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We hope that you enjoy today's speaker. Yeah, it's it's awesome. I was talking to somebody the other day and realized that 3 weeks from yesterday, I'll have 14 years.

And uh nobody's more surprised about that than me. you know, my uh my sobriety date is October 5th of 1998, and I'm uh truly grateful for what I found here. Um when I first got sober, they kept telling me, "You're on a pink cloud.

You're in a pink cloud. It's going to go away. It's a pink cloud just going to go away." And and and after a while, I just went to a different home group because I got tired of hearing that crap.

Uh, I'll stop now and say they told me I should really try to watch my language. But for me, what that generally means is watching it fall out of my mouth and get all over people. So, I'll do the best I can.

You know, I get it worked up, stuff comes out. Uh, but yeah, it's it's for the most part, I've been on a pink cloud for nearly 14 years now. It's my opinion that that uh all that is is the newfound presence of God.

And as long as I keep finding new God, it doesn't have to go away at all. Um, a lot of times people who do this, you know, the meeting starts at 7 and at 7:50 they're getting sober. I don't want to do that, you know.

Uh, or they talk a lot about the events in their life, but not how they practice the principles of AA on the events in their life. And that's what I want to know. You've been through a lot of stuff.

That's awesome. Tell me how you work the steps on it because I got a feeling I'm going to go through that stuff. You know, it's not helpful just to know I can.

I'd like to know how. This is the way my head works. I'm a gear head.

I'm a by nature, I sort of analyze things to try and understand how they work. I'm not comfortable. You know, I'm that guy who moves into a new house and learns what all the light switches do right away.

You know, that's just how I am. That's not good or bad. It's just how I am.

Um but uh so my my take on this is very mechanical. You know, if I can't reproduce the results, then I'm not doing it right or I've misunderstood something. And uh the beauty of the program is it does not matter if you believe it works or not.

If you does, if you do what it says to do, you get what it says you get. having had a spiritual awakening as the result. You know, it's like opening a a recipe book to the chocolate cake recipe and going that doesn't make cake.

But if you do what it says, you get cake. And the first cake will be crappy, but it's cake, you know? And and the more I make the cake, the better I get at making the cake.

And the I begin to understand the nature of the why I'm doing what I'm doing. And pretty soon there's cake everywhere. And it's awesome, you know, and uh and that's what the program is like.

It doesn't even matter if I believe it as long as I just do what it says unreservedly. And uh and that's awesome because that's exactly what I had to do. Um I preface my story by saying regardless of anything I say, you need to know that I'm basically a nice boy from a good family.

In my heart, that's really who I am. The people I run into now in my life who I haven't seen since 1980, I'm exactly who they expected me to be. They didn't they weren't there for the detour.

Um I'm a little bit different than a lot of people in the program in that I grew up in a house with no other alcoholics and addicts. You know, uh there is a history of some depression in my family. I found out not long ago that one one of my mother's sisters died 20 years sober, but I never knew that.

But uh there wasn't any drinking in my house. There wasn't any it was a you know you know those Thanksgivings you were all upset you never got to have that we were having them. That's my house.

And I I was a very happy little kid until the first day of first grade. And I went to school and were those kids I didn't know and they made me uncomfortable. And uh and so I started to eat because my story isn't just a story.

I said I'm an addict and alcoholic. What that means is I'm a chronic binge drinker and a low bottom heroin addict. But my story is not just a story of alcohol or drugs.

It's a story of malady, a really progressive malady. And and looking back now, that's the first that's where I can see its roots. Six years old, uncomfortable around people.

You know, it's funny. You know, as you can talk about leaving your kid in the car while you're running in the bar in an AA meeting or going to prison, but he bring up food. People get real tense.

But uh I was told that I started putting on weight in first grade because I'm such an active boy and they're making you sit all day. And that's an awesome story. It's totally not true.

You know, there was food I was uncomfortable and there was food and I started to eat. And I was with the same 25 kids for six years and I never really developed friendships with them which is also a symptom of the malady this disconnect. I had a lot of proximity buddies like if I saw you all the time we were friends and if I stopped seeing you by accident I stopped seeing you all together.

It didn't occur to me to call you. Swung with all the same kids in in grade school and I and never really developed any lasting friendships with them. I moved between sixth and seventh grade.

So I went to a different middle school than my friends and I never spoke to any of them again. And then middle school comes along and you know I have kids in middle school right now. Middle school is a holding pin for hormonal lunatics.

But but everyone in middle school feels different. But but I was different. You know at 7 years old I saw I believe it was the Rolling Stones and Ed Sullivan and knew for a fact that that's what I wanted to do with my life.

I want to be a musician. And by middle school I'm walking around with a tape deck. It's 1973.

got a big Panasonic tape deck with an earphone in one ear listening to Black Sabbath and hair down to here at a point in time when the rest of the kids haven't even discovered the radio, you know. I felt different, but I was different, you know, but it but it was the feeling different that mattered. And I started going to concerts when I was 13 years old.

My parents would just drop me off outside and I'd go because kids my age weren't interested. And uh and uh so I'm going to concerts and there's a lot of marijuana smoking at the concerts and for the first two or three it's like that's weird. I don't know.

But nobody seems to be freaking out, so I I'll give that a shot, you know. And I met a guy um not long after that who lived not far from me whose next door neighbor sold pot. So that was convenient.

And and for the next couple of years, I I was smoking pot because it went so good with the food. And and and you know, and struggling to find my place in middle school. Um, high school rolls along.

I'm, you know, at 15 years old, I was 6 feet tall. I weighed 200 lb. I had hair down to here and a beard.

The drinking age is 18. And I grew up right by the university campus, you know. So, but the broad picture of my story is I drank and I used for a long time and it was really fun.

And then I drank and I used for a number of years and it was still fun but there were starting to be some consequences. And then I drank and I used for a number of years and it was kind of fun but there was more consequences. And then I drank and I used for a few years and it was never any fun and there was tons of consequences and I wish I was dead every day and then I got sober like you cannot.

But, you know, I mean, my story is kind everybody's story, you know, it's crap. It's good. It's worse.

It's kind of crappy. It's totally crappy. Okay, here we go.

But, but in high school, life was still good. I was having a great time. You know, I'm not one of those people who the first time it crossed my lips, I drank for three weeks and threw up on a cop.

you know, it's and it took me till college to get to get get to that place. I find some guys in middle in high school and we start skateboarding in the mid70s. I find this little they're older than me and we're having a great time.

I find my people, you know, and uh and then I get out of get out of high school and start my first band. Like within a month or two, I'm my hair is cut off. It's this long, it's blonde, and I'm in a punk band.

It's 1979. and and I'm playing in I'm playing a lot at this club down by the drag and having a really good time and I found my people, you know, this is the Reagan administration and punk rock was perfect for me, you know, and and everybody there drinks a lot and everybody there smokes a lot of pot and there's people over there that are doing some speed and they make me nervous. Um, but I'm I'm playing music and it's really fun, you know.

I start getting a lot the band starts becoming successful. We start traveling, making records, you know, I I begin to get that first blush of if I can just get enough of them to tell me I'm cool all at once, maybe I am. And uh and things keep progressing and so does my drinking and so does my my use.

But it's still manageable and fun. The band I was in, that wasn't a central piece of what we did. That band fell apart in 8384.

The next band, our motto was show up drunk, show up late, don't show up at all. and and uh we once ran up a $300 bar tab on 50 cent beer and I'm not even kidding, you know. And uh and you know, life was on, you know, and by this point I hit this place in around 84 where I started drinking so much that I would pass out.

You ever pass out? I don't know if it happened to you. It happened to me at that time.

So, and bless my friend's heart, they they cared about me, but nobody was dragging my 200lb dead weight back to the car. So, they'd roll me on my stomach so I didn't choke and then just leave me where I felt. And and I'd wake up in alleys or front yards at fraternity houses or, you know, and and my solution to this problem was not to go, well, I should probably be careful about my drinking.

It was to buddy up with those guys over there who were doing speed. And uh that was one of those first I should have known moments, but I didn't know. Uh you could drink so much more.

And uh and so you know that got to going, you know, and I moved to Los Angeles in 8 in 85 or 86, you know, it's fuzzy. Uh and uh put together a rock band in the late ' 80s, you know, where they paid me in booze and dope. And uh a month after I got there, I met a beautiful little goth girl who was dealing the best crystal method I'd ever seen two blocks from my house.

And it was love at first sevenday bender, you know. And uh and uh I mean I moved to Los Angeles at a time when all the boys are dressing like girls and trying to sound like poison and I look like me. You know, those outfits don't come in a 38.

I mean, it's really good. But but I managed to get a record deal and I managed to, you know, I'm becoming successful and things are going well and I'm getting ready to leave on my first big tour. The video's all over MTV.

The record's out and the singles in the charts and I'm still dealing crystal meth. And the DEA comes through the front door of the cook I'm buying from's house and his girlfriend calls me while they're there. Wrong number, but but so I sat down with my girlfriend and said, "We have to stop this.

I've worked too hard. There's I'm right at the edge of this thing I've always wanted. We have to stop this.

And I think we thought we were going to stop doing drugs. I think that's what we thought we were talking about. I climbed in a tour bus and she stayed home.

I started drinking a fifth of vodka and the better part of a case of beer every night and doing whatever cocaine I could talk the crew out of because they had more money than me at the time. and uh and uh and within a week she was doing heroin because we were well past just stopping. But we had no idea that that's where we were.

And for the next couple of years, what my life looked like was I would go on the road and I would drink tons of alcohol. The band I was in, they gave us four ca five cases of beer and two fifths of liquor. And at the end of the night, there was none left and we were looking for more.

you know, we all drank and used exactly like each other, which is probably why we were in the band together. But, uh, so I would go on the road and I would do this and then eventually it got to where I would come home and I'm paying for this heroin, so I'm going to do it, you know. And, uh, you I've been awake for most of the 80s.

I could use a nap. So, so and I spent a couple of years, the nature of my job was like I got to work every day for the next three and a half months, but my job is like 45 minutes a night and if I'm too drunk to do it, that's funny. And then I come off the road and I don't have to be anywhere for four months and I'd get completely strung out.

I'd stop drinking, stop doing everything else and just do heroin. And as long as I was making money for people, nobody said anything. But that was getting more and more miserable.

And there came a point in that when I realized that every good thing in my life was going to go away if I didn't stop this. But I couldn't stop. Um I was on the same label as Nirvana and when Never Mind came out, that was the end of rock and roll.

And so we we closed the band up and I got a job working for a fashion accessories guy who who could uh I was making enough money to stay strung out and that scared me to death. So, I sold half of everything I owned and bought a van for the other half and moved back to Texas because there's no dope in Texas and and and managed to stay sober for well the drive home took 5 days because we weren't sober when we left LA. Um 28 hour drive took a long time to get here.

But uh but when we got here and discovered we couldn't stay sober after about three weeks, it was like we got to have to brush off our Spanish and head to the east side because this is undoable. And when moving didn't work, all bets were off. You know, in LA, I had been like the most together junkie anybody knew.

I was the leper with the most fingers, you know, but but but all bets were off. You know, I got a job working at a at a dangerous nightclub and I was carrying a gun everywhere I went and I was just out of my mind. I didn't care if I lived or died.

That's not entirely true. Every day I spent terrified of dying and wishing I were dead, which is a really bad spot to find yourself. And that drug on and on for a couple of years.

I mean, we say in AA, you know, for me to drink is to die, but I was dead four times. You know, I didn't get sober because I was afraid I was dying. I was got I got sober because I was terrified of 30 years of not dying and I couldn't keep doing what I was doing.

It was it was miserable. It wasn't killing me. I couldn't seem to stay dead.

I mean, who knew my roommate knew CPR? You know, I had to do a stress test for a insurance thing a while back and they're looking at the print out going, "When did you have your heart attack, Mr. Gay?" I was going, "I never had a heart attack." Oh, does that pulp fiction thing count?

Oh, yes, sir. I did that twice in 98. Should I worry about that?

But so the point at which this really changed for me where because I went and I went to a handful of meetings the last two years. I spent the last two years I was using every single day trying to figure out a way to stop. And uh I went to a handful of meetings, the same meeting every time and they go just don't use no matter what.

And they go off to dinner together and not one of them said do you know what resources are available you to you for detox here in this town? you know, the hand of AA nearly killed me, you know, and uh but what happened um my roommate I had a 21-year-old roommate who got arrested and was sure he was going to prison so he killed himself in my house and I had found him and I had to talk to his family and I didn't know what to do and my neighbor came over and said, "What are you going to do with his room?" And I said, "I don't know." He said, "You want me to teach you to grow pot?" Said, "Yes, I do." So, I start making a ton of money and I never have to leave the house. So, that's what I do.

I never leave the house. Um, and uh I'm sitting in my house, my dealer has delivered me a large quantity of drugs and my father collects guns and his hands are getting bad and I'm working on a pistol for him. And I'm sitting at my desk and I find myself with a syringe in one hand and a gun in the other one, calmly trying to decide which one to use.

And it wasn't that addict alcoholic. Oh, I won't somebody save me. Don't they see?

It was just today or forever. And for just an instant, I was standing across the room looking at my own back going, "How in the hell did those become my only choices? I had a life.

I had possibilities. I was on MTV." And now that's that this is really this is it. There has to be something else.

And I don't know what it is. And then later that day, and I don't know how much later because I didn't use the gun, I'm channel surfing and I come across the news magazine 2020 and they're doing a feature about a guy named Buddy Arnold who was a jazz drummer forever, played with all the greats in the 50s and the 60s and was a drug addict the whole time. And now Buddy's 10 years sober.

He's put the arm on the people who fund the Grammys. And they've started a foundation whose sole purpose it is to pay for musicians to get treatment. And I'm going, "Oh my god, I've been praying if I could just get a week to get through the detox, maybe I could figure this 12step business out, you know, just a week." Which is funny because I argued a lot about God.

We'll talk about that in a minute. But but I was praying for a week and here's this gift. And so I ran into my bedroom and I got on my computer and my 144 dialup modem, you know, three and a half minutes later, their page comes up.

It's got one picture and I managed to get their phone number. And I would love to say that I just I called them and we went straight to treatment, but like I had gone back to school, which was an interesting ploy, the condition I was in. And I was I talked to him.

I was going, I have 26 days before the next semester starts. Can we go in? Can I leave a couple of days early?

No. So, so I went, "Well, okay, then I won't go." And I started school and that lasted a few minutes and I called them back and and uh and I was given a couple of gifts. The first was they sent me to a treatment center out in the Hill Country.

And when I called them, they found out I was always also on methadone. And they told me, "We can't take you on that methodone. You'll miss everything we have to offer you.

You'll be so sick while you're here. So, just stop taking that and we'll see you in six weeks." And what they were saying without saying is it was I had to go back to full-time heroin use. And that was a gift because I hadn't worked without a net in a couple of years.

And uh I got to see just how ugly and unmanageable my life really was. The second gift was my on-again off-again ex, you know, uh, who was just as strung out as me, sat me down and said, 'You got to think about why you're going to go, why you're going to do this because if you go for the wrong reason and it doesn't work, you'll die for good this time. I'm certain of it.

So, I was able to sit during that miserable six weeks between when I absolutely was ready to go and when it was time to go and think about why I'm going. And I came to the realization that I wasn't going because I was living in a house that had a fire and we didn't tell the landlord because we couldn't afford to move. And I wasn't going because I had a ton of warrants.

And I wasn't going because the electricity keeps getting shut off. I was going because I could not figure a way to live without these substances in my life. And I I was there has to be a way, but I don't know what it is.

And that's why I'm going. And that was a gift being having that before I even got there. The next gift was not knowing that AA was going to be part of treatment, which was great because it didn't give me a chance to work up a good argument.

But so I get to treatment and and you know, I'm detoxing. The first the first thing I remember about treatment is staggering up the hill from the detox ward into what was apparently my first meeting and somebody starts talking about God. My head clears up for just a second and go, "Oh crap." And then fuzz right back out again.

That's all I remembered. Um, a lot of people say that uh they did the first step while they were still out there. And maybe that's true.

I did a lot of research on the first step. I had all the all the elements, but I couldn't put them in an order that added up to anything. I thought that if I could just get my body straightened out, get the drugs and alcohol out of my system, then my thinking would straighten out, then the hole in my chest would close up and we'd all be okay.

But what happened was I'd get the drugs out of my system, my head would go insane and and then I'd use again. And uh and it wasn't until I got to treatment and somebody sat me down and explained that I have to work on the spiritual first. You know, they talked to me about the physical allergy.

They talked to me about the fact that my body processes this stuff differently than other people. You know, they talked to me. They made the connection between the powerlessness in the first half of the first step and my physical allergy.

Nothing I can do is ever going to change that physical allergy. And they sat me down and and helped me understand the second half of the first step, which is not, you know, I keep going to jail because I have warrants because my car is everything is expired and that, you know, I'm broke all the time. Bl.

That's not unmanageability. That's delusion. you you can't live the way I'm living and not have those consequences.

The real unmanageability in my life comes from trying to manage what's wrong with me through my own force of will. You know, my unmanageability doesn't really get going till I stop drinking and using. Then it gets real hard to stay inside my skin.

And then my first pass through the second and third step was two weeks about arguing about the arguing about the nature of God with other people in a mental facility. basically, you know, and the book says God either is or he isn't. I figured we better decide, you know, religions might wants to know.

But but uh but what I also found out during that two weeks of arguing is there were 70 people in that treatment center with me. 64 of them were not there for their first treatment experience. and something approaching 60 of them were back after two months or six months or 18 months because they never did a fourth step.

And I don't know what this four step is, but I'm certain nobody's paying for me to come back. So, two, three, whatever. Screw it.

Let's do four, you know. And apparently that's perfect because I'm still sober. I'm the only one I think out of that 70.

But, uh, my understanding of those steps has a little more nuance now, you know. But uh but apparently screw it was fine. I mean the second step for me, you know, there's a lot of talk about waiting to be restored to sanity in the rooms that I think sounds like horse hockey still.

How can I be restored to something I never had? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. But you know, we're not talking about every crazy thought Chris ever had. We got the fourth step for that.

You know, the book over and over again talks about the insanity of the first drink. Page eight in the big book. Trembling, I stepped from the hospital, a broken man.

Fear sobered me for a bit. Then came the insidious insanity of the first drink. Page 66.

The maintenance growth of a spiritual condition. This business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it's fatal.

For when harboring such feelings, we shut oursel off from the sunlight of the spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns. Page 40.

Page 57. Insanity. Insanity.

Insanity. Over and over again. So my understanding of the second step now is I'm coming to believe and it doesn't say came to believe in a power greater than ourselves.

That was I got hung on that for a while. Coming to believe in a power greater than myself is step one and a half. You know it's uh but it's came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity, could remove the mental obsession because if I have a physical allergy and I just don't put it in me, who cares?

I'm allergic to wheat, but the brownies aren't going, "Chris, we'll make it better, you know. It just doesn't happen." Well, once in a while, but but uh but but it's this mental obsession. I have to believe or at least be willing to believe that a power greater than me can remove that mental obsession.

The beauty of the program is it's not even built on a belief in God. It's built on firsthand experience with the effects of this power in my life. I get that experience by taking the steps.

And uh so for me, for most of the guy mo for most anybody sitting in this room because Lord help you if you're sitting in this room and you've got the obsession to drink. Listen to me must be torture. But uh but from by the time I'm sitting talking to my sponsor, what this is really about is credit where credit's due because the obsession is not on me.

So am I willing to give credit to a power greater than myself for its rem for the removal of this thing that never went away and now it's gone because if I am that's a handy bit of firsthand experience to start with, you know, and it removes all this waiting to be restored nonsense. You know, if I'm still waiting to be restored, I got inventory to do. And then the third step for me, you know, turn it over, take it back, turn it over, take it back.

What does THAT MEAN? WHAT'S MY JOB? I JUST WANT TO KNOW MY JOB.

And so, you know, and how am I supposed to know God's will? It's like the book says I have to, you know, I must carry a vision of God's will into all my affairs. So, for me these days, the third step has become a decision to act like a man of faith.

instead of a man who's afraid. You know, the book says, "When I straighten out spiritually, the mental and physical will follow." So, if I put if I turn my will and my life over to God that to the care of God, then then I'm more likely to make good decisions. My thinking is more likely to be centered in reality at least.

and uh and I may not know what God's will looks like, but I'm I got ways to figure out what my fear looks like. So, I launch into my fourth step. I'm in a hurry because I'm terrified I'm going to go back to rehab.

And uh my first fourth step is an interesting work of fiction. Uh I got I nailed the first two columns, but but the rest of it was I was because I wasn't asking for guidance or help. And every time I did, somebody would show me some 80page Hazelton book and it wasn't helpful.

you I can't rem, you know, this is confusing. I need to understand, you know, and uh and it wasn't until a couple of years later that I finally learned how to do a fourth step. But my sponsor knew what was supposed to be happening.

And he was able to sit down with me and lead me to my part in all of these resentments and help me understand that I had a part in all this stuff. And uh you know, I did six and seven the way it says, an hour. I tried not to fall asleep, you know, and uh and said about making my amends, which weren't too bad because I tried to keep everybody away from me.

Turns out a lot of the amends were, "Stop keeping us away," you know, but uh come prove to us it's not scary to have you in the room. Um and I get on about my business. Now, like I said, I had a lot of problems with the word God and organized religion.

I was like, it just Oh, it made me insane. uh and uh and I struggled with it a lot you know and and what I came to and you know in my infinite spiritual wisdom is you know if you need to dress it up like Jesus that's fine but I'm more involved than that and you know and at the end of every meeting I'm ref I don't say the Lord's prayer and I look around see who's cool like me not saying the prayer that's what I do in my kickass program and uh you know at about 120 days sober I'm sitting with my sponsor most of my amends are done and I'm telling him you know I think the promises are coming true. I think I'm finding what the program has to offer.

And he looked at me, "No, you're not." You know, in the in the kindest, most loving way possible, he said, "You are better than you've been in 25 years, and you're still so far from good. It's terrifying on a good day." And somehow, rather than getting upset, I I was able to go, "You mean it gets better than this?" And he was going, "Oh, dude, seriously." And uh so I kept going, you know, and uh the first six months of my sobriety was like the first 15 minutes of Saving Private Ryan, you know, sound keeps going off and stuff's going by my head. I couldn't even make whole sentences, you know.

Around 6 months, I learned to make whole sentences and began to date because, you know, that's all it took at my home group. And you know, everybody says don't get in a relationship in the first year of sobriety, but nobody knows if that works because nobody does it, you know. And somebody after this will come up to me, oh, this dude, lighten up.

It's a joke, you know. But, uh, so I'm so I'm getting on with this stuff, you know, and I'm I'm trying to trying to live my life. And I'm working a 12step program if you count the 13th step because I'm really only collecting power from my use.

And uh, and I'm and at about 18 months sober, I go to a reunion at the treatment center I went to. And there's an amazing speaker out on the lawn on this beautiful day in the Hill Country. And after it's over, 800 of us sitting in a circle holding hands saying the Lord's prayer.

And I'm doing what I do. I'm looking around that circle seeing who's cool like me not saying the prayer. And halfway through this thought came into my head that if even half of these people were even half as desperate and messed up as I was.

This is a miracle. And it was the first time that word had any real substance. You know, miracle miracle.

But this had weight. I could see this and it was like I'd spent 18 months having small spiritual experiences, you know, trusting God, taking action, striking match. Oh, look God.

Trust God, take action. Oh, look, God. But sitting on the lawn that day, the cumulative effect of all of those small spiritual experiences was the bush caught fire and I woke up because an educational variety spiritual experience is not thinking my way into an understanding of God.

It's having enough spiritual experiences to educate me and wake me up to the fact that the world does not work how I thought, you know, and I have to keep having those spiritual experiences even today. So I come back to Austin and I realize that I need to get into sponsorship. So I go to meetings and I try to become attractive because it's a program of attraction rather than promotion, right?

No, it's not. The 11th tradition doesn't have anything to do with the 12step. IT'S A GREAT way to avoid service work and setting up chairs is nice and cleaning ashtrays is nice, but it's not one-on-one service carrying this message, you know, and I know you're not good at it yet.

You know how you get good at something? You do it a lot. You'll be willing to suck first, you know, show up and suck.

It's my motto, you know, but uh so I I started, you know, I saw a guy come walking into my home group. His insurance paid for five days of detox. A redheaded, see-through Irish guy, 35 years old, still shaking.

And I just walked up and went, "Hi, I'm your sponsor." When he got a year, he went, "I just thought that's how it worked. I didn't know." But but what I discovered is a number of things. Like first off, my spiritual growth is dependent on me working with others.

And once I learned that, others started getting worked with. Plus, and apparently everybody knows this but me or probably maybe us, but it's real easy to have a partial understanding of something if you're learning it for your own use. But if you teach it, you have to understand it.

And I've got a I have a you know, like I said before, I believe the program is based on firsthand experience of the effects of trusting this power and taking action and gaining the experience. But if I don't ever examine that experience, I'm not sure what it was. But every time I talk about my experience, my current experience with what I'm doing in the program, it solidifies behind me and becomes a solid foundation to stand on.

It's not this notion that I think the steps work. It's this concrete proof at how because the beauty of the program for me is that the results are reproducible. And not just reproducible, they're refinable.

I can get better at this stuff. Because if I want, you know, screw sober, I want a big cool life. Sober is the first thing I've got to do.

Apparently, it takes this much willingness and connection to God to stop using and this much to stop lying to people and this much to show up on time for work. And you know, we treat that first one like it's the big one. It's not the tiniest bit of willingness and the obsession's lifted.

You know, it's the rest of the work that where the big cool life happens. So, I keep moving through this stuff and I become fascinated by this spiritual stuff. You know, I'm the kind of guy growing up where if I heard a song I liked, you were going to hear it whether you wanted to or not.

And this is just like the best song ever, you know, and uh so I'm I'm running through the steps and I'm I'm trying to get a better understanding of this stuff and it continues to change. Like I said, I've been sober, you know, 13 plus years. In in the beginning, I walked in with almost nothing.

there was very little left materially, physically, spiritually. There was just not much left. Um, I stumbled into a job that paid me a lot of money to work a few hours for the first three years I was sober.

And and it and it allowed me to only have to think about this. It was a gift. And then I showed up for work one day and the company was out of business and nobody told me.

And the job skills were not transferable. And the only other things I knew how to do to make money I was no longer comfortable doing. So, you know, and but because I was had a home group and I was I got so freaked out about money and so I couldn't pay my bills.

I wanted to be responsible. That was new. But the but the desire to be responsible was crushing me, but I didn't go to my home group for a few days and one of the guys came over and said, "What's going on with you?" And we talked and he gave me a meditation practice to do right that minute.

And an hour later when I was done when we started this is me and here's the fear. And when I finished here's the fear and here's me. Same fear but I can make some choices now.

And uh and they the fellowship kept me sober that day. One guy kept me sober that day. And I lost my apartment.

I sold my car. I started renting rooms. Seemed like a disaster.

People are going God's making room for something big. I was in there. You know, next time you're tearing the house down, let me get my stuff first.

But it but it was a gift because I was able to start a business because my expenses were low. I could afford to work for myself for a little while until I got some clients. And for the next nine years, I was self-employed.

I had to put everything I owned in storage, which turned out to be awesome because about three years later, I got married and we didn't have to wonder where my stuff was going to go. It was going to go wherever it had already gone. You know, I got to my the only thing my father wanted from me was my presence.

And that wasn't always easy. Not because he was a bad guy. He wasn't.

He was awesome. But he was old and he was sick and it was hard to watch. And I was still selfish and full of fear, but I went out there as much as I could.

And and at the end of his life, I got to be there for him. I got to walk him through it. I got to help him do inventory so he could die without resentments against me and some of my siblings.

That was awesome. You know, it's a I tell people that the last couple years I was using every day was worse than the day before. That's because every day was one more bit of bitter and demoralizing, incomprehensible misery.

I couldn't find my way out of the hole I was in. It means every day was the worst day of my life, you know. And now every day is a little better than the day before, if only because I got a little bit more experience that this works.

Day my dad died was the best day of my life. The next day was even better. You know, the day I got married was the best day of my life.

The next day even better. You know, and the beauty of all this is I am not special. You know, they say some are sicker than others.

And I used to think that meant that the people who kept relapsing were sicker than me. You know, but what I understand now is that I'm one of the sick ones. You know, I get wildly uncomfortable very quickly.

And so what that means is I apparently have to do this a little more rigorously than most the people I'm around. You know what I see in the meetings today is 70% of the people in the meetings, they go to meetings, they worked the steps a while ago. They go to meetings, they hang out with sober people, they pray some, you know, when the wheels come off, they gather their friends around them and they talk about inventory.

They might even start a little writing and then once it passes, they go, "Okay, but that's not there's no growth in that. I can't do it. If you can do that and stay sober, knock yourself out.

I can't do that. I'll die. And I know because I imitated you guys for a while in early sobriety and it nearly made me insane.

You know, I have to really do what the book says. I have to develop a manner of living that requires rigorous honesty that requires constant motion and action, you know. And uh at some point the program for me had to stop being um a way to deal with problems.

I had to stop using the steps like a fire extinguisher, you know, and uh and start trying to develop a manner of living that allowed some real freedom and some real, you know, some real growth in my life. You know, it's like when I came in, people were talking about happy, joyous, and free. And my first thought is, well, well, not all the time, right?

You know, and then I I sat down and went, but the book says happy, joyous, and free, and I believe what the book says. So, what's the hang-up in my thinking on happy, joy, and free all the time? And then I realized that when I said happy, what I meant was euphoric.

And you know, pleasure is awesome, but I ran pleasure into the dirt trying to make myself happy. You know, and don't get me wrong, I'm all for pleasure. As long as I don't think it's going to fix what's wrong with me because my happiness now comes from a good connection to my higher power, not from all the fun stuff I do, you know, not from the pleasure.

Pleasure is great, but it's never going to make me happy. And when I say free, what I mean is absolute zero accountability or consequences. I should be at freedom is the ability to do anything I want and never have to pay for any of it.

You know, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. you know, and in my head when I go to sleep at night. But but but real freedom for me came from the firsthand experience of trusting God, taking right action, and getting to a place where I was no longer afraid of the responsibilities of my life as it stood at the moment.

Because for me, what spiritual fitness means is not it's not a place I reach. It's like the demands of my life right now are 10 inches in diameter. And the experience I have with trusting God and taking action is 10 inches in diameter.

And through no fault of my own, my life will go 11 in. And now I'm taking my 10-in circle and I'm rolling that puppy around trying to cover the new area. You know, old behaviors come up.

Apparently, they're not old behaviors if I'm currently doing them. But but if I keep practicing these principles, I keep doing living in the discipline of 10, 11, and 12, I gain the experience and my my connection to God grows and and I'm now spiritually fit again. And I watched this happen over and over in my life and the lives of those people around me.

I thought I was backsliding every time things would get rocky, you know. And and the truth was in early sobriety, I got bored around two years and the people around me got bored. And so every once in a while they just stand up and light themselves on fire for something to do.

You know, I'm going to sleep with her, you know. You know, six weeks later we're back to normal. Can't go to that meeting anymore, but we're back to normal.

You know, but but I started looking at it and going, you know, I don't want to be back to normal. I want to I wonder if there's a way to invite some positive chaos into my life. maybe I can take on a challenge on purpose that's just as demanding spiritually, but the end result is my life is bigger and better.

So, I started a band which was, you know, it's like dating four people, but you know, that's a whole other story. But so I keep doing this stuff and I'm trying to develop this manner of living and trying to develop this understanding, you know, and I got introduced to this other spiritual program by my brother and uh and I was reading the book and about halfway through I realized that this book is assuming a spiritual starting point that I can't assume as an alcoholic and an addict that if I'm not fluent in the steps, there's no way I'm going to be able to do what this says. And one of my buddies had returned to the Catholic church and was in a Bible study class and he was going, "That's exactly how I feel about the Bible.

You know, it's great lessons, but I can't do it unless I'm already doing this other stuff, you know." I thought I was in the game and apparently I had been driving to the racetrack, you know, and uh but it but that realization was was awesome because as long as I keep doing this, I can take on these other challenges. And uh you know one of the principles that I came across was begin with the end in mind. And we talk a lot about progress not perfection.

But if I don't know what perfection looks like I can't tell if I'm making progress or run around in circles. You know if I if I'm going to Dallas and I don't know where that is four hours of driving around Austin does not get me to Dallas. You know, and and I hear a lot of people, and I've been guilty of claiming progress, not perfection, in order to justify no progress at all.

You know, oh, it's better than it was. No, it's not. You're just not drunk, but it's not better.

You know, and I'm not trusting God, and I'm not growing, and I'm not, you know, I'm not getting a bigger social life. I'm not getting a bigger spiritual life. I'm stuck, you know.

And we were at our at my home group the other night. We were talking about humility. And you know it's not smallalness.

You know part of being humble is admitting the good and the bad in me. You know and and often what I find in myself is that there are things that I'm bad at because I have entirely neglected them. Not because I'm bad at them, but I didn't want the responsibility of being good at them.

And there are things that I there are gifts that I was given that I'm good at that I've neglected taking advantage of. And I do not believe God put me here to spend the rest of my life working at ThunderCloud. You know, not that there anything wrong with that, but I don't think that's my path.

It'd be a great place to hide, but I don't want to hide in the program. You know, for me, meetings are awesome. You know, meeting makers make it.

No, they don't. I know lots of people that go to meetings and get drunk all the time. But if you talk to somebody who stops going to meetings, what you discover is they stopped going because they stopped working the steps and they couldn't listen to that stuff anymore.

It's hard to sit in a me in a room full of God when you don't have any of your own, you know, and uh so I got to stay on on the ball with this stuff because meetings are like the pep rally, you know. The game is not won at the pep rally. You know, we can get to go to three pep rallies a day and still not score a single point, you know.

So, so I got to I got to do this stuff and I really got to get serious about how I'm how I'm moving on with my life. You know, what I know, you know, I've learned a lot over 13 plus years of working these steps and applying these principles. You know, I learned how to become honest.

I learned how to become employable. You know, I mean, when I walked in the front door, you know, it was not it wasn't wasn't safe to be around me for the first year or so. I was erratic at best, you know, and and now I actually dress like this on a fairly regular basis.

It's not just, you know, will the defendant please rise, you know. So, you know, I'm in a job doing something I've never done at 51 years old, but it's exciting and it's challenging and I can't wait to see what comes next, what it's preparing me for. You know, we talk about one day at a time.

One day at a time. But what I see is like people waking up in the morning and going, "Okay, God, keep me sober. Oh, it's bedtime." you know, spiritually holding their breath.

And and and the reason I recognize it because I was doing it. But once again, that's not what the book says to do. And there's no growth in that.

And there's no freedom in that. And there's no real joy in that. There's just endurance.

And I don't endure very well. No, I do. I just don't want to.

So rather than just thinking about one day at a time, I'm spending my energies these days trying to work the steps in order to live one day successfully because 95% of everything life ever does, it does over and over and over and over again. And I need to get good at it. You know, it can't be a catastrophe this, you know, the next time the same thing happens.

You know, you know, the book says I have a new employer. That means I have a new job. And what kind of an idiot doesn't get good at his job?

I got to go every day. Back in the early 80s, a friend of mine hired me at a restaurant to be a line cook. And I'd never been a cook before.

And I really Okay. And like four days in, I went back to dude, I should quit. I'm going to put you out of business.

This is just a nightmare. And he's going, "No, no, you'll be fine." Oh, no. But he wouldn't let me quit.

So, I didn't. And you know, and I'm I'm having to look at the recipe book for every single thing I do. and and I'm half of the orders are wrong and people are yelling at me and other people, you know, and but after a month I start to get the hang of it a little.

And after three months, the four or five things that people tend to order, I I get good at those, you know. And after six months, I can do I understand why we do things in the order we do them because I've been doing it enough to start recognizing the patterns and and answering those sorts of questions. And after a year of doing it, I can spend an eight hour shift and the only thing, you know, we're talking about sports and music and the only thing I remember is the four weird orders, something that was a little outside the norm.

But my program should be exactly like that. You know, I need to be fluent at this stuff. You know, I I didn't know how to do a fourth step.

And the way I learned that was by trying to explain to a poni the first time how to do a four step. And I asked two or three people to show me how to do a four step. And they couldn't show me either.

And eventually I found the Joe and Charlie step study where they go line by line through the book and explain it. And I had their handouts and I learned the mechanics of a fourth step. Because if I can't do four with absolute clarity and efficiency, there's no way I get the good results I need out of five.

There's no way I can spend time in six imagining what it would look like to be what God would have me be instead of the crap I've been doing. There's no way I know what I'm asking God for help with in seven. I can't make proper amends in eight or nine.

There's zero chance I can do 10 because I just explained why, you know. So, so it's this thing that I stumbled through two years of sobriety without having any clarity on at all. You know, I needed in my head in real time to go this person first column did this second column did affected that third column.

My part was this and here's the character defects that caused it. I need to be efficient at that, you know. And after a after a year of doing inventory with my sponsor, I realized I had a part.

I think it takes everybody about a year of doing inventory to realize every time really apart you know and then about two and a half years most of us hit that place where we're going why is everything affecting my third column so much why am I so dependent on the world and its people and its outcomes for those those needs in that third column we talk a lot about fear is not getting what you want or losing what you have but it's not not getting the girl or losing the job it's not getting those third column needs met the way I thought I needed to or losing using them in some way where I thought I had a male down. It's all in that third column. And I sp I've spent the last 10 years trying to get better and better at depending on God's power and direction and my own actions for those third column needs and not you people.

You know, self-esteem apparently isn't based on you thinking well of me. Who knew? You know, I mean, it's right there in the word selfesteem, but I was completely out of that loop, you know.

you know, and my ambition should be based on what God would have me be, not what I think will make me feel good or look cool or whatever, you know, and and as I continue to practice this, I'm less and less dependent on the world and more and more independent so that I can just it's me and God and you people don't affect me as much because I don't need things from you can't give me. And I began working with sponses and they kept pissing me off not doing what they were supposed to and I'm doing inventory on a guy whose last name I don't know and that's inappropriate and and and I I eventually learned to let them be who they are, however that goes. And after I did that, I was able to learn to let my friends just be who they are and where they are on this path, however that goes.

And once I could do that, then I could start letting my family just be who they are. However that goes. And then then finally, I was just barely ready to get into a one-on-one romantic relationship.

You know, Joe and I have been married for nearly six years and we've never had a fight. And that's not because we don't piss each other off. That's because we're both clear on the fact that we have a side of the street.

And as long as I stay on my side and do my inventory, and she stays on her side and does her inventory, there's nothing to fight about. We don't talk about the relationship. That's a refreshing.

You know, we you know, we uh the hardest the single hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life is is nothing when she's having a bad spiritual time. But if I jump in there and try and help, I'm showing her I don't trust her to do it. And pretty soon she doesn't trust herself either.

And I know because I've done it to poor women, you know. And and I've also shown her it's my job to fix it. And and when I don't fix it, then it makes her mad at me.

you know, and it's a lose-lose deal, you know, but if I can stay on my side of the street and work the steps and realize that that's I'm not working the steps to be comfortable. I'm working to the steps to stay connected to God while I'm uncomfortable in order for her to leave her the room to write her own ship. And after six years, I have no fear of her sorting that out.

And she's not worried about me. However rocky either of us get spiritually, we always come back and we don't have to worry about each other. But we had to give each other that kind of room, you know.

Um, my job is just to keep practicing these practicing these principles in all my affairs so I can keep up with the demands of my big cool life. You know, I stopped setting myself on fire. Life just started getting better on its own, you know.

You know, but but that's awesome. I mean, who doesn't want a big cool life, you know? Who doesn't want to go, "God, it scares me to death, but I'm going back to school.

It scares me to death, but I'm going to take this thing that feels in my heart like the right thing to do." Scariest thing I ever did was tell her I didn't want to be friends anymore. I just I wanted to date. That was terrifying.

Then sec the next scariest thing I ever did was ask her to marry me because that was also terrifying. But oh my god, it was the right thing to do, you know, and there was a lot of prayer leading up to that. Um, you know, it's it's just an amazing life.

And I keep saying this, I am not special. If you do what I do, you get what I get every time. And uh, I still don't say the Lord's Prayer at the end of meetings.

I'm I'm still struggling with food, you know, but it's kind of the last frontier for me, you know, but I don't say the Lord's prayer at the end of meetings, but it's not for the same reason. Now, um instead of saying the words, I'm looking at you guys' faces and I'm listening to the music and it and just marveling at the miracle. You know, I'm so happy to be here and I'm so happy that you guys are here and I cannot wait to see what happens for you guys next.

Thanks. >> 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.