Why Therapy Is Not a Magic Wand for Recovery – Tim M.

that worked um to set the tone for the meeting i will read an extract uh from page 164 of the big book still you may say but i will not have the benefit of contact with you who write this book we cannot be sure god will determine that so you must remember that your real reliance is always upon him he will show you how to create the fellowship you crave our book is meant to be suggestive only we realize we only we know only a little god will constantly disclose more to you and to us ask him in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still sick the answers will come if your own house is in order but obviously you cannot transmit something you haven't got see to it that your relationship with him is right and great events will come to pass for you and countless others this is the great fact for us abandon yourself to god as you understand God admit your faults to him and to your fellows clear away the wreckage of your past give freely of what you find and join us we shall be with you in the fellowship of the spirit and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the road of happy destiny may God bless you and keep you until then the topic of tonight's meeting is uh well tonight's meeting is part four of working step 12 with a sponsee and Tim will share anything between 30 and 45 minutes on the topic after which the floor will be open for questions rather than the typical sharing. And with that I will now hand over to Tim. Evening everyone, Tim Alkholik. There are a couple of topics I'm going to start, I want to get them out of the way because they're sort of deadly. So there are a number of topics that I want you to look at couple of outside issues which uh come up when you're sponsoring people and the first one is the issue of psychotherapy and the second one is the issueof psychiatry and i'll deal with these separately um now uh i don't know about anyone else but when i when i was growing up various people tried to help me uh and when they couldn't they always said the same thing when they ran out of things to say they'd say i think you should see a therapist now what this means is i don't have a solution but there is a solution somewhere and the thing is about therapy we talk about it in recovery lot as though it's a single thing but it's like saying you need a solution because it covers such an incredibly broad range of things from psychoanalysts with psychotherapy to cognitive behavioral therapy to very very targeted interventions to and there are all sorts of skill levels or people different experiences but therapists different experiences for 12-step recovery some are very hostile some are really positive so it doesn't really mean anything to say i'm in therapy or i'm thinking about going to therapy or you should go to therapy it has it has no like saying um you have you have a problem you need a solution because it's too broad a term but one phenomenon which is very common where where it interacts when i have no opinion on one can't have an opinion on therapy per se because it's such a broad topic doesn't mean anything uh one has to know what what therapy one's talking about and i've certainly had therapy a number of times and and subjectively speaking there have been some benefits i'm not anti-talk but where it comes up where it come up very regularly with sponsees is um now there are some people i've known who sponsee's who've gone into therapy to deal with particular childhood questions or particular behavioral problems particular phobias or particular um compulsive behaviors um but what often happens with sponsees is they'll experience a malaise of some sort particularly when they're part way through the process so part way through step four or partway through step eight or part way through step nine and someone suggests therapy without going into any detail about exactly what sort of therapy or why or what aspect of the problem but it's just sort of waved as the sort of magical solution over there and as they're one you know everyone is necessarily missing out if one isn't if one isn't having it um and and i shouldn't really say this but i'm going to um i've been to a number of meetings where the topic of the meeting becomes so the chair mentions therapy and then the topic of the sharing is aa is great because it gets you physically sober but the point of aa is to enable you to go to therapy and that's the real answer and i've seen some meetings where you sort of suggest that you've done the aa program that solved your problems and there's lots of head shape at the assertion that aa has anything to offer other than keeping you physically sober it's very disconcerting i don't tend to go back to those meetings but they do for some round here where i've been to which are like that um now the question with obviously it's up to the sponsor what they do but i think there are a couple of considerations there are couple of areas of considerations which i give sponsors when they start to sort of um uh when they want to wave the magic therapy wands to treat their whatever their condition is and the first one uh if you are going to visit i don't know about anyone else's experience with therapy it's very expensive unless you can get some sort of funding you know i've paid up to 150 pounds an hour for the therapist money well spent in some cases but nonetheless it's a big financial commitment one wouldn't spend you know five to ten thousand pounds on a kitchen without doing some due diligence about what one's letting oneself in for so what i suggest to people is exactly what i did when i undertook the therapy project to solve some specific questions which is what is the problem you're seeking to solve how have you determined that therapy is the answer what therapy what are the qualifications of the therapist what is the method what isthe outcome what does success mean how do you measure progress towards success how long does it go on for before you understand whether or not it's working it's a because it's a big financial decision the questions one would ask if one were buying a car or or or as i say having a kitchen redone and what's very interesting is a lot of friends of mine who've gone into therapy haven't asked any of those questions at all absolutely no idea what they're letting themselves involved there might be single personal recommendation or they've got the number out of the directory um which suggests a sort of magical magical thinking about it as though those are magical properties to everything within the category but whereas in fact um there's one person who's meeting will know there are some very specific very targeted strategies which are immensely successful with a really good evidence base and and there are others which which are very contra the certain types of therapy which is very controversial where the evidence base is much weaker what so the question to a sponsee is do you know what why you're doing this and what you're letting yourself in for and when i've questioned sponsees who are thinking about this often the thinking has gone no further than this well i don't feel very good and i'm a year sober now and susan's suggested it this is this is not solid thinking this is wanting to wave a magic wand when you're already in a process so the first one is to know exactly why what you why you're doing why you are considering something what solutions you're considering how you've identified therapy as a solution what type of therapy what what are the credentials uh what are testimonials from that particular a therapist i want to know what i'm getting myself into with things like that the second the second question and this is not often discussed um i've known a lot of people in recovery who see the problem the entire life problem of the individual as essentially a psychological problem rooted in childhood experiences now i don't know about anyone else my experience is that yeah that's a factor i'm not saying it's not a fact but i think i've identified in my life eight areas of problem and each has a different type of solution and therapy was the solution to one of them namely the psychological so there all sorts of psychological quirks which therapy very much helped with so I've got a form of autism and when that was it was informally diagnosed it wasn't an autism specialist but the therapist was experienced with people with autism and we the diagnosis was in the form of if it looks like a duck and it quacks rather than going through formal diagnostic criteria um but the shoes fit and the approach she adopted was um very specifically aimed at looking at certain cognitive processes and working around those in a very tailored way so a very good example of a psychological problem another good example is that when you're in a hospital and you're psychological problem a friend of mine had and a therapist was immensely helpful was being so dissociated he couldn't access any of his feelings and a therapist in a few weeks managed to unlock everything and then that really let the that opened a can of worms but you need the step four needs you need to start with the worms unless you've got the worms of resentment and fear and guilt and shame on the surface invisible you've Got nothing to work with I'm sure you've had sponsees who say i don't present anyone i'm a very nice person and it just means you've probably got someone's just totally dissociated and a rather probing therapist can usually put paid to that so those are examples of psychological problems uh people with ptsd is a psychological problem where certain um events are associated in the mind with certain traumatic events in the past and trigger the same response to those traumatic events of the past as though right now and i've experienced that myself um and part of the uh help i've had from professionals on that is unpacking and unpicking those reactions and then and that ultimately helped to change it but no that so it's not the psychological problems that cognitive distortions the other one i've had friends who've been very much helped with um psychotherapists cognitive behavioral therapists specifically who look at cognitive distortions like splitting and black and white thinking and uh catastrophizing and get people to memorize the checklist and learn to spot them and not buy into them and replace them with different types of thinking and and and so all that's immensely helpful so that's real uh and true and good and helpful but there's one aspect of my life another aspect of my life is social interaction how i interact with other people and i've had huge problems in this area how do you interact with sponsees how do interact with bosses how do you interact with family and so that the solution there comes my experience largely from finding people who are functional in those areas and saying what do you do how doyou have dinner with your mother give me five tips i will write them down so learning how to when you've got a boss who shouts how you handle it how doyou handle hr departments how do you behave in interviews how do you deal with the council what how do how do and an aa is wonderful with these because it gives you a full room of people who can say well this is how you deal with the housing authorities this is how you do this is how you deal with the people at the job center social interaction and i know some therapists will focus on this but It's not the primary focus of therapy, in my experience, to examine very closely how one interacts with others. In some therapists it is, I'm sure, but it's not my experience of therapy in various forms for many years. Social problems, the question of do you have friends? What do you do with those friends? What type of friends are you picking? You've got the social, you've got practical. All sorts of problems in my life I thought were psychological, but were actually entirely practical. I had all sorts of psychological problems stemming from not having a job and not having any skills which enabled me to get a job. And what I needed in this case was the experience of people that knew how to get me onto the job ladder. and this is this is the this is not the job of therapy physical things are if you've got a dietary problem you go to a dietician if you got a sleep disorder you go into a sleep disorder specialist there are lots of physical things so we've got the we've got the practical the physical the social the psychological and one needs to go to the way one's got to identify what the problem is you find the appropriate person to solve that whether it's inside aa or outside and then that we haven't even got on to the the main ones there is a moral problem a spiritual problem a philosophical problem and a theological problem so to go from the back your relationship to god your conception of that's the theological side your conception of your position in the universe and your relationship with the rest of the universe is a spiritual question who are you are you a body or are you on those on the spectrum between the two uh but it's very broadly that the spiritual question um uh you've got the um you've Got the moral question of are you for yourself or are you for your contribution to the world um what have we got we've got moral so philosophically so uh there are also philosophical questions which have been immensely relevant now if my problem my a lot of my i've had problems in all eight areas and part of my difficulty over the many years that i struggled in recovery was going to one type of practitioner when my problem resided in an entirely different area um hanging out with assholes sorry to pardon my french is a social issue and i i had terrible problems in my 20s which actually stemmed from some of the people i was hanging out without no wonder i was so on until i diagnosed what the problem was i couldn't solving um the same with lots of physical things it's amazing how many people in recovery think there's something wrong with them spiritually when they don't have a regular um going to bedtime getting up time so they're constantly you know if you look at your own experience of jet lag even two or three hour jet lag uh people that work night shifts are all over the place and a lot of in recovery will have a terrible relationship with sleep and exercise and then be and then think that this is psychologically maybe it's a physical problem maybe sort out the low-hanging fruit first um so i think that to sum this all up what one's got to do is uh find the appropriate solution to what the problem is you've got to find out what the trouble is first and the trouble is with early recovery first two years three years is until you've done the steps everything is a mess so there is no way of really diagnosing uh specific things that are wrong one's got to sort of do the general sweep of the steps and sort out the basic things like like sleep and diet and exercise and regularity and rhythm in one's life before one can see what's left over um and also and to go back to the first point to exercise due diligence about if one goes to outside expensive outside practitioners and if so how to go about it rather than treating it as a magic wand so i don't have any questions about that whole area james thank you tim um yeah my question is it's kind of related to this and it's this is the question when a sponsee is going to meetings maybe or having been through a treatment center or through a therapy process and is getting or is jumbling up stuff they're hearing in treatment center etc or therapists with the 12-step recovery program as outlined in the aa big book how to keep it on track if you like do would you suggest that we just that it's useful to just keep bringing it back to the process in the steps or spend time discussing alternative or differing views of causes and solutions in recovery or to just keep bringing It back to The Big Book. Can you give me an example of where the two things in your experience can conflict? OK, so working so this is a off the top of my head example so working with uh sponsee going through the uh through step one and having to unpick the um or to to look at the idea of just not drinking and going to meetings in and of itself is not the solution to alcoholism because that's what they've been told maybe previously that that's the problem and that's the solution if you just don't drink and go to meetings then everything should be fine and having okay i think you've got two distinct issues there um the first issue which which is maybe a sort of therapy specific issue um is uh and this is this is a very very difficult one to what a difficult one to resolve and I'm going to try and say this as respectfully as possible but you know me you know the chance of me being able to do that frankly remote there is a current in society at the moment where if you feel it, it is real. And it's happened. I was having a conversation with John, I've told you this story before, I was talking to Jonathan a few months ago where I was losing. And so to press my point, I thought in a winning way, I said, but it's my lived experience. And he said, yes but that doesn't mean it's real now the tightrope here is to acknowledge the feelings are obviously real i mean if you feel something you are feeling something but the notion that if you felt something it is an authentic reflection of what has happened that's the contentious part and sometimes people are not open to being challenged on their perception of what happened um the the katie parker puts this very well uh she and she she's even rougher than i am um uh but i remember her at state line many years ago someone she sort of quotes a sort of apocryphal conversation with the sponsee where the sponcee i says says i want to talk about my feelings and the and she is the sponsor says your feelings your feelings come from a delusional mindset let's talk about delusion now there are kinder ways of doing it than that so i think one acknowledges the feelings and says but are you open to challenging your own perception and interpretation of what happened are you willing to separate the physical events which happened in the material world from the story that you've the narrative you've told yourself about now um i never got the narrative challenged in with outside practitioners in fact the narrative we worked with the narrative as though the narrative was the reflection of reality so that's an example of where you're doing something which is entirely different um uh sometimes i've had sponsors who've been encouraged to get angry with and express that anger towards and confront friends and relatives with uh with what they perceive to be their poor behavior unfortunately this just goes against the program so now i'm not saying the program is right that that practitioner was wrong but there are times when you have to say to the sponsor matey you're going to have to pick a horse to ride because you can't ride these two horses i've had lots of sponsors who've perfectly successfully had therapy married the two um it as i said in previous talk what you don't want to do is to be reconciling to so what i get people who people are having therapy say you leave the therapy over there we're gonna we're going to do this just as a standalone thing it is not my job to if you want to due to systems at once that's fine but you're going to have to do the reconciling i'm not here to be played off against the therapist and vice versa or to reconcile the two systems you're just gonna have to figure that one out on your own and people manage people if they're if they want to they find a way so that that's the sort of conflict between therapy for instance or other practitioners and uh uh and aa you get a similar thing with religion in aa by the way it's actually the same type of confidence what you're talking about more specifically there though however is uh having to unpick before you actually build up and the simplest way to do it is to uh and i've a responsee who should remain and name this many years ago who um went whatever you said they would say back but you said two weeks ago but i heard sober in shortage but my last sponsor said but i heard on television but judge judy said like like constantly citing what someone else has said by even using what you said back against you and that won't do you just have no um this is where the set aside prayer comes in so you say everything you've learned so far lots of it is great because it's got you to where you are now so hooray but what we're going to have to do is just quietly set the whole thing aside start with a blank sheet of paper anything you've previously learned which is true and helpful will be returned to you as part of this process so you you're not going to lose anything by setting aside what you're going to do is simply put it on the shelf and leave it there. And then when you get to the end of the process, you can look back at the shelf. So what can I reclaim from previous processes or learnings or lessons? And sometimes as you're in the process, sometimes things fall into place that you learned before. But what you have to you have clear the ground first. If if the pot is full, you can't put anything in the pot. So you need to clear that clear the pot first. And And then you'll have absolutely, if they're willing to do that, you'll have absolutely no trouble. Sara Rivka. Hi. Yeah, thanks. Well, first, you already just answered part of my question. But the other part of the question is, like, it was very interesting to hear you describe the different kinds of therapies, you know, different things that might be therapy might be helpful for but I'm just wondering like I don't want to say why you said like why were you saying all that um like is it is it so that I is this information so that if I'm sponsoring somebody um you know like is this for if somebody comes to me and says should I go to a therapist and then I should then I could you know say back to them similar things to what you said or is that just stuff that you know like I just wasn't sure exactly what I'm supposed to do with that the reason why is because I've had extensive experiences over many years I don't really have them anymore because I sort of solved the problem before I get there where people are doing very well and then they join some other external program maybe a religious program or they adopt a therapy approach and the aa activity dwindles um the stuff they're learning in therapy can sometimes undermine their trust in aa um there's there is only a certain number of hours in the week and so especially if people are working and they have other commitments necessarily it's going to double or travel the time it takes to get through the steps particularly if they're given lots of homework um and they're trying to adopt two often two entire world views at the same time and uh what happens is they can't adopt either fully and if they drink again they may die so this is a very important question What are you going to? I've had honestly, I've had it the other way around. I've got sponsors who's or people but newcomers whose PTSD is so extreme. Frankly, my feeling is that unless they get the psychiatric and psychological psychotherapeutic help first, they won't be able to do the AA program. They need to be brought back to reality before they can. The AA measures can be of much use so go to meetings fine but maybe let's maybe go and sort some of that stuff out before you do any really detailed stuff in the steps maybe do um you know get a sort of daily program in place but let's not go anywhere near your childhood until you've had it looked at by by a psychotherapist it's because um so often when people are trying to do both at once they do neither properly, and it can destroy their ability to recover. And that's why it's such a critical thing. If it's going to be done, it should be done diligently and carefully and in response to a specific situation, not waving a magic wand. So this is not to interfere with their process. It's to encourage them to take maximum responsibility for making sure that what they're doing is deliberate and thought through so you're not guiding them to do it or not to do it you're giving them the tools to make an informed decision about what they're saying does that make sense i reckon yeah yeah it does and i i just i know that sometimes i've had the question put to me uh by a sponsor who's having a hard time and they'll say to me do you think i need therapy and um what i really think that they need to do is to take some of the suggestions that i've been given them in giving them and like to actually do them um but therapy seems to be an easier softer way i'm not talking about somebody who's like you know suicidal or freaking out or something i'm talking about just it's people who don't really you know seem to be doing the the their their aa homework and um it's just frustrating like yeah go ahead see a therapist but then what do you want from me i don't know well yeah so that's the point so that'S a very that'S very helpful because THAT'S a VERY concrete situation so my response in that situation is you've already started something why not finish the thing you've started and then see if you still have a problem because you haven't tested yet whether aa is going to work on this unless you complete the first nine steps and live in the 10 11 and 12 for a good couple of years afterwards it takes two or three years after completing the first line steps to get a real feel for what effect it has it doesn't take straight away it doesn' t clear everything up straight away he's a lot of patients with this even dr bob craved alcohol for a number of years um uh so so i think that's the response that's a response there i've had therapists who um give me lots of homework to do now if they're not if they've come to aa and are not doing the homework the question is if you go to a therapist will you do their homework why do you think you'd be doing their homework when you're not doing the aa and that's a really legitimate question to ask so is this are you doing this because you think it's going to be more effective or are youdoing it as a way of avoiding what's in front of you here so i think there's some very serious questions when when you've got when youve got someone who's going full throttle in aa and there's stuff that's just not shifting absolutely you know you've got to diagnose what's wrong and find a either find a solution within aa the world of spirituality the world of religion the world or therapy whatever um but you can't test you can't diagnose something when the acute problem has not been sorted out um uh Seamus I think you're next oh there we go unmuted thank you tim hello everybody um yes i um i think i'll ask this question by way of a case study so it's someone i have in mind who um when i first met him i kind of picked him up from um another sponsor who had uh who had drunk so the guy was the guy was drifting by the time I met him he had a history of some of interludes in his drinking as did I actually it's part of my history as well time off six years off in my case and quite a long time off in his during which time in his case he had become depressed and he had sought help with his depression he gone to an expensive psychiatrist I think and being treated and what had treated with was um pills um i don't know exactly what but um sort of fairly heavy duty antidepressants which seemed to have done trick um and then there was the drinking um so he started drinking again and for that um he came to me uh he worked the steps he did what i thought was a fairly creditable workmanlike job on on step four and seemed to be getting the um and seemed to be getting the results. I think he wanted to stop drinking more because of what happened when he drank than for any more fundamental existential reason. He was getting consequences that were bad for his family life, for his professional career. It was that kind of thing. He felt that he needed to stop and we provided him with a way of stopping. After a few years of this, he started drinking again intermittently and has never really succeeded in stopping that also had another bout of so-called depression um you know back to the psychiatrist change the medication all right now kind of thing incidentally i always forget to ask the medicate the medication question up front i'm always kicking myself oh god i wish i'd asked them what pills they're on because you know you can bet your bottom dollar about half of them are on some kind of pill and and i wish I knew that but there's a final strand to this which i've just been surfaced actually by something that you said which is religion uh so the guy's also got religion and he's got the kind of religion where if enough people get together and pray to god god kind of rearranges the universe in their in their favor you know in response to to lobbying it's a bit like in bruce almighty where you know a lot of people pray to win the lottery and bruce gets fed up and he presses the yes to all button on the on the prayer management system is it's that kind of view of yeah prayer as an exercise in in lobbying the the almighty um i feel sorry for this guy but i don't really know what to say beyond what i've said already which is trying to draw attention to the you know the nature of um prayer and our relationship with the divine within this um within this programme and trying to communicate by one means or another. I don't think that oppression is a separate problem, kind of like over here but actually part of the same problem. One problem needing one solution rather than two problems needing several solutions. So it's kind of a big question mark. What would you do faced with a situation like this if you wanted to try and help this guy out of the mess he's in that's a very very helpfully put scenario um i've actually got parked as a separate question the question psychiatry because it's an entirely different topic from psychotherapy um uh because it'S a it'S a medical question um and then you've got the question medication involved so i'm I'm parking the psycho, the psychiatric medical side of it just for the moment. C.S. Lewis talks very interestingly, I think it's in Near Christianity, about the case of two men who don't want to fight in the First World War with and have got terrible psychological blocks against being soldiers, essentially. and both of them go and see a psychiatrist or a psychologist or someone to help them with these psychological blocks and bothof them are have these psychological blocks resolved and removed and one of them says this is marvelous now i've got my psychological blocks removed i can fight for my country and then the second one says well that's great now i've now i'm going to be more adept in avoiding fighting for my country i'm now much more in control of myself and how the psychological question is a different question and the moral question. Now, obviously, depression is widely considered to fall squarely within the domain of psychology and or medicine. I'll tell you something anecdotally. living an immoral and materialistic life made me depressed quite aside from other factors i've had periods of my life where i was i would be very very spiritual doing lots in aa sponsoring lots of people um doing all all the right stuff and over a period of time my behavior became selfish i started to harm other people through deceitful action and i became very materialistic basically money romance sex appearance and i began profoundly depressed as a result profoundly depressed i think it's true to say that it's only in my case and that's not that's the only cause physical things can do it as well physical illness has done it for me in the past as well i had very very bad depression when i was growing up what i've discovered in mycase is that there was a strong moral and spiritual component in my depression also a philosophical one my philosophical attitude towards the universe when those things when the social when the practical problems which are not being faced you put all of those together you will my first sponsor so people know me for quoting is my first sponsored who was a doctor actually um uh doug i said to him i'm depressed he said you're not depressed your life is depressing if i lived your life i'd be depressed as well so although it's very clear and it's muy well documented you can go and read it on wikipedia that there are organic causes of depression and certainly it takes on a life of it it can take on life of its own it becomes a self-propagating phenomenon you know um where people will will uh avoid other people they'll retreat from life and that will actually exacerbate the depression and it become and all sorts of things happen with diet and sleep and that makes things worse so i think you've got two separate questions with with extreme psychological conditions whether they're anxiety or depression or panic attacks which i suffered very badly from um is you've Got the acute treatment of the problem and then identification of the underlying cause and if you take someone with a good childhood this is my observation of friends of mine in aa who report this they reported themselves a good child no psychological hang-ups but years of living in a way which is dysfunctional from a material a practical the physical a social the philosophical religious and moral and a spiritual point of view and they you will generate the same surface condition as someone with a very traumatic childhood they present the same way so um in my case i only worked out where the depression came from by addressing not just the psychological but addressing those other areas the practical, the social, the physical, the moral, the spiritual, the philosophical and religious until the jigsaw puzzle as I dealt with those one by one some things caused the depression to lift more quickly than others. I thought aha well that was a large component of it. So I always encourage people to look at everything, to look for this holistically not to treat one aspect like if I pray it will go away, if I do service it will goes away, if i get enough exercise it would go away if i examine my childhood maybe but maybe there are all of the areas involved that need to be looked at so to look at everything we treat it as a 10 year project not a five minute project and be systematic about examining each of those eight areas inventorying each of these areas and finding people who are super functional in each of those areas um and to copy what they're doing and see if that helps and so it's really empirically that i've done this it's not based on any sort of theory um it's simply by trying things and discovering that they work and i was someone that was told in my um teens that uh i would likely uh i'm the sort of person that that would probably be ill forever and have to be under under medical psychological supervision forever because my case was so extreme so this is not coming from someone that's sort of tripping through the tulips their whole life and is looking askance at people with entirely different problems this is from someone who's been in that position when i was at school uh i was on suicide watch for five years uh where people were charged secretly i only discovered this argument secretly with surveying me surveilling me and writing reports which then collated weakly and sent to my parents my mother of course has wiped all memory she said oh you had an idyllic childhood that she's conveniently forgotten all of this so this is this is this as i say not coming from a pollyanna-ish actually it's come from having to to really knock on every possible door to solve the problem depression anxiety panic attacks and other disagreeable manifestations um i do want to say something about the psychiatry question which is even thornier harry do you want to come in with your question uh yeah it's a bit of a spoke off should i just go with it though yes okay i'll take that as yes okay so the question was um so someone's got something of a program um you describe and then let's say they they're not feeling they're feeling unhappy and then therapy comes up as a potential magic fix for this but what you made me think of was often my sponsees will rather than say i'm going to go see a therapist they'll say i need to go through the work again so i don't know if you've got that as a topic to come up like when what are the guide rails for coming back onto the work and because like all of them have just almost immediately wanted to do it again which i don't know if reflects reflects my sponsor shout i'm gonna do that in about two minutes time i'm going to say two things about psychiatry um um i've had lots of sponsors who uh you know my first question i ask is are you taking your medication um you know i'm not one of these people that you know there are people recovered so you shouldn't take things uh i'm the i'mthe other way around if they've been you know if they're on antipsychotics i want to be you know this is my first question are you still taking your antipsycotics uh what the the one thing i would say about there are there is a type of alcoholic who will treat them and i've sponsored them sometimes who treat themselves essentially not as human beings but as chemistry sets so that every problem is a chemical is looking for chemical solution now i don't know whether that's the case or not what i do observe is that people with that profile um struggle with the not drinking bit of the program on a regular basis um dr paul o is great on this subject um so there is a there is a question with the psychiatrist hunting which is a whole hobby that some people engage in they're constantly looking for new psychiatrists and new diagnoses and new prescriptions i don't know and i don't have almost nothing about arteria what i observe is it very often combined with a resistance to the program um so it's looking for something which is in so that the purpose is not to learn how to live well the purpose to feel better and whatever means achieve that end is fine now i don't think that's a bad approach it's just not my approach and so if people's approach is simply they just want to feel better they don't care how um totally welcome in aa do whatever you want but that i i approach things very, very differently. My job is to learn how to live well and have my emotional state as a consequence of that. And I think there's a fundamental philosophical question there. And it's good to have a sponsor you're aligned with on that. I don't think there is a right or wrong answer to that philosophical question. But it is important for the sponsor and sponsee to be aligned. Otherwise, you're just going to have terrible arguments the whole time. uh i will say one thing there was an a.a there's an a member in bristol who is a philosopher his job is he is afraid he gets paid remarkably for being a philosopher and he goes around one of the things he does he goes round to school and he says to the kids he does thought experiments with them that that's one of his ways in which he introduces people to philosophy he's sober very many years and one of his thought experiments is this um you've got two options the first option is to go through life and it's this to seven-year-olds and eight-year olds to go Through Life feeling everything that life has to throw up throw at so you'll have joy you'll Have Pleasure You'll Have Apathy You'll have numbness you'll have anxiety at times you'll have depression at times there'll be times you want to die there'll be times that you're immensely happy and you can't understand why a year ago five years ago things look so bleak you have the full range of human experience option number one option number two we can put you in a room we can hook you up to a machine with a virtual reality headset which gives you a happy dream and plug into your arm a drip which ensures that you are consistently happy for the rest of your life. You won't have any friends, you won't do anything but you'll have presented to you in the virtual reality headset a story which is pleasant and the chemicals will ensure that you are happy forever which do you pick but you can't you're not living you're doing anything of normal life you're just in the room and he's done this with thousands of children not one has chosen the machine it's a fascinating anecdotal i mean It's just one person with their own experience. But it's a very interesting one. I bet in AA, I'd love to do this, whether you'd get the same, whether you'd got the same response. I think you might be evenly split. And that's a philosophical question. Why am I here? Am I here to feel good? Or am I here to live life um on the question of um I yes I need to go through the work again um oh by the way one point with the psychiatry thing I've got a little worksheet that my sponsor put around some doctor friends of his which basically says here are some classes of drugs which some aa members um have experience of leading to relapse so if you're going to take these maybe you want to disclose the fact you're a doctor you're you're up you're an alcoholic and addict to the doctor or the anesthetist or the the the surgeon or whoever and discuss how these are going to be dealt with um and that's a very helpful thing because again it helps people make informed decisions so you're not making a decision for them you're putting them in a position that they can make an intelligent informed decision with the professionals that are helping them but your question harry but i want to go through the work again so in recovery world it goes through different phases for a while the for the catchphrase was i need a new experience i need an experience and particularly it's not so much in aa i don't know i think they is just lethargic but CA is deadly for this that there's always a new method it usually starts in Toronto or Liverpool no one knows why where someone devises a new way of going through the big book and then suddenly everyone's got these sponsors in Liverpool or everyone's got these responses in Toronto and and it's all the new method and all the other methods are wrong so ca is that if i dare say this is deadly for the new jerusalem new jerusalem constantly being builded on some hill of a new method of going through the big book um i'm extremely skeptical about or extremely skeptical about all of this um there are when do you need to go through the work again if you've had a little drink or a little drug you probably want to go back to the beginning of the steps again. If you haven't been to AA since the Callaghan government, you might want to go through the steps. Again, if you went through the Steps in an incredibly shoddy way before or went through with four different sponsors, you want to go through it again. Uh if you've had a nervous breakdown or maybe two nervous breakdowns or three nervous breakdowns maybe so there are extreme situations where it's necessary if you're working very hard in aa and you really hitting a brick wall fine but my suspicion in a lot of cases people want to go through the work again without having completed the work first time and without sponsoring other people so the the aim it's as though you're going to sort of get some special spiritual tools or uh people talk about um going through the steps at greater depth i'm skeptical about what that even means it's like developing a deeper relationship with my higher power i literally do not know what that i just don't know what any of that means i and i give you an example what i mean by by this i don't think it's about death um if you've got someone who's six weeks sober and they admit that they lie a lot and cheat and think very resentful hateful thoughts about people um and are frightened a lot and feel guilty about the things they've done in the past I don't think that is any less deep than someone who is 20 years sober and saying the same. I don'T THINK IT'S DEEPER BECAUSE YOU'RE SOBER LONGER IF SOMETHING IS FULLY TRUE AT SIX WEEKS SO IT IS AS DEEP AS ANYTHING AND I I THINK WE'RE DOING A TERRIBLE INJUSTICE TO PEOPLE IN THEIR FIRST YEAR BY SUGGESTING THAT THEY'RE NOT DOING IT DEEPLY AND THAT YOU KNOW if they go through the steps every year for 20 years then they'll get some depth that all they're doing is peeling the first layer of the onion it's a sort of there's this sort of endless onion peeling i'm as i think extremely skeptical about that i've known people in their first year who are as spiritual as anything when it comes to letting go and being of service and real depth is when today if I go through the day not thinking about myself just fully engaged in the world around me and kind of grateful and cheerful as as deep as it gets and the in A Course in Miracles it says that there is no hierarchy of illusions which means something which is untrue all things which are untrue are equally untrue so it's not that some are more untrue than others and where this applies to the steps in this notion of depth the steps don't find out what's true and real they find out all the blocks to what is true and real in order for those blocks to be removed and then what is truth and real which is innocence and peace and all those things just shows up you know that the michelangelo and david uh i don't know if it's a true story but they said how did you how did your car the statue of david and he said well mate i'll tell you how i did it i've got a chisel got me block of marble i chipped away everything wasn't david now i've gone down david look yeah i i don'T believe it any more than you do but it's A great story because i think that's what the steps do we chip away everything that's not us now if you're very complicated and neurotic and you're 20 or 30 years sober and you write about all the illusory bs in your head that's no more deep because it's it's unreal it's no it has no more substance than the illusions of a newcomer that believes our nonsense about the person sitting next to them at the meeting that illusions are illusions and the idea that some illusions are deeper than others so there are lots of situations where people need to go through the steps again and that's fine but to treat going through the first nine steps as a solution to spiritual malaise I think is wrong-headed I think what one should what's more useful is to really be practicing 10 11 and 12 in a diligent consistent way on a daily basis try that for a couple years and see what happens and you can always if you want to go back if you find that there's a particular relationship with a person or a situation which is problematical then you can do you can Do steps four through nine on that situation in three hours because you've you've learned how to do the method now but what people want to do is like another nine month process of staring at themselves and pouring over the book and pouring över the meaning of this and that's what i'm so i think you're right to being absolutely right to be skeptical about that harry i didn't cover any of the topics i meant to cover does anyone else have any questions for tim will you do exercise next week so what i've got left is exercise drama families and workplace and i think that's it then although you know what i'm just going to say one thing because the exercise thing is a tiny topic let's just kill that one now um it's very it's straightforward um i don't know how to be spiritually well and mentally well without being physically well um it's not that it solves all my problems but by god it helps with so many things and as i said earlier uh i don't think it needs to be belabored uh with i think it's broadened as exercise it's physical health you're looking at sleep diet diet sugar caffeine nicotine exercise and um lots of friends report this as well but when those are any of those six are out of whack good luck being spiritual good luck Being Emotionally Balanced you get those in whack and it's amazing how many psychological problems just evaporate how many other difficulties um just cease to be difficulties so i wouldn't underestimate those and i try and encourage uh sponsors even when they're very new to start looking at those and getting some sanity in place that's all i have to say about physical things and now it's eight o'clock thanks tim anyone any questions on exercise the physical would you count phone use and media and stuff as part of this seems like the same as sleep to me like digital hygiene yeah yeah i wish mine were better but yeah that's absolutely a question well very often when you've got people that can't get done during the day all the stuff they need to get done to get their program sorted out to get their life sorted out, to get that work sorted out. Very often it's because between 10 o'clock at night and one o' clock in the morning, it's all Netflix and WhatsApp. That's why everything else is out of whack. You get that sorted out and suddenly then they can get to the 7am meeting and then everything else just falls out automatically. So, yes, as with everything in recovery, pick the low hanging fruit first and sort those out and then see where you are. And you'd be amazed at how many simple measures will massively improve the person's quality of life because they've never been taught these things. thank you tim i think that seems an appropriate junction and uh so we will be on next week um those topics okay great um yeah without uh actually hand the meeting back to you tim um to close with this serenity prayer thank you and if any anyone can think of other topics in between them feel free to uh message me and if you don't have my or don't write my number down in time then alistair will be happy to receive those questions so would you please help me close with a serenity prayer god grant me the serenities except the things i cannot change courage the things I can and the wisdom thank you tim thank you guys bye Thank you.