Welcome to Sober Sunrise, a podcast bringing you AA speaker meetings with stories of experience, strength, and hope from around the world. We bring you several new speakers weekly, so be sure to subscribe. If you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober- sunrise.com.

Whether you join us in the morning or at night, there's nothing better than a sober sunrise. >> >> We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. Okay.

Hi, my name is Damon. I'm an alcoholic. >> Okay.

Uh first off, I want to thank and he's not here for me to thank, but I want to thank Derek for asking me to speak. Um, I always uh make sure to to recognize that when I start off because uh I love to get to speak for Alcoholics Anonymous. You know, um I was given a life that I had absolutely no idea was possible um by what I found through this through this fellowship and the program of this fellowship.

And um I love any opportunity that I can get to give back. And I always say, you know, the more that I give back, the more that I end up getting from this. And so it keeps me in a in a loop.

You know, I get more and I want to give more and I give more and I get more and I just keep going. I had a moment um sitting here, you know, every once in a while before a meeting um I just have I have a different kind of a connection in the moment to like really the fact that I'm here right now with all of you, you know? I mean, it's a Saturday night.

And uh and I made the decision to and there were a lot of things that happened in my life that weren't decisions before, you know. I was a prisoner of the wind, you know, but um I actually made a decision to come here to spend Saturday night with all of you. And uh that's not something the guy that I used to be ever would have done, you know, unless he unless he was getting something.

Um, so I love that moment of connection to the fact that I am not the human being that I used to be. Um, I started off, you know, I was I was pretty sick, uh, from right out the gate, you know. Um, now I don't based on my understanding of what alcoholism is, um, I didn't start out alcoholic, but I certainly started out really spiritually sick.

And um you know you could see evidence of that all through my childhood. And there were a lot of people uh in my in my life that I knew or people in the world that I could see then or see now that have a spiritual sickness. And I tried to reach out in lots of different ways to address that spiritual sickness, you know.

And if food had clicked for me, then I might have become addicted to the food. Or if sex was my thing, then I might have become addicted to sex. or if it was gambling, then you know, I reached out for different things.

Some of them felt good and I held on to them for a little while and some of them didn't really work and so I didn't go bothering them again. When I realized what alcohol could do for me, I was off to the races. You know, it was not like that for my very first drink, but it was like that as soon as I made that connection.

As soon as I realized, oh my god, that knot that I have inside of me has just loosened up and this is the reason why. And I'm having a fantastic night tonight. I'm not in fear.

I'm not in, you know, all these different things. Like, I'm actually enjoying myself. And people are able to enjoy me.

I'm not that shy, scared, awkward geek in the corner. You know, when I made that connection, I was off to the races. I was in a car with a handful of friends pile passing a bottle of vodka around and it went to each person and they took a swig and it went to me and I just held the thing up and guzzled and I remember the the physical sensation of it bursting out all through my system.

But what I really remember is bringing the bottle down and looking around at my friends faces and seeing their jaws hanging open just a little bit and their eyes just a little bit wide at at the amount that I had just poured into me. and I fell in love with that. That's how people should look at me all the time.

And so, um, you know, I said, "This is it." Like, "This is this is my thing." And, uh, and from that point on, it was six, seven nights a week, blacking out most of those nights, throwing up most of those nights. It it wasn't so much about falling asleep anymore as it was about passing out. Um, I loved blackouts.

I I was very spiritually sick and I looked around at this world and I said, "I'm not interested in this. I'm really not. I don't understand what you have to offer me that's worthwhile at all." And it seems like this planet and its people are asking a lot more from me than I seem to be getting.

Not interested. I'm looking for the first bus off of this planet, you know. And I actually said that when I was younger and um and so I didn't want to live, but I didn't want to die either cuz I was afraid to die or I thought it might be painful or I was too stubborn to say that I had given in, you know.

Um blackouts were door number three. Blackouts were at the end of a night or at the end of a weekend. It was like a day or a couple of days just went by and I was neither dead nor was I really alive.

they're just gone. And that's what I wanted for the rest of my life. I wanted to be able to just have the rest of it just be gone without me having to die.

>> Don't want to be a part of this, you know. And so I chased that. Um, I had lots of consequences come up in my life, you know, but a lot of those same consequences were already present before I kicked off with the with the booze, you know, the the the ruined relationships, the parents constantly upset with me, the failing out of classes, the wrecking cars, the losing jobs.

I was doing all that stuff before the booze, you know. So one of the things I mean in terms of the first step when I had to look at what's actually going on here, what's my problem? One of the things that I was able to understand from the very beginning is booze is clearly not the source of the trouble cuz this stuff was all already going on.

And so one of the things that actually helped me when I got to AA was knowing that if all I did was put the booze down, my life was still going to be miserable. I was just going to go back to the misery that my life was before I started drinking to begin with, you know. So, um, like I said, there were lots of consequences along the along the line, but, you know, I drank through them and, um, eventually I came to a place where, you know, I had been stuffing the feelings down and stuffing them down and stuffing them down and there was no place left for them to go and they were starting to burst out the sides, you know.

Um, I didn't look at my life one day and decide I want something more than this, you know. Um, it stopped working really. I would I would wake up in the morning looking forward to like when's this stuff going to get in me because I don't want to be a part of this day, waiting for that moment to come.

And what happened was I reached a point in my life where that moment would come. I get it in my system. I'd feel a physical sensation sometimes.

I'd still, you know, slur my words. I'd still sump, stumble, I'd still throw up, you know, all these things. But I wasn't numbing out anymore.

I was still really painfully aware of how much I hated myself and how much I certainly hated all of you, you know, and um my door number three was gone. So now I was back to don't want to live, don't want to die, and there's really no answer. you know, in this place of like absolutely having no idea what to do and then doing the same thing over and over again because what else is there?

This is the only thing I know, you know. Um, I had a sense though from the very beginning that something was wrong in the whole picture because when I would go out and be this different guy, when I would go out and start walk out the door as a nervous, scared, angry, shy person and get the stuff in me and become the life of the party. Something in me said, "Wait a minute.

Alcohol couldn't have created the things that I said tonight. It didn't create those actions and create those words like that's me somewhere in there. So, how come I can only get to this me that I like when the stuff is in my system?

And so, I knew that something was wrong from like the very beginning, but I didn't care because I didn't know the answer and there was booze still available. So, I just kept putting it in my system. And what happened was now towards the end it's not working and I start asking more and more questions and I'm saying like something's really wrong with this life.

Um I started to uh I used to like to to rent movies. you know, I was often out of work and I just go home and rent movies and I do, you know, alcohol led me to other substances and I like to just get a little obliterated and sit in front of a movie and just be in, you know, a different world. And uh what happened though towards the end is I'd be in the video store and I'd see clean and sober and something in me would come up like like oh my god you know my name is Bill W 28 Days like all these different things and I'd go and I'd rent the movie and I'd go home and I'd get drunk and high and watch this movie and ball and ball my eyes out, you know, desperately, desperately hoping that like that this was going to do it, that this was going to make me stop, you know, and uh and it just and I was just in more pain and more and like what is wrong with me?

Like, why can't I stop? I want to be done. And I was just in utter anguish.

And there was a night, well, no, not a night. There was a period when I started to, like I said, it's bursting out the sides. And I started to feel like I'm going to snap, just wound up in a ball.

And I would lay in bed at night curled up in the fetal position like I got to fall asleep. I got to fall asleep cuz I'm going to snap any minute and I'm going to hurt myself or I'm going to hurt somebody else. And I was living with mommy and daddy cuz I couldn't survive out in the real world, you know.

And I was afraid I was going to go off on my parents and seriously hurt one of them, you know. I did not trust my own mind anymore. And I started to get this twitch.

And it wasn't this, it wasn't withdraw. It wasn't the shakes like this. It was I'd just be sitting around and my body would do one of these.

I'd get this little jerk and I was like, "Oh my god, what is that?" Like, it scared me to death. I'm losing control of my mind and my body. I was petrified, but I did not know what else to do.

It scared me enough to get everything out of my system for like a week or two >> and then I felt a little bit better and I went right back again, you know. Um, I found a uh there was a an old friend of mine, an old ex-girlfriend who um had 5 years uh clean in the fellowship and um I started asking her lots of questions, you know, and uh and getting into conversation about that stuff and I said, "All right, I'm going to give this thing a shot." You know, now I'm spending more time than I'd like to on the details of the using because I personally feel very clear none of that is my first step. Everything that I've been describing was my need to take a first step.

That's not my first step. You know, my first step was having a different perspective on that stuff, was seeing it differently and understanding that I actually had no power any longer. That I had crossed a line where I wasn't making choices and it wasn't a matter of why aren't I strong enough to do this.

I didn't understand that it wasn't about personal strength anymore, you know. So now when I was starting to be exposed to the fellowship, that was the first opportunity I had to begin to take a first step on the shades. It says, you know, we we admitted we were powerless over alcohol.

Well, anybody can form an opinion about whether they think that they're powerless over alcohol, but in our book, they say we learned we had to fully concede to our innermost selves that we were alcoholics. This is the first step in recovery. And that I would argue today I cannot do until someone has explained to me the definition of alcoholism.

I can't admit whether I'm an alcoholic or not until somebody tells me what an alcoholic is. Otherwise, I'm walking around with my own ideas. And of course, conveniently, I didn't fit the picture.

You know, I had created a definition that didn't apply to me, you know. So, um, so I was coming to meetings. Um, I did not think that I was an alcoholic again because I had my own definition that I didn't fit.

But I looked at the steps and I said that's got to work better than what I'm doing. >> I knew the one thing I knew for sure is that I didn't know I didn't know how to live life. And what I thought was going on is I'm a screw up.

It causes me pain. I drink and take the pain away. And as long as I can drink and take the pain away, there's no reason for me to change.

And so that's where the problem is. So, I need to put the stuff down for a little while, learn how to live life, and then I'll be able to go back to drinking and taking drugs. You know, that's what was going on in my head.

But that realizing that I had no idea how to live my life ended up saving my life cuz it caused me to pay attention to people when they were talking about the steps. And I came to Alcoholics Anonymous and I'll tell you, I almost walked right back out again because I knew that putting down the drink was not going to solve my problems. And there were people that I heard share.

I've got 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years without a drink. They put their hand up and they sounded miserable, scared, angry, lonely, hateful. And I was like, if that's what I have to look forward to, I want a bottle or a gun.

I need one of the two. I cannot live life that way. If I could, I never would have gone down this road to begin with.

That's the whole reason I'm here is I can't live like that, you know. So, um, it's tricky for me to talk about the steps a little bit because when I came around, I had, you know, what I refer to today as sort of like a fellowship sobriety. I had somebody who said, "I'll be your sponsor." And he was taking me through steps and we looked a little bit at the book Alcoholics Anonymous and a little bit at the 12 steps and 12 traditions and a little bit at Living sober and there was a lot of I heard a guy say who heard a guy say who heard a guy say, you know, and and you know what?

I didn't drink, you know, and I was going I was a meeting maker. I was going to two, three, four meetings a day cuz I could not hold down a job, you know. I went from meeting to meeting to meeting.

I was doing lots of service. My hand was up at every meeting cuz I'm like, I know something needs to take place here. And I heard people saying, "Only one in so many alcoholics makes it to AA and only one in so many makes it to 90 days, and only one out of them makes it to a year, and only one out of them makes it to five." And I'd look around a room like this, and I'd say, "What in God's name makes me think that I'm the one who's going to make it?

what am I doing differently than everybody else? And so I said, I got to kick it into high gear. Like I had my running buddies that were my friends, but they weren't the person they weren't the people that I took sobriety advice from.

You know what I mean? Like I wanted to hear the people that had every once in a while I'd see a light on in somebody's eyes. And so I chased them, you know?

So, um, I was going through steps with this guy and I went through nine steps, you know, but all along I would hear things that just didn't seem like they could be reconciled with my understanding when I would hear stuff out of this book. And uh, and I heard a guy who was like a handful of times share who was on fire. He was one of those guys that would like pound the table when he when he talked, you know, and um, and but he scared a lot of people and angered a lot of people.

I loved it because this guy was talking about having to do a lot more than we usually talk about having to do. People didn't like hearing that. That I knew that I could not go on the way that I was.

I was 3 years without a drink or a drug in my system and I still hated myself and all of you somewhere in the back of my head. You know, he talked about having to do a lot more, but he talked about getting a lot more. And so I went to him and I said, "What are you doing?

Like I need for you to show me what you do." And that's when I really began to learn about the steps. And so what I found out in that process is all there were a lot of things that I was saying, oh well, you know, I'm an alcoholic, so this or this in my life is my alcoholism. And I got to find out there's a lot of stuff that I was saying that simply wasn't true.

You know, there were two things that I was suffering from that were my alcoholism. One was a seemingly hopeless condition of my body. I had an abnormal physical reaction to alcohol that when I put alcohol in my system, I could not predict what was going to happen.

Usually, it meant I couldn't stop once I started. One of the things that confused me though was every once in a while I'd have a couple of drinks and I'd stop. And so I'd say, "Oh, well, see, I didn't have a craving every single time I picked up a drink.

I must not be an alcoholic." You know, there was one of those loopholes that I found. But what I got to realize is what was abnormal about my reaction is I couldn't tell you which nights were going to be which >> when I sat out some nights to have two or some nights to go all along. I had no idea what kind of a night it was going to be.

And that is not the experience of most people when booze enters their system. So I saw yes booze affects me abnormally. And because I can't predict ahead of time what it's going to look like, it will never be safe for me to put it in my system.

And that was as much as I really understood about alcoholism before that. I'm an alcoholic. I can't drink safely.

That's what I thought the first step was. I can't drink safely. And what I came to find out was, you know, that's really not that dangerous a problem.

If I can't drink safely, there's a really, really, really simple solution. Idiot, don't drink. If that was my only problem, you would tell me, "Don't drink." I would not drink and I'd go on about my life.

I tried not to drink and I found that I didn't have the ability to do that. And when I look through our book, I saw this group of people all talking about, you know what, we've been where you are. We've had that same experience.

As much as we threw our will at it, as much as you could hook us up to a lie detector and we're saying, "I don't want to be doing this right now. Even in the moment that I'm doing it, as much as that's true, I have no ability to stop myself." And that's the dangerous part of the alcoholism. And that's the thing that I hadn't really understood, you know.

So that's how I started to have that firststep experience to be able to look at the evidence of my life to step back and think about times in my life where I was writing down you know I would journal every once in a while and like I got to stop doing this I got to chill out for a little while or something you know and then I'd go and I'd look at it and like two days later would say oh I drank today you know like constantly like I had all these battles that I was going through to try to have it look different and the evidence overwhelmingly was I had no say in the matter, you know. So um what I what I found what I came to understand through that is that nobody has been able to figure out a way around that and it was true when they wrote this book when it came out in 39 and they said you know nobody's figured out an answer for that physical craving for that phenomenon of craving still true and that inability to see the true from the false when it comes to booze that form of insanity that I suffer from that. The insanity is not the crazy stuff that I did when I was out there drinking.

The insanity isn't that I think you're all talking about me. The insanity isn't that I think every girl wants me. The insanity isn't that I think my boss isn't going to notice that I'm stealing.

None of that is the insanity that they're talking about in here. The insanity is I look at this glass of what to me is poison and I think it's going to do the same thing to me that it does to other people in the world. I look at this thing and no matter how many hundreds or thousands of experiences I've had that tells me all hell is going to break loose if I start to drink that.

I look at it and I say it's going to be different this time or is it or the thought never even crosses my mind. I just reach out and pick it up as I'm doing something else. You know that's the insanity.

And you know what? To this day they still haven't figured out an easy answer for that one. And so here I am.

I'm a walking dead man. And now comes the real difficulty cuz I got to deal with the God stuff. And I wanted no part of that.

That was the thing, you know. I I looked at the shades and like I said, I said, "Well, this has to work better than what than what I'm doing." But I also saw the word God all over the place and I was like, I've fallen in with the Jesus people. This is a bad scene.

You know, cuz there was an attempt made to raise me religiously and it did not take you know, and so I said like this is it. Like the one thing that was going to just like when the booze turned on me. It was like here's the one thing that I thought was going to be an answer and now I'm screwed all over again, you know?

And I remember being on the phone with the guy that took me through this book one day. I was in Union Square in in in uh in Manhattan and I'm walking around my cell phone and I'm pacing and I'm and I'm like screaming on the phone with this guy, you know, and I made it really clear to him when I would scream about stuff. I'd say, "Listen, I'm I'm going to fight right now, but I don't want to win.

I need for you to I need for you to know before I start. I'm not trying to win this. I need to let you know what my objections are so that you can help me get past them.

The last thing I want is to win in this conversation. Help me, you know. So, I'm screaming all the stuff that bothers me so much, you know.

And I was saying, you know, I don't believe in this thing, but I know that there's times I go to do something and I feel this claw like grab me and like yank me back like, "No, that's not your truth." You know, and it God burned me up for that. And he said, "You experience that thing as a claw because you're resisting it. If you were to give yourself over it to it, you'd find that it's trying to lead you to an experience better than you'd imagined, you know." And that started to turn a few gears.

And I started to see that there were people all over AA that were getting results regardless of what they believed. You know, that it that it wasn't one particular religious tradition that was getting the results because God liked their answers, you know, God liked their rituals and things like that, you know. And what happened for me is I looked around and I said, "Okay, cuz I was one of those I was a thinker, you know, and I actually for a big part of drinking for me was and I consciously said this like I got to shut my brain off.

I'm thinking too much. This was just always going, you know, and so um see and now it's failed me cuz I lost my train of thought. Uh can I play the tape back?" Um, >> sorry.

>> Yeah. Um, I was >> turning gears on God. >> Turning gears.

Oh, okay. Thank you. Um, I'm looking at the God stuff and this is this was my analysis of it, right?

I'm saying, "Okay, I know there's no God, but there's all these people who believe that there is a God and they're getting results." And so, I figured it out. It must be that there's something to faith that solves the problem, that there's a power in faith, even though there's no God. And so, I was like, I got it.

I figured it out. Now all I have to do is figure out how to have faith when I don't actually believe in anything, you know, and so now it became these like mental gymnastics of like how am I possibly going to do that, you know? And at some point, you know, suffering is I used to try to avoid suffering at all costs and now I have such an appreciation for suffering because suffering leads me to be open to things that I wasn't open to before.

And what happened is I said, I can't keep going the way that I am. And so something in me said, you know what? Let me take all this brain power that I'm putting into picking this apart and trying to figure out why it won't work and instead put it into, you know what, there's people that are getting results.

How could that be? Let me put all my brain power into trying to explain how it is that there's all of these people that are getting results from this thing. And so I just I just decided to take a different shift and it was that willingness.

And one of the things, you know, I already talked about a difference between our first step in the book and the first step up on the shades. I call this the cliffnotes version. You know, it's we've got over 164 pages boiled down to this little tiny thing.

Stuff's going to get missed. And one of the things is I looked at step two and it says came to believe. So, it looks like in order for me to take the third step, I've got to already believe.

When I was taken through the chapter, we agnostics, I saw that all over the place there's these three wonderful words. As soon as, I love words like that as somebody that became an alcoholic. As soon as, you know, they say as soon as the person can say that they believe or are even willing to believe, we assure them they're on their way.

As soon as we believe or are even willing to believe, we begin to get results. As soon as we admit not the existence of God, as soon as we admit the possible existence of God, all I had to do was say it's possible. I didn't have to believe anything.

And if I'm saying that it's possible, then that means that if I don't have any answers for the thing that I'm suffering from and there's a possible answer, I should probably decide to go down that road. And so that's what led me to the third step. And um you know I've seen a lot of confusion around and I had a lot of confusion the first time I tried to take the third step around I thought that step three was turning my will in my life over to God.

And so I'd go and I'd take step three and then I'd see myself behaving selfishly or still rejecting what I knew God wanted for me and I'd say oh look I must have failed in the third step. You know I was missing the whole point. I don't turn my will in my life over to God in the third step.

If that were the case, then this would only need to be a three-step program, right? If God's now in charge of my life, what else needs to happen? You know, all I was doing was making a decision that that's what I want.

And what they go on to say is lack of power is our problem, right? We can have moral and philosophical convictions galore and can't live up to them on our own power. And so that's the problem.

I'm deciding that I want to live my life by this power, but I can't do it. I try to do unselfish things. I try to be honest.

I try to be helpful. And I keep finding myself failing consistently. Just like picking up the drink and saying, "I don't want to be doing this." I'm lying to somebody saying that's not cool.

And I know that I'm not supposed to be doing this right now, but unable to stop myself. And so the decision was what I like to think of now. I think of it like a vow just like you know we have wedding vows right when we when someone makes a decision to love honor cherish obey through sickness and health good times and bad you know it's a decision doesn't mean we make good on it >> my wife's here she will testify to you I do not make good on that decision you know on a on a on a consistent regular basis you know that does not mean I'm no longer married It does not mean that that I did not mean it when I said it.

You know, what it means is I've made a decision that this is what I want to have happen. And I may see evidence in my life that that's not what I'm actually doing. And so now I need to step back and say, "Okay, so what needs to change?" And what I was shown is, you know, they say after we make this decision, we say this prayer, we tell God, "God, I'm yours now.

I want you to I want you to save me. relieve me of the bondage of self. Right?

And that's why I'm not turning my will and my life over. I'm in bondage. I can't turn anything over.

I'm in bondage. So, I'm saying to God, "Help me out." And now they say, "The next thing we do is we launch into this course of vigorous actions." 4 through 9. I've got to do some things to clear out a channel between me and this power so that power can flow into me to allow me to be the loving person, the honest person, the fearless person, you know, all these things.

Stuff's got to change before that can happen. So, um I'm really looking forward to uh to the rest of this month. I'm so excited.

I've really enjoyed this. Um, I'm really looking forward to hearing from all of you cuz I consistently need to learn more and more and more. Um, thank you Derek again for this experience.

Thank you God for this experience. And uh, that's it for me. Uh, we're second week to share his experience on set four, five, and six.

We have Damon from Primary First. >> >> Hello, my name is Damon. I'm an alcoholic.

>> Okay. Um, so 30 second recap. Um, I got to a place of being able to look at my experience in a different way.

You know, there were lots of experiences that I had that could have or should have led to a first step over the years. Um, but I was out there, uh, you know, beat up in all kinds of different ways and none of that had anything to do with my first step. Um, that was just examples of the powerlessness that I had not yet identified what my problem was.

I did not know what an alcoholic was and so I could not fully concede to my innermost self that I was an alcoholic. So at some point after getting to this fellowship, it was explained to me that I suffered from a or I shouldn't say nothing was explained to me in terms of what I suffered from. And that's what I love about this book and this program.

You know, a lot of people say, "Oh, well, my book tells me I'm powerless and this book tells me I'm this book doesn't tell me I'm anything." You know, what our program says, what our book says is this was our experience. We had lost the power of choice. We could not stop drinking without a phenomenon of craving.

You know, all these different things they talk about them and then I get to look at my own experience for the first time. Nobody's trying to tell me what's true about me. There's just something laid out in front of me and I get to see for myself, does this fit me or doesn't it?

And so what I got to see in that description was that yes, I did have a physical allergy to alcohol. I had an abnormal reaction. booze affected me very differently than it affected any of the other drinkers that I knew.

You know, um, usually what that meant is that once I started drinking, I couldn't stop. But over all of that, really what it meant is I had no idea what was going to happen once I put booze in my system. The second part of the problem that I was asked to be able to identify with is what they call a form of insanity.

And it's not all the wild stuff that I did when I was out there drinking. It's I cannot see the true from the false when it comes to booze. And I got to look at my own experience and say, you know what, I can see how that's true for me.

That no matter how many experiences I had of what was going to happen, the hell that was going to break loose when I put this stuff in me, something in my mind looked at the glass and said, "It's going to be different this time." or my thought processes just didn't come. You know, uh somebody held out a drink to me and even though the day before or hours before I may have been swearing, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm done.

I said, "Oh, sure." And it's half empty before I have any idea what happened. So, um, that being the case, you know, I I was I came to find out that that is something that no human power seems to be able to do anything about, you know, and again, I got to look at my own experience, my own evidence, and say I certainly had no reason to believe that there was any human power that was going to change this because anything that I had thrown at it hadn't worked. and the girlfriends that tried to convince me and the parents and the friends and the times that I had been in therapy and the run-ins I had with the law, all these different things.

Nothing seemed to shift it. I talked last week about all the, you know, renting the the movies that had to do with, you know, uh, Clean and Sober and 28 Days and all those things, you know, and sitting there crying my eyes out because I was hoping that something would click in me that would make me want to stop and um, and none of that stuff did, you know. So if I'm suffering from something that's going to kill me and I recognize that there's no way out from me in terms of human power, well now there's this proposal in front of me that you know what, maybe there's a power greater than human that can help you out.

And um and I had a big struggle with that, but suffering works its magic, you know, and eventually I had no choice but to start to be open-minded um cuz nothing else was going to shift. That was the only way anything was going to change, at least for the better, was if I started to become open-minded. And I started to see that this program and some of the people in the fellowship were bending over backwards to try to get me to see that this is whatever my own concept is.

It's whatever makes sense to me. So that my job was to look inside and try to be able to hear that voice that's been talking to me all along, you know, and I got to and I got to realize for myself, you know, I can remember times that I was going to do something and there was this little voice that was like that's not a good idea, you know, or that's that's wrong, you know? I mean, the the good idea, bad idea stuff usually had to do with the consequences for me.

But sometimes there was like, you're about to do something that's really going to hurt somebody, and that's not right, you know, but I wanted what I wanted. And so what I would do is I'd start drinking and I realized that that voice would get drowned out by the booze, you know. And so now this thing that I thought I wanted to do, the thing that I thought was going to get me the the sense of connection, the sense of peace, the sense of happiness, the sense of fulfillment.

I had made up my mind as to what stuff was going to get me that. And this voice is trying to tell me different, but I drowned it out with the booze. or I would do something and I'd wake up the next day and have that twinge of like, "Oh, that was not cool." You know, and okay, let me shut that off and start drinking.

So, I had to make a decision. Am I willing to make the rest of my life doing what I can to try to follow that voice? To try to be able to hear it more clearly and to pay attention to it, to make following that voice more important than following the whims of my ego or than following the pressure of my peers or following even what society is trying to tell me.

But instead of always listening to the outside voices or the voice of the ego to get in touch with that thing. And so I made that decision in the third step. You know, I can't live life based on what I feel like doing anymore on what I want.

I had an unmanageability list. You know, I had an exercise to look at the unmanageability in my life. And I got to see this is a mess and this is what happens.

This is the result of me saying here's what I want. I'm going to go get it. And so I got to see it's not about like I shouldn't get what I want.

It's me trying to go get it ends up really badly. And so I need to stop running around the world trying to get what I want because it only leads to trouble for me and others. And so now, okay, so I make this decision.

I'm going to I'm going to live by this power. Well, there's a problem. You know, I don't have the power to do that.

I can have all kinds of ideas as to what I think is good and bad and right and wrong. when I was out there and I was trying to get myself fixed, you know, I got a lot of self-help books and things and and there would be this like this plan laid out in the book of like here's how to approach life. Here's a philosophy that works, you know, and I'd say yes, that's amazing.

Let me go do that. And I go and I try to do it and it I just found myself doing the same stuff over and over again, you know. It wasn't that now all of a sudden I had this idea that I should be a good person and stop hurting people.

I'd had that idea before. I didn't want to run around the world hurting people. You know, I wanted to be a good son.

I wanted to be a good boyfriend. I wanted to be a good worker. I wanted to be a good friend.

And all I knew is every time I turned around, somebody was crying in my face or somebody was screaming at me because of what I had done. And just as much as I couldn't understand why I kept picking the drink up, I couldn't understand why I failed so horribly at being the person that I was trying to be. And now's when I started to understand, you know, the drink is down.

I can't blame the drink right now. Here I am without a drink in my hand. How am I behaving?

How am I thinking? Do I do I now think that I just have the power to be this guy that I want to be? If I had that power, why would I ever have gone down this road to begin with?

Why didn't I just decide to be this good person and go do it, you know? So our fourth step in in our book in our literature is described as like it's like a uh a business that's taking inventory, you know, and that if the business doesn't take regular inventory, it usually goes broke because there's all this stuff in the store room, you know, there's all this stuff that the business is trying to use to operate. And there may be things in there that are broken, that are rotted, that are in fine condition, but just nobody's interested in them.

You know, it's just stuff nobody wants. And what I had to do is think about, you know, all that's all what was going on inside of me. There was a lot of stuff inside of me that was rotten or that was broken or there was stuff that simply nobody wanted, you know?

And here I am every day opening up shop and putting this stuff out on the shelves. And I'm like, why is the business failing? And so the fourth step was about me going in and finding out what in me is working and what in me is not working.

let me look at my experience, you know, and um one of the things that occurred to me somewhere along the line that I loved, you know, in the the the more I got into our book, the more I got into our literature, I got to see how everything sort of weaves together. And I really don't know if I believe that they like sat down and had this all planned out this way, but they were in the spirit when they worked on this book. And somehow it all seemed to come together.

And so what happened is I got to see things like and we agnostics they say we found the great reality and they use capital G and capital R right it's like a standin for God for the divine we found the great reality deep down within in the last in the last analysis it's only there that God can be found right if God's out there someplace then you can all get in the way you can all block me I'm trying to get over there and there's things in the world, there's people, there's philosophies, there's ideas that can get in between me and that far off place that I'm trying to get to. But if God is the great reality deep within, if this power resides somewhere within me, then there's only one thing that can block you can't block me off from it. The only stuff that can block me off from it is other stuff that's inside me.

And so that's what the fourth step was about for me was about going in and saying what is the stuff inside me that has me blocked off from that deepest core from that voice that's been trying to speak up all this time you know and so it it was time to drag out into the light the fear and shame the hatred the m you know all these different things. Um, I was given a pretty clear set of instructions, you know, put down the names of the people that I was resentful at. Um, I I I wasn't real clear on the meaning of the word resentment.

It was broken down to me that really it's as simple as saying to feel again. You know, it's to continue to feel something after the fact. So, I get to see that there were, you know, I' I'd see your face and we're talking and I'm still I'm, you know, I'm looking at you.

You're smiling at me. We're talking about the day, but there's something in me that like I still kind of want to punch you just a little bit because it's something that you did 3 months ago, you know, and so I'm continuing to feel these things. It's not about, oh, resentment is about if I'm in a rage, you know, it's not about the intensity of the emotion.

It's about is this thing sticking around after the fact? Am I not in the moment here where God is, but am I stuck in the past? So, I get down those people.

And then there were also things like principles you know which for me some of the you know it could be things like materialism uh racism um you know principles like just ways of ideas about going through the world you know things that that I had issue with even concepts like um that uh well I don't know like you know like materialism that like that we need to put that that that someone's worth is based on how much they produce you know and So that was something I had a problem with conveniently because I wasn't producing anything. I would sit back drinking, you know, so I was like, "Oh, materialism is a bad thing." Um, institutions, you know, and so that could be things like the institution of marriage, it could be the IRS, it could be the public school system, you know, I had lots of resentments, things like that. And so, okay, now I've got all these people, these places, these institutions.

Now, why am I upset? You know, what's the thing? Well, uh, the public school system, um, they I fell through the cracks, you know, they they didn't they didn't address my style of learning and, um, you know, I I I get I get down to the specific thing that like when I see this person's face, this is what burns me up.

Um, they they made me look stupid in front of my friends, uh, you know, at that party. And so I get that thing down and now it's so what does it affect in me? You know, and I like to think of this as like the so what column.

It's saying, okay, well here this person did this thing. Why am I bothered? there must be I must feel like there's something about me in my life that was affected some way, you know, and so I get to see, okay, well, this friend made fun of me at the party, so um that affected my personal relationships, you know, he's putting me down in front of my friends and now my friends might think less of me.

And so now he's he's he's changed the state of my relationships. He's he's altered things a little bit and I don't like that. And so that's one of the reasons I'm upset.

and maybe there was a girl there that I was interested in. And so now, well, he's affected my sex relationship. You know, he's impacted my ability to maybe get this relationship going and my pride.

You know, how do people see me? People are supposed to see me a certain way, you know? So, there are all these different things that I got to look at and say like, what is it in me that was affected by this thing?

And I get this all down on paper. you know, I've got people from, you know, my current life, people that are right, you know, right next door to me, right down the block, right on the other side of the telephone, but then there's people from 3 years ago and 30 years ago when I was 5 years old. You know, there's all kinds of stuff on there.

It's all this stuff that keeps showing up and keeps churning regardless of how much time has passed. And now I've got this all down on this paper and this list of all this stuff that these people have done to me and all the ways that I feel like I've been affected. And what I didn't notice at first, and I wasn't really aware of this the first time I went through the four step, but I got to realize later on, there's like a page of directions.

You know, after those first three columns, those first three things, it says, "When we finished this, we considered this carefully." And there's a page of sort of like meditation for me to step back and look at this is all the stuff that I've got in my head and my heart and this is as far as I've usually gotten in looking at it. You know, here's how these people were wrong. And they make some suggestions like, isn't it true, look at your experience, that that hasn't stopped these people from doing these things, that they just keep doing this stuff that's got you upset until you just keep feeling upset.

And sometimes you try to battle them or try to get them back, but doesn't it just end up worse on the other side somewhere down the line, you know? And um can you see how carrying this stuff around can only lead to they say futility and unhappiness? You know that that that to the precise extent that I permit these in my heart and in my life I squander the hours that might have been worthwhile.

You know and it was pointed out to me it's like an equation. You know if I spend 10 minutes in resentment I've just wasted 10 minutes of my life. And if I've been in resentment about something for 10 weeks, I've wasted those 10 weeks, you know, and so in that sense, they're talking about everybody, you know, they say any life that includes this is is going to be unhappy and feudal, right?

But then they bring it back to me and what's going on with me and they say with an alcoholic, you know, it's a waste of your time. It's a waste of your energies, no matter who you are on this planet. But if you're an alcoholic, you've already acknowledged that your only hope is this spiritual relationship, is this connection with God.

And so now, can you recognize that this page after page of stuff that you've got down on here, that this is the stuff that's blocking you off from your one shot at life, from your one shot at sobriety? This is the stuff that's got you blocked from that power deep down within. And so, can you be willing to look at this from a different angle?

Can you be willing to say maybe other people in the world can afford to feel this way but this is this is what's going to kill me you know and so they say step back from the list then and look at this in a different way and say maybe these people are spiritually sick you know like me though and that's the important thing see I can use the maybe they're spiritually sick as just a way of condemning the people around me but if I'm saying maybe like me they're spiritually sick I get to realize that, you know, here this person lashed out at me and I'm taking it so personally and I'm feeling so wounded, but what about how much I lashed out in my life? What about all the pain and suffering that I caused? Did I really mean it?

You know, I already said I I was just telling you tonight, you know, I didn't want to hurt these people. I I didn't understand even how it was happening. So, how is it that I'm not going to give these other people that same credit?

That maybe they don't really want to be hurting me the way that I'm feeling hurt, but maybe they're just trying to get through life the best they can, just like I was. And maybe they're as lost and as clueless as to how to do it successfully as I was. And so, let me have some compassion for these people.

And then there's a prayer in there, you know, and I love in the prayer it says, "God, save me from being angry." It does not say, "God, forgive me for deciding to be angry." As though I've got a say in the matter, as though I sat down and said, "I think I'll be angry about this, and that was wrong of me." It say, "Save me from being angry. I can't help it. This person does this thing to me, and I'm going to kill them." You know, save me from that cuz I recognize it not to be the truth, but I can't do anything about it.

Lack of power is my dilemma. And so, I beg for a new perspective. And I say, "You know what?

This isn't about moving from them being wrong to me being wrong or them being wrong to them being right. It's about moving from them being wrong to I don't care about them. It's about moving from them being wrong to what am I doing, you know?

And so now I got to look at myself and say really the whole reason I'm doing this is to find out how why I'm blocked from that power that's inside of me. So I got to stop thinking about them. And then I start to look at the things like, well, you know what?

My pride only could have been wounded if I'm walking around with pride, you know, and maybe the thing that I feel guilty about, you know, well, maybe it's because I actually did something that was wrong, you know, and so I got to go in and look at like where are my wrongs in all these situations, you know? Sometimes it's that I did something to bring the thing on. Sometimes it's that I did something after the fact to continue it.

You know, maybe I turned around and punished for the rest of my life. I turned around and punished every person that reminded me of the one that hurt me. You know, maybe I planned vengeance against the person.

May, you know, whatever it is. Maybe I use the incident as a as the fear around something like that happening again to not participate in life to rob this world of the gifts that God has given me that God intended for me to use for the better for the betterment of this world and for the good of my fellows. And I use the fear about that thing to happen to say no, I'm going to this gift is going to be buried down deep, you know.

So, um I looked at all that stuff and uh and it was not pretty. You know, I had a I had um page after page of stuff and um there was a there's a funny four-step story I wanted to tell and in the sake of time I'm not going to but if if you want to laugh you can ask me afterwards. Um but um I no I'd much rather talk about solution you know we can laugh there's lots we can turn on comedy central if we want to laugh you know but if you're suffering from something and you don't have a way out like places like this might be your only shot at hearing an answer to that you know um I found somebody uh you know I I knew somebody who had found an answer and who was willing to listen to me relay you know this is the stuff that I found um so I sat down with this guy to share And um one of the things that I love about five is it talks about, you know, it says we're admitting to someone else and we're admitting it to God, but it says admit it to ourselves.

And it's interesting because there isn't like a concrete action that they say in there that like here's how you're going to admit it to yourself, you know? But I got to see in the experience to admit is to take in, you know, to to allow something in to admit it. When I heard myself saying to this person these things that I had done, acknowledging the wrongs that I knew that were in there, when I heard them coming out of my own mouth, not from a standpoint of bragging about them, but for the first time acknowledging it was wrong for me to do this, I felt it in a way that I had never experienced it before.

Even though I had felt it, when I wrote it down, hearing myself tell another human being, I admitted it in a completely different way. You know, um I was at a meeting the other day where where people were talking about the fist act and people were talking about how wonderful a feeling it was when they were done and a wind was clean wind was blowing through them and you know I felt like hell when I was done my first fist cuz I had just sat there and thing after thing after thing of this is I really got to see the gunk that was inside of me, you know, and it was painful but it was a wonderful experience in the long run because I needed to see that so that I could know what to ask God to take. You know, this was the stuff that was going to kill me and it needed to be gone.

And one of the amazing things about about four and 52 is, you know, if my problems really had been caused by all the people in the world, then that means I can never rest. I can never be at peace. cuz I could be walking around, I could be not drinking and I could be doing everything I need to do and somebody could always come around the corner and screw my life up.

But if what was suggested in four and five was actually true, that I caused my own problems, that resentment, that self, that ego was really the root of all of my troubles, then that means if I'm willing to have this stuff gone, if I'm willing to have God take this, I don't have to experience pain and misery anymore. I don't have to experience problems anymore. things will still happen but I'll experience them in a very different way you know so um I shared all this with this man and uh and afterwards you know there was the the hour that I was to go and and sit and reflect on these things was my I'm so bummed I did not talk about the fear and the sex part of the inventory h one of the things that frustrated me so much after I had done this is being at step meetings you know where People were talking about their four-step experience and I never heard anybody talk about a fears inventory or sex inventory and for me they were some of the most powerful aspects of that inventory.

So again I have left myself with not really time to get into them but if you're doing a forep and they're not in there somewhere talk to somebody or take take a look at our book. I got so much help and so much insight from what came out of those, you know. Um, I saw all this stuff and now I had to say, am I willing for these things to be gone?

And what was amazing is it wasn't that I'm willing to go work on this stuff. You know, this th this was the difference between the process of the steps and all those self-help books that I had been reading is the self-help books were like, "Okay, well, now you see what's wrong." And so now here's how you're going to go work on it. Here's how you're going to go manage to be a different kind of person.

And I and I heard in a lot of meetings that I went to people saying like, "Oh, and I, you know, I got to work on my I just saw this new character defect and I really I got to work on this defect." Our literature doesn't say anything about working on these defects. What they say is I've got to ask this power to remove them to take them from me you know and if I'm not willing then let me ask to be willing you know prayer upon prayer upon prayer you know but until something is able to shift and um and that was the thing you know I had already made the decision that I wanted to live life this way but now there was sort of another moment of reflection that needed to come when I really understood in order for me to live the way that God wants me to live. This is all the stuff that's going to have to go away, you know, and I hadn't I hadn't necessarily known that when I made the decision, you know, there were some things in me that I hadn't realized were harmful to others or I hadn't realized were dragging my life down.

And so now that it was all out on paper, you know, am I really willing to have this removed? Um, words are going at this point. Um I I you know this week I feel a little blocked.

You know I feel like there's so much that I would love to have gotten across that uh that got left out. Um maybe I'll uh I'll take just a minute next week and and uh talk about fears and sex part of the inventory a little bit. But um that's it out of me tonight.

Now 89. My name is Damon. I'm an alcoholic.

Uh want to thank Derek again for asking me to speak here, for giving me this opportunity. Um it's been a real pleasure um to be doing this and I'm looking forward to tonight and to next week. Um, I think I went a little uh I got a little hung up last week by trying to recap first.

I'm not going to make that mistake this week. I'm going to roll right into seven. So, um, the the one thing I'll say is, you know, having that willingness in the six steps, and I did talk about this last week, but recognizing that this is not about me having a job to do now, that this isn't about me having to go out and work on these defects was a really important part of this process for me, you know, because that's what I had always been trying to do throughout my life is trying to work on myself and trying to like get in there and grab a hold of the things that were going on in me and reshape them and and and make myself into something different, you know.

And what these steps were suggesting is that instead of having to continue to struggle in that way, instead of having to continue to try to manage, all I needed to do at this point was to ask for these things to be taken. And um I really love talking about the second step because I feel like it's something that gets over complicated um painfully commonly you know it's like six and seven together are like a paragraph or so in our book you know and um and it's very simple it says when I get to the place where I'm willing to have these defects taken and so at this point now I've done this inventory And I've looked at what's all the stuff inside of me that's blocking me off from this power that also is deep down within me. You know, this is the stuff now that I'm seeing that is going to lead to my drinking again.

This is the stuff that's going to lead to my death. Because if my only shot as an alcoholic is a connection with this power and this is the stuff that blocked me off with this power, then I'm looking right here at the reasons for my relapse. You know, we can talk a lot about, oh well, you know, I relapsed because I lost my job.

My girlfriend broke up with me. I the people at the meeting didn't respect, you know, whatever it is. And none of those things are the truth.

You know, it was pointed out to me, my uh my sponsor when we were taking a look at the fourth step, he pointed out a section where it talks about um you know, resentment, cutting oursel off from the sunlight of the spirit. And he said that's the first stage of the relapse. And it says the insanity of alcohol returns again, right?

Because if it's God that's protecting me from the insanity of alcohol and I'm now cut off from God, well then now the insanity returns. So that's the next stage of the relapse. It says the insanity returns and then we drink again.

And so there's the next leg of the relapse. So I'm looking on this page at all of the stuff that is going to be the cause of my relapse. And now the question is, am I willing to be rid of it?

And so if that's the case now, I can ask God, "God, please take this from me." Um, I can twist a lot of this stuff around. You know, the book is just the book and there's words on paper and my ego can get in there and do all kinds of stuff with those words. And um, and I can set myself up for some real fear and danger depending on what I do with this, you know.

And so I can take that seven steps and I can say this prayer and I can go into it with the idea that oh well, you know, just because I ask doesn't mean that God's going to take this stuff. See, there's my time and there's God's time. And even though I want the stuff gone, maybe God's not ready for these defects to be gone.

I need a God to make sense. The whole problem that I had with other people's conceptions of God that I was given is they didn't make any sense to me when I really sat and thought about them. And so now here's this proposition that well wait a minute.

So I'm asking God to do God's will. I'm saying listen, my life is yours. I'm going to do your will.

You tell me what you want me to do, but here are these things that are in the way and so I need you to take them from me. How could it make sense that God wouldn't want to take them? And you know, I've used the analogy with guys that I work with before.

I'd say, you know, if you were at my place and I said to you, "Hey, can you take my car and and go around down to the gas station and fill my tank up?" And you said, "Okay, well, so I'll need your car keys." And I said, "Well, no, I'm not going to give them to you." So, could you take my car and go get gas? You know, and that's the that's the vision that we have of God sometimes of like I'm saying, God, you tell me what to do. And now God told me what to do.

And I'm saying, but God, in order for me to go do it, here's what I need from you. I can't just go do this thing. There's stuff that's blocking me off.

I've got these defects. I need you to take this stuff. Bless you.

>> Thank you. >> Um God's got to take it. You know, I I love in the uh I have um a a copy of the text of the original manuscript, you know, before they went in and edited things out and said, "Well, what's going to scare people off and what's going to," you know, and I and I love digging into it because I can really get some more insight into the program at times.

And there's a line when when it talks about the third step in our text today. It says, you know, we had a new employer being all powerful, he provided what we needed. In the original manuscript, they said being all powerful, he must necessarily provide what we need.

And I get so much hope and strength out of that. that realization that if I if what I'm honestly asking for is to be able to do what God wants me to do, the only possibility is that God's going to give me the strength to do it. And so now I need to recognize if I'm asking for these defects to be removed and they're still showing up in my life, I've got two possibilities of how I could perceive that.

Either it's God's fault or it's mine. What's more likely? You know, so I could say, "Oh, well, yeah, I'm perfectly willing, but God doesn't want to have this stuff gone yet." Or I could get honest and say, "Is it possible that I'm still getting something from this particular defect?

Is it possible that I'm not as willing as I'm trying to sound?" You know, >> I love the fact that right now tonight, seven is paired with eight and nine. You know, we usually sort of think of like four and five together and six of seven together and but seven really does lead very directly into eight and nine and and and I make much more of a connection um with those things. We say that sevenst step prayer and it says we've now we've completed step seven, but now we need action.

Faith without works is dead. We need action, right? And so what that's saying is I can say this sevenstep prayer and maybe I don't have faith that God's going to take all my defects away.

And so that of course then I'm I'm not going to get a whole lot of results out of that prayer. But maybe I do have the faith. Maybe I have faith that God's going to take all this stuff away.

And so the next thing they point out to me is, "Yeah, but faith without works is dead." And so I can say the sevenstep prayer and have the faith that God's going to take this stuff. But if I stop right there, I'm not going to have an experience. I need to go out and now clean up the past.

The best way for me to experience that these defects are gone is for me to go out and clean up the harms that were caused by me acting out of these defects. That's how I get to experience so clearly that they're not there anymore. Um, I I I have a my own twist or my own take on those ninestep promises.

You know, there's all these things that they say, "Okay, so now we're going out and we're making these amends and we're going to be amazed before we're halfway through. We find a new peace and a new serenity and fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us and all these different things." And I think I don't see them as being the promises in the ninth step. Those are the promises of the seventh step.

If I ask for God to take all these things away, well, then that's the result of God taking this stuff away. But the catch is I have no way of knowing that they're gone until I do eight and nine. If my fear of economic insecurity hadn't been taken, how is it that I was able to sit across the table from this person and give them the money back that I had stolen?

If I'm in fear of economic insecurity or if I've got fear of people, how is it that I sit in front of the person that's put me down, you know, so many different times in my life, but I still have the courage and I have no idea how they're going to respond to what I'm about to say to them. But I still find myself sitting in front of them and owning up to my wrongs. you know that fear had already been removed but I get to experience it by doing eight and nine.

One of the things that can happen is I go out into the world in bad habits, you know. Um, I've been used to living life a certain way for a long long time, you know. So, a situation comes up and my first impulse is to lie.

My first impulse is to use. My first impulse is to manipulate, to steal, to, you know, all these different things. The defects are not my abilities to do those things.

The defects are the fact that I don't have a choice. The defect is that I have no say in my own behavior. I can't help but lie.

I can't help but manipulate. I can't help but steal. I ask to have those defects removed.

Now God gives me freedom. Now I'm free. I can behave.

I can lie or not lie. I can steal or not steal. I've got that freedom to make choices in my life now.

And what happens is I need to be conscious throughout my day of what's going on so that I don't start doing the same old stuff not even realizing that I don't have to, you know, and it's sort of like another example that I think about, you know, I there was a cat that I that I had a pet for a long long time, you know, and um and she loved to to eat the bottom of my cereal, you When I was done with my cereal, I'd put the bowl on the floor and let her have the rest of it, you know. And I was so in the habit of doing that that after she passed, I would find myself, you know, I'd eat cereal and I' and I'd go down and I put the bowl on the floor. And there was no need for me to do that anymore.

But I was doing it because I wasn't thinking about what was going on in my day. And I can do the same thing with these defects of character. You know, I ask God to take them and God takes the defect.

God takes the need to do this stuff. There's no need for me to lie anymore. God's taken it.

But if I'm not thinking about what's going on in my day, if I'm just running around, I can end up lying even though I no longer need to. And so that also leads into the 10th step, you know, the uh the continuing to take inventory of being conscious about my actions. So there's all kinds of things that can lead me to believe that seven's not working, you know.

Am I willing to have that faith? Am I willing to have that concept of God that makes sense and say, "I'm looking for God to give me the power to do what God wants me to do." I say that prayer and now I need to get up and go out and act in willingness. Um, I had an experience early on.

I had lost, you know, lots of jobs in my first year of sobriety and um and so once again here I was, you know, needing to go out and look for work and uh and I wasn't doing it, you know, and I talked to the sponsor that I had at the time and he said, "Okay, well, you need to pray for the willingness, you know, ask for the willingness to go out and apply for these jobs." And so what I would do is I'd get up in the morning and I'd hit my knees and I'd pray, "God, grant me the willingness to go search for a job today, you know, and I'd do that prayer and then I'd get up and I'd go over and I'd turn the computer on and I'd play solitire and I'd wait for God. Okay, when's it coming? You know, God's going to And I said this to him and he said, "No, that's not how it works.

Like you need to pray and not then wait for God to swoop down and take over, but pray and act like a guy who asked for help, you know, and it's not act as if, you know, that's just more pretending. I spent my whole life pretending, you know. It's not act as if something has taken place.

It's have faith and act because something has taken place. I just got down on my knees and asked this power that I've been willing to believe in give me this strength and so let me get up and see what happens. And when I would do that, I found all kinds of things took place.

You know, in my first seven step, I would find myself in conversation with somebody and I'd be h I' I'd be talking to somebody and it was like I would sort of float above the conversation momentarily and and like I'm watching it and I could while my mouth is moving and I'm talking to you, I could go, I'm being dishonest right now. I'm in manipulation. I'm in fear.

And I could see the stuff in black and white for my inventory, you know, my in my own handwriting on the page. And I had that moment of like, what do I do? You know, and I'd find a moment to excuse myself from the situation.

I have to go to the bathroom. I'll be right back. You know, and I go and I'd say the prayer.

And what I try to do is say, not God, please, please take these things from me. I already asked that. God, remind me that you've taken this from me.

Remind me. Grant me the faith and the and the willingness. Grant me the courage to trust that you have taken this from me and and and let me go back into the situation and do something different.

And so I'd walk back in and I'd say, "I must have the ability to be honest now." And so I'd walk out and I tell the truth. And I had these amazing amazing experiences. And what happened is things change so drastically for me that what's what's the next logical thing to do?

Sit still and say I got it from here, you know. And I stopped I stopped move cuz that things are great. Why should I do any work?

You know, and that's why I got to experience that faith without works is dead, you know. Things started to drop off a little slowly for me at first and then more more rapidly. You know, now this was my first pass through uh and this was not out of out of the book really.

And so, you know, the the guidance that I had wasn't necessarily as strong as as the second time I went through the steps. Um but it was when I it was when I got up and got to work again that things, you know, began to change. And so, okay, so now here I go into eight and nine.

um I've got to uh make this list of all the people that I've harmed. But the beautiful thing is they say in the book, we already have the list. You know, we made it when we took inventory.

Right? If I've made this list of all these resentments and now in each one of them, I've stepped back and said, "Let me disregard the other person entirely and look at where I've been wrong." Well, now I have this whole list of all these people that I've been wrong in relationship with on. And so now there's lots of things that I can that I can go down this list and say, okay, well, did I cause harm in this situation?

You know, um it wasn't necessarily the case in every single situation. You know, there are times when like when the wrong was was really between me and God and maybe, you know, in this particular thing, like this person wasn't affected in any way or maybe they had no idea that it was even going on, you know, I was in judgment about somebody that didn't even know who I was, you know, so of course, okay, well, that person wasn't harmed, you know, but there were a lot of other people on this list that had been harmed. And I also had to take some time and sit with is there anybody that I've harmed that didn't make my resentment list because what happened is I came across some really wonderful people in in my active years before I even started drinking.

You know that I had no reason whatsoever to resent them and yet I had harmed them >> because I was running around on selfishness and fear, you know. Um so I got to add some names to the list as well. And um and now I needed to go through and do some meditation and say, you know, am I willing to make all of these amends?

Um you know, I hear a lot of talk uh in meetings and I had questions myself about amends that like, well, is it possible that these amends shouldn't be made or these amends can't be made? you know, whether it's someone that's passed on or maybe it's like a violent drug dealer or maybe it's a legal situation or maybe it's an ex-girlfriend or whatever. There could be all kinds of things that maybe it's questionable as to am I actually going to go out and make this amend or not.

But the thing that I appreciate in aid is it's saying we become willing to make amends to all of them. You know, if there's a violent drug dealer that I'm not necessarily going to go back and make amends to, that doesn't mean that I just skip the part where I'm willing to do it. I really do need to sit down and come to that place in prayer and meditation where, you know what, I I'm past the ego that's holding me back from it.

I'm past the fear that's coming me back from it. and if this is what God wants from me, I would be willing to go and do this thing, you know. And I really appreciate the way that Aid and N are laid out in our book that there's all these example after example of different things that these guys experienced, you know, different situations that they were in.

And I got to see things like people saying, you know, here's a situation where I might go to jail. And they said, we thought that the person should have been willing, you know, yes, we need to be willing to go to jail. another situation where the guy says, you know, if I stand up in front of my town and acknowledge this thing, I might destroy my reputation.

What's that going to do to my family? You know, and the guy says, but I realized if I need this relationship with God, I can't put anything before that. I can't say, well, I'm I need a relationship with God, but if it means that my reputation might get harmed, if it means that I might lose my job, well, then that I'm not willing to do.

you know, I need to go in and face what am I really willing to do for this new experience? What am I really willing to do for this relationship? And um what I got to find the questions that I needed to ask were not do I trust this person?

You know, it's not about if I go and make amends to this guy, is he going to find some way to hold it over my head? if I go and make amends to this boss, am I going to lose my job? You know, all these different things.

It's not about trusting the human being that I'm going to make the amend to. It's about recognizing I have no idea what they're going to do and it's none of my business. It's do I trust this power?

Do I trust this God? There's uh this is you know a little bit of a tangent but you know around the subject of anonymity there's a woman that I know on this fellowship um who I think is a fantastic example of these principles and uh she's a judge and she talks about how she's fully open about her being a recovered alcoholic with you know the other judges the prosecuting attorney the district attorney all these people everyone knows that she's a recovered alcoholic and she says I don't believe that God picked me up out of the mud and cleaned me off just to let me fall back in it because I choose to be honest with people about who and what I am. You know, now this is somebody that was able to act as a demonstration to me that it's not about trusting her fellow judges or her fellow lawyers or whatever it is.

It's about trusting this power and I need to do that same thing in eight and nine or I'm not going to be willing to do half of these because so many of them could come back to bite me in some way. you know, um so now now that I've now that I've become willing, you know, um what happened with me is I sat down with the sponsor and um and we talked about these different amends and I got some guidance as to how to do these particular things. you know, what was appropriate to say and not say, what um um what maybe uh needed a little more prayer, meditation, and what I was ready to go out and do right then.

Um I've had a couple of different sponsors in this process. And so I I got to benefit from a couple of different points of view. And one that I appreciated is one of my sponsors said um in in our book it talks about uh you know it talks about when somebody has had extrammarital affairs you know and and should they necessarily like go and tell their wife about this stuff and how is that whole thing going to be handled and what they say is no outsider could appraise such an intimate situation and when we were reading over that he pointed out to me he said you know I'm an outsider in this you know I can't presume to tell you what you need to do to clear things up between you and the power of your understanding.

And so he had the faith not in me but in this process of the steps and in that power that if I had really been giving myself over to this so far that I would have the ability to go into meditation and find out, you know, do I is this something that I need to do? Is God what's that voice trying to say? Um, but he helped to reflect back to me what came up for me.

So, regardless of who it is that I was working with, you know, each of these sponsors would guide me. And so, I got to go out and have some really fantastic, really powerful experiences. Um, you know, some of them were more personal than others, some of them were more um emotionally intense than others.

You know, I had situations like I went back to a library that uh you know, before I was before I was drinking, you know, before I was an active alcoholic, but was someone with a spiritual malady that was driven by fear, selfishness, you know, all these all the the things that make up the self-centered personality. Um I would go to the library and I'd say, you know, I never seem to be able to return books on time, but I know I'm going to bring them back. And so what I'll do is I'll just take this book.

I'm not going to check it out. I just take it and I'll bring it back at some point when I'm done with it, you know. Well, of course, like they never made it back to the library, you know.

And so now here I am with this box of, you know, this host of books like, you know, from years of going to this library. And um and this is the kind of stuff that like every time I glanced up at one on the shelf, there was just that little twinge somewhere, you know? And this is the kind of stuff, I mean, eight and nine for me, the power of them is, you know, I believe in a God that's forgiving, right?

And that I have been forgiven. God has forgiven me for this stuff. Even in the moment that I was doing it, God forgave it.

The problem is I'm not as forgiving as God is. I don't forgive myself for this stuff. And as long as I haven't cleaned this stuff up, I'm not going to accept the beautiful life that's that's that's opening up before me in aa I'm not going to accept the gifts that God's trying to give me because somewhere in the back of my head, I'm like, you did it.

You you succeeded in the con. You got away with the stuff. And there's that little scumbag still in there that I that I still feel like I'm still that same guy, you know.

And every time I saw one of those books, I saw the little code, you know, the little gooey death mole thing at the bottom, you know, and I was like, so I show up at the library with this box of books, you know, and I set them down on the counter, you know, and I'm like, I'm an alcoholic. I'm an alcoholic who has found this program of recovery. You know, I've been taught that I need a spiritual way of life in order to survive.

And what I need to do as part of that is to clean up the wrongs that I've done. And so I took these books, you know, over the years. And I'm here to return them.

And the thing that was really, I mean, these people were like, I have no idea what to do with this. And so they're like and really like they found it quite annoying because now they've got this giant box of books that they have to deal with and they're trying to check them back in and they're looking and they're like we don't even use this coding system anymore. Like they couldn't even enter the books into the system, you know.

So um but that was, you know, but that was one more piece of freedom, you know. Now I could look at my bookshelf and not have to feel that, you know. Um, and and you know, I'll say on that too, I got some freedom out of that, but that was not the point of having done it.

I got confused because I go to a lot of step meetings and um, you know, where they were reading out of the 12 and 12 and I'd go to meetings that they said, "Okay, this is a ninstep meeting and I'd hear lots of different things and um, and it was an experience that caused me, you know, when when I looked in the book Alcoholics Anonymous and it said, "We've discovered a common solution." That was such a powerful promise to me because I would be at meetings and hear the the solutions that I didn't hear that I heard were not common. I'd hear all kinds of different things. One person would say, "Oh, well, you know, in the ninth step, this isn't about me feeling better.

This is about setting the other person free, you know, of of of setting them free of the harms that I've caused." And then another I'd be at another ninestep meeting and somebody would say, "This isn't about them. this is about I need to be released of these burdens so that I can live this way of life. You know, and I'd hear these when I was taken through the book, I got to see neither one of those things is true.

I got to see very clearly in black and white what they had to say about the point of these amends. They say our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people around us. you know, it's got nothing to do with whether I feel any better and it's got nothing to do with whether the person in front of me feels any better.

Now, certainly that's the ideal situation, you know, but what's really taking place in the process of those amends is I'm getting to experience I'm going out in faith and saying, "God has taken these things away." And so, let me perform an act of faith and go out and heal this thing. And by my going out and doing that, I now on the other side of that amend and more fit to be of service to God and my fellows. I don't have the same level of fear anymore.

And at the very least, here's one human being that I may possibly be able to be helpful to now that prior to that maybe we didn't want anything to do with each other. You know, um, some of my most powerful amends were to ex-girlfriends. You know, I've heard people at meetings, I heard a guy share, you know, who had a bunch of sponses and he said, "I don't make amends to exes." And I tell all my sponses that they're not to make amends to their exes.

You know, in our fourth step in the sex inventory, it it says, you know, when we're when it talked about getting the stuff down on paper, it says we were willing to set these matters straight. You know, I think a lot of the reason that there's so much apprehension about making amends to exes is because a lot of times it can go south, you know, and the reason it goes south is because my motives may not be too pure, right? Maybe I'm there to try to get the relationship going again.

Maybe I don't maybe I maybe I just want to show that I've gotten better and look at I'm not that same guy. You know what I mean? And like there could be all kinds of different motivations.

The problem is not the making amends to the ex. The problem is that I've got other motives going on. And that is going to be an issue no matter who I'm making the amend to.

If I'm going to an old boss and I'm there because I want the job back or because I want the boss to see that I'm doing better than I used to be, it's going to be just as much trouble. If I'm going to make an amends to my parents because now I need some money from them or because I want them to see that in spite of all their screw-ups, I'm doing really well. You know what I mean?

It's not the relationship that's the problem, you know? So, I need to now it may mean that I need to do more work to get clear on that to prepare myself for it, but it doesn't excuse me from the amend. And I'm telling you, that has been some of the most powerful stuff because that's where I really got deep inside of somebody and did some real damage, you know, and that's the stuff that when I'm sitting here looking at my life today and saying, "Do I deserve this or not?" Those are the things that haunt me.

>> The person that was balling their eyes out in front of me, you know, because of how deeply that I had hurt them. Um, I want to keep going, but um, I'm not going to. Um, I'll just say, um, going through the process of this amends, you know, I got to see little by little by little more and more freedom.

And each experience of that freedom gave me more power and motivation. And I saw more stuff flowing through me that enabled me to do the next thing, you know, and a momentum got built up. And I heard it explained, you know, this is like dominoes.

Like when the dominoes are stacked close together, you hit one and they all start falling down. But if there's space between them, one falls and it misses the next one, you know. And so if that momentum is going, I need to keep moving.

It can be a really dangerous thing to sit still for a little while. And I've been in that place, you know. Um, I got stuck and there were some more that I was sitting on and I just recently picked back up a couple of cards that had not gotten uh, you know, had not gotten addressed for a while and um, and I'm getting to find out that there's even more freedom available than I had imagined.

So, um, I'm glad to be able to connect with that cuz now maybe I have the motivation to go home and and look at the next one. And I'm looking forward to hearing from you. So, thank you.

>> Hi, my name is David. I'm an alcoholic. Thank you, Derek, again for this opportunity.

Um, the way I understand it, um, I came to Alcoholics Anonymous with two different problems. Um, one is that I was suffering from alcoholism. I was suffering from a seemingly hopeless condition of body and mind.

You know, I had a body that couldn't process alcohol safely, and I had a mind that could not determine whether or not to ingest alcohol. you know, that did not have control over whether or not I drank. And so, that was my one problem.

And then I had an additional problem, which is that I had a severe spiritual malady. I was I was completely blocked spiritually. And I've got these two different problems.

And here's this one over here, the alcoholism I can't do anything about. You know, that was the first thing that I got to see in looking at the first step is that I had no power over any of this stuff. I could not control what happened when booze was in my system and I had no reason to believe that I was ever going to be able to say no on an extended basis, you know.

So, here's this problem I can't do anything about. And AA comes along with this radical message that's so different than what I had heard any place else, different than what family members or friends or therapists or rehabs or TCs say. you know, all those things are saying you have to decide that you're done once and for all.

You know, make your sobriety the most important thing in your life. And and AA came along with this radically different message, which is if you're like us and sobriety is the most important thing in your life, you're in trouble because we don't have any power over our sobriety. And so what we've done and we're going to suggest to you is instead of trying to stay sober, take all of that energy and instead put it into trying to clear out a channel between you and a power that can protect you from it.

So instead of dealing with the alcoholism, I deal with the spiritual malady. And you know, I used to look at this book and our text as this is a guide to staying sober. And as I was taken through it, I got to see that they say the reason we've written this book is this book is to enable you to find a power greater than yourself which will solve your problem.

This book isn't actually about me recovering from alcoholism. It's about getting me in touch with a higher power, about getting me in touch with God. And what they found is when they got in touch with God, God handled the alcoholism.

So I don't have to worry about that problem again, you know. So we've been talking about the first nine steps the last handful of weeks and now that's the thing that was to clear out the channel. You know, I identified that problem in the first step.

I have some hope of a solution, some willingness to believe in a solution in the second. In the third then okay, well obviously there's nothing left for me to do if I've got one and two but three. You know, if there's no answer for me except this one possibility that I'm willing to believe, well then I better try to make that the focus of my energies at this point out and then four through nine are this program of action.

Bless you. That that's that's to clear out the channel between me and this power. And so now what they say when they start to talk about 10, they say we've entered the realm of the spirit, right?

We've the past is now behind us. We've looked at the selfishness, the self-centerness. We've looked at the fear and the anger and the judgmentalism and the entitlement and the grandiosity and the blame and all of this stuff.

We've looked at it. We've got it all on paper. We've dragged it out into the light where it can't survive.

We've asked God to take it away. And we've said now so that I can experience it being gone, I'm going to go out and clean this stuff up. I'm going to go out and make amends, make right these harms that I've caused.

And now that that's happened, we find that we're experiencing a form of conscious contact with this power. You know, in two, all I had to do was be willing to believe. They say that over and over again, and we agnostics.

I didn't even necessarily have to believe anything yet. I just had to be willing to believe. willing enough to do this experiment to take a shot and say, "Okay, well, I'm gonna take these particular actions that these people took." And I found that when I took them now on the other side of it, I'm experiencing a form of contact with this power.

I can now hear it more clearly. I can feel it more intensely. I can answer to it more easily.

And at this point then, it's not about belief anymore. I don't have to be willing to believe. I don't have to believe.

I now have experience. I can tell you that I have experienced this power in my life. And that I could not and would not be here sober right now if that power had not transformed me in a way that I could not possibly have imagined.

I don't have to believe anymore. I have experience. And that's an profoundly powerful thing.

And so what they say then is that you know in this state they said we've been restored to sanity. Now that's something that I had a lot of confusion about because you know anybody's welcome to an AA meeting and anybody can put their hand up and share. And so I heard lots of interesting and colorful things you know opinions and points of view about sanity and insanity and oh I was always how could I be restored to sanity?

I was never sane or oh I'm so insane. you know, I think everybody's always talking about me and I think every, you know, all these they talk about something very clearly when they talk about insanity in this book. If you find the word insanity or sanity and as you're going through, you'll see it's always coupled with the idea of the first drink.

The insanity is that with no booze in my system and every piece of evidence that my life is going to fall apart if I pick it up, my brain is unable to recognize that. And I go, "Sure, why not?" So being restored to sanity just means one very simple thing. It means I can now see the true from the false when it comes to this.

And so there's all this, you know, I I don't even I don't want to say that there's controversy over recovered or not recovered. There really isn't. You know, there's people who have had the experience of having recovered.

And I'm one of them. And then there are people that because they have not recovered, they choose to be comfortable with the opinion that it is impossible to recover. I don't need to argue with them.

I have had the experience that I am recovered from alcoholism and that what that means is in the course of any given day. The only time I think about alcohol is when there's somebody sitting in front of me that's suffering that I need to talk about alcohol in order to be helpful to that person. And that 99.9% of the time is the extent of my relationship to alcohol, whether it's whether it's, you know, practically or in my head and my heart.

And um and it's a beautiful place to be because if I had if sobriety was about what it was for me when I first came into AA, which is sitting in a meeting like, "Oh my god, let me get through this." And like, "Am I going to be able to get to sleep tonight without a drink in my system?" Gripping the edge of the chair, watching the clock, making the phone calls. If that's what sobriety is about, I would not still be here today. I wouldn't be capable of maintaining that for too long.

They say that the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us as long as we remain in fit spiritual condition. You know, does that mean people will say, "Oh, well, oh, so you're recovered, so now you can drink." No.

I I have a physical problem. I will never be able to ingest alcohol safely. But what that means is as long as I remain in this connection with God, I'm protected from that form of insanity.

I don't have to worry about the temptations, the urges, and the inability to say no when the thing comes up. So there's a qualification to that. You know, they say this is this is what we experience as long as we remain in fit spiritual condition.

Right? So, I can tell you that as long as I continue doing what I'm doing now, I will never pick up a drink again. You know, there are people that presented sobriety as though, oh, I could be doing everything that AA suggests and just be strolling down the street one day and get struck drunk, you know, and if that's the case, then really, why bother?

You know, there is much more available here than that. I can say as long as I continue to do this, I will not drink. They they use an interesting phrase.

They talk about permanent sobriety, right? Intensive work with others was vital to permanent recovery. But at the same time, I have to acknowledge to this room, I may die drunk.

And it's not because aid doesn't work. And it's not because there's no God. It's because I may stop doing this one day.

and they they make a statement, you know, and and I I really appreciate thinking about the we in this book as it's the original fellowship. It's not us today. I could look around the rooms that I go to today and say, "Oh, yeah, it seems to be easy for people to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on their laurels.

I see it happening all around me." But it's another thing to realize the original fellowship, the first 100 that were saying we've recovered. We're happy, joyous, and free. the that we've entered into conscious contact with your creator is the most important fact of our lives.

Like they're really shouting this from the rooftops. They've created this fellowship. They were saying it's easy for us to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels.

So that does two things for me. You know, on the one hand, it cuts me a little bit of slack that when I do find that I've step back in some way, that I'm distanced, I don't have to now whip myself and say, "Oh my god, I've gotten this all wrong." You know, okay. So, I can say, "Yes, I'm in I'm in good company.

I'm having an experience similar to to the one that they're talking about in here." But at the same time, I need to keep very aware of what they then say. We're headed for trouble if we do that. Alcohol is a subtle foe.

We're not cured of alcoholism. So now we're in the realm of okay, I've recovered. Now what?

And um one of the things I love, you know, they they point out in here that alcohol is just a symptom, right? So they say a much more important demonstration of our principles lies before us in our homes, occupations, and affairs. And that um this is something that and I'm trying to remember the line.

I'm going to let it go. Um this is the this is the important aspect of my surprise. Oh, it's that uh we've made a good beginning, right?

That elimination of alcohol is just the beginning. That's what it is. I used to think of that as oh okay so just not not picking up a drink is just the beginning and now we need to start the steps you know and I came to find through further study of it that what they're really talking about is they say in the original manuscript elimination of the liquor problem is just the beginning.

So when they say now in the 10th step the problem has been removed now this is just the beginning the problem being removed my recovering from alcoholism is the beginning and now it's how do I go out into the world and live now I've got a spirit that's awake and I've got no booze in my system and how do I interact with this same world that I seem to function so poorly in before people in it haven't changed what do I do So they say they had to continue to take personal inventory. Um if I'm continuing to do something, I've obviously been doing it before. And so I look to okay, where did I take inventory?

I took it in the fourth step. um when resentment, dishonesty, self-centeredness, you know, when these things crop up, when I see something pop up that is not in line with spiritual principles, I need to bring my consciousness to the moment and be able to spot that and be honest enough to acknowledge it. Um, I mentioned last week like God takes the compulsion for the defect away.

But if I'm not paying attention to what I'm doing, I could be running around acting out all kinds of crazy things that aren't in line with spiritual principles just cuz I'm not paying attention. I'm not thinking about what I'm doing. So, Bill, he talks in uh in his story about he's sort of outlining the steps and he says, "I was to test my thinking by the new God consciousness within." He's talking about that that 10th and 11th step, you know, that now I've got to now that the past is behind me and I'm in the present moment, I have to look at like what am I doing right now?

And is this in line with spiritual principles or am I beginning to build a new resentment? Am I beginning to cause new harms that later on down the line I'm just going to have to inventory those and I'm going to have to confess those and I'm going to have to make amends for those. And so instead of accumulating new garbage, let me keep keep that channel clear.

He says common sense would become uncommon sense. Right? So what I used to do is go through the world and when I was about to do something if somebody cut me off in traffic, there would be this thought of, oh, okay, well, what do most people do in that situation?

Oh, I'll flip the guy the bird or now I'm going to tailgate him or whatever. And I think, well, that's yeah, that's what most people would do in that situation. So I went by what was common sense.

What do I what do I hear? How do I hear most other people react? But what they've asked me to do at different points in this process is to look around at the world and see that the results that normal people seem to be getting aren't all that good.

And that if they're not in contact with the power that might be okay for them, but my life depends on it. And so I can't use common sense. I have to test my thinking by an uncommon sense.

Continue to look at this stuff. You know, when I see something come up, be willing to deal with it right there in the moment. That may mean excusing myself from the situation so I can go into prayer.

Sometimes it's just about pausing and in the moment being able to say, you know what, that thing I just said to you, that's not really the truth. Here's what's really going on. you know, to be able to own up to it, to be able to apologize, you know, to have a situation where I'm I'm in a store and I'm dealing with the clerk and they're, you know, I'm not happy with the policies and so I'm rude to the person and I walk out and I'm going out to the parking lot and there's that little twinge.

There's that little feeling of disease that I used to answer with a drink. I can't live with that feeling, so let me shut it off, you know? Well, I don't I don't want to go back to that having to shut it off anymore.

So, it means now I have to address it. So, it means stopping, turning around, and going back into the store and saying, "Listen, I'm sorry. I just I snapped at you.

I I wasn't getting what I wanted, and I got frustrated. I realized it's not your fault. I really apologize for that.

You're just here trying to do your job. Do the best you can." And um um you know things like that enable me to continue to enjoy life. Um I hear people talk sometimes about whether to you know do we write the stuff out or not you know um a lot of times I don't um they talk when they're talking about the 11th step they say you know at some point like we start to become more and more along the plane of inspiration as this goes right so sometimes I have an experience and I'm able to see very clearly in my head here's what's going on you are pride and entitlement and so that's what you need to be asking to have taken.

That's what you need to own up to. You know, there's other times when something's going on and I just keep thinking about what they did or I'm not able to see quite what's going on in me and so I say, "Then let me do what I let me do what I did when I first started this inventory. let me get out the paper and actually write this thing for, you know, and um and I and ideally, and I don't do this all the time, you know, but call somebody and talk to them about it, you know, to confess where I'm at, to own up to this thing so that other people who know me on this path are able to see if I'm headed in a direction that they can start to like, you know, bring me back and and say, "Damon, it looks like there's some things that this has been coming up a lot recently.

You might want to take a look at this. Um, so that's the the sort of like moment to moment stuff in the day. Um, then in 11 they talk about, you know, doing this having a process of this at night so that I can look at as I'm going through the day.

I'm trying to keep an eye on this stuff, but I'm not going to be able to see everything. I'm I'm moving around. I'm moving around and I might miss something.

And so let me take some time at night and sort of reflect on the day and think about is there anything that now that I've slow down that I can feel in my gut that maybe needs to be addressed. Um but the thing I really wanted to say about 11, you know, on the on the shades we have thought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, right? And so we talk a lot about prayer and meditation, prayer, meditation.

If I've been doing half of what they've suggested in here, I've been doing a lot of prayer and meditation throughout all of the steps, those things are suggested. So, that's not really the new ground here. What this is about is me trying to improve the contact that I've made with this power.

You know, I I heard a lot 10 and 11 uh 10, 11, and 12 really referred to as maintenance steps. But in reading them they talk about in 10 they say our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. And now in 11 they're talking about improving my contact with this power.

So okay if a little bit of contact with this power is getting me some ease and comfort well let me see what some deeper contact is going to bring me. And if this is enabling me to be more effective in the lives of others and be more helpful well then let me clear out that channel further. Um, I found some fantastic things.

You know, 11 for me is about exploration. Um, so you know, I just wanted to talk about a couple experiences that I've had. Um, I think I mentioned when I was talking about the second step, there was an attempt made to raise me with a religion and I was not having it.

Um, I it was not my concept of God. And uh, I was I was at home visiting my parents for a weekend. Um my father came down the stairs and he went out to the car and he said, "Okay, I'm going to church." And um you know, same place that he had dragged me out of bed kicking and screaming when I was a kid.

Um all the all the fighting and arguing about it, you know, and it and he does that and I'm sitting there watching television and I don't know what happened. It wasn't a conscious thought. I found my body just get up, grab my shoes, run outside carrying my shoes and say, "You know what?

I'm going to go with you. And the look on this man's face was like he didn't he didn't know what to think. He didn't know what to say, you know.

And uh and I went there with him and waiting for this service to start. And I'm and I'm in prayer asking for a new experience, asking for an open mind. And I can see that he's in prayer and he's praying quietly, but he says out loud at the end, "Thank you for bringing my son back to me." Such an amazing experience.

Now the important thing that I have to tell you is that service ended and I said this is not my concept of God. I do not belong here. All right?

But it was such a fantastic thing to feel and experience that willingness and to see it through different eyes to say how am I going to experience this practice with the spirit that's awake and how am I going to experience it with my prejudice set to the side. Um I also uh I dug into like early early a literature the Oxford group you know we get our program from a from a religious group you know originally there was this Oxford group and it was a Christian fellowship and we've grown in a lot of ways and taken the doors off of those those boundaries. Um but I was curious as to what were these people doing and one thing I found was a fantastic practice.

It's a a practice they call how to listen to God. And there's a there's an early Oxford group pamphlet where they spell out this practice of here's the first thing that you do. Here's the next thing that you do.

Here's the next thing that you do. And it's a process of going to God and bringing a specific question into meditation. And it's interesting because if you read our description of meditation in the 11 step in here and look at this, you can see that they're really talking about the same thing.

But when they say in our book, we can make some definite and practical suggestions, it's interesting. I found that that this how to listen to God, the suggestions were so much more definite and practical. I knew exactly what to do at each step of the way.

And um so I've gotten a lot of help from that and it's something that I've gotten to pass on to sponses. You know, there's not a direction to do that in the book. So, I can't tell them you must do this, but I can say, "Listen, it's what a lot of the early guys were doing, and I've gotten a great deal of help from it.

So, if you're interested, here's this thing that's available to you." Um, I wanted to reach out, look at other spiritual practices of the world. You know, I was in a um uh I was in a psych program. I had started going back to school and I was studying psychology.

I wanted to go into counseling and I took a class. I I took a religion's class just to see. And um and it was comparative religions which is basically like looking at at at the traditions of the world and seeing not how are they different from each other but like but what's in common in all this what are the principles that under underly these things forget about the names dates and places you know what do what do they all have in common and it really lit me up and I found that in these classes I was having more powerful spiritual experiences than most of the meetings that I had been at that week, you know.

Now, I hadn't found some groups like this yet, you know, but um I found that I wanted to study it more and I ended up adding it as a second major and oh my god, I first of all, I still can't believe that I'm able to say this and secondly, I can't believe that I'm coming out to AA in this. But I ended up finishing that program and saying, "You know what? I've seen lights go off in people's eyes as they're hearing about this stuff and I'm having all these powerful experiences and I think I want to be able to teach these things in the same way." And so I went to a seminary program.

If there's anything more miraculous in this world than my having not having a drink or a drug in my system in the last 10 and 1/2 years, it's that I went to seminary. Cuz if you told me that years ago that that was going to happen, I probably would have taken my life to prevent it. That's how vehemently anti-religious I was.

I still I do not have a particular system of belief. I still don't know what it is that I'm praying to. I don't understand this power.

I can't describe it to you. I don't have dogma around it. I don't have a particular tradition.

I I do and I don't. I found a faith tradition that is defined very much like Alcoholics Anonymous by they say we're not here to talk about a particular belief system. We're here to study spiritual principles.

You believe whatever you want. So you have people there with all kinds of different belief systems. Um that was the only home that I would have felt comfortable in.

Um and so um I I felt like this is what I need to do with my life. You know, I need to find some way to continue to to grow in this and talk about this. Um I got involved with something that um has become very dear to my heart.

There's this thing Step by step which I stumbled upon uh while I was going to school. Um, it's basically like it's a it's a cross between a service, a worship service and a meeting where it's people from all different with all different addictions, from all different fellowships coming together not to talk about how to stay away from their thing, but how to get closer to this power and looking at looking at spiritual texts from around the world and from all different traditions and how do they match up with what our program talks about, you know? Um, so that's been a big part of my spiritual practice.

um times that I have uh laxed in you know I I haven't had um as many sponses in my life that has been a form of being able to carry a message just like our original 12step said having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps we tried to carry this message to others especially alcoholics is what they said because they they say our we're sure our way of life has its advantages for all right so I why do I want to limit this experience to only other addicts. Like, let me offer this to everyone. Um, and that brings me I'm going to have to squeeze in 12.

I'm I apologize for that. But, um, you know, maybe it makes sense that I didn't talk as much about 12 because I personally feel like there doesn't need to be a direction for 12. You know, if I really have had a spiritual awakening as the result of this process, if I was suffering and agonizing in my life before and a solution has been given me where I had an experience like they described, feeling reborn, not in the afterlife, here and now, feeling reborn.

If I've really had that experience, nobody's got to tell me to talk to people about it. I want to jump up out of my chair and run and be like, "Do you have any idea what's possible here?" I I moved out here and I found some wonderful groups and wonderful solution and all I can do is think about the meetings that I used to go to in Manhattan in Brooklyn where people are suffering and have no idea that something like what's happening in this room is going on. And I feel like what am I even doing here?

Like let's get up and GO TO THE CITY. COME ON, GET IN YOUR CAR, you know? Um, I've learned so much more about these principles and about this program by taking other people through it than by me being taken through it myself.

You know, this is really where the joy comes in. And um, you know, I I guess I'll I'll say too, um, I never say no when someone asks for help. If somebody asks for my number, somebody asked for sponsorship.

Um, and it's God has an interesting way of working things out. I mean, if I had to take through all 12 steps, every person that's asked me for help, it would absolutely be thoroughly impossible. But the reality is, most people that ask don't follow through.

And so, I have the freedom to be able to say yes to everyone and let God sort out or let their fear sort out what my what my load is actually going to be. And there's times when it's really intense and I'm sponsoring a whole stable of guys and I feel like, wow, I this is a little too much for me to handle right now, you know, and I don't know, you know, then a couple of the people they drift off into space. They got an inventory to work on and they don't feel like it.

They got better ideas and a couple drop off and then a few weeks later somebody else comes along and a couple more people come along, you know. Um, it's been a wonderful, wonderful journey. I wish that I had left more time to talk about 12, but I don't want to take up uh hearing from you.

So, I'm going to stop now. Thank you for this experience. >> Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise.

If you enjoyed today's episode, please give it a thumbs up as it will help share the message. Until next time, have a great day. >>