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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. >> It is really good to be here tonight.

Um I think it's been about 7 weeks. I don't know. I've I've lost I've lost track.

But we spent a lot of time on the first step. We've gone over steps two, three, and four in detail. uh a very very brief synopsis of that material for anybody that hasn't been here the whole time.

Um step one is uh an admission, a full concession to our innermost selves that we have a brain that will take us back to alcohol. And if we're a drug addict, we've got a brain that'll take us back to drugs. No matter how strong the desire to stay separated from that is, no matter no matter how many reasons we have uh for not drinking or not using uh no no matter how strong our decision is to stay away from alcohol uh or drugs, we end up back with the alcohol.

Uh we also have a a body that is is sickened as well. And how that works is once we start drinking there are times when we have little or no control over the amount we take. It creates an actual physical craving in our bodies and uh the first drink uh always asks for the second drink.

The second drink insists on the third. The third drink demands the fourth. And many many times we get tongue chew and kneew walking drunk.

And that's not what we plant. That would be bad enough uh if it wasn't for the fact that there's a dash and it says that our lives are unmanageable. And we found that there's both external and internal una unmanageability.

The externals is all the DUIs and the lost families and and all the problems, the jobs and uh not being able to manage your money and all the other things that happen uh with active alcoholism. But there's also the internal unmanageability which is emotional basically and mental and spiritual. And how that works is that on a good day you're restless, irritable, discontented.

Most of the time you're prayed to misery, depression. You're full of fear. Uh you've got guilt and remorse about the things that went on in the past and anxiety about what's going to happen in the future.

uh and you get to a place sometimes in sobriety, you get to a place where uh you're just pitifully and incomprehensibly demoralized. Uh and many many times we uh we relapse over that. Uh we take our own life over that or we get locked up over that.

And uh you take the alcohol away from an alcoholic and don't give them something um a a spiritual answer. you just take away their alcohol and you're you're not you're not doing them any favors. What what you know the more you learn about alcoholism, the more you see that it's really a spiritual in nature.

Alcohol is a symptom. And we learned uh we learned that uh I believe um in the last couple of weeks here. Step two is okay, you know, I buy this.

I'm in real trouble. I'm in way more trouble than I thought I was. The thanks a lot Alcoholics Anonymous.

you know, you've painted me into a corner. Okay. Uh there's a way out.

I believe that there's a way out. I believe that there's a power that I can access through practicing spiritual living which will afford me um survival from alcoholism. Um uh that power that power will enable me to stay separated from alcohol, from drugs.

uh and if and if I if I practice spiritual living by you know maintaining uh my spiritual condition uh I'll be safe and protected in in the sunlight of the spirit where I'm safe and protected from the next drink or drug and the problems in my life uh start to get solved because I need to fire my manager and get new management uh because me managing my own life didn't work very well. So that manager has to go and uh uh and the power greater than myself has to come in and there's many ways that we learn further on in the steps where where we uh we find that we actually do get guidance from the spirit. Um I believe that there's a solution.

Uh I'm not real happy about it but I believe there's a solution. Uh there's just you know it it says these are not easy alternatives to face. die an alcoholic death, live life along spiritual lines.

It's not an easy alternative to face. You, you know, if you were sane, it would be an easy alter alternative to face. You know, you're going to die a horrible death or you're going to, you know, go to some meetings, practice some steps, help some people out.

You know, somebody that's not insane would say, you know, where do I sign up? But but we go we go, you know, tell us a little bit more about that dying in alcohol like that. How exactly do how exactly does that happen?

and how much time do I have you you know uh so we're not real happy about step two but we we need to move you know we need to move forward we need to move forward so in step three we make a decision to go through these steps to live life along spiritual lines uh because we are out of plans this is a plan that has worked for a lot of people uh we reluctantly agree to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God to to practice these principles uh in in all of our pairs and we move forward and the first thing they ask us to do is to do an inventory. Uh what are our gross what are our grosser handicaps? What what are the real problems in our life?

And they manifest basically in anger. They manifest in fear and they manifest in that horrible uncomfortable emotional uh feelings of guilt, shame and remorse. Those are the things that us.

They keep us in the bondage of self as the book talks about. And we need to inventory these things because we need we need to gain mastery over them. Now, we're not going to be able to take care of these things on a frontal assault.

We can't just say to ourselves, "Okay, I'm never going to be resentful again. Okay, done. Next." You know, that doesn't happen.

You know, the next time somebody takes your parking space at the grocery store, you're freaking out. you we we don't have like we don't have the power to stay separated from alcohol. We don't have the power to stay separated from our character defects.

We just don't. You know, we can't wish our character defects away. But there's a process that they the early AAS found uh for moving past these character defects, outgrowing these character defects, bringing these character defects into, you know, a a manageable area, you know, normal normal people uh have normal emotions.

Alcoholics are prey to, you know, extremes of all kinds. So we need we need to inventory these things in steps uh in step four and that's what we went over in the last two weeks. We looked at resentments uh two weeks ago when we looked at fears and our conduct especially our sex conduct.

We looked at that last week and that brings us to chapter six into action. Now I I will mention that being being a a pseudo intellectual, you know, I always always saw myself as an in an intellectual even though I really had no education to back that up. Um uh I wanted to figure this out.

DIDN'T DIDN'T EVERYBODY IN HERE WANT TO figure this out? Give me Give me the cliffnote versions. Tell me what I need to know here to get out of this jackpot.

you know, to show me how to drink normally or, you know, or at least show me how to how to be happy not drinking. Uh, and let me get the hell out of here. You know, I mean, that was really that was really my my uh my first impression.

You know, this chapter doesn't say into thinking. It doesn't say, you know, into understanding. It doesn't say into figuring this thing out.

It says into action. because they found that action is really the only hope that we have for changing ourselves so fundamentally that we can overcome alcoholism. Um, one of the reasons why therapeutics don't seem to work very well on alcoholics like if an alcoholic wants to treat their alcoholism by going to a therapist.

Um, therapy helps a lot of outside issues. It helps us gain perspective on what's going on in our life. And I'm a I'm a huge supporter of therapy.

Uh my sponsor happens to be a clinical psychologist and and he does counseling and therapy all day long. I'm all for it. But it, you know, in single-handed combat against alcoholism, therapy is going to get its ass kicked.

And the reason is is because in therapy they try to help you change your thinking, you know, well, why did you do that, Chris? You know, you know, why did you vomit on that nun? You know, I mean, you know, AND SO SO I'LL GO SOMETIMES I'LL GO ALL THE WAY BACK TO CHILDHOOD, YOU KNOW, like like why I did that and and I'll start to gain a real perspective in what the heck is going on with my life, but I won't BE ABLE TO STOP DRINKING, you know?

I'll know I'll know why I'm drinking, but I won't be able to stop. You know, uh what they found out in Alcoholics Anonymous is is is we wanted help you change your behavior. We almost don't care what you think.

Have you ever had a sponsor that you, you know, you're trying to explain to the sponsor like how you feel about something? Oh, well, well, I think, you know, and your sponsor tells you, "Look, if I cared what you thought, you know, I'd come to the booby hatch where you live and ask you. I'm I don't care what you think.

What I I want TO KNOW WHAT YOU'RE GOING TO DO." AND and uh you know, I think we've all had people uh come at us like that. And there's a reason we, you know, we want your feet. We don't care what you think a lot of times.

Okay? your your brain is what got you into this mess. You you know the the the the illness centers in the mind.

So a sick mind is not going to unsick its own mind. You know there there has to be a process where we'll regain perspective. And that happens through behavior modification.

The stuff that they ask you to do in Alcoholics Anonymous. And here's a here's a real big action. This is this is a very very big action step.

Step five says, "Having made our personal inventory, what shall we do about it? We've been trying to get a new attitude, a new relationship with our creator and to discover the obstacles in our path." Steps three and steps four. We have admitted certain defects.

We have ascertained in a rough way what the trouble is. We have put our finger on the weak items in our personal inventory. Now, these are about to be cast out.

That's a hell of a promise. Think about that. The the things that you have inventoried in your forep are about to be cast out.

This requires action on our part, which when completed will mean that we have admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our defects. Now, for the longest time before I was exposed to a fourep, I knew what I did wrong, but I didn't I didn't I didn't have a clue about how that manifests in me. When we look at the fourep, we look at, you know, who we're angry at.

We look at why we're angry, but then we see how it affects our areas of self. Um the only way for us to really have a resentment is to have our money, our power, our sex harmed or interfered with. Uh that's what gets us every single time.

So we now know that. But then we do something that we've never done before. We look at our faults in the resentment inventory.

In the fear inventory, we look at uh we look at the fact that don't we have these fears because self reliance has failed us? We've been running the show and we're filled with fear. Isn't the reason we're filled with fear because we've been running the whole show?

And we start to change a little bit of our perception with that. And then in the harms to others inventory, we we review the in we review the relationship. We ask ourselves the nine questions and then we try to put together a sane and sound ideal for our future relationships, for our future sex life.

When we see it all like that, it starts to become clearer. Now, we have to admit it to somebody. Now, this was difficult for me.

Uh I was always told, never admit anything, even if they've got you on video, you know? I mean, that's the way that's the way I grew up, you know, and And so so put together every single thing in this fourstep and you know meet with somebody and tell them just what kind of a schmuck I am. You know I I wasn't really looking forward to this.

Now the first time I did a fourep and the first first time I did a fifth step, it it basically went like this. I didn't have the benefit of a big book sponsor. They they were not available in North Jersey at this time.

They there wasn't such a thing. Um the book Alcoholics Anonymous had grown so out of favor that it was pretty much replaced with living sober and the 12 and 12. So when when when you know when I had uh when I was up against the fourep I didn't get any direction.

You know, you would you'd raise your hand in a meeting and you'd ask like, "Uh, would anybody in here tell me how I can do a fourep?" You know, SOME OLD-TIMER GO, "KID, YOU DO A FOUREP WITH A PENCIL, YOU KNOW, AND THAT'S ABOUT THAT'S ABOUT THE BEST YOU WOULD GET." SO, so what do you do? What I did was I went to the 12 and 12. I went to a bunch of step meetings, you know.

I I tried I got Hazelton guides. I grabbed anything and everything I could find and I started to put what I thought a fourep was together and basically it was a life story because I'd been in treatment and you know they had you do a life story. So I did like a an expanded life story.

I listed out some character defects. I listed out some of the things that I did that I never told anybody and I put this all together and I met with my sponsor. Uh we met out in a out in a park.

Um, and you know, I later realiz I I thought maybe he wanted to bring me back to nature like like a Yoda kind of experience or something. You know, he just wanted to walk his dogs while he was doing the fistep, you know, like, you know, kill two birds with one stone. So anyway, um, anyway, when I got done reading this thing, I mean, I was reading it like I am such a scumbag.

Oh, you know, and I finally get done with this thing and two things happened. One one was he looked at me and he goes, "Chris, you know, that's really not that bad." Like like every single thing, you know, that really was not that bad. And I want to tell you something.

I believe that you were an alcoholic before you put alcohol in your body. You were like a campfire with the coals just just red. And when you started drinking, it was like throwing gasoline on that campfire.

And it flared up and it burnt you and everybody around you. and and now you know you're doing something about this. You're one of the very very few there's a small percentage of people who recognize this problem and really work toward the solution.

So you should lighten up on yourself a little bit. And I started for that exact moment I started to feel like I might be part of this human condition, part of humanity. I felt I felt outside of I I felt smaller than you know.

I had the I had the the big ego with the lack of self-esteem that a lot of us have and I just felt apart from. And after finishing that botched up fifth step, I started to feel like I was part of the human race again. Now, my second time doing a fifth step, I actually had some instruction on how to do the fourth step.

So, I went to my sponsor with a four column resentment inventory, you know, uh an expanded two column fear inventory. the harm to the harms to others, emphasis on sex with the nine questions answered and all that. And I went to him and he looked at and he goes, "What the hell is all this?

Where's your story?" You know, I mean I mean it was the first time him or probably anybody else saw it the way the book asks you to do it. And I said I said, "Let me just let me just read this." You know, I tried to do it from the book Alcoholics Anonymous and let me just read it. So he goes, "Fine, go ahead and read it." Now, now this was a whole different experience for me because I had discovered the exact nature of my defects by doing the four-step inventory and by sharing THAT THAT WAS A DIFFERENT experience than my first this step.

My first this step was confessional. I wrote down everything that I already knew. There wasn't any discovering any truth about, you know, my stock and trade.

I wrote down the stuff that I already thought. So, it was confessional. It was like going to to confession if you were a Catholic.

It wasn't the same experience as a fist. And I learned that by doing doing both of these. When I did the fifth step as at using the right inventories, I got um I got really clear on what was going on in my life and what I needed to do, the actions I needed to take to be able to truly recover from alcoholism and move forward with my life.

Um this brings us to the fifth step in the program of recovery mentioned in the preceding chapters. Uh this this is perhaps difficult especially discussing our defects with another person. We think we have done well enough and admitting these things to ourselves.

There is doubt about that. In actual practice we usually find a solitary self apprais appraisal insufficient. So if we've come to all these conclusions and we're not ready or willing to share this holding nothing back, what they found their experience was it was insufficient and you didn't stay sober.

Insufficiency means you're going to go back to drinking usually. But even if you don't go back to drinking, you're going to have untreated alcoholism out the wazoo. That's usually that's usually what happens.

Many of us thought it necessary to go much further. We will be more reconciled to discussing ourselves with another person when we see good reasons why we should do so. The best reason first.

If we skip this vital step, we may not overcome drinking. That's the first time they say about they give you about eight warnings in here that if you don't do this, you're not going to going to stay sober and you're certainly not going to recover. There's like eight places in here.

You think they're they're serious about this? if they give us like eight warnings right in a row, and I'll show you them. Time after time, newcomers have tried to keep to themselves certain facts about their life.

Trying to avoid this humbling experience, they've turned to easier methods. Almost invariably, they got drunk. Having persevered with the rest of the pro program, they wondered why they fell.

We think the reason is that they never completed their house cleaning. They took inventory, all right, but hung on to some of the worst items in stock. They only thought they had lost their egotism and fear.

They only thought they had humbled themselves. They had not learned enough of humility, fearlessness, and honesty in the sense we find it necessary and until they told someone else all their life story. I heard I heard a fist the other day and in it the individual came over with his resentment inventory.

He came over with his fear inventory. He came over with a sex harms inventory and we read all that and in the middle of hearing all of these things, I got background. You know how that happens?

Somebody will go, "Well, I'm I'm about to read you a resentment. Let me just tell you a little bit about this situation." And there'll be some background. Okay, that painted the whole life story picture.

So, this individual read me the inventories and along with it gave me enough background to get an accurate picture of what his life was like, his life story. And it was an alcoholic life story, let me tell you. And uh you know there there's a lot of pain and suffering in the past but there's a lot of hope.

There's a lot of positive things in the future as we go through this. I uh I deal a lot with the uh the the the medical and the treatment uh uh world out there for addiction and alcoholism uh treatment. Uh I'm involved with it.

Today I I interviewed an addiction psychiatrist down in New Orleans and you know we talked for about an hour on all all the current topics and I can hold my own with with these uh these kind of guys. I can I've learned enough uh I've learned enough about uh the treatment processes to be able to hold my own and uh and you know the one thing uh the one thing that's made very very clear uh from statistical studies is that nothing is more efficacious for recovery from addiction than the 12step process. I'll give you a statistic.

treatment, regular 28 day rehab treatment, you know, the run-of-the-mill kind of treatment. There's good treatment centers, there's bad treatment centers, and there's there's, you know, average treatment centers. Uh, aggregate all of these statistics together and you'll find that 5% of the people that go through treatment are sober 5 years down the road.

There's other studies that have been done uh within Alcoholics Anonymous where um for people who have done the fourth and the fifth step, 60% of them are sober 5 years out. Now, that's pretty significant. That means that it's something like six times more powerful to do a fourth and a fifth step than it is to go to treatment for 28 days.

This stuff is powerful. Why aren't the other 40% sober out of that 60%? Because they didn't finish their amends and they they weren't praying and meditating on a daily basis and they weren't working with others.

That's usually the reason. Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path and that's still true today. The problem is very few people thoroughly follow the path.

That's why when somebody says AA statistics are only 5 to 10%. A lot of times those statistics are based on people who walk through that door. We all know that everybody that walks through that door does not get through all the 12 steps.

If they did, our statistics would be would be way better. But a lot of times they just come in, take up a chair, you know, uh, uh, weasle around for a while and, you know, they don't find enough power to stay because they're not doing anything. And they leave and they get drunk and they tell everybody that it doesn't work.

And we get a we get one more black eye from some that that that that, you know, uh, the 12 steps doesn't doesn't take those seriously. More than most people, the alcoholic leads a double life. He is very much the actor.

Um, to the outer world, he presents his stage character. We went over this when we were looking at the third step. This is the one he likes his fellows to see.

He wants to enjoy a certain reputation, but knows in his heart he doesn't deserve it. So, anybody ever seen the movie Zelig? It's a Woody Allen movie.

This guy's a human chameleon, and if he's with hidic Jews, he grows a beard, and he looks like a hetic Jew. if he's with Nazis, all of a sudden, you know, he's he's like saluting like a Nazi. This guy's a human chameleon.

Well, when I saw that movie, it it touched me a little bit because that's what I DID. I TRIED TO FIT IN so much that if I was over with the Republicans, I was talking Republican stuff. If I was over with the Democrats, I was talking Democratic stuff.

You know, I want I needed I needed so desperately to be accepted and and to fit in. Uh, so I have a stage character that I've been using. The inconsistencies made worse by the things he does on his sprees.

Coming to his senses, he is revolted at certain episodes. He vaguely remembers. These memories are a nightmare.

He trembles to think someone might have observed him as fast as he can. He pushes these memories far inside himself. He hopes they will never see the light of day.

He's under constant fear and tension, and that makes for more drinking. You know, sometimes I've got to say, "Thank God for blackouts." You know, you know, I I there there I'm sure things that uh that were unbelievably disturbing that I did during blackouts because some of the things that I remember were were pretty horrific. Um, I was I suffered from such shame and such remorse because of the way I acted when I was drinking that I would have to get drunk again to get past it.

Does that make any sense? >> You know what I'm talking about, right? Like you wake up in the morning and you you vaguely remember some you know you you you you you were grabbing the boss's wife's ass you know at the party really drunk and you know you're LIKE OH MY GOD YOU KNOW I I've got to go into work today you know you know and I THINK I'LL TAKE THE DAY OFF AND UH AND GET DRUNK.

I mean because you just you just can't face yourself. You can't face what you've done. Um, and you know, this makes for more tricky.

We get caught in a cycle. Psychologists are inclined to agree with us. We've sent thousands of dollars for examinations.

Uh, how many people in here paid $100 an hour to a psychiatrist or a psychologist and then lied to them? Let the record show 200 of the 600 hands. What up?

HOW INSANE IS THAT? And and then you complain that they're not doing anything for you. They don't EVEN KNOW YOU DRINK.

Because when YOU WHEN THEY ASK YOU, you said, "YEAH, I HAVE A COUPLE. I JUST HAVE A COUPLE." YOU KNOW, YOU DON'T TELL them you're you're you're sucking down four gallons a gallow every day. You know, JUST HAD A COUPLE.

SO THEY'RE WONDERING, they're thinking you're you're a you're a psycho or YOU GOT SPLIT PERSONALITY. THEY DON'T know what to do with you. We have seldom told them the whole truth, nor we have have we followed their advice.

Um, unwilling to be honest with these sympathetic men, we were honest with no one else. Small wonder many in the medical profession have a low opinion of alcoholics and their chances for recovery. They still have a low opinion of us, folks.

Um, there was a study done uh and it was basically a study showing how much compassion the medical doctors have for us. And they they did this study from first year interns all the way through third-year residents for doctors. Okay?

And they found the first year intern had a whole lot of compassion for us. And by the time they're third-year residents in a hospital, they can't stand us and want to avoid treating the alcoholic like the plague. And it's because they see us at our most horrific.

We come in THERE AND WE'RE BEGGING for help. You know, we're completely out of our minds. And you know, we get some lirium or something.

We start to calm down and the first thing we think of is they ain't running things right around here. You know, THIS IS UNFAIR. THESE OTHER PEOPLE ARE UNFAIR.

AND UH we we run out of the place with a resentment, you know, and we don't pay our bill. And then two WEEKS LATER, WE'RE BACK. HELP ME, HELP ME, HELP ME.

You know, it's it's horrible. Of course, they can't stand us. Here's another warning.

It says, "We must be entirely honest with somebody if we expect to live long or happily in this world." Do you think they mean we have to be completely honest with somebody if we want to live long or happily in this world? Do you think that's what they mean? Rightly and naturally, we think well before we choose the person or persons with whom to take this intimate and confidential step.

Now, here's where the book shows a little of its dating. Remember, this book was written to be uh a mail order recovery process for alcoholism. That's really one of the main points of of writing this book.

They wanted to mail this out uh across the country to as many doctors as they could find. The doctors who were alcoholic would do this stuff. They'd get sober and they'd start Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

That was really the point. So, when they talk about who we should who we should look for, there are some really good descriptions in here that we should pay pay mind to, but you got to also understand that they're expecting this book to land in somebody's hands where there is no Alcoholics Anonymous. There is no sponsors.

There are no people who understand what a fist is. So nowadays, you can't shake a stick without hitting somebody qualified to listen to a fistep. But back when this book was written, there were really only two groups.

Uh, Akran and New York City, those of us belonging to a religious denomination which requires confession must and of course will want to go to the properly appointed authority whose duty is to receive it. Okay, this is u this is if you're Catholic, you're really they're really saying in this book that it's your obligation to do this with a priest. But it also says person or persons with whom you're going to take this confidential step.

So if you are Catholic, I would recommend doing it with a priest and doing it with a sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous because you're going to get something different from the sponsor in Alcoholics Anonymous. Very rarely are you are you sharing inventory with a priest and the priest says something like, "Oh, YOU PLAY WITH YOURSELF LIKE THAT? I DO THAT, TOO." You know, it's it's JUST NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

You know what I mean? Now, now in Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, uh you're going to get some identification probably. So, it's a different experience.

Though we have no religious connection, we may still do well to talk with someone ordained by an established religion. You know, do it with a sponsor and then then go do it with the priest. Many of the people that I've sponsored have done these these with priests.

you know, you can, you know, it's it's a good experience, I I think the more of this stuff that you share, the freer you get. See, while we got this stuff all bottled up inside us and, you know, it's it's taken it's taking hold in us and it, you know, negative emotions are coming out of us holding this stuff that when we share it, we can let it go. This is about freedom.

freedom from the bondage of self. So I I believe I believe in uh I believe in doing inventory like it says in this book and and sometimes going further. I have experience doing multiple uh fist steps.

In other words, it says we think well before we before we decide the person or persons with whom to share this confidential step. So this one time I picked three guys. I I picked one of my sponsies.

I picked I picked a really good friend of mine and one of his sponsies and I did a fifth step in front of three people reading it to three people. Now I'm not recommending this you know I'm just saying that this was my personal experience. I had an unbelievable experience with this.

My ego was stomped down like you wouldn't believe. I was I was so right size. You you know you could have put me on a mantle after after this this this step.

I mean I walked I walked out of there humble you know like sometimes sometimes we can fool one person but when three people are looking at you you know it was it was a different story for me. Now do I do that all the time? No.

Uh it was it was an experience I wanted to have. We often find such a person quick to see and understand our problem. Of course we will want we sometimes encounter people who do not understand alcoholics.

If we cannot or would rather not do this we search our acquaintance. If we don't want to go to a priest, we search out our acquaintance or a closed-mouthed understanding friend. Perhaps our doctor or psychologist will be the person.

It may be one of our own family, but we cannot disclose anything to our wives or parents which will hurt them or make them unhappy. I would recommend against doing a fistep with your parents, you know, and uh and and and be very careful about doing one with your spouse, too, you know. Um we're trying to get free.

We're not trying to alienate. We have no right to save our own skin at another person's expense. So if the information that we share is going to harm them, that's that's not part of what this is supposed to be about.

Such parts of our story we tell to someone who will understand yet be unaffected. All right. If you've got if you got a murderer or something, okay, tell that tell that to a priest.

you know, uh, you know, sometimes sometimes you you have to have some tact and you have to have some common sense. There was a lawsuit um there was an there was a a law action that happened up around our area in New Jersey. It was basically this individual, you know, shared something with with with somebody about um uh about a murder and it was found that um it was found in this one case.

Uh there's a couple of cases that went either way. It was found in this one case that you don't have the same rights as a priest if you're a sponsor. You don't have the same rights uh of of confidentiality if you're called into court and asked to testify under subpoena.

You know, a priest can say, you know, priestly confidentiality and and that's cool. As a sponsor, you may or may not, depending on what court system you're in, have that. So, sometimes you just you need to be you need to be smart about about this stuff.

uh you know you might be you might be dragging somebody into something that they may not want to be dragged into. The rule is that we must be hard on ourel but always considerate of others. Notwithstanding the great necessity for discussing ourselves with someone it may be that someone is so situated that there's no suitable person available.

And this can happen you know if you're a lighthouse keeper in Greenland or something. I mean, you know, listen, Leslie, anybody that's been to the international conventions has seen the tables for the loners, okay? You ever heard of loners in AA?

They stay sober by writing letters back and forth to each other. There are no meetings where they are. They cannot get to meetings cuz there aren't any.

There's like 10,000 of them that show up every 5 years at the international convention. And that's their first MEETING IN 5 YEARS. you know, you you you know, you can you can be in a position where where you're not going to have an AA member available.

It says if that is so, this step must may be postponed. Only, however, if we hold ourselves in complete readiness to go through with it at the first opportunity. We say this because we are very anxious that we talk to the right person.

It is important that he be able to keep a confidence that he fully understand and approve what we're driving at, and that he will not try to change our plan. Those are three specifics that the other person that's going to be listening to your fistep needs to understand. And it's okay to tell that person.

It's okay to if you're doing a fistep with somebody, go, you know, you you do understand that this is confidential. You know, you do understand that you're not going to you're not going to be trying to change my plan and you know what I'm doing here, right? This is a life and death errand.

You understand that, right? It's okay to ask somebody that. Um, but we must not use this as a mere excuse to postpone.

Now, here's our instructions. When we decide who is to hear our story, we waste no time. We have a written inventory and we're prepared for a long talk.

Uh, we explain to our partner what we're about to do and why we have to do it. He should realize that we are engaged upon a life and death errand. Most people approached in this way will be glad to help.

They will be honored by our confidence. Notice that it says we are prepared for a long talk. One of the things that I've seen a lot of my contemporaries do is try to edit down your fistep.

In other words, they see you coming over with a stack of papers like this and they go, "Oh my god, this is going to be 10 hours." And and what they try to do is say, "Just read the first few." You know, I get it. I get it. It says in here that they need to be prepared for a long talk.

So, if they're going to try to edit you down, you may be picking the wrong person. Find somebody who's going to going to give you enough time. Now, on some occasions, I've had to do this on multiple days.

Uh, you know, the the longest inventory I ever I ever heard was 22 hours. Now, that's not normal, but that's the longest one I heard. And that had to be done on multiple days.

I couldn't stay awake that long. And you know, people get really, you know, they get real attitude when you fall asleep on them when they're doing their fistep with you. That has happened to me.

I'll sh I'll share a really good one. There was a period of time in the late '9s where it was just STEP PEOPLE GOING THROUGH THE STEPS AT THE Schroeder house like, you know, IN AND OUT all weekend long, you know, two or three nights a week, step work going on. And and I thought to myself, there's this guy, this guy Jean, and I know I gave him I gave him the instruction to be ready for the fifth step.

I'm going to call him up. So I call him up and I say, "Jean, GET OVER HERE. WE GOT TO DO YOUR FIFTH step and we're going to do it tonight." The guy comes over.

He's got his he's got his inventory and he sits down and he starts to read. And by the fourth or fifth uh resentment, I start to I start to get a feeling of deja vu. Okay.

I start to realize that I've already heard all this. I'd forgotten he did a fistab with me two weeks EARLIER AND I DRAGGED HIM OVER AND MADE HIM DO IT AGAIN. SO, he's sitting there and he's doing this whole thing again.

Now, you know, I'm I'm always honest. I'm always upfront. So, basically what I told him was, you know, Jean, in cases like yours, I like to go over this stuff twice just in case we don't we don't we don't miss anything.

You know, you know, I didn't want to look stupid. Well, I am not kidding. I'm not kidding you when I say this.

He moved to Florida and he's known as as as two fistep jean cuz he makes everybody do it. Oh god. I saw no real harm in it.

So Oh god. All right. He's going to hear this tape and want to kill me.

Uh, all right. Here's some more instructions for us. This is what we need to do.

We pocket our pride and go to it. Okay? Forget about your ego.

Forget about your pride. This is read what's down on the paper. Just read, you know, ask God for the strength and the courage to read this stuff and do not edit.

Uh, we need to illuminate every twist of character, every dark cranny of the past. Now, here are some of the fifth promises. You know, we're always and forever hearing about the promises of AA.

And and when you hear somebody say the promises of AA, what they mean is the ninth promises. If you've been painstaking about the ninth step, you know, you'll know a new freedom and a new happiness, etc., etc. They leave out the part that you have to get halfway through the n, you know, the the first nine steps.

You got to be halfway through the ninth step before those promises are guaranteed to start to materialize. Well, every single one of these action steps has promises. And here's some of the fifth step promises, and they're awesome.

Once we have taken the step withholding nothing, we are delighted. We can look the world in the eye. We don't have to hang our heads anymore walking up the street or walking through the mall because we're afraid we're going to, you know, bump into somebody.

We can be alone at perfect peace and ease. That's an incredible promise. Back when I was drinking, I would have a big bottle of bourbon in front of me.

I'd have the TV on. I'd have the stereo playing. I'd have a guitar in my lap and I'd be reading a magazine and I'd be talking on the phone.

I mean, you know, I couldn't be alone at perfect peace and ease. I was out OF MY MIND. OUR fears fall from us.

We begin to feel the nearness of our creator. We start to feel the presence of God. We may have had certain spiritual beliefs, but now we begin to have a spiritual experience.

The feeling that the drink problem has disappeared will often come strongly. Now understand that the feeling that the drink problem has disappeared will come strongly. It doesn't disappear until step 10.

We feel we're on the broad highway walking hand in hand with the spirit of the universe. Those are great promises. Returning home, we find a place where we can be quiet for an hour.

This is the returning home part of the fifth step and it's important. Taking this book down from our shelf, we we turn to the page which contains the 12 steps. And uh that that page basically is um uh see is page 58, 59, and 60.

Uh carefully reading the first five proposals, we ask if we've omitted anything, for we're building an arch through which we shall walk a free man at last. So in this hour, we need to start learning how to meditate. And again, I think I mentioned last week that when they talked about meditation in this book, they really meant more contemplation really than meditation.

They didn't want you to just sit there with an empty head like like the Eastern mystics do. They wanted you to think about something at a deep level. So in our meditation, in our hour quiet time, we're asking ourselves, did we leave anything out of the first five steps?

Is there any part of this process that we haven't done completely? And it's very very important that you know we are able to answer truly to ourselves yes. Now when I'm doing fists with someone I always tell them I'm going to be home.

You you go do your quiet hour. You need to go home. You need to go to a church.

If if you have a crazy household go to a church. Go someplace where you can be quiet for an hour and I will be by my phone. If in meditation you come up with anything that you need to share with me that you left off of your inventory, I'm available.

And every once in a while, someone will call. Something will come to them. But most of the most of the time, they get through the quiet hour and they're able to say, "Yes, I've done the best I can with these first five steps.

Is our work solid so far? Are the stones properly in place? Have we skimped on the cement put into the foundation?

Have we tried to make mortar without sand?" Again, Bill uses construction references because he's telling us we're building an arch through our actions through the through the spiritual exercises of the steps. We're building an arch through which when we go through, we're going to be free. The step process is about freedom.

It's not about staying sober a day at a time, NO MATTER WHAT. EVEN IF MY ASS FALLS OFF, I'm going to stay sober. That's not what Alcoholics Anonymous is about.

It's about showing a way that you can be free. You can be free of uh of uh the the damaging symptoms of alcoholism. You're always going to have alcoholism, but the symptoms, the stuff that affects your quality of life can be uh can be put in remission.

And that's really what this is about. Um it's great news. You know, I I always sold myself short in Alcoholics Anonymous.

I, you know, for a long, long time, I sold myself short. I was looking at AA as a way to stay sober. I wasn't giving it credit for being a way to recover from alcoholism.

I really thought that what I needed to do was come to AA and be encouraged on a daily basis to stay sober. cuz you're all going to tell me just stay sober one day at a time. You know, Chris, we need you.

Please keep coming. You know, let's let's not drink. And and that's what I thought Alcoholics Anonymous was offering.

And I was selling myself short. I don't know, you know, I I'm I'm doing a couple of things. So, I might have shared this story somewhere, but you know, I'm going to share it again.

And if I shared it here, uh I apologize. But I want I want to talk about the difference between uh a fellowship of sobriety and a program of recovery. And this is a this is a story my friend Charlie Parker shares.

Charlie's a really good friend of mine and he lives uh he lives in Texas and he has been a Dallas Cowboy fan forever. His whole life. I mean you know you walk into his office and all there are is like Dallas Cowboy posters.

I mean, this guy is a fan. And he's gone to every single home game for the past like 40 years. And he starts to sponsor this this rich kid, okay?

This this kid who's just out of rehab and he's got a lot his family's got a lot of money, big Dallas money. And the KID GOES, "HEY, CHARLIE, I know that you're a fan of the Cowboys. Would you like to, you know, WE'VE GOT A SKYBOX.

Would you like to go watch the game up in the skybox with my family?" And Charlie goes, "Sure, you know, why not?" And he says, "You drive to this really nice parking lot. It's not the main parking lot where everybody's tailgating. It's a special private parking lot.

And then you go in and there's these beautiful escalators and everybody's handing you cheese and and and sparkling water. And you go up this escalator and there's beautiful music playing. and you walk out and you go out and you sit in this skybox and there's waiters and waitresses just ready to give you anything and it's really civilized and you can see the field really well and it's quiet cuz there's no crowd noise and it's a whole another experience for him.

And what Charlie said to himself was he didn't know whether he should be he should be pissed off that he was sitting in the cheap seats for 40 years or be grateful that he found a better way. And a lot of times that's how we are in Alcoholics Anonymous. When we perceive the fact that this really isn't just a fellowship about sobriety, it's a program of recovery.

we start to see that there really is a lot more to offer than what we've uh you know what we've uh what we've gone after. You know, we have shortch changed ourselves. Now, there's two schools of thought for doing a fourth and a fifth step.

The one school of thought is is you do a fourth and a fifth step once and then you live in 10, 11, and 12 for the rest of your life. And that comes from uh that school basically was started by Clarence Snder and some other people that go way way back. But there's another school of thought.

If you read in the 12 and 12, there's uh there's a statement that says many of us go in for annual or semianual house cleanings. Now what a house cleaning is is it's basically from step three through step 9. That really is what a house cleaning is.

So, Bill was saying many of us, he doesn't he didn't say all of us or we have to. He said many of us go in for annual or semianual house cleanings. Now, I've done that.

I've done that. There are periods of time where I've done, you know, gone through the steps two times in a year. Uh I haven't been through the steps in in a while now, but there was a period of time where I went through them uh quite often.

uh between 1995 and probably 2000, I went through them five or six times. And each time I went through them, there was a new benefit. There was a new place.

Uh there was a new place where I stood. Um there was there was more stuff that I got free of so often. So often this stuff is like an onion.

You can only peel so many layers back. You don't become aware of all of your character defects in one shot. Sometimes it's a lifetime process.

Yeah, our glaring character defects are above the horizon where we can see them and everybody else can see them. But sometimes after some years in AA, some years working a program, really trying to change and apply these things in our life, sometimes our character defects are now a little bit below the horizon. They're harder for us to see.

they don't manifest themselves in in in you know in in major ways where they get our attention. And sometimes when we do uh a fourth and a fifth step at year 10 or year 20 we're dealing with different stuff than at year 1. Now if you're the type of person who lives in 10 11 and 12 on a daily basis and has only done the fourth and the fifth step once and that's working for you, that's what you should do.

Um I have experienced multiple um inventories. I've experienced multiple times through the steps and I'm glad that I did because again each time it took me to a new place and I have to admit I am not an expert on you know maintaining everything through 101 and 12 stuff gets past me and with the annual or semianual house cleaning you can get you can catch the stuff that got past you. And if you're a person who lives in 10, 11, and 12, you can deal with it in 10, 11, and 12 when you catch up with it.

Uh either way is fine as long as we're applying ourselves as long as our we're we're applying ourselves to the to the best of our ab any given ability at any given time. Now being that we're going after freedom. Um there's two sets of steps that really get us to that freedom.

I believe four and five and I believe eight and nine. Now we're going to be talking next week. We're going to be talking a little bit about uh steps six and seven.

There's only two paragraphs in our book on six six and seven. In the step book, uh, Bill, uh, expands his ideas on steps six and seven, and there's some good information in there, but I understand steps six and seven today, and they're very appropriate for right after you've done an inventory. Right after you've done an inventory, you become willing to have the defects of character that you've seen in that inventory removed, and you ask God to remove them.

You know, those are very, very logical steps. We want to move away from the things that have been blocking us off from God and the things that have been roadblocks to our quality of life. We, you know, we want to move away from our handicaps.

These are the things that hurt us. Now, a lot of times in a in a four-step meeting, you'll hear somebody say, "Well, I inventory my, you know, my good points, too. I don't just inventory my bad.

I inventory my good points, too." And I don't really see a problem with that either. But understand it's not it's not the good things that are going to get you drunk. It's not the good things that are going to kill you.

So really the important thing is to see the character defects. See the things that are blocking you off from the sunlight of the spirit and keeping you uh keeping you in uh in active uh alcoholism. It's very very hard to describe what goes on in Alcoholics Anonymous because it's a spiritual program.

Um it's not a theory we have to live it. So it's very very difficult to explain to somebody who doesn't know anything about Alcoholics Anonymous how does it work? How does it really work?

And you know the the only the only way uh I think I can get my hands around this is if I participate in the maintenance of my spiritual condition, I will be placed in the spiritual atmosphere where the sunlight of the spirit can can beam down on me and keep me safe and protected and keep me going in the right direction and help me move away from my character defects and start to become become the type of person that uh that God would want me to be. Now, how exactly does that work? You know, it it's it's difficult to quantify, but it but it's observable.

We see it happening all the time. And the person who's on the debating society that just can't get to these steps because they just don't understand why they work. Uh, I YOU HAVE TO EXPLAIN TO ME HOW AND WHY THIS WORKS BEFORE I DO IT.

Those people are like the people on the Titanic who won't get in the lifeboat until they find out who the hell was in charge of looking for icebergs. You know what I mean? I ain't going nowhere until I figure out what the hell happened here.

Who cares? You know, we've got a lifeboat that keeps you afloat. Jump Jump in the boat.

Get in the boat with us. and and you know, get off of the debating society because you can be so smart in here that you that you kill yourself. You know, uh sometimes sometimes it sometimes it's the dumb guy that's just too stupid to argue with his sponsor that gets sober and the intellectual who's got to figure it all out who who, you know, it never gets sober.

So, you know, understand that it's the actions that bring about the recovery. And if we if we do to the best of our ability what it's asking us to do in this book, we got a real good chance of never drinking again. And we've got a really good chance of having every year be better as far as our quality of life is concerned.

Uh that's all I got tonight. THANKS. >> Thank you for listening to Sober Sunrise.

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