting there and it has been busy. Like, I haven't had five minutes to myself where somebody hasn't pulled up. I get into my car and turn the heat off and I just sit there and all of a sudden a car pulls up. I'm like, really? A car? And I see the lights come up and this truck pulls up next to me and the guy looks down and it's Johnny. And that's like when the rubber meets the road. Like, okay, you said you're willing, let's see what you got. Now, understand how much I hated this guy, okay? I mean, in prison, I, you know, the brainstorm, this guy owned time in my head about what I would do to him. And so, you know I'm on over and he comes on over and gets in the car and he's like greeting me like nothing. Which kind of made me mad. And then we start talking, and I say, he said, hey, I heard you've been looking for me. What's up? And I start telling him. I started telling him this. I didn't have to set the appointment. I told him what the wrong was. I told them what I had already been doing to make it right. You know, I wasn't at the place where I was here. You know what I mean? I told Him what I did. As in, I made some amends to people. I slandered their name. But I asked them, you know, like, would anything else be on? I did the amends. I made it. It was interesting how we had this... I thought I would never be, like, ever really want to talk to this guy or be in the same room with him. And we talked for, like an hour and nobody showed up. Like, nobody drove up for the whole hour. Like, we sat in there and talked about how crazy it was, what we were doing before, you know. I mean, these guys live with me. You know, he was a drug dealer, I was a drugs dealer, and I had two other roommates. FBI kicked our door in, like kick our door, and they just knocked. But they came in, you now. That's really how they did it, they'd knock. They're like, three guys in suits. Right? Open their Salem Bibles. And so I put our livelihood, I mean, I put his life in danger. Who knows what was going to happen? I mean they see scales, they see all the stuff that's going on. And so, I had to make amends for that with his livelihood in jeopardy, the house in jeopardty, slander in his name. And we're chatting and at the end he says to me, he's like, hey, you know, I just want to say something. You know, it was so wrong of me to hook up with Kerry. I mean, they have been gone, they haven't been together in a long time. He said, you know, I think about that and I was a real scumbag and he owned, and truthfully, I didn't even need to hear it. Like, I would have been okay if he did say it but I got to tell you, to be honest, really, I was kind of glad he said it but I think I would've been fine because I wasn't there anymore to like, now you make amends to me. Like, I was there just to say, you know what, I was wrong. I slandered your name and it wasn't fair, it wasn'T right, It was wrong. I don't care what you did. It's none of my business. What I did is what's wrong. And we became, at that moment, we became close. Now here's the interesting thing. We're not friends. And I don'T think we will ever be friends. And we have some similar friends, but it's probably not going to be. It's just not the way it is. But that to me was one of those lessons where I really, I only had like one or two that I was not willing to make. And he was one. The other amendment that happened to me, which had a greater impact than that. I mean, I was eight months sober, nine months sober when that happened. And I went around and I paid the guy's truck who I got arrested in, my dad's friend who owned a pest control company. It was a pretty big pest control country. And he gave me a... Without any experience, he let me have a commercial account. He got me a truck I could take home. He was training me to get licensed. I mean he was really stepping up. I stole from them. I would take my account money. and I'd always pay it back but when I got arrested I had to take some money that I owed so I owed him probably like 380 bucks plus I got arrested in his vehicle and all the accounts he was doing that day they had to change everything so I had make amends to him and he was my dad's friend like my dad is a golf buddy and I went and made amends to him that was a very powerful experience I mean it was really powerful and I'll tell you how powerful it was and it was one of those lessons of I never know what's going to happen because I made amends to this guy and then I would see him occasionally I'd golf with him occasionally but we're not he was not my dad dad's friend. Well, last year when my dad died, I was and he knew like my life was different. He knew it. And so a year ago, in April, my dad tied in April, April 28th last year. So about a week after I was at the service and I was sitting in a hotel room and it was the day of the service and I was bumming. My wife and kids were in Maine. I was just by myself, and I was sitting around in my hotel room. I was like getting ready, getting dressed to go to the service, and I Was sitting in my chair, and I was Just reflecting about how kind my dad really was, and what a really, a man of honor and integrity. My dad was really honest, and he was really principled, and I'm just thinking about how, like, I mean, he got to see me with my kids, and he got to see my new life, and he's got to know me. He got to get to see what you guys could do for a guy like me. He got the see all that. What I started doing, or I think a lot of us do, is I started having a little bit of regret. My dad wrote me in prison every week. Every week I got a letter from my dad. For seven years, every week, sometimes a long letter, sometimes a short one, always with a $20 money order one of my cons there.