The Friday night Barefoot Group of Al-Anon Family Groups in Burbank, CA

Like I said, I'm Bryson. Hey, Bryson. How's your day going? Know me. This meeting, July, where I started, I was laughing.

I was talking to Josiah. I met my sponsor. Josiah is my sponsor. I met him here about 3 years ago, and, and John's actually the first guy to ever, tell me keep coming back is the answer to a stupid Al Anon question, which I love. A Tuesday night, Burbank.

So I have a special place in my heart for him too. You know, I I always say this. It's like, although I look like one, not an alcoholic. I'm not an AA. And, and and and as I tell my story, it's gonna become more apparent that I have a lot of the traits of an alcoholic, but I still don't have that allergy.

You guys are right now, lifetime of people who caused problems in my life, so I thought. Mhmm. I'm just gonna run down a long list, a lifetime of people who caused problems in my life, so I thought. People who whose drinking bothered me, people whose behavior bothered me. And the truth is, the only problem that I really had was myself and my thinking, and that's what this program has taught me.

I'm not from what most people consider an alcoholic home. My dad and mom didn't drink alcoholically, and and their their drinking never really bothered me that I could see at any point. I have to come to say, come to see that probably some of my grandparents, and they're not even sure about that. There's there's a lot of the stories that are around this, so they may have been alcoholics. I think that, certainly, it looks to me like my father might have been an Al Anon, has some traits like that.

You know, these these are self diagnosed self diagnosed diseases, so I don't really you know, I can't really say. But I do know that there was a lot of behavior in my family that really bothered me. Had you asked me 3 years ago if anything had bothered me, I would have said no. My parents' divorce didn't bother me. You know?

In my mind, it never bothered me. None of that stuff ever really bothered me. The story starts out, I grew up in Arkansas. My dad was a pro bull rider. My mom rode barrels, and I was grew up on a farm.

And, in my life, men were rough and strong and didn't talk about their feelings and were really shut down and tough. And women were were very warm and loving and took care of the kids, and that was my experience. And to this day, I still struggle with that. I'm not very intimate with men. My sponsors helped me a lot with that.

I said to somebody recently that I hope someday to model my love and romantic relationships on my relationship with my sponsor. I want someone that I can be that honest with and and and have no shame with. And that's something for me that's been a huge growth thing, is coming through this program to develop relationships with men. And men and a lot of the men in this room, I'm really tight with, and it's been a beautiful thing. So I grew up with that, traveled around a lot.

As, about 5 or 6 years old, my parents had trouble. Interestingly enough, my parents' divorce was very calm. I don't remember it as calm, and this is really key. In the process of my inventory and putting things together, I remember drama and fighting and trouble, and I remember feeling that that was directed at me and that there was some problem over me. And I spoke to my mother recently about that, and she said, your father and I never fought.

I just thought she was in denial. I was like, oh, that's great, mom. Yeah. Okay. My mom's crazy.

And what I actually came up and found out was that they didn't fight because just like me, they didn't talk. Everyone was very shut down. We didn't talk. It was like, we don't talk about feeding stuff. They broke up very calmly.

There was apparently some other trouble with my stepmother and my father, and she fought a lot. And when I was young, somehow, for years of my life, I transposed and put those two things together so that in my head, my parents fought, and they fought over and about me. It was all about me. That's really indicative of my disease. It's about me.

Truth was, none of that was about me. Okay. Both loved me. You know? But for me, I'm self centered.

You you guys are all thinking about how I look right now. You're all worried about something on me that doesn't look right, and and that's what you're thinking of. You're focused on that. In my mind, I'm sure of that. And I know that's not like mom and dad are split up.

My relationship is my dad is gone. Don't know him. Don't wanna know him. My dad is is a tough guy. He's hard.

He shames me, and that's my experience with him. My mom is great and wonderful, and I love her and and that's the story of my life. Supposedly, As I really dug in the inventory, I found that it ain't necessarily so. That there were things that my mother did that really bothered me that shaped who I am today. On my cell phone over here, as I pick it up, the first thing it says on the display is now is not then.

This now is not then because I react to you people from 5 6 year old place when I first experienced that trauma, and that's a big deal for me that I look at that every day that now is not then. So before I go off on somebody, because they've induced some feeling in me that maybe my father put in me years years years ago. Wow. Okay. I don't need to come off on this person because it's just the guy at the grocery store.

It's not your dad. You know? Even though he's making you feel that way, and that's deep inside you and ingrained in you and programmed into you, that's not where you are right now. Now is not then, and that's just a theme of my life right now. So my mother got remarried to a guy whose drinking and pot smoking did bother me, and and it and it really did.

And and at 9 and 10 years old, I was prime Al Anon material, man. And I was like I called him illiterate. I I just went off on him and was mean and cruel to this guy all the time. And this guy was really wonderful to me and and really loved me. But because he drank and behaved in a way that I didn't approve of at 9 years old, holy shit.

You know? I would beat on this guy as any way I could verbally. And that's I see it now, man. I mean, I go through that and go, wow. What in hell were you doing?

And, also, this guy was taking my mom away from me, inducing that feeling of, someone's going away that it's become so wonderful and comfortable and a theme throughout my romantic relationship is that I came to find that when my mom dated and left, oh, wait a minute. That feels a little weird. So here I am kicking along in life in my thirties, thinking everything is really great, and I'm behaving like an absolute fruitcake, and I can't figure it out. And what I found was it's all tied to this. Now is pretty good.

Now is really, for me, seldom is it a problem, really, on a on a big global scale. It seldom is it a problem for me day to day? But it's just that mixing up those old things and letting go of those. Got up into high school, and, man, you know, discovered girls. And, particularly, I discovered the girls that were maybe in the bargain basement being damaged goods section.

And that's not to judge anybody, but for me, when I look at my history throughout life, the bird with the broken wing is my favorite, and that's the gig. I am looking. I call the weak one from the herd, and that's just, like, that is it's like Wild Kingdom. You know? And, and that's my experience.

And it's crazy, man. I did it as I look back, I did it from a very early age, and and that's, you know, that's classic outlaw stuff. It's I'm always gonna be better than person. You know? I'm always gonna look like I'm far more together than this wreck of a human being, you know, that I'm bailing out of jail right now.

And, by the way, a lot of my friends, alumni cry help, so you're in good good hands there. So let me tell you, many a time I I have visited there. And, I I found that as I went along, you know, there was this pattern in my life. It's not you know, I often say of my chosen career. I don't know if I chose my career because I really like it or just because it allows me to hang out with a lot of really jacked up people.

But, I know the drama and chaos surrounded me from an early, early age, and then I love that. And and I don't know what that's about. Some people say that that may be about trying to feel something, being so shut down that you need something really heavy to feel, same way that people would cut themselves just to feel something. I don't know that for me, I was really shut down, and maybe this may this was exciting and seen. What I've come to find is that my life was so filled with terror and drama and fear that my level of what was exciting was way out there compared to the normal person.

Serenity was cool like, not even known. If this is the Serenity baseline down here, I was operating always up in here. So it really feels something that was exciting. It had to be like, oh my god. We're, you know, blasting off of a rocket.

And and that was a really crazy thing for me. So I had these crazy people in my life. I don't know if it was about that. I know that it definitely was about the fact that I had no self esteem. Somewhere when I was a little boy, somebody told me that I was not as good as any of you, that you all knew something I didn't, that you people were better than me, that you had more of whatever it is in the universe we're supposed to have than me, and I was not enough.

And not enough was just that's that's me. I'm not as good as everyone else. And that has, throughout my life, made me it's it's made me feel pain. It's made me feel shame. I've always felt less than.

And if you guys know anything about I don't know if any of you guys ever work at a bar. I always tell this story because when you work in a bar I used to manage a bar. When I manage bars, I would hire the biggest dudes I could physically. I have one guy that's £350 and 6 foot 5. And and the reason is if a guy was 6 foot tall, weighed 180, and he went up and said, hey, man.

Can you put that down? Somebody would swing at him because they thought I could take that guy. And the big guys, nobody would ever swing at them. The converse of that was the guy that was 6 foot tall, when that guy would start to swing, he'd have to defend himself, and there would be a fight. The big guy, somebody swung on him, he just pushed their head back and hold them off and something.

He's laughing them. They weren't gonna hurt him, and he knew that. So, therefore, he didn't have to hurt the customer. So big guys never hurt my customers. The little guys hurt the customers.

I was the little bouncer. I was the little doorman out there. If you swung at me, oh my god. What was gonna come back at you? If you said something to me that hurt my feelings, if you said something that damaged my ego, I was gonna cut you down with everything I had because that's just the only reaction I knew.

For me, now it's become about being self contained, being a full person, and being okay enough with myself that I can let people be as much of a jackass as they want to. And And that's really beautiful. Being able to walk away from situations like that is really, really powerful. To hear that guy going off on someone in a store and not have to go, hey. Hey, man.

Hey. Ho Where I know that's gonna go. You know? You know? That's gonna be a court appearance.

You know? And so for me now just to be able to go, oh, jackass. Okay. That's huge for me. You know?

Staying, you know, staying here, you know, inside my my personal boundaries. Gone. Love these crazy dramatic girls. Moved to Los Angeles from Arkansas. Really, really, really big trauma in my life.

It was terrifying. All of a sudden, a whole new level of fears introduced into my life. Basically, over the years, I just got separated from God. I just got separated from any concept of a higher power. A little bit about that.

I don't know. I don't know if me and anybody in this room have the same god. You know? For myself, any god that I could fully comprehend, I don't know that I could trust. So for me, I just I I I found a higher power.

This is not the higher power I grew up with. I grew up with a really right wing religion, really fundamentalist where I grew up. And and that damaged me because there was so much that I couldn't bring to god, so much of my life that that, god did not wanna know about or I didn't want god to know about in my mind. And so there's this whole part of life that's like, okay. That can't bring to God.

And that stuff just started piling up in my life because I had this weird just like everything else in my life, I had no sense of reality. I had a God that I couldn't go to. Well, if it's really he's really God, he knows. Like, let's get over it. You know?

It's like, don't cuss in church. Okay. Alright. But for me, it's like, okay. You know?

God knows I cut. You you know? And my god accepts it. It. My god knows what I've done, and he's always accepted it.

Now I didn't always accept the idea that he knew and that I was okay with that, so I'm still over here holding this pile of crap back, supposedly hiding it from god, whatever. And that created this weird rift in me. That's what inventory and what the 5th step is really about. It's coming to get that stuff by pulling all that back. Let's get in the flow and everything out in the open.

Right now, one thing I say all the time in my life is you got nothing on me. You got you people got nothing on me. There's not anything that I can't come into a room full of you people and say. And and the great news is is that I've been able to take that now from these safe rooms and go out into the world. So it's it's great because that translates into weird weird weird ways.

You know? I I can just be who I am, and it's amazing for me that removing that shame, what that does for me. How I got specifically into these rooms is, you know, I'm an artist. I'm a aficionado of the art, and so I'm always drawn to other artists. And, I was involved with, a young lady who was, in the in the in the dance end of the art.

And they're in the ceiling and my sponsor laughed because she was, you know, she was professional. She was professional as she did it, you know, and and, it was cool. To save money, she didn't use a lot of costumes. And not, like, not on when she when she danced. She was more of there for the profit motive thing, but, and not your everyday dancer.

She was an exotic dancer. So so there you go. But, anyway, I was dating this girl who I thought was a really great you know, I thought it was a great idea. It's like, you know, it's and it's just like live the stereotype. You know?

It's like, okay, dude. You know, the guy that looks like he's a member of Lynyrd Skynyrd is dating the, you know, blonde, you know, stripper from Van Ives, you know, taking care of her kid while she works, paying the bills. Today, on the way actually, all the way over, I I ate next to a place that was by RadioShack, and I still remember going and buying minutes for her cell phone so I could call her because her cell phone was never turned on. She keep it together. So I dated this girl for about 6 months.

She just ran through my life like a tornado. Unbelievable. Just when I look back at it, I mean, I really I really, like, have no resentment towards this girl because I I'm just in awe of her ability to, like, you know, take me for all the love, money, and sanity that I have. What what little of all three that I was able to offer at the time. And, it's like a vision for you.

I read a lot of AA literature. I'm, like, sitting in my office one morning in, like, fuzzy slippers, boxers, and a wife beater T shirt at my computer bawling. And my assistant comes in and she looks at me and she's like, okay. You gotta go here. And she gives me the dress of an Alamo meeting on that night.

John was there, and she said, go find Beverly and tell her you know me. And so I was like, oh, okay. And and I showed up at, like, the ultimate grandma house. Like, I was wearing a leather jacket. I just looked like I'd come in off, like, of, you know, on the out riding motorcycles, and I'm, like, hanging out.

I'm just like, okay. Yeah. And what's weird is, though, I better. I mean, I really identified. And I was like, okay, grandma.

Whatever you got. I want some of that. You know? And it was really weird. But, I was you know, it was weird.

You know? And maybe it just fit into my sense of terminal, you know, weirdness and difference and and, you know, terminally unique, but but I kept going back. It's really weird. I, you know, I like to be honest. Like I said, you got nothing on me.

I I 12 stepped someone in that meeting, and, and it was a horrible experience. Not not really dramatic or anything bad, but just this wasn't cool, and it certainly wasn't something that I wanna do. And I ended up leaving that meeting. It was not one meeting a week. And what I did let me give you an example here of how not to do it.

I went to one meeting a week. I was able to read a little bit. I wasn't gonna really call anybody or or connect or become friends with everybody. I wasn't gonna get a sponsor because they might tell you what to do. And as a result, weirdly enough, 6 months went by.

I went out. A year later, I went to the desert with, my gay sober friend, and I love telling the story like this. We came home and she was not acting gay, was no longer sober, and not my friend. And, and we started a relationship that really, really, really scared the hell out of me. You know?

And it was weird. She had just enough recovery to let go. Hey, man. You know? Something's wrong with you.

And and her taking my inventory in a weird way got me back in the because she said you're empty, and there's a hole inside you that you're trying to fill with money and sex and love and need and anything that you can grab for. And the truth is you gotta fill that with god. And and I I was able to hear that, and I thought about it for a couple days. And I was like, I think I'm gonna go back to Al Anon. I went back to Al Anon, and this is something else.

If you guys drop out of this program, this is important to know. When you come back, again, not everyone's looking at you. Nobody really cares. And and it was really great and really wonderful. Nobody's gonna go, whatever.

Hey. Glad to see you back, apple. And once again, at the crosstalk, where my good friend John was there, and he said, so why don't you come back? And I looked at him and I said, because it was good, but not good enough. And that was the truth.

My life was okay, but Al Anon just like you say, AA messes up your drink, and Al Anon messed up my obsessive thinking because I couldn't do it anymore. And And I didn't wanna do it anymore, and I knew something was wrong. And when this girl said that, I was like, you know what? You're right. I came back.

I ended up at this meeting, and, I saw, you know, this big buff macho dude talking about stuff like he was a little bitch. And, that was my sponsor. And I said, wow. Yeah. That's, you know, for me because what's more funny is that guys didn't do that when I come from you.

Guys didn't know what they're feeling. They won't know what they're feeling. And what's funny is now I realize that that's out of fear. That's out of fear. I can't look vulnerable.

I can't look sensitive. I can't be a wuss. And the gig is is that they don't understand that there's this whole other thing that you get to the other side of, And for me, that's become what a man is about. You know, I am surrounded by really amazing amazing men in my life now. And, you know, I'll I I lately, I've been saying it.

It's like this program has allowed me to become the man. I used to lie about being, and that's that's really the truth is that, you know, I always put up a good front. I always was able to put up that good front, and that was a big spinning wheel of my life. So there I am with this crazy sorta in, sorta out alcoholic and having trouble, and it's all wild and wooly and whatever. And, it was really strange.

I struggle with that and struggle and struggle and struggle with that. And and I'll you know, there's a there's this card here that says you know, they talk about the other affiliations and leaving outside issues out. And and something that I I have to make a pitch for is that, for me, I believe in romantic relationships that love addiction is an outside issue, and I just wanna say that because Al Anon deals with some of that. But I want everyone here to know that that if somebody came in here and spoke about their alcoholism and their AA stuff, everybody would wanna throw them out. And I I just find that if I found that for me, when people talk about love addiction issues and allergies, it sort of bothers me.

So So that's just kinda my pitch about keeping this program about the effects of other people's drinking and sobriety on us because that's what this is about for me. Romantic relationships bring a lot of us in here, and in my case, it did. What I found out that was it had nothing to do with them. It's all about me. I behave badly in relationships.

I don't know how to do them. I don't know I didn't know how to do friendship. I thought I was a loving person. I had no idea. Basically, I came in here 35 years old with no skills, having never had a healthy relationship, had a career that should be, by all rights, doing great, and I could never make it work.

And I just I I was miserable in a really great life. And and I say in a really great life because my like, a huge issue for me is not I'm not able to see reality. I have irrational fears. And I've come to hang out I I I hang out a lot with alcoholics and, and sober alcoholics, and I go to a lot of AA meetings now because I get a lot of support from those people because they really deal with that stuff. They deal with these issues.

I've come to see at the core of this disease, the way this works, really, really, really similar. The the feelings are a lot the same. Our reaction to it it and what we do is it can be really differently, but I think the core things underneath are really tied. And, you know, the steps are the same. The traditions are the same.

So in our literature, they talk about using a a literature, and I found that to be really helpful. So for me, I started looking at what was going on. To tell you the truth, I I worked the steps really half ass, but I worked them. That's a big deal. I like saying nothing ever changes if nothing ever changes, and that's a big deal.

Recently, I said to somebody, you know, we're talking about a particular meeting, and, I said, well, you know, it's like, do you do you wanna stop behaving that way, or do you wanna talk about stopping? And for me, that's the difference between the people who work program and people who don't. Do do you wanna talk about it, or or do you wanna change it? You You know? Because the deal is is if you wanna change it, well, the answer is, oh, here.

You know? That's this is the deal. This is this is what we're here to do. Work steps. Because the gig is is that nothing in my life changed.

The outside circumstances of my life have changed very little. My life is so much better now. And and, you know, it's weird to say it. You're like, well, what what are you saying? It's like, no.

But my reaction to everything, my my experience of life is totally different. I mean, walking in this room tonight compared to walking into it, you know, 3 years ago or, you know, whenever. Man, that's a difference. It looks really different in here, and it's not. Still the crazy godly stuff and all the the bloody handprints still on the wall and but the gig is just that, you know, I feel different.

I am different in size. You know, I've forgiven myself for all that horrible shit that I've done. You know? It's like, I am a liar. I'm a cheat.

I'm a thief. I'm a debtor. I'm a love addict. I am probably some kind of weird, dry alcoholic who doesn't have the allergy. I have 12 steps people in this program.

I have been mean to people in this program. I have snapped at people. I have behaved badly in in business meetings. You know? I have slept around on girlfriends.

I've done all this stuff in my life. It was all part of this broken person who had a disease. You know? That was me reacting just from this tiny, shrunken place was all I had. I had no God.

And the minute I was able to come in here and and and start down this path and go, okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Yeah. This this is clear. Man, I'm manageable. Got that one. Powerless, I don't know about yet.

Put me in a minute to figure that one out. It's like, I don't know. I think I I think I can make it work. You know, I twelphed a friend of mine into this program by saying, you're not gonna figure this one out. And that's one of the most profound things I've ever said to myself.

You're not gonna figure this one out. It was the way I stopped myself when I had obsessive thought about, for a while, I had a lot of financial fear, still struggle with it to this day. I always had this fear of financial insecurity, and I'd say, you're not gonna figure this one out. When I'm obsessively running numbers in my head, obsessively running something, you know, obsessing over someone, you're not gonna figure this one out, and that's the moment of surrender. That's me surrendering.

God you know, maybe I couldn't say, god help me, but I could sure say, k. You're not gonna figure this one out. Then it was like, okay. Well, you know, how did it end myself? Am I am I sane?

You know? Couldn't make me sane again. And and I don't know. I love what you you said about, you know, you got a group in a normal family. I'm like, wow.

Wow. Because I don't know. I don't know what that is really. Because I didn't like my friends who had supposedly normal families because I didn't wanna show up at 6 for dinner. I I never wanted that.

I didn't want, you know, June Cleaver as my mom. So for me, it's really weird to go like, wow. But sane and insane, I can sort of get a handle on because I do some crazy stuff over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and way. I'm screaming an alcoholic. You know?

And and and and both of them have the same amount of, you know, reaction to us. But it's insane. You know? It's crazy. You're screaming.

You know? It's crazy. You're screaming. I you know, matter of fact, parking meters probably I would have done less damage to them, and they would have hurt me less. But, this is a big one.

3rd step, huge, man. Make a decision to turn our will and our lives over the care of god as I understood. I have ruined everything I've ever tried to run. I, myself, alone, I'm really bad at running my life. I mean, you know, it hey.

I love doing it. It got me into a church basement on Friday night. Yeah. Under fluorescent lights. You know?

So for me, that's the key. So I just when I started to get that, that's when stuff really got pretty cool because that one really took a lot of the heat off. Man, it's these decisions in our life that we have to just, like, woo, big decisions. Like, what am I gonna do about, you know, whatever? It's like, well, you make a decision to turn your will in life over to god and say, god, what do I do?

What do I do? What what what do I do? You know, I I I get up every morning to hit my knees. I started this year actually hitting my knees when I got up. So I get out and groggily roll over to the floor and clear my head enough to say, show me your will and give me strength to carry out.

That's it. Sit. Like, give me that level of acceptance. And and that's a really big one. And then you get into inventory, which the dirty secret is, I don't wanna blow the crazy movie secret here about this, but when you finish the 4 step, what you figure out is you're okay.

You you all are. You all have the same outcome. You're fine. We all think you're fine. Even if you are sitting here right now thinking about some horrible thing you did, that sweat, wake up in the middle of the night thing that you did, we've all done it.

We've all done it. And and worse. I've done worse. Trust me. I'm gonna say that.

That whatever you got, deal. You know? You know? That's the deal. You know?

A friend of mine went in to read a spin step and the guy had 3 TVs on different stations. He walks in, and the guy will turn the TV off. He's like, hey. What? He goes, like, hey.

Sit down. Have a seat right here. Hey, man. Did you kill anybody? And he goes, no.

And he goes, oh, it's gonna be easy. And that's it, man. You know? We have such a you know? It's like, wow.

Yeah. You know? Our reaction stuff can be way out of line. I want I wanna talk about, before I get out of here, about self esteem and other esteem and ego. Because for me, man, that's, like, that's a big deal.

It it it relates to to get to that, I wanna say that if you wanna have compassion for an alcoholic, if you are self righteous and mad at some alcoholic, I invite you all to find that thing that you do maybe a little too much. Could be television, could be food, could be smoking, could be alcohol, could be someone else, could be sex, could be anything. Find that thing and stop. Dead stop cold right now. Call me in 2 weeks and tell me how you feel about the alcohol.

Find it. Find the obsessiveness in your life. Find the drug. Find the thing that you check out with. If you're in these rooms and you're miserable, maybe there's somewhere else to go.

If you're in these rooms for a long time and you're miserable and you, you know, it it won't get worthy steps. We'll do that because that's that's a big one. And then then the second thing is if you're still miserable, dig deeper. Look at it. Because when you get into this one, you may find that there are things that you, the self righteous alibi on, for me, the guy, the perp hey.

I'm the one with the job. I'm the one peddling as fast as I can to keep everyone going here and keep the billboards and lights on and la la la la la. God forbid, when I did my image right, I found out, wow. Wow. I'm an asshole.

Let me say right now. Let me scratch you. I'm an asshole. Keep coming back. Because I have I have hurt people.

I I never have been hurt by an alcoholic the way I hurt them. Them. I'm I'm I'm I can't tell you the shame I have about the things I've done and said to other human beings and and just gone out of my own fear and weakness and and and and ego. And and so for me, that's that's my pitch for all of that is to look at it, figure it out. If you're miserable, maybe there's something else going on because emotional sobriety is what I'm here to get.

I'm here in this room for emotional sobriety, and that's the deal for me, to be sober from whatever I check out on. I I whatever it is. There's there's some there are ways that I check out. And so for me, the the big gig on that was, what's this all about? What the hell is the deal?

Like, I'm having self esteem. I was not a fully formed human being. If you said something to me if you said, hey, dude. What's what's that shirt about? Oh my god.

It was, like, the biggest thing in the world. I I don't know. If something was not perfect, a perfectionist you know, I love that it was the term, I'm, lazy perfectionist. You know? I I I I wanna be perfect, but I can't really do that.

And I don't wanna work enough to do that, so I just won't do anything. That's the story of my life. 5 years out of my life, I didn't do the thing that I'm the most passionate about because I couldn't do it perfectly, and I didn't just wanna show up at work. I wanted to check out instead because it's too hard to show up for myself. And and I have probably one of the biggest things for me to forgive myself for, and I and I'm working on that.

So in the end, there's all these things that I think I need to be okay in your eyes. Could be my watch. Could be a car. Certainly, for me, it was always a girl. Always a girl.

And, you know, the money in my pocket, where I lived, what I did, who I hung out with, those things. Those things. And that's all well and good as long as you can keep all that going. You know, as long as that all works out and fits fine, that's great. But, man, it's funny.

God had a really weird way of taking all those things away from me one by 1, and I had to find a new way to deal with it. The good news is is all of that can go away, and you all will be fine. Mhmm. And I found that out because, like, anonymity for me in this whole thing is not really about protecting me from the outside world. It's protecting the program from from me.

You know? That's why I'd like to say it's like so when I'm out there being crazy in the world, people know that. But the the thing that anybody did for me in these rooms was I came in this room every Friday night. I cried when I took my 2nd year of cake or or my 1st year of cake or 2. And I came in this room hating myself every Friday night, and people would hug me.

Every one of you guys would go, hey. What are you doing? And give me a hug. And then I hated myself. But the gig was the the weird trick of the program is is that I all thought you guys knew more than me.

You were smarter, better, faster, stronger than me. And so when I came in and you liked me, I hated myself, but I liked you guys, and I had to go, wait a minute. Are you saying they're wrong? Mhmm. And for me, that's, you know, a great thing.

My sponsor talked about that for me with with with taking compliment. I couldn't take it. I wanna share that a compliment for me was like someone putting an ice pick between my eyes. If I would I would cower and and shake like a little dog getting kicked when somebody complimented me. I would literally walk into a group of people and they would go, wow.

That was amazing. Oh my god. And I would I would sit there and shake like they were hitting me. And I learned to say that, and I would always go, oh, no. No.

And and I'd make up some excuse why I wasn't great or why whatever sucked or whatever. And I realized that I'm spitting in those people's faces. I'm basically, I should just be saying, you don't know what the hell you're talking about. No. You don't know, and you're an idiot.

And that's really what I was saying to them. And it's like, who am I? Who am I? Have some humility. Allow those people.

Allow them their opinion. Allow people their path in life. You know? One of the unofficial all on slogan. You know.

Shut your fucking mouth because mind your own goddamn business. You know? And and that applies even to the good stuff. Shut your mouth. Mind your business.

If they wanna think you're great, I'm afraid that you have to let them. Thank god. Because I had to let you guys think that I was really nice and wonderful and cool. And it's weird. You guys didn't know what card drove.

You didn't know who I was dating. You didn't know anything about me. You know? You didn't even know my last name. And it's like, that's just a level of love I was able to take into the outside world.

It was like, wait a minute. What about this? What if I didn't have to do anything to be loved? What if I could just be and be loved? And as I experimented with intimacy, which, by the way, I hate I hate I hate the slogans, man.

I just hate it. It always feels, you know, they're all true. They all work, And I have to admit it. But I'm so, like, blah. And I would hear people, like, you know, I hear these people spout stuff.

Like, you know, I just, like, blah blah blah. Here's what I heard in the book. And, like, that to me is not a share, but whatever. That's my judgment. Anyway, people would say, into me, I see.

Intimacy. Into me, I see. It's like, okay. Okay. Alright, hippie.

But I read a book one time that said intimacy is sharing your honest reality with someone and having them share their honest story reality with you without trying to change it. And that's huge. That's huge. That's what I have when I call my sponsor. What'd you do today?

Oh, gosh. You know? And you run it down without lying. Because I didn't know this guy. I didn't even know his last name.

I didn't have to lie to him. I could just show up and go, woo. Guess what? I killed the drifter. He goes, keep coming back.

Right? You know? Good news. So when you you should get, you know, get a sponsor you don't know. Get somebody you don't know.

Get someone in another state if you have. Just call them up and say, whoo. Here's what I did. Because the gig is that you learn intimacy because guess what? 3 years later, I mean, man, you know, every time I hang up the phone, that guy says, I love you, man.

And and I believe him. Mhmm. You know? And I love him. And that's pretty cool.

Like, that's a bond, man. And he knows everything I've ever done. He knows more than you guys. He knows stuff I can't even say in front of people. And the great thing is that none of it.

Never flinched. Never and love never wavered. So unlike my family, I grew up with, was, oh, you dance the right way and you get love, you know, or do this or be this or be smart or whatever and you get love. No. No.

No. It's not the deal. The cosmic deal, the big secret at the end of it all is you just get loved. You just be loved. You are loved.

It's reality. Now it's not then. This is it right here, and it's good. You know? You don't know me.