AA/NA Speaker – Arthur D. – Dallas, TX – 2018
Arthur D. from Dallas shares his recovery story: from drug addiction and homelessness to spiritual awakening through surrender and the Big Book. An AA speaker on finding freedom beyond sobriety.
Arthur D. from Dallas, TX spent 11 years in the program but relapsed spectacularly—blowing $20,000 in a month while tweaking alone in his closet with loaded pistols nearby. In this AA speaker tape, he walks through what changed when his friend Glenn hugged him instead of judging him, and how a second, deeper surrender led him from white-knuckling sobriety to actual spiritual connection. His talk is about the difference between stopping using and finding freedom.
Arthur D. shares his journey from crack cocaine and heroin addiction in New York to 23+ years of recovery in Dallas, describing the moment he surrendered to a power greater than himself. This AA speaker tape covers two key surrenders: the first when his relapse ended in his friend’s hug, and the second when he realized working the steps mechanically wasn’t connecting him to God. He explores how letting go of ideas—even the process itself—paradoxically opened him to the spiritual experience the program promises.
Episode Summary
Arthur D. opens with a simple premise: don’t believe his story, but map your own experiences onto it and see if the directions he took work for you. What follows is a raw, unflinching account of a man who had everything externally—a six-figure job, a house, a fine car, a family—and lost it all to crack cocaine, heroin, and the obsession that defines addiction.
Growing up in Queens, New York, Arthur D.’s childhood was brutal: his mother abandoned him, his father was a career criminal, and he bounced between foster care and juvenile detention. He took his first hit at 12 and felt, for the first time, like he wasn’t afraid. Like he was okay. He spent the next decades chasing that feeling every single day.
By the time he lands in Dallas, he’s been arrested for aggravated assault, fled interstate, pawned his own possessions and other people’s to feed his addiction. He’s holding loaded pistols at 3 a.m., convinced SWAT teams are coming. His wife, who had never seen him high, takes one look at his coked-out face and tells him she’s scared. He uses all night anyway.
The next morning, at 10 a.m., he’s running low. His friend Glenn is coming to fix his remote. Arthur D. knows he should say “come back at 1:00,” because he needs to score more dope. Instead, something breaks. He tells Glenn: “I’ve been smoking crack and I can’t stop.” Glenn hugs him. His arms fall. It’s over.
That surrender—that moment of absolute defeat while sitting in a $500,000 house—launches him into a different kind of recovery. He walks into his old home group at Wham East, asks for a sponsor, and says something that cracks him open: “I don’t have God, dude. I don’t have two weeks.”
What unfolds over the next months is Arthur D.’s agonizing discovery that 11 years of meetings, sponsorship, and sobriety had left him spiritually numb. He got a sponsor who hands him 36 one-hour tapes, a black pen, and tells him to write only in the margins—nothing else. Arthur D. listens twice, writes inventory, and has his second, shattering surrender: he realizes he’s been using the program like he used people—to avoid the actual work of connecting to a power greater than himself.
At four months sober, sitting with his sponsor reviewing inventory, Arthur D. sees his core problem spelled out: he is self-centered and driven by fear. And he can’t get out. He’s been using the letter of the law—the steps, the structure, the sponsorship—without touching the spirit of it. The intention was always to connect him to something larger. Instead, he was collecting spiritual tools like trinkets, trying to buy his way to freedom.
He tells his sponsor he’s not going to make it. He’s not going to make it staying sober on will alone, clinging to a sponsor as his god, performing recovery while dying inside.
That’s when he starts meditating. Five minutes twice a day. Then twenty, because if five works, twenty must be better (the same thinking that drove his addiction). At nine months sober, in his closet—the same place he smoked crack—he gets it. An inside feeling, not audible. It says: “You believe in the process of recovery to keep you sober and it is blocking you from my power.”
He calls his sponsor. “Nope, no more. I’m not going to do this anymore.”
What he does next is terrifying. He lets go of the very thing that got him nine months away from the dope: the process. Still goes to meetings. Still sponsors people. Still works the steps. But he’s no longer gripping them like a life raft. He turns his face to the sun and says, “Okay, show me.”
That shift—from the “many thousand on 50” to the “many hundred”—marks the moment he moved from recovery to freedom. He stops looking outside, stops performing, stops trying to control the outcome. He goes inward. And what he finds there is that the answer was never missing. It was just blocked by his insistence on knowing, planning, acquiring, managing.
His inventory becomes real for the first time. Not surface-level. He bores through the wood, finds his actual defects, his actual patterns. And with that comes something else: clarity. He starts speaking in meetings and realizes those aren’t his words. He’s become a funnel, not a bucket. A channel, not a collector.
He retired a year ago. Now he waits for what’s next without pushing, without exerting himself. He doesn’t know what he’ll say each time he speaks. Every talk is different. But there’s a frequency he’s on, and he can feel it in the room.
His message is this: freedom isn’t just the absence of drugs and alcohol. It’s not stopping using. It’s what comes when you let go of everything—including your ideas about recovery—and trust that something bigger than your broken mind actually knows what it’s doing. It’s the difference between white-knuckling sobriety and actually living.
Notable Quotes
My problem was not what happened to me. My problem was that when I’m not using and I’m sitting in a meeting, I’m wanting to get well. I’m wanting to feel okay. And I’m obsessed until I can get that candy.
You believe in the process of recovery to keep you sober and it is blocking you from my power.
I’m fortunate. I don’t leave until I get something from Central Casting to go perform, because I suffer when I exert myself. Wisdom gained through surrender says relax, take it easy, don’t struggle so much, and the right thought will come.
I removed the things that were blocking it from being realized. It was always there.
If I can’t trust me, please don’t trust me. But if there’s anything you can grock, if you can wrap your experiences and tack them up on this map I’ve presented, and maybe see yourself having felt those feelings of sheer despair, loss, hopelessness—grab it.
Spiritual Awakening
Sponsorship
Big Book Study
Relapse & Coming Back
Topics Covered in This Transcript
- Step 3 – Surrender
- Spiritual Awakening
- Sponsorship
- Big Book Study
- Relapse & Coming Back
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Full AA Speaker Transcript
This transcript was auto-generated and may contain minor errors. For the best experience, listen to the audio above.
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. >> Can y'all hear me?
I'm a soft talker. Um, thanks Ashley. I almost started to cry.
Damn, I don't cry often. I want to thank Wesley for asking me to come out here and tell my story. Thank you.
Um before I start there's only one reason I'm here anyway. It wasn't because Wesley asked me. It's because someone used Wesley to ask me to come here.
And I trust that that voice who got me clean, freed me from the bondage of self puts me standing here today. Um, I hope some of this stuff you can you can really relate to. Take it away.
Turn it on in your life and see what happens. So, I'm going to bring that power into this room. We we said that sermon prayer, but I got to bring it in.
Okay. So, you know, someone asked me to come up here and tell my story. And I was thinking about it today just briefly.
I said, you know, this whole world is made of stories. We tell stories and we're usually narrating our own story. And I'm usually have that voice inside my head that's telling me what's going on in my life rather than experiencing what's going on in my life.
And I lived like that for my pretty much up until about 15 years ago. and I stopped buying that story. So, what I'm going to ask you is not to believe a word I'm going to say, but to map your experiences to some of mine.
And if they stick on that map, maybe some of the directions I can point out that I took you guys can take. If not, you'll just enjoy me talking for an hour. So, I'm going to condense my using part.
Um, I'm a recovered drug addicted alcoholic. I love the taste of crack cocaine. I love the smell of cocaine.
Uh, immensely even to this day. But something uh happened to me. I laid down the letter of this law and let it go.
And I picked up the spirit of it. And that only was through initially it was through grace. And I talk about grace sometimes because it took grace to get me into these rooms.
But they didn't keep me here. They protected me and got me here. And then it took some power to take over.
You know, I understood what my problem was a long time before I walked in here. I just couldn't do anything about it. My problem was what everyone kept telling me.
You're a dope clean. You're a drug addict. I don't want you living here.
I don't want you working here. Police usually confronted me and weren't the kindest. And I would usually mock them and say, "You should have saw me high wasted I was last night.
You're lucky you didn't catch me." And that was all ego and it was all really. So, I'm going to get into the difference between letting go absolutely utter defeat, abandoning myself, and what it looks like in a trusting and relying relationship on a power that absolutely used everything it possibly could to get me here. And I cooperated by using everything I possibly could to get me here, too.
And I used everything I could to get here. So, single mom, five kids, welfare in five states. My dad's a safe robber.
He's in prison all the time. I'm in orphanage, foster care, foster care, juvenile detention for two years. I'm on my own at 14.
Never made it past the eighth grade. I take my first hit at 12 years old. Everyone else was like, "Are you high?
Are you high? We're passing around this quart of Miller High Life, the shittiest beer you could probably drink at the time. I think it was 79 cents for that court and we're burning a joint.
And I didn't feel high. I felt together. I felt peace.
I felt like I can come out of my shell. I didn't feel afraid. I didn't care what you thought anymore.
And that started uh an every single day journey to get high again. Every single day. And I don't can't remember when I stopped until I got separated from it a few times.
So I get out of there and uh get out of juvenile detention. My mom ends up moving to Dallas and she moved in an unorthodox way. I come home from work.
I'm working at a very young age in the city in I lived up in Queens, New York, if you couldn't tell. And I come home and everything's gone. And there's a note saying, "I just can't handle it anymore." I said, "Okay, this is See, to me, that wasn't abnormal anymore." That was how things went.
I usually got abandoned and rejected. And I got used to that. I was robbing houses.
I was protesting for the IRA. And I'm not Irish, right? I have a mohawk and I'm pretty much batshit crazy.
I'm actually in full flight from reality. I'm an outright mental defective. I can't differentiate true from false.
And I didn't think so. I thought I did. I thought I knew it was going on.
But I was driven by fear. And I was scared. And I wanted to just be okay.
And what happened was I have this idea in my life that if I could just get something outside of me to make it okay inside of me, I'm going to pursue that. And I tried a lot of things to do that. Especially this.
So that seeker in me used its attention to seek something in you so that you could give me the attention back. And that felt good. That felt good.
That filled another hole because I didn't get attention when I grew up. I was uh I was a lonely kid in a room of people, you know. Um, fast forwarding, smoking crack, holding a handgun, taking ambient to try to come down, doing hydrocodone to try to do something.
And I'd been smoking crack since before crack was out. I was smoking it when it was uh when we were freebasing back in 1984. I'm in New York.
I break my leg at Reunion Arena. That predates anyone who only knows about American Airlines. Does anyone know about Reunion Arena?
Not many. So, I I snap my leg and uh they put me in the hospital. My My buddy takes my motorcycle.
Two months later, I stick it in a trailer and drive up to New York. I've got a cast up to here. Still got a mohawk.
And um I wiped that bike out on a bridge going from Staten Island to Brooklyn. And a state trooper laughs at me and says, "Get up and go put your money back in the change plaza, the toll plaza." So I'm hobbling back there. He I have to flip the motorcycle off me.
He didn't help me at all. A week later, I sold it for a gram of coke. I needed I needed to feel something different.
Um DWIs, lost marriages, blameless children, you know. I was doing everything that they said I would do. And guess what?
None of that makes me an addict. Not one thing. Cuz I know people that are an alcoholic addicts have worse experiences than that.
Worse consequences than that. I've been to jail for aggravated assault, assault, buying crack, public talks. Doesn't make me an addict.
>> Yes. >> Could you speak up a little bit? I can.
So, what makes me an addict is that when I'm not on something, I want to be. And I'm obsessed until I can get that candy. And I am freaking out inside.
I'm tight. I'm wound. My chatter is loud.
My gut is wrenched. My vibration level is high. and I'm not okay.
And that thought repeats itself a hundred thousand times an hour. Just do another hit and I can't anymore. I've stopped using the drug it was using me.
It was using my life to feed off me. And so what had happened was I would then give in because I had no way I wasn't going to give in. I was too wound tight.
I had to have that feeling released again like that first joint in that quarter beer when I was 12 and I couldn't get that feeling to go away. So what happened was right before I took that hit and during it there was another voice going on and it was the voice I wouldn't listen to and it was my body saying please don't take that. Please don't take that cuz the moment you take that I'm taking off full speed and here's what would happen.
Check yourselves if this maps to you. see if it worked. I would take that hit to shut the noise.
My head would feel great and go, "Ah!" And my body would fly out of the cage like a rabid dog. And I would be then on the streets hanging out at Motel and Harry Hines and Dolphin and Samuel just or check this out or driving from Corpus to Dallas to buy crack. You can buy six miles from Cor in Corpus, man.
But the idea hit me. Well, there's probably some better stones up here, you know? So, I was on my way.
But what happened at that point was now my mind was screaming, "Please don't take it." My body was saying, "Please go get it for me." That's what makes me an addict alcoholic. Not the things that happened to me. Not because mommy didn't hug me enough.
I would have liked that. I didn't get it. But because when I'm not using and I'm sitting in a meeting and I'm not well, I'm wanting to get well.
Who relates to wanting to get well to feel okay? Well, the hard part is can I make that jump from that utter defeat to that full-on trust and reliance on a power cuz that's the only way cuz every hit I ever took and every shot of dope I ever did and every drink I ever meant. I'm telling you in hindsight, I didn't know this going forward.
My God has believed through a rearview mirror. Oh he did all that. That's how I felt.
I couldn't see it coming and I couldn't trust it coming. But I could see the protective nature that this power had over my life. I could see the amount of times I was given more than I deserved and I wasn't given what I would was deserving of, which was probably a lot of punishment and beatings.
So, there came a point and I've been coming to recovery since 1986 when they made me come. They handed me a piece of paper with 32 signature slices on it and they said, "Uh, this is a result of your DWI. Go to DWI school and go to um 32 meetings.
I went to one meeting and I realized I can get three or four different colored pens and pencils and and I filled it out in about seven minutes and I waited a while and I turned it in. No one ever said a word. Manage that.
Got away with it. Didn't get harassed. Didn't have another problem with that.
By the way, currently I was on 8 years uh deferred adjudication for an aggravated assault with intent to kill and I flee the state and so I had interstate felony flight from Texas. I end up in New York. I moved to Delaware in the middle of the night.
I move out of Delaware and I was all messed up and I moved to Cleveland, Ohio. And I'm just running, man. I'm scared.
I get popped by a drug task force in Ohio and I got this 74 Dodge Dart with a brand new BMW stereo in it. So strange. It had this dim lights in the dash and this bright orange square radio.
And they have us out on the snow at 3:00 in the morning on our faces and they go over everything pretty harsh. And I go, I'm going I'm going away for a long time. I have this uh felony charge on me.
And I ran and they didn't find it. And I felt like that was a wakeup call. And I wrote the judge and I was savvy again trying to control everything.
I stuck the letter in another envelope, mailed it to my mom and had her send it from New York so that they would not see the postmark coming from where I was. Um I didn't have cell phone then. This was 86.
And I I got reinstated and I got back here and it didn't get better. I was having dope sent to me from New York because cocaine was better up there because Colombians were bringing it in and Texas really wasn't getting good coke at the time. And so I'm freebasing my own dope and I can't stop, man.
And I don't really want to. There's a 8 to 10 years of zero amount of income I earned during that time. I have three children, a wife, and zero income.
I was using her. I was using society and I wasn't growing up. See, and what really happened to me fast forwarding was I had 11 years of recovery, but I didn't have one day of freedom.
And that 11 years of recovery was done through uh through AA. And this time in I had a sponsor tell me, please don't take offense to this. He said, "Adicts die in aa." I said, "What do I do?" He goes, "Well, go get a book." Cuz he said, "You know the book better than me." He goes, "Go get a book, a brand new one." And I said, "Oh, cool.
I I'll go get one." "No, no, get a big one." I said, "I don't want to carry a big one. I didn't want to carry anything that like I didn't want a billboard in my hand, you know." He goes, "And I don't want anything in it cuz I don't want you to read your highlights anymore. I want you to read it like it's a fresh clean slate.
And I want you to practice the set aside prayer regularly because what you know has kept you high for a very long time. And it keeps you from getting free. And he was right.
And I didn't like hearing that. But I listened and I took it in and I internalized it. I got into recovery.
My last night out was It's horrific, man. I mean, I blew 20 grand in a month after about five week run after a relapse. Uh, the last night I have about $750 worth of dope.
Three different types in three different piles. I'm I'm on ambient and I'm cooking dopes, smoking crack, and I'm making my own capsules of pure hydrocodone. And then I started snorting hydrocodone.
And then I started thinking SWAT teams were coming. Anyone ever have that? I don't know why I thought that.
Maybe the crack. Just maybe, man. But I'm standing there and I'm pacing like a rabid dog and I've got a pistol in my hand and I've got another one in my drawer and they're fully loaded.
One in the chamber, safety off. And I think they're coming for real. This time they're coming.
See, every time they were coming, but they never showed up. And I was delusional enough to believe they're coming, but this time they were coming. And my smart ass thought, if I'm holding a gun, dang, don't with me.
They're going to kill me. They're a ask a question. I should have put that thing down, hid under a pillow, or had them taken from me.
My wife said, "Uh, what are you doing?" She had never seen me high ever. And I was like, I'm serious, man. It was like Scarface.
I was like I my face was full of white and I was like I have never felt this good and my eyes and the veins in my neck and I'm holding this pistol and she looked at me and she goes I'm scared and she left the bedroom and slept in the other room first time ever and I went at it all night all night long I did all that dope and I didn't want to I didn't want to do it anymore and I was being used to do that dope It was feeding. See, when they talk about we can be possessed of a new power, I was possessed of a different power that was using me to get high off of my life force to wipe my family out, to destroy my career, to destroy everything I owned. You know, I'm a kid who came from a really broke broken, messed up family, you know, hardcore street living style New York kid.
And I had a life now. I had gained some stuff back. I gained a career.
I had things. And none of it was enough. You know, I was driving a fine European automobile.
I had a double six figure job. And I would have thrown it all away for one speck of just a break. I didn't even want freedom.
I just give me a break, man. inside. I was cratering.
That night, I'm tweaking with my remote control that my friend set up my flat screen and sound system and it ain't working. So, 1:30 in the morning, I'm texting. You know how it is.
Come fix this, bro. He goes, "It's 1:30." I said, "I am not able to watch my flat screen >> with this remote. I can't get it to work.
He goes, "Take the batteries out." Da da da. Needless to say, he goes, "I'll come over tomorrow." I said, "Yeah, you need to do that, man. What time you eat?" He goes, "One:00." I said, "Thank you." Well, I didn't sleep.
I was up all night. Ran the dope down. And around 10:00 in the morning, I was just about out and I got scared.
See, I had enough dope in me to kill two small children. But see, once the dope was running out, I wasn't high anymore. Even though I was so high that, you know, I should have been hospitalized, right?
I was so high. I was so high that every hit I did, I would lay on the floor listening for that same SWAT team to come in. I could hear the cars pulling up the street.
You know, I was believing this. I was losing my mind. Full flight from reality.
And all of a sudden, I see this car pull. I go, "Oh shit." And I was just about to split. It was Glenn to come to fix the remote.
He's going to mess up my high. He opens the door. And I didn't I wanted to say this.
Can you come back at 1:00? I swear I wanted to say that cuz I needed to go out and get more. And instead I said, I've been smoking crack and I can't stop.
And I was shaking. And all he did was grabbed me and he hugged me and my arms fell and I just went and it was over. Right then.
It was over. It was over. I knew it was over.
He said, "Let's go to a meeting." And I said, "Yes." Yes. I There was no more. I gave in right there.
I was defeated. Did it look like I was defeated from the outside? Nope.
Not at all. I had a million dollars. Had a badass car.
My house is pretty much paid for. ton of stock. I had gave every single bit of it away at that moment and something suspended me that see there was like that magic potion grace matched with timing match with that moment of clarity and that willingness and it was that perfect combination.
It didn't come easily and I had to seize on that moment right then. There wasn't going to be another moment. If I missed that moment, that window, it could be years more.
Cuz it was years for me. Cuz the moment I pick up, I don't hang around y'all. I go parallel universe.
I I live at night. I sleep all day. And eventually I pawn everything I own.
And then everything you might own if I come over. You know that Canon camera looks nice. I need to use your bathroom.
And all of a sudden, I have it. I'm not kidding. That's how I was operating.
I go to a meeting. I walk into the place where I had 11 years continuous sobriety. Spoke from the podium, shared at meetings, sponsored people, and I picked up that desire chip and I was petrified to do it.
I was broken. My ego didn't have enough resistance that that day to say, "Don't do that. Go pick up a chip at Wham.
you. No one knows you there. You know what I'm saying?
Or any group. Just go pick up a chip somewhere else. I walked up and I People were floored, man.
As I sat in the back seat where that homeboy in the gray t-shirt is and I said I scrolled my way all the way around, came up and I got that desire chip and people were blown away cuz they knew me. They didn't know I was high and now they knew and I knew. And something happened though, and I say this, not many people you might know this, but that crash site right there, when I hit that morning, that was the launch pad for being rocketed into a new way of living.
And it happened right from that spot. I didn't get to say, "Oh man, that sucked. Let me get together a little bit.
Let me get my life squared away. Let me get some time. Then I could take off from there." Nope.
I didn't get a choice because what happened in that utter defeat, that absolute crushing blow I took, that doomstate understanding is I got introduced to a power cuz it was the grace that got me back. And that power occurred that moment. It literally changed me.
I surrendered in two ways. I I knew the drug had me. I knew the liquor had me.
I knew the lifestyle had me too because I liked it, man. I liked I don't know why I liked I don't I don't know why I liked hanging out with dudes holding pistols inside of motel rooms that I didn't know and who had names like player G friendly. I'm like if we get pulled over I got to know a real name.
A real name. Someone give me a real name and man what you talking about? you know, that kind of thing.
But something happened. Something happened that day. And I remember I called Lisa and I said, "Hey, I'm going to go to a meeting with Glenn." She She lives.
She You are. Blew her away. She goes, "Are you serious?" I said, "Yeah." And I went that night and I came back and I went the next night and the next night and I kept going.
And I didn't want to go, but something wanted me to go. And I was cooperating now. See, I was cooperating with that power that possessed me to go get dope.
I was doing whatever it wanted to whenever it wanted to at all times of the day and night at the expense of everything that I held dear. And I get to the Tuesday, this was a Friday. On a Tuesday, I walk into the firing line, which is Wham East.
And I I walk in there and I walk up to this dude after the meeting and I said, "I need some help, man." That's all I said. And asked for a sponsor. And I said it with that same broken voice that I had when Glenn walked in.
And this dude is sort of like an M MMA guy, you know? He's one of the we'll call him pillars of the group, whatever that means. Don't be a pillar.
Be a member. Sorry, that was my rant. He goes, "What is it, bro?
Is it anchor green? Don't want to offend? Is it women or money?" And I said, "No." He goes, "You on paper?
You got legal problems?" I said, "No, man." He goes, "What's wrong?" And I swear this is again didn't need I didn't want this to come out. I said I don't have God, dude. I spoke that and he looked at me.
He goes, "Man, I usually like to watch guys for a couple weeks to make sure that they're serious. They are in meetings. They want to do the deal." I said, I that same cracked voice.
I said, "I don't have two weeks, literally." And he said, "Come over." And we began to take a journey together. And I began to suspend ideas, ideas that were killing me. And I began to have incremental small moments of sanity return.
They didn't land at one moment. The surrender moment happened, but I was just walking around this doomed, groundless, where do I go kind of guy point me and click me because I don't know what to do. I didn't h yet have anything.
I had a whole lot of knowledge about this book. I could like read full pages without looking at it. It was strange, but it wasn't helping me.
It wasn't keeping me sober. And it while sober, see, here's what happens. I go out and I come back in and I'm like, "Okay, I just need to stop using dope.
I just need to stop shooting cocaine. I need to stop smoking crack." And see, and I get in and I stop that and I think, "Oh, good. I've stopped.
That's good. Thank you, God. And I'm I'm okay now." What I need to find out is why do I keep starting again and how do I keep from starting again and restarting again and restarting again and that cycle and promising people with such Academy Award-winning effect.
You got to believe me this time when I don't even believe that I can do it. But I got a really good ability to convince you to believe that I'm going to stop this time. But it didn't work anymore.
No one bought it. I went through the steps. He was a a hands-off guy, though.
He wasn't a micromanager. He didn't push me. He didn't have to.
I actually tell guys I sponsor, I said, whenever they object or resist or rebel, I say, "Here's what you do. Call Call Doug. Just ask him anything.
I'm not even going to fill your head with the thought to ask him. Just say, "What was it like working with Art?" and you'll hear what he tells you. And I'll just challenge y'all to do that if you ever run into him because I don't want to brag on myself because I did anything at any moment with no resistance.
He sends me 36 1-hour tapes. He goes, "Listen to these and I only want you to write in the margin of your book in a black pen." You got it. It's black pens.
That's it. I listened to all 36 twice and I didn't take three months. I began to listen to them with headphones on with a pen over like maybe a week.
I had nothing to lose except my life and that was pretty much gone. So I did that. Few months later, I'm at his house writing inventory.
Wrote it and I had my I call my second surrender. I'm sitting there and I share with him inventory. We're looking at revisiting.
See, he's bouncing me from two to look how crazy I was to three to look where I don't rely and four look what you do when you're out of alignment. Look what you do when you and I'm just seeing this like shell game three card money life and I start realizing at my core I am I am I I I literally turned him I said I'm going to go. Um, I need to let her know to move cuz I had and now I had about 4 months sober, but I knew I wasn't going to make it because I was still trying to stay sober on the unaded will and I had used Doug and I had got that resource and I said, "This guy is a pillar and he's going to help me and he's got the answer.
He's going to use the book." But I was using the letter of the law. I was using the functions and the process of the program, but I wasn't using their intention, which was to connect me to a power greater myself that will solve my problem. My problem is I'm self-centered and driven by fear.
And I can't get out. And I tried. And I looked at objects.
objects would be things I could buy, people I could control or be controlled by, shiny new things, rusty old things, whatever it took, something other than me to make me okay and something definitely other than a power greater than me to make me be okay. And that day was my second surrender in this program because I knew I was not going to make it. Was not going to make it.
and I wasn't using. And I didn't think about using, but I couldn't see how to break free from that selfishness that wrapped me in a cocoon and had me tightly in its grip. See, selfishness has billions of things at its disposal to to bring me right back into the game.
The power has one thing, truth. and everything I kept looking outward at. See, and I was I was always looking out.
Always looking out. Bill's story says, and this happened. I was inwardly reorganized.
I had a new footing. My roots grasp a new soil. And I didn't know much about that.
It's like entering that world of the spirit. My next function was to grow in effectiveness and understanding of that world. I didn't know what it was like.
I had mental ideas. I heard what y'all said it was like, but I wasn't seeing anyone elevating above their problems that they told us we could do. Everyone was still slogging through quicksand talking about freedom.
And I'm like, this isn't what they mean. This can't be what they mean because I won't make it if I walk that. I'm not going to make it.
I'm not. He said, I want you to meditate twice a day, five minutes a day. Okay?
I did that and I felt that was a little weak. So I I went to 20 a day, twice a day because if five minutes would work, 20 would be better. Just like dope, right?
Just like dope. Same effect, looking for something. And I remember 9 months sober now.
And you know, I told you guys I've been around since ' 86, but I had uh since 93. This is great to like date myself. There's probably not a people born here in 93, are there?
Right. 93. From 93 till now, it's 25 years.
And I have about 23 in a so 23 of them sober with a lot of slices of getting wasted. And I knew it was going to happen again. Even though I'm meditating, even though I'm having these profound understandings, I knew something I knew something was still missing.
I knew it. And that's where no one could tell me what to do anymore. I had to start going inside.
And I didn't want to. I wanted to look out. I wanted to perform for you, my sponsor, or for you.
I want you all to see what I shared, hear what I shared. But I wasn't having deep and effective spiritual experiences. So, I'm I the irony, man.
I smoke crack in my closet, even though I have a freaking huge ass house. And I found myself sitting in my closet writing nightly reviews and praying. And I laughed one day.
I was sitting there. I go, "This is incredible. I'm seeking God in the same place I smoked rock." And I was laying on my face when I prayed.
I just laid straight out like a swimmer because I felt like I needed to knees weren't enough for humility for me. >> Just not going to bring me down far enough. And I remember laying there and all of a sudden at 9 months sober I get this inside feeling.
It wasn't audible. It was a feeling and it said it said this. You believe in the process of recovery to keep you sober and it is blocking you from my power.
And I stopped right then. I remember calling my sponsor. I said, "Nope, no more.
I'm not going to do this anymore." And it was scary. Please don't try this at home. I worked the steps fanatically, wholeheartedly, just as prescribed, and I followed to the letter of the law, and it was choking me out.
I set it down and I turned my face to the sun and I said, "Okay, show me." That was a big risk for me. See, I had to let go of old ideas of using and old friends I hung with and old places I hung out with. Now I had to let go of the thing that got me 9 months away from that last run.
And that was petrifying. And I did it. I put it down.
Still was going to meetings. sponsoring guys, working the deals, speaking when asked to, part of the area comm you know committee. I think I was social chair and that was a blast.
We had a good time. But that was the moment where I shifted from the many thousand on 50 to the many hundred because what I did is I let go of the most precious thing I could have at that moment which was the freedom from the drugs that were killing me. And I didn't know if that was such a good idea, but I knew that I wasn't feeling the connection if I didn't let go.
On 85, they talk about some really powerful things. And in ' 86 and on 87, they said, "We begin to trust this intuition, this inspiration this insight that we gain. And on 55, it says we finally saw that the great reality was deep down within us.
And I stopped looking outside anymore. And I started going in for everything. And I began to find things about myself.
And it was painful. It made, let me tell you this, it made my inventory look like a piece of crap. It made my inventory look like a joke.
And I wrote a very, you know, we'll say customized inventory. And it and it was a joke because what I had never touched, what I had done was I was superficially looking at the top of this table. This time I was boring through the wood.
I was peeling it up. I was trying to find out what was really going on. I was getting to the root of my problem and I was doing it inwardly.
Meditation expanded. spiritual understandings have expanded and I began to hear myself talking in meetings or to people and realize those aren't my words. That's not me.
And I would become as surprised at what I was speaking as the person listening to it. And I began to realize that I was now a funnel and not a bucket. that I wasn't here to acquire all these wonderful little trinkets and goodies like Halloween candy and say, "Look at what I've gotten when I got back home and pour them out on my bed and say, "This is my safety net.
I kicked my safety net out the window and I don't have one today that's visible or mental. I have a safety net that wraps around me just like that dope did, but it isn't constricting the air out of me. It isn't choking on every inb breath and let not letting me get that outreath.
It is my breath and it did something in my life that I promise you it'll do for you. But here is the caveat. There's ideas in the way.
I'll guarantee it. Because if you'd have told me that that's what I had to do. See, I was looking if I could do this, then I'll be.
If I move here, then I'll be. And then if I then I'll be dot dot dot. And it was never happening.
I was never getting okay. I tried something new. when I let go of this viewpoint, when I let go of these opinions, when I drop this idea, and what's so interesting, and I say this a lot to people that are close to me, is what I'm describing to you is is a thing that I say I found this.
I didn't find it. I removed the things that were blocking it from being realized. It was always there.
I challenge you to look within. It's there. But here's something interesting.
I would give up even that idea if I was prompted to to go one more step further towards something I call it the unknown, the mystery, and away from what is known, which is my insanity. Cuz if I'm tossing the idea around, it's in a broken washing machine. It's not ever coming out, and I don't want to wear it if it did.
I'm fortunate. Um, I retired a year ago, a little over a year ago. I spend my days waiting for what's next.
And I honestly, this is sort of tricky. I don't leave until I get something from Central casting to go perform because I suffer when I exert myself, project myself and propel myself into my life and into your lives. I begin to hurt myself.
I set balls mo in motion. And wisdom gained through that surrender says relax, take it easy, don't struggle so much, and the right thought will come. And all of a sudden, people ask me to come speak.
Good luck, cuz I'll tell you this. I never know what I'm going to tell you. I never know.
You can record these. I probably have 30 of these recordings in there. None of them are the same.
None of them. You might hear about a mohawk. Maybe not.
You might not. You might hear about me unplugging my kids VCR while they're watching Lion King. You wouldn't have heard that today unless I had to go back and recall that.
But you'll always hear this. And hopefully, listen, get on this frequency right here. Hopefully, you're feeling that feeling in this room right now cuz I do.
If you don't, just quiet it a little more. It's right there. That's what is the presentation of what we have to offer.
Not just freedom from alcohol and drugs, selfishness and fear. All you've done is created just nothing. But the inclusion, the insight, the intuition, a reliance being on that new footing when I sincerely made took such a position to rely on that power.
And I only take that position because I'm absolutely convinced and I've conceded to myself that I can't trust me no more. Can't. So listen to this.
If I can't trust me, please don't trust me. You feel me? Please don't.
But if there's anything that I said tonight, if you can grock, if I bring you right back, we tie this all up is you've heard a story. I asked you not to believe it, but I said if you can wrap your experiences and tack them up on this map that I've presented to you in the journey I've taken and if you can maybe see yourself or feel yourself more importantly having felt those feelings of just sheer despair, loss, hopelessness, and then going through it, struggling, grinding it out. It ain't working.
I don't feel it. What am I going to do? And then you get a sense, maybe a whiff, a hint, that there's some freedom in what this cat's talking about.
Grab it. I call it initially it's just a thread and it's real small. They call it a read, a flimsy read.
That sounds weak. And I pull that thread and it just keeps getting all a sudden look, I got this pile of yarn. I keep getting more and more.
It never ends. What I'm getting out of this and everything I've been given, which is nothing tangible, is to give it away to you. And I'd be remiss to stand here and to take anything from this.
If I haven't poured myself out fully, buried myself, exposed myself, become vulnerable enough, and emptied myself enough to allow the spirit of the universe and to sit on that tip of that spearhead of the ever advancing creation of God's world, then I have not done a damn thing here. And if it has happened, I've also not done a damn thing here. Thank you.
>> 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.