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.

We hope to always remain an ad-free podcast. So, if you'd like to help us remain self-supporting, please visit our website at sober-onrise.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. >> Morning everybody. >> Morning.

>> What a great place to have uh have a retreat. Oh, and by the way, these waters are mine. All of them.

Uh nobody uh nobody gets any of these. Uh want to thank Dave again for uh for having the the vision um to put something like this together. Uh it's, you know, a lot of times uh I get to go to these things and a lot of times they're in the basement of, you know, some uh uh clubhouse somewhere or something.

And you know to to have the uh ability to to experience nature the way way we have is is really special. I got to show Peter the the howler monkeys this morning. I mean you know that's not going to happen in uh Bayon.

Uh but uh my topic this morning is uh is is the gift of desperation. Basically basically step one. Um I I spend a lot of time when I'm working with someone on step one.

If you look in the big book, uh there's something like 60 pages that are that are basically about step one and then you look at the rest of the program and it's about 80 more pages or so uh moving up through uh working with others. So there's a there's a giant emphasis in uh in the in the recovery material on step one. And you know, I had a lot of misconceptions um prior to wanting to quit drinking, after wanting to quit quit drinking, after going to treatment, after being exposed to afterare, and after being an alcoholic synonymous a while.

I had a lot of misconceptions about alcoholism and what step one was. Uh back in the 80s, you heard a lot of oneliners. Um uh there was oneliners are basically short wisdom sayings.

Uh they they're very helpful these oneliners because you can remember them. You know I I always remember this one. Uh it was a grizzly old old-timer came up to me one time and he goes Chris underneath every skirt's a slip.

You know I thought whoa you know how profound. And uh and you know these these oneliners are very easy to remember and sometimes they're even accurate. Uh many times they're misleading to someone like myself uh because I tend to overthink things.

You know, I can complicate a onecar funeral pretty quickly and if you give me one of those oneliners, I'll make it mean whatever I want. Now, uh I heard a lot of things in in in the 80s. Um you know, alcoholism is be being an alcoholic is like being pregnant.

You're not just a little bit alcoholic. And I find that one to be as inaccurate as you can possibly get because again I talked last night about the scale of alcoholism. Some of us are sicker than others.

That's one of the ones I I believe in. That's I I think that's a great saying. Some of us are sicker than others.

One of the mistakes that we can make though when talking about sicker than others is to think that you're a better AA member if you're sicker. We're the only people in the world that reverse brag. In other words, you had three car crashes.

I had six, you know, you went to four treatment centers, I went to 12. You know, we we reverse brag, which, you know, if you tried that at a Rotary Club meeting, uh, you know, it would it wouldn't go over that well. But, uh, but understanding the problem is always the key to being able to move forward into a solution.

Uh Bill Wilson was like a kind of a failed businessman, failed stock speculator, analyst. And so he used a lot of business terminology, uh a lot of business analogies. And if you look at some of those, um let's just use one right now.

If a business is in trouble, the first thing you need to do is accurately identify where what the trouble is. where is it coming from? So as al as as an alcoholic who uh gets gets the opportunity to work with other people, the first thing I do is help someone to selfqualify.

What is an alcoholic? Uh what are some of the signs? What is a description uh a basic description of an of an alcoholic?

Where are you on the scale? These are all important things uh for someone to understand because depending on those items may depend upon how much work they're going to have to put into this thing to be successful. There's probably 10 million alcoholics out in the world today who truly believe that AA does not work for them because they showed up in some meetings, they did a couple of halfmeasured things, they wandered away, they got drunk, and they truly you couldn't convince them that AA has an answer for them.

But AA has an answer for every alcoholic. It it it really does. It's the misunderstanding.

It's the not a it's it's the inability to really know what the problem is that usually stumbles us up. So this is why the first step is uh is is so important. The first time I drank um I cut school with a couple of my buddies.

I was about 13 years old and we decided we were going to we were going to cut school and we were going to go to my mother's house cuz she was at work and we were going to get drunk cuz I had some whiskey up in the closet. And we did that. Me and uh these two guys named name named uh named John came to my house and and I pulled out a bottle of Four Roses whiskey.

Nice big cord of Four Roses whiskey. not knowing much about the drinking game at that time. Uh because there wasn't there was some beer drinking in my house, but there wasn't any real alcoholic behavior in my house.

I really didn't know. I'd seen some John Wayne movies where you pour a big water glass of whiskey and you drink it down and then you go shoot somebody, but that's about all I knew about uh about drinking. So So I poured three big water glasses of Four Roses whiskey and I passed them out.

I had one. Uh, my two friends had one and I started to drink and it tasted like absolute crap. I I mean, Canadian whiskey is really not sipping whiskey, but I didn't know that.

I'm drinking it and uh, you know, you had to be cool, so you had to like, you know, get past that taste to drink it down. Now, I want to tell you what happened to the two guys I was drinking with before I tell you what happened to me. They drank about 2/3 of their glass and they'd had enough.

You ever drink with people that have enough on you? >> Is that annoying? >> What do you mean you've had enough?

What do you mean you have to go home for dinner with to see the little wifey? Are you out of your mind? You know, I I mean, it was I I'll never drink with you again.

You know, we got to we got to close down the town when when we're drink. Anyway, they had twothirds of their their their glass and they'd had enough and they sat back and they watched the show. Now, that really is the normal the normal non-alcoholic reaction to alcohol.

You have a little bit of it, you have just enough, you know, maybe you get a little lightaded, maybe you start to spin a little, you you feel maybe not in control. That's a that's a normal effect of putting ethyl alcohol in your body. What happened to me was immediately the phenomenon of craving took over.

I I was an alcoholic, you know, before I picked up a drink. I was like a little campfire that was smoldering and all you had to do was add alcohol for the flames because what happened was when I drank twothirds of my glass, I finished my glass. I finished their glasses and I finished the bottle and I went into my first blackout.

Um I understand that today in hindsight looking back that it was a phenomenon of craving and you know science has uh has kind of explained this as the way we metabolize alcohol. you know, it burns into different uh uh uh different u type types of uh uh uh uh chemicals and it creates an actual physical craving for more alcohol. That's why uh when some of us go out to the bar to just have two, you know, we're clo we're closing the place or we're just going to have one or two drinks before we go to motor vehicles and to get our license back for a DUI and we get drunk out of our mind.

Or we've promised the boss that we're not going to get drunk at the Christmas party. I'm just going to have a couple of beers. Don't worry, I'm not going to embarrass you.

And you end up busting the car windows out with a baseball bat in front of all his clients. you know, you know, this is this is what would happen to me. So, uh, so anyway, the very first time alcohol entered my body in a significant way, I experienced the phenomena phenomenon of craving.

Now, each alcoholic is different. Some of us drink our way into that craving. Some of us never really have it to the extent that others have it.

It's a genetic bullet, you know. It's it's not uh Jonathan said last night, it's not causal. It's not because, you know, your mother put you on the toilet backwards when you were a kid.

It's not because you came from a terrible childhood. It's not. It's a genetic bullet.

And some of us have it and some of us don't. So, I'm 13. I go into a blackout.

I trash the house. And then I go into one of those hangovers where you have to be horizontal for two or three days. You're you're vomiting, you know, straight up in the air and it's coming down on you like a fountain.

I mean, you know, those type of uh hangovers. I mean, I was just I was physically devastated. Now, if any other substance any other substance would have affected me like that, like like a papaya.

If I would have ate a papaya and got that sick and been sick for two days, I got to tell you, I never would have had a papaya again the rest of my life. I would not have had to join papaya anonymous and get a papaya anonymous sponsor that I would call if I'm feeling the urge to eat a papaya. I would have had I would have had the the adequate mental defense against putting a papaya down my throat pretty easily with no trouble.

But here's here's the other trick to alcoholism. Alcohol alcohol does for us something that it doesn't do for the normal drinker. The normal drinker gets a little fuzzyheaded, a little giddy, a little sociable, you know, and I'm always thinking, well, you know, finish about four more of those and go from giddy to fun, will you?

Cuz you're boring right now. Let's do some drinking. Anyway, uh anyway, it does something for us.

Now, what does it does do for us? The hardest thing for me to understand with the first step was the after the dash. I understood that if I put alcohol in my body, I would be drinking and I'd get the job done.

That was that from day one. I understood that. I also understood toward the end of my drinking that if I made a firm resolution never to drink again, that that that wasn't worth the paper it was written on.

I could mean it, but I would change my mind, you know. So, that's the uh that's the obsession of the mind and the allergy of the body. Now after the dash is a little bit more difficult to understand because there are people in the meetings today who will tell you life on life's terms you know uh we all go through tough times we all feel emotional we all do you know there's a lot of our emotional and our spiritual and our our our psychic uh life that is impacted in a gigantic way by alcoholism and it's very very hard to discern because as the book says our our our it feels like it's our normal life.

The way we suffer feels like it's part of our normal life and we think we don't equate that with the alcohol. The alcohol actually helps the unmanageability in most of us. Alcohol is more of an answer to the alcoholic than it is a problem because of this unmanageability.

Now, the book Alcoholics Anonymous in different places. I I kind of wish that they would have summarized it like in in a paragraph like they did the obsession of the mind, theology of the body, but they don't. They talk about it in different places in the big book.

In the doctor's opinion, they talk about being restless, irritable, and discontented unless you can once again that feel that sense of ease and comfort upon pounding down a couple of bourbons. Has anybody in here felt restless, irritable, and discontented in a sober state of mind? Duh.

You know, that was my normal uh you know, op that was a good day for me. You know, back in the days when I was drinking restless irri was in the 12 item line with 13 items, I was I was going to slash their tires out in the parking lot. I mean, I was so in, you know, and if somebody was doing less than the speed limit in front of me, what's the matter with you?

Don't you know I got somewhere to go? You know, impatient, irritable. Oh, very quick to take offense.

Anybody in here very quick to take offense? What did you say? You You know what?

You know what I mean? I mean, that that's like a normal day for me. Now that's alcoholism.

Do non-alcoholics suffer from that? Absolutely. But it's not a chronic state of mind normally in non-alcoholics.

Now a good day is restless, irritable, discontented. An average day is being prey to misery, depression, anxiety, selfcentered fear, feelings of uselessness, fe, you know, feelings of of of just, you know, this is just not there's something just wrong. I just I just don't I don't feel like being here, you know.

I I I want to I just I got to get out of here. I just want to go somewhere else, you know. uh or or else somebody would invite you somewhere and you would figure out 12 reasons why you don't want to go.

I mean, your life gets smaller and smaller and smaller as an alcoholic. You you you uh you protect your alcoholic environment more and more, you know, and and mine was protected to the point where really my last two years of drinking were done in a in a bedroom. I mean, I I I was I just I couldn't I couldn't really leave the house without there being problems, you know?

I I love the people that talk about being bar drinkers their whole life. I I didn't last 10 minutes in a bar. What would happen is I'd get in a fight, the bartender would cut me off or I pass out on the bar.

All three of which they get annoyed with. And and and the the getting cut off really annoys me. I you know I would be insensed when I got cut off.

You cutting me off? Don't you know who I am? Don't you know I'll kill you?

You know, I mean, I I it was just so so I I couldn't I couldn't do the bar thing after a while. So So that's a that's a typical day. That self-centered fear that keeps you from being able to step out easy.

You take three or four drinks, four or five drinks, and guess what? You can now step out easy. You're restless, irritable, and discontented.

You take a couple of couple of drinks and you're just like, ah, you know, the world is as it should be. I mean, see how alcohol really is the solution to the unmanageability. Now, the worst part of the unmanageability they talk about in a vision for you.

The vision for you chapter is wonderful. It's got a dark vision, the vision of chronic alcoholism, and then it's got a vision of recovery. There's two opposing visions.

And what I think Bill was trying to do in that chapter was show you good reason to embrace this process of recovery because because a dark vision versus a vision of recovery, there's really no choice. You know, not only is it about our survival, our survival, but it's about our our sanity. It's about our ability to cope on this planet.

But anyway, in that chapter, it talks about pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. Anybody ever been there? Uhhuh.

>> Anybody ever been suicidal at periods of time? You know, not too many people raise their hand in Rotary Club meetings either. >> But I'll tell you this, the alcoholic is 60 times more likely to take their own life than the non-alcoholic.

And we normally don't do it drunk. Sometimes we do, but normally we don't do it drunk. We do it in that period between drugs where we're suffering from pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization.

We can't see life with alcohol. We can't see life without alcohol. We're at that jumping off place.

We we wish for the end. You know, that's the dark vision that they talk about in a vision for you. And that's that's extreme chronic alcoholism in instage alcoholism that pitiful and incomprehensible, you know, I felt situational uh pitiful and incomprehensible normalization when I would do stupid things, you know, when when I would grab the the boss's wife's ass at the Christmas party drunk or something and wake up the next morning going, "Oh, no.

I I can't believe I did that." But toward the end, it was a chronic state I would come to in the morning just being humiliated with being me. It was such a burden to be me. And I would long for the weekends where I could get drunk out of my mind, pass out, come to, start drinking as quick as I could to get drunk out of my mind again, pass out, come to, start drinking.

and somewhere around Sunday afternoon try to pull out of this so that I could maybe get to work. I was drinking for oblivion. And it talks about that in the book.

That oblivion was the vacation from the restlessness, the irritability, the discontent, the self-centered fear, the depression, the anxiety, the pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. I needed a vacation from that because I was not I was not going to make it. If I had to feel that way day after day after day, I would take my own life.

Many nights I sat with a 38 caliber handgun cocked to my head, cursing myself for the being cowardly enough not to be able to pull the trigger. Now, that's not normal behavior, you know. No, Aunt Fanny and Uncle Fud don't sit there with a gun to their head.

You know what I mean? This is this is the chronic unmanageability of alcoholism. And it creeps up on you by seconds and inches a minute, a day, a week, a month, a year at a time, and it becomes your normal consciousness.

This unmanageability. Now, I didn't know any of this stuff when I staggered into Alcoholics Anonymous. I no one no one sat me down and got me clear on the first step.

They told me I had a drinking problem. Now, in in certain aspects, I could understand that because drinking was was literally poisoning me. I found out 20 years after I quit drinking that going into a blackout, passing out and being, you know, unwakeupable is alcohol poisoning.

That's you've poison. That's that's alcohol poisoning. If they would drag you into a hospital in that state, they would pump your stomach and when you came to, they would tell you that you were near death and you better quit drinking.

But that's what I did every single time I drank. I I drank myself into unconsciousness. Again, this is not everybody's experience.

Uh but it but it was mine. Now, when I showed up, I understood that the continued drinking like that was going to devastate me physically. It was certainly uh it was certainly racking my my uh my my emotional state, you know.

I mean, I knew that alcohol was somewhat involved in all this, but I still didn't think these people understood because alcohol did something for me that other things couldn't do. It gave me at least a little bit of break for myself. But I did understand the fact that I was poisoning myself and I was going to probably die pretty quickly if I continued to drink.

So I showed up at the Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and I started to do the Alcoholics Anonymous fellowship stuff. went to a lot of meetings, got a sponsor, got a home group, made the coffee. I was a secretary here, the gsr there, you know, uh went out to the diners, ma made, you know, made all new friends, all new friends in AA, you know, I did all the the the fellowship stuff out of a sense of desperation, not trying to be a a good AA, not trying to get A's in AA, I did it because I just didn't want to want to feel bad anymore.

And uh somewhere along uh somewhere along the way uh I learned that uh I learned a little bit about alcoholism. I started to put the pieces together and I started to see just how aggressive alcoholism was. If there's one thing that an alcoholic does that all alcoholics do, it's minimize.

We are always in way more trouble than we think we are. Every single one of us is always in way more trouble than we think we are. Right now, I'm in way more trouble than I think I am.

If you have any unfinished amends, you are in way more trouble than you think you are. If you haven't gone through the steps in a couple of years and renewed your spiritual practices through prayer and meditation and you're not working with other alcoholics, you are in way more trouble than you think you are if you're an alcoholic. That's across the board.

It's something that we all suffer from because the ego bs at investigation as uh the 12 and 12 states. Now, looking back on uh on my trials and my tribulations during my early years of bitter struggle in Alcoholics Anonymous, I look back with um with an eye of gratitude on what I went through and all the pain that I suffered. Um I believe that the alcoholic is an unresolved mystic.

And I want to explain what I mean by that. What a mystic is is a my a mystic is someone who is desperately searching for a connection to the divine. How I searched for it was with drugs and alcohol.

I tried to get myself to that perfect state. Just enough cocaine, just enough booze to be right there. You know what I mean?

And I would always overshoot the mark and turn into a vomiting pig. But uh but I was searching desperately for that sense of ease and comfort. I was searchingly I was searching desperately for that sense of everything is all right.

That I'm in the right place at the right time with the right people. I was desperately searching for that. Now I think that's what motivates a lot of mystics.

The people who go into the religious orders and go into uh you know silent meditation for 5 years. The people who become high lamas you know uh the people that go to India and study uh with the with the Daly Lama and the people who you know go you know join the convents or join the priesthoods or whatever. I think that innate in mankind is the need to touch that divine.

We come from the divine and we need to go back to the divine and touch that. Now the alcoholic is an exaggerated form of that type of uh that type of uh uh belief system. I think that we desperately sought that peace that can really only come from a spiritual peace and we looked for why do you why do you think alcohol is called spirits?

I mean, you know, when I first started drinking, they were called the spirit stores. They weren't called the the the uh they weren't called the liquor stores. They were called the spirits, wine and spirits.

Spirits, spiritus, you know, the breath of God. That's what they used to call alcohol. And we were going after that breath of God to escape that unmanageability and try to get back to the sense of divine.

this some of those senses of being able to touch the divine that we felt in our childhood. You know, each of us has has felt that. Bill Wilson talks about it going into Winchester Cathedral.

Then he talks about many of us have seen like a sunset or it's just been a beautiful perfect day and we get that sense that this is a beautiful perfect day and we're right where we want to be right where we need to be and God is wonderful and loving and everything is wonderful and we've had those those those experiences of sator. We're on a desperate quest for that as alcoholics and a lot of times we die heading in that direction and it warps our minds and it warps our ability to believe and it becomes very unspiritual. It becomes very decadent and very ugly and very tody and very vacant.

You know this quest for uh for the spirit through alcohol or drugs. And that's when we get to that a lot of us get to that jumping off point. Now many of uh many of the spiritual sages and teachers believe that a spiritual journey starts through adversity.

Very few of us are going to be motivated to dedicate our s our our our lives to a life of service and compassion without having our ass a little bit on fire. We come from we come from and are motivated and are pointed toward the spirit through adversity. And not all seekers um of the divine are alcoholic.

Many of them many of them are driven in that direction through really bad childhoods or trauma in their life or death of loved ones or or physical abuse or whatever. A lot of a lot of people are are pointed in those directions, but most of them do not go after a spiritual life out of a sense of virtue. They go after that spiritual life from a sense of I don't want to feel this way anymore.

And so I think as alcoholics starting uh a spiritual journey, we're doing it to get out of the fire, not to get to the light. And the good news is is that um that the spiritual journey that that we have to accept is an answer not only to our alcohol problem, but it's an answer to our living problem. It's an answer to being better equipped to experience this God-given spiritual journey called life on earth.

and the people who can get past the misunderstandings, you know, the the bad meetings, uh the the lack of, you know, true understanding of what alcoholism really is or the solution really is. The people that can get out past that and into the operational methodology of spiritual living will experience unbelievable joy in their lives, an unbelie unbelievable um an unbelievable quality to their to their life. And that's what's really special, I believe, about Alcoholics Anonymous.

Now, I I've done a lot of uh Bigbook workshops and I've worked with a lot of people and whenever I'm working with someone, I I you know, I've got an open big book and without exaggeration, I've probably gone through the big book, uh except for the stories, the first 164 between four and 600 times. Uh you know, I know evangelists that haven't gone through the Bible that many times. I mean, you know, and listen, I don't reread anything, okay?

I give books away as soon as I'm done reading them. But the book Alcoholics Anonymous is a spiritual classic. And the definition, in my opinion, of a spiritual classic is a book that will meet you where you are and open vistas in your understanding and belief systems where you are and will continue to do so throughout your spiritual journey.

I believe that there's a handful of books that I've experienced that can be called spiritual classics and the alcoholics synonymous is one because every single time I go through it I gain a little bit more understanding of of where Bill was at when it was being written. a little bit more understanding of the spiritual mechanics and processes uh that he's explaining and a little bit more about uh the spiritual life and the promises inherent in that spiritual life. Every single time uh I go through the book.

Now my first exposure to the book Alcoholics Anonymous was in treatment. They gave us a book upon admission. Here's your big book.

Here's your stepbook. Here's your lirium. Okay, those are those are the three things they gave me.

Uh they didn't they didn't require that you read it, but you know, we had a lot of downtime, you know, uh and uh you know, in between the Father Martin movies, there was a lot of downtime. So, so I read this thing and I read it like it was the it was the Da Vinci Code. Man, I blew through this thing 100 miles an hour.

When I got to the end, I thought, not very well written. Bill Wilson's kind of a loser. You know, this thing is dated.

It's using ter Why didn't they update some of the verbs and adjectives to meet, you know, modern day? You know, what is it with this thing? Uh, the enormity of its significance completely eluded me on my first read.

Uh, some of the stories touched me a little bit because every once in a while there was somebody that actually was alcoholic in those stories and I recognized some of their symptoms and some of their their viewpoints when they were talking about their drinking, but that was it. I I did not see this as a vehicle to my salvation. Uh, certainly not.

And they certainly weren't saying that it was in this treatment center. And they certainly weren't saying that it was in the AA meetings. They were basically telling me not to drink.

Go to meetings. Take the cotton out of your ears. Stick it in your mouth.

Keep it simple. Think, think, think. Easy does it.

Shut up. And that's basically what I I was getting in the early days. Now, thank God I got through that to get exposed to the problem because the problem is the springboard to the solution.

I thank God today that I have an accurate appraisal of my alcoholic condition. Even though I'm minimizing it a little bit, I still have kind of an accurate understanding of my alcoholism. Here's what would happen if I stopped the spiritual disciplines, the fellowship activity or being of service.

Probably in about 3 months, I would be crankier than you can imagine. I would be restless. I'd be irritable.

I'd be discontented. Self-centered fear would come back. Depression would come back.

Anxiety would come back. That's what would happen. And it would happen slowly.

Wouldn't happen the day I stopped making coffee at the home group. It would happen slowly and imperceptibly and inch by inch this unmanageability would creep up on me until I was exposed to or susceptible to the obsession of the mind which would convince me that just a bottle of vodka. I need a little vacation from me, you know, it's just going to be that one bottle.

I just I just need a retreat. I need to retreat for myself a little bit. and I would be drunk somewhere between 3 months and two years.

Who knows? I don't know. But I know that that would happen.

That's my my accurate self- appraisal. So the spiritual life has to come first for me. I make that clear with my wife who is just the most lovely, understanding person in the world.

She even encourages me if I haven't been to a meeting in a while. Hey, I think you need a meeting. You know, not like you're an go to a meeting more like, you know, I've been watching and you've only hit two meetings.

Why don't you why don't you go find somebody to talk to? Why don't you call so and so? When's the last time you did you did a full-blown four-step inventory?

She's very encouraging. And this is coming from a non-alcoholic. She just seems to get it.

There are actually spiritual people out there that don't have to go to 10,000 meetings, you know? they they just tend to get uh intuitively um the fact that some of us need to put into practice the spiritual life to be okay because we're we're a little sick. So I know that I know that's my first step truth.

I believe that when I sit with someone, it's my job for them to get to a point where they understand their first step truth. Sometimes this is really difficult. I've had treatment center commitments for 20 years and there's this place that I go to in upper New Jersey which is it it's the it's it's considered I don't believe it to be true but it's considered to be the last door you can go through.

They accept you if you failed at a number of treatment centers prior to and this place minimum stay at this place is eight months. I've seen people stay there for two years locked down. No phone, no nothing, nothing.

Just you. You know what I mean? And I've had commitments I've had commitments at this place for almost 20 years.

And even being locked down for over a year, some of these people still just don't get it. They don't understand hopelessness. They don't understand the need for surrender.

They think that if they could just get the hell out of here, everything will be all right. I know now. Thanks for the information.

I got the book. I got the book. I'm good.

They don't get the insidious insanity that happens to us. They they have not touched that enough to be able to make a full surrender. So, when I work with somebody today, normally it's people who've been through the steps already.

You know, they want a new experience, but every once in a while, I get a newcomer. I've got two newcomers I'm working with now. I don't let them go until I'm sure that they know where they are on the scale of alcoholism, that they know where they are as it relates to powerlessness, as it relates to unmanageability.

We get very, very clear. I've got some exercises I give people. I'll give them the bedment exercises.

You know, we were afraid of misery, depress, you know, the beds. And I'll have them do multiple paragraphs on each bedment and how that's showing up in their life today. I'll have them un underline every single promise in the big book.

I'll then make them go back and have them underline every bit of unmanageability. I'm not going to let them go until I'm convinced that they're they're clear on their truth about their alcoholism. Because if you let somebody go who doesn't really understand or doesn't really know, they're going to be part of the halfmeasure club.

And a lot of times the half measure club make it. Meeting makers make it. Halfmeasure meeting makers can make it.

They can depending on where they are on the scale. But if you've got a tiger by the tail, if you've got one of the real deals, they're not they're not going to make it. Um the the meetings are not going to be aggressive enough uh to counteract their alcoholism.

Their alcoholism is cunning, baffling, powerful, and awesome to behold in its nature. Anybody here ever seen newcomers with their plans? >> That's my favorite.

Newcomer newcomer plants. Aren't they the best? >> I collect them and trade them with my friends.

So there there's an act there's actual an actual process. I probably spend more time on on the first step with people than I do on any other step. Cuz if they do a good job identifying, if they do a good job of finding their own truth, I won't have to push them through the steps.

I won't have to do more more work than they do, you know, going through the steps. They are going to have a motivation born from desperation. and they're going to understand that they need to lock into the power uh that power that helps us go through the steps.

I believe that we don't have the power to go through the steps on our own. I've seen too many people who really wanted to go through the steps, not go through the steps. I believe that we need to tie into that power through some prayer, through some meditation, through some surrender to be able to start moving forward with the steps every single day.

I need God's help living a spiritual life. I can't do it on my own. I on my own uh you know I fall short in word, thought, and deed every single day.

My you know, I have feet of clay. And it's only through the power of God uh manifesting in me in very mysterious ways sometimes uh that I'm able to take one foot forward and continue to do enough of this stuff uh to be able to stay in the recovered state. Um you know in in today's day and age um especially around the time when I got sober there are multiple issues out there.

It's not just about alcohol anymore. Um, there are some really insidious drugs. Anybody Anybody heard of bath salts?

You know, I mean, there's crazy drugs that are showing up now that are monstrously addictive and unbelievably destructive. And there are people coming in that are just blown up through drug and alcohol use. And uh, and how I approach that is in the same way.

Whatever drug they're using, I let them use the big book. And where it says alcohol, I just change the name to crack cocaine or whatever. Uh I don't I don't work with a lot of drug addicts because I believe in the the singleness of purpose and I believe that they they would be better served working with someone with their own experience.

However, you know, sometimes uh sometimes I'm really the uh I'm really the only uh only only person available uh or around. So I've had experience working with people with multiple problems and multiple issues. And and I can say this, the good news is, you know, the power of God is sufficient.

Power of God is sufficient. I don't care what you're on. I don't care what you you've been doing.

You can recover. It's a mistake to think that you are not going to have to work very hard for it though. Um, oneliners like easy does it.

I I just don't like I understand why that slogan is up on the wall because some of us come in just, you know, wanting to get this thing done, you know, give me the steps, give me, you know, give me the book. I want to get the hell out of here. I got a life to live.

You know, I understand that there's appropriate um uh appropriate understandings of things like easy does it. But in my case, easy never did nothing. You know what I mean?

Um, I had to do a lot of work, a lot of painful work, a lot of pushing through that self-centered fear, especially in things like the fifth step, especially in things like the ninth step. I had to push through monstrous self-centered fear. If I go back to my ex boss, he'll think I'm a jerk.

I mean, that one blocked me from making amends for about six months now. I look back on it and I think, "What a stupid thing to think. Who cares what my boss thinks?

I'm gonna die." You know what I mean? I'm gonna die. But I'll die.

I just don't want to look stupid. You know what I mean? I mean, it's insane.

But I had to push through that self-centered fear. I had to push through the fear just going to meetings. Every single meeting I went to for years, it was tough walking through that door.

You know, who's going to be in there? Am I going to know? I might have to have to sit by myself.

I mean all these thoughts it was it was it was tough but I had to do that. I had to start changing. Now you know I believe that uh change is is very difficult for us.

I know that we need help doing it. Uh knowing how to live a good life is the booby prize in Alcoholics Anonymous because knowing how is not offering you the ability to. I had to do a whole lot of work uh to start to even get close to living uh a decent life.

And all that came from the motivation and the understanding that I got in step one. Uh you know, if you're new and you're coming back and you haven't had um uh a spiritual guide really show you this stuff in the book, I highly recommend that you do. It may mean the difference between staying or going.

It may mean the difference between life and death. It really may because many many of us leave the meetings somewhere along our path through these meetings. We find them to be an overreaction and something that we no longer need to do because we've got this thing.

And you remember alcoholism is uh cunning, baffling, and powerful. It's just it's waiting. It's the ego is waiting to grab you back and start to move you around because the ego needs control.

That's its whole purpose. It's it's a survival belief system that is out of place with an alcoholic. It can cause our destruction.

So, if you're new or coming back, get with somebody who can explain this stuff to you. Once this is explained to you, once you have a full concession to your innermost self about the truth of your stock and trade, your alcoholism, the rest of this is going to be uh the rest of this is going to be forward momentum. It it really will.

And in a very short period of time, you will find that your spirit has awakened. Um you are experiencing some profound promises in your life. You have been reborn of the spirit and your old alcoholic life is something that you'll always remember but you no longer really experience on a dayto-day basis.

If you're working with other alcoholics, please take the time to sit down with the book and at least go through um the important areas of step one, the first paragraph in we agnostics. If when you honestly want to, you find you cannot give up drinking entirely or or uh or or if when drinking you have little or no control over the amount you take. That's an important one.

The bedments are important. The doctor's opinion is important. Please go through this with your uh uh with your protege because you do not want it to be your fault that you did not offer sufficient exposure to the problem so that they would become motivated to seek the solution.

You do not want it to be your fault. Take your job very very seriously where it concerns the first step. Also going to the first step, uh you can you can unqualify a lot of people who are just going to be a headache, you know, moving forward anyway.

They're going to be the sponsies that make you look bad anyway. So, uh you know, if uh if it's not their truth, if it's not their truth, they could, you know, it's not like you're going to kick them out of AA if they're not alcoholic. Nobody is the AA police, but if they're not alcoholic, it's not your responsibility to work with them.

You can continue to do so out of a out of a sense of uh you know compassion but it's not your not your job to do so. If however someone does qualify as an alcoholic you need to make yourself available for an adequate presentation and motivation through the rest of the steps. That's your job.

Take that job seriously. We die. We die.

And we die in very very pathetic ways. the alcoholic. When the alcoholic checks out, he is bankrupt and vacant in every way possible.

You know, you don't want to be part and parcel of that. So, take your job seriously. You know, uh be very honest and very forthright, but never talk down to an alcoholic like you're some faking guru and they need to polish your car before you give, you know, talk to them about, you know, recovery.

Don't do that because we've been shamed enough out there. Alcohol has alcohol has shamed us enough. We don't need a sponsor that's going to shame us.

We need a spiritual guide. Someone who's going to offer us u um someone who's going to offer us an adequate presentation of the material that's going to give us sufficient defense against the next strength. And that's all I have on step one.

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.

>>