An NA convention in Charlotte, NC

I'm still an addict. My name is Usman. I'm from the Greater Newark area of New Jersey, My home group is the double trouble group of narcotics anonymous. We meet religiously every Tuesday night for 2 hours, and that meeting was founded by a very special lady who since moved on to Freedom and Ease. Her name was Stephanie w, and she taught me that humility is not me thinking less of myself, but thinking of myself less.

And that's why I asked you to turn to someone and give them that hug. I wanna get a few, preliminary things out of the way. First, in order of importance, I wanna thank almighty God for getting us all here. I got down here early Wednesday, through the efforts of my good friend, Eric, and I want to thank him. I had a nice trip down here except for when I got to Raleigh.

I got on the smallest plane ever created. The the seat was so small you could only get one butt cheek on the seat. The pilot said, if it's too hot or cold, just tap me on the shoulder, But I wanna thank you for your effort, Terry, you know. I wanna thank anybody and everybody that had anything whatsoever to do with putting this fine convention on. Give them a nice hand once again.

And I got here and I felt a little disconnected and I saw Brooklyn roll up in the house. I saw money making Manhattan. Then my Chicago connection came. Philly Road was in. Baltimore.

I saw a French from all over rolling in and pretty soon and short order, I I didn't feel alone anymore. I felt real blessed and fortunate to be given this opportunity to share my experience, strength, and hope at the Serenity Fest number 18. Now a fest a fest some of y'all don't know what a fest is. I didn't I looked it up so don't feel different. A fest is like a serendipitous occasion.

It's like a celebration when somebody ought to go out and kill a fatted calf or something. You know, it's an opportunity to come together and have a good goddamn time. That's what effect is. And so that's what I thoroughly intend to do and really in enjoy myself up here. Someone asked me, when you when you when you do something like this, when you're up there in front of so many people, what how do you feel?

Do you do you have to pee? How what? What? What? How?

What? How do you feel? Do you feel nervous and what have you? And and what I need to share with you before everybody gets a turn, you do get feelings up here. You feel like you're beside yourself, but I've learned through experience that that's the experience you feel when your help comes.

And I need to let you know that my help is here and I feel real good about that, You know? In fact, when you don't get that feeling, you need to run like hell because you're on your own. You know? I wanna thank, some special people who are were gracious enough to form a circle and and pray with me to invite God into this evening's affair. And and and they know exactly who they are, and I appreciate that.

I wanna thank Phil Owen. He knows what he did and why I'm thanking him. I wanna thank my little sister, Karen s from Raleigh, North Carolina. This was a real special treat to just be able to spend some time with her. And I and I wanna really thank, Salam and Lukeman and Jaleel and Tyrone and and and and Carl from the walk in different people who are near and dear to me for consistently showing up in my life and giving me the support I need.

Now having said that, it's time for my disclaimer. You know, I I usually give a little disclaimer because when you do something like this, the only way I know how to do it is to get clean out of the way. And when I get out of the way and just let my spirit flow, I I can't really be responsible for editing myself and, double clutching and second guessing and I just have to let it flow. And so sometimes, I might curse. I might fart up here.

I might do a lot of things, but I don't want anybody to leave here tonight, and if you're asked how was, the Saturday night speaker, don't respond by saying, rarely have I heard such a beautiful exposition of the vagaries of addiction with particular emphasis on particular emphasis on the narcotics anonymous modality of recovery, except for an apparent inability on behalf of the speaker to avoid the propensity to specifically profanate his English. I know how to speak, but sometimes the literature gives me the permission to speak in what is called no uncertain terms. And sometimes when I'm describing my disease or active addiction, I need to tell you in no uncertain terms just how it was. Alright? So with having said that, I'm gonna segue right into to my story, and I wanna and I wanna kinda do it in and around the notion of, serenity fest.

You know, when you do this type of thing, all you really have is your story. Sometimes people say, well, what are you gonna share this time? I'm gonna share the same goddamn thing I shared the last time you heard I ain't got time to get no new story. This is it. When you see me, that's what you get.

My story. But sometimes, what you can do is try to artfully weave it around whatever the theme of the convention might be. For example, tonight's theme is serenity fest. And I wanna tell you how it is that I can stand before you, a serene man, a peaceful man, a joyous, happy, free man. You know?

I had a sponsor. He was from Manhattan. His name was Will p, and he told me that his sponsor taught him that recovery is like sex. If you're not enjoying it, you're not doing something right. So I wanna tell you about how I came in to this world very serene, how I lost that peace and tranquility and salinity, and how through the grace of God, his unmerited favor, his divine intervention, and narcotics anonymous, I got it back.

Alright. That's where we're going. There was a time circa 1950. I was born in Newark, New Jersey, and I came into this world, flat out happy little boy. Yes.

I was. I was happy about the whole thing. Just a little happy ass boy. I could laugh and dance and skip and sing with no prompting, with no outside validation. Didn't really need toys.

This is long before Nintendo and Sega Genesis and all the high-tech stuff we have today anyway. Play by myself and be happy. Me and my imaginary friend. Who you playing with? My friend?

I don't see nobody. That's my imaginary friend. Fuck it. The point being, I didn't need permission to be happy. Nobody had to give me a green light to be happy.

I was already happy. I was still real close to God. God breathes life into each of us, and I still felt God's loving arms all around me. The world was a nice, safe, nurturing environment started to get broken. Sometimes, it would be members of my whole own family that would break my peace, misinformed people who had already had their peace broken.

They would see my little happy self playing. And then what your little black ass so happy about? You ain't got nothing to be happy about. Don't you know we're black? Don't you realize we live on the wrong side of the tracks?

Didn't anybody tell you we come from a broken home? Because kids don't realize that the home is broken unless you tell them. And by the greed, I started losing my peace. And I went out into the wider world. I went to school and seeking education.

I'll never forget. I remember I was in the about the 5th grade, and I was sitting behind little Mary Anne, and she had a long blonde pigtails, and I I had never seen anything like that, and I started playing with her pigtails. She didn't appreciate that. She turned around. She said, get your little nitty hands off and don't pigtails.

I said, wow. That's a new word. I went to the teacher. I said, teacher, what's a nigger? She said, oh, you come from a long line, nigger.

Yes. You do. I said, alrighty then. And I went home and I and I my mother asked, she said, well, how was school? I said, great.

So what'd you learn today? Well, I learned that I'm a nigga. You're a you're a nigga too, mom. You know? And, in fact, we come from a long line of niggers.

That's what I learned. And And I looked at the look on her face, and and it was like she she had this attitude realities of life. Now when you look in the dictionary, the dictionary says that god is the ultimate reality. God is the answer to every question, and that's where I had been. But now people in society were exposing me to what they call the real world.

And the more I got exposed to the real world, the less I liked the hand that I had been given to play. I don't know if you can identify with looking at your hand and saying, I don't like this hand. God, why you give me this hand to play? And this is important because early in life, man makes habits and later on in life, that habits make you a man. So because my peace was broken and I didn't like the hand that I had been dealt, I began to, by degrees, move away from God and the only real permanent thing in life.

And I picked up illusion. For anything but God is straight up illusion. The only permanent real thing in the world is God. So I began at a early age to buy into things that wouldn't last, that couldn't sustain me, and couldn't nurture me like God had been doing. I bought into illusion.

I bought into fantasy. I got the habit of watching cartoons, and I loved it. I loved hanging out in fantasy. It worked for me. It was a temporary fix.

It was my first temporary high. Fantasy. Even today, I can pick it up. So I started watching all the little cartoons, and I'd I'd watched Snow White and 7 dwarfs. But you need to know that even as a little tike, I was a few flapjacks short of a full stack.

I'm talking about the literature saying, sir, we can weaken it. If we really do some work, we can spot our disease long before the substance even came on the scene. So I was a few french fry short of a happy meal as a little boy. I'm trying to tell you something here. So when I watched the cartoons and I watched Snow White, I saw little skis on a whole stroke with 7 little tricks, and she worked them all.

Sneezy and Scooby worked them all. When I watched Goldie locked in the 3 beds, I saw a B and E. The Bear family never invited her happy little ass up into their home. She broke in. She broke in and like a good little attic.

She tried the hot orange and then the cold orange and she this little part of speed ball, went upstairs and nodded out. That's how she got busted. Yogi there was a rip off ice with his coca spirit of boo boo. Ran all through the park just ripping people off. Wile Eswari gave new meaning to the second step.

Some of y'all gonna have to let that marinate till you get to the second step. Do some step work up in here and you know why people were laughing. My favorite character was Popeye. I liked Popeye. Popeye had those big attic arms.

Wasn't your superhero. He couldn't fly. He didn't have a cape or anything and for most of the cartoon, he got beat down bad, But in true addict fashion, he would go into surrender mode. He took you off. He said, that's all I can stand.

I can't stand no more. Then he reach into his stash. Right? And he put out this silver can which had this green leafy vegetative substance in it and he'd squeeze the can and the spinach would jump up and he would properly proceed to smoke that spinach in his pipe. Oh yeah.

He smoked that spinach. Oh yes. He did. But some interesting stuff happened once he hit the spinach. All of a sudden he had self acceptance.

He said, I am who I am but I'm not nobody fail a man. He stopped talking shit. He turned to her and said, well blow me down. So early in life, man makes habits and later on in life, the habit makes a man. So I'm looking.

I'm watching these cartoons. I say, okay. I see. If you want love, do like Snow White. You put La Di Dotti in everybody.

Somebody got something you want. Right? Okay. I got it. Do the goal if I can break it and take it.

Be like yo. You don't need somebody to leave something that's yours and if life is beating you down, pull a pop up. Find you something that will allow you to fix a feeling with a seal. Then I picked up comparison. Spent a lot of time running around wishing I had somebody else's hand to play.

I'm telling you how the disease was attacking me even when I was small. I'd rather be up the street in another household, at the Miller household with Billy Miller's sister Gloria and mister and missus Miller. Because when I played out there, missus Miller said, little Usman, are you hungry? I said, hell yeah, mister Miller. She said, well, what would you like?

Bologna cheese, tuna fish, what do you want? And I said, get out of town. I remember running home saying, mom, listen. You are not gonna believe what they have up at the Miller household. She said, what, son?

I said, choices. She said, boy, you crazy. Alright. But you don't have choices here. Now you know, good goddamn boy.

You can go over there and have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and if that's not to your liking, you can have a jelly with your peanut butter sandwich. Only problem was in my household, we weren't talking about Skippy, Jiffy, none of that. We had this big silver oil tanker size, industrial strength size, big big ass silver turbo, industrial stents, heeler butter. Had like a oil slick on the top. You had to kinda jump start it.

Shit. Fucking get that shit up to like Make no difference whether your bread was white, whole wheat, pumpkin, nipple, raw. Guarantee, don't fuck your bread up. Peanut butter. The best you could hope for would be like a little peanut butter jelly ball.

Just had to push that shit all together. I can still hear my mother saying, let's eat it. It's all going to the same place. Let's eat it, boy. You don't like that little damn happy little happy ass chunk of that cheese on.

Oh, well said cheese. That long pork Oh, hard orange ass cheese. You need a pitcher knife to fuck that shit like cheese. Then one day we got matches furniture. I don't know if y'all been so poor that matches furniture is a big deal in your house.

Where you go from just being bland to have furniture to everything matches. And I'll never forget to move and people moved the furniture. People moved the matching furniture in and in no time flat, my mother probably proceeded to ziplock everything. Nobody's natural ass has ever touched fabric in my household. Furniture that I've outlived whole generation.

We just keep passing it on down and it's just as new as the first day it came in. We moved up. We got some carpet in. As soon as the carpet was laid, my mother said, shot this plastic runner straight to the middle of the house. That's where I first learned to stay on the path.

She said, boy, I suggest you stay on the path. So these are my earliest recollections of loving things and using people. So it should come as no small surprise that in short order, little while later I do loving things like little glassing bags and loving things like little plastic vials with colorful caps. All during this time, I was trying to be an average Joe, seeking the American dream. I wanted to be a family man.

I wanted to be a black man. Had a Afro biggest disconvention today. 1 time. I know it don't look like it now, but I wanted to be a father man, a brother man, a working man, a professional man, but in the process, this other character was created. I'll call him Attic Man.

Attic Man was a bad motherfucker. He could jump over abandoned buildings in a single bound, but first, he was like little added boy. We were cool like that. I prerogative. This is my money.

You see, I work for this money. When you work for this money, then you can tell me what to do with my money, but since I work for this money, if I want to break off a little something something on the weekend, that's my prerogative. So me and little Attic boy were cool. He'd only jump out on the weekend. We were crookie crunch.

Then he started growing up. How do I know? Because he started sassing. He jumped out. I said, wait a minute.

It's Tuesday. He said, fuck that. We ain't into the days of the week no more. Look here, buddy. There's gonna be some changes around here.

I've progressed. I'm what you call full blown full blown now. And, from now on, you're gonna take your orders from me. In fact, before you do anything, I suggest you check with me. You wanna go to work?

See how I feel about that. Your cousin getting married? Check with me first. I'll let you know if we're going and how long we're staying. A matter of fact, don't make any more purchases without checking with me.

I'll let you know how much money we have for other things. And by degrees, I began to lose my mind. I know I was losing my mind because I was talking to myself. I started trying on new stuff like sheer willpower and gritty determination. I'm not gonna use the thing.

I'm done. I'm not gonna use the thing. Now that's it. And I found myself doing things like crazy things like trying to hide my money from me. I don't believe you heard me.

I'm talking about the same man who is hiding the money. Is trying to hide it from himself as if he can't find the money, he just hid it from himself. And I get little envelopes. I mean, I actually did this shit. I get little envelopes and I segregate my money and I put some money in the envelope and seal it up.

Take a big magic mark and say rent. Even had the nerve to have a subtitle most important And I'd take another one in the state, gas and electric. Another one would say telephone all the way down to get this miscellaneous. Land insanity. Attic man would jump out.

He said, of his head. You open up one of them. You open up one of them, we gonna open them all up all night long. This disease is insidious because it talks to you in your own voice. Sometimes I've managed to stop using.

You know, you run out of money and shit. And, addict man said, what last time you used? I said, oh, about 2, 3 days now. Mhmm. He said, they said you couldn't stop.

Personally, I always believed in you. So since it's quite apparent now that you can't stop and you wanna stop, let's go get that shit, man. And I'd be off to the races again. You talking that wolf man stuff to my wife? Look.

You better take this money, lock the door. Now you're gonna hear some hollering and screaming, but whatever you do, why don't you open that door? Attic man jumped out and he said, look, Jack. If you don't get that money, they gonna need dental records to even recognize your wife. I remember, I remember doing my active addiction.

I thought I was a little bit of a Rudolph Vascelino. I was like, this Bruno Fazzolino character. Right? I ain't had no real rap or nothing. You know?

I just get some drugs and get down, girl. You know? Hey. Come on. I got that shit.

We're going to the shady rest. Let's go now. And we get there. Right? And she's gonna go fresh enough.

Go on fresh enough, girl. I'm a just do a little something here. Go on. I'll be right here when you get back. And she come out.

She said, I'm ready now, daddy. When she went in, I was dead. When she came out, the attic man was dead. She said, I'm ready now, daddy. Attic Man said, you about to go suit the fuck up.

Better take a hit of this shit. I don't know why you're watching broke ass in the first place. You ain't got no money. You ain't getting no wood. Well, take a hit of this shit and go on now.

I tried the social accessibility piece. I did. Used to go to work in a shirt and tie, had a little attache case, little boxy Cadillacs to build back in the day. I used to be able to drive up to the drive up. Tell her.

This is for you socially acceptable addicts. You should drive up to the drive up. Tell her. Tell her. Say, hello, mister professional man.

How are you? Very well. Thank you. Doing just fine. So would that be the fullest end of your withdrawal?

That will quite Thank you very much. You're new here. Aren't you? You better get to know me. I'm here all the time.

And I'd leave. Little later, I'd be back. She said, oh, we're back, aren't we? Yes. Yes.

We're back. We're back. Ray Charles could see way back. Someone's been saying contingency in the road that are gonna require my immediate attention. You better give me 3, 5, 2 Make that 20 times as much money.

Hurry up too. I'll get to the bottom of bed. This time I burn rubber getting away. With 20 times as much money now before the progression, I'd be back in 1 20th of the time. Only this time, my tires are all crooked.

I got my high beams on now. My jaw got a light of its own. She said is there anything else I can do for you? I said, yeah. Just lean on.

Think what you just do your motherfucking job. That's what you can do. Don't be asking me I'm not having a nice day and, how are you doing? Fuck all that. Just give me my who trained you and don't you see me taking all my money out of here?

I wanna pull my blame throw out now and blame her for all my ills, all my self created drama. The geographicals didn't work. Nobody told me wherever I'd go, there I'd find myself. I used to go all over the place. I remember once I went to Paris.

You see, that's why I ain't no addict. Look at this. I'm in Paris. You wanna see the Mona Lisa. You wanna see her ass.

Yes, I am. See the Mona Lisa and the what? The Eiffel Tower and then I'm a see all of this stuff. The only problem is in France, the French are funny people. They drink wine with everything.

You ought a bowl of cereal. What kind of wine would you like with that cereal? And nobody told me that one was wet, one is dry. Bottom line, it goes get too high. Alcohol is a drug.

So if you an addict, don't make the mistake of thinking you can mess around with starter drugs and be alright, you know. So I'm over there in France and I picked up my starter drug. Right? By noon, I'm drunk at the Georgia Pines. The little tool got tool went one way, attic man jumped out speaking French.

Who said true? Wide open in France. I don't know how I made it back. Got back here and I already told you about Wile E. Coyote.

So I had no problem make the same mistake expecting a different result. So I'll never forget it. I'll never forget it. I was home with my wife before she escaped. Right?

And, this is before the escape. I was home with her and, we were watching our TVs. We had to watch both of them because we had one with picture, no sound and one with sound and no picture. We was watching our TV and this commercial came on and it said come down to Jamaica. Well, we love you.

Come down to Jamaica where the water is blue and this woman got about the water in this wet t shirt. I said, oh, that's it. We're going to Jamaica. White sandy beach and the blue water. And we're gonna lay on the beach and kick these habits.

That's what we're gonna do. Yeah. Let me we made it there. Made it down there. Never forget, I came out of the cabana and, my wife was there with these 2 pina coladas.

I said, are you you'd have lost your mind in somebody else's. Don't you remember what happened in France? Because they had these little parasols. Right? And these cherries.

She said, look at them. They're adorable. I think the most adorable thing you've ever seen. And you know, Hannes don't need much prompting. And no time slot, they began to look adorable to me.

And I knocked back one of those adorable little pina coladas forgetting that in Jamaica, the rum they use is that 151 jet fuel. Same thing they slide their jets with. The same thing we used to burn with. That's what they put in their rug. And I'm not stuck in the middle of the door with a little pina coladas and that a man jumped out.

So by now, I'm in a flat out war with myself. We're talking about peace. I was a long way away from a serenity fest. I was a long way from being serene with me. I was that flat out war with myself.

I'm not talking about your declared wars like World War 1, World War 2. I'm talking about that undeclared war that addicts find themselves in. Not the type where you drop the bomb like Hiroshima, Nagasaki. I'm talking about where they drop bombs on you like boat and boat. Yeah.

Wars like wherever you from, you still got people caught up in this undeclared war. I was riding down the street and I said, oh, look at that hand to hand combat. And the person riding with me said, what you talking about? I said, listen. My man just cut.

He said, I ain't see nothing. I said, that's because you ain't never been in battle. You don't know what to look for. And today is a cold war. It's a cold war and everybody's sitting in here.

Casualty is a war, but the good news is we're survivors of the war. Yeah. So look, when you see yourself struggling, don't be hard on yourself because everybody in here is suffering from post traumatic war syndrome. Yeah. Yeah.

That's right. Just like in Vietnam, When when when the GI wanted to make love, they they had the little Vietnamese girl. She said sucky sucky, sucky, sucky for a candy bar, big GI Joe. Now if you're an addict, you understand that because a whole lot of stuff went down for a hit where we came from. So it's the reason why I had this struggle with committed love.

There's a reason why addicts struggle with romance. It's the reason why some people still come in here trying to get paid for love. Because animals living skills rather will reduce to the animal level. That's why some of us today wake up with drug dealers. Oh my god.

What's wrong with you? I I just had a dream, man. I was back in the war. It was so real. You know, the good news is we've been delivered from the war.

The good news is that the war is over. The good news is we are all the recipients of God's grace. Grace, unmerited favor, divine intervention. That's why that's why as long as I live, I'll say thank God for God and thank God for anything. I thank God for bringing me to narcotics anonymous and I thank narcotics anonymous for in turn bringing me into a richer, fuller, more deep appreciation of the God of my understanding.

So the end to me wasn't pretty. I'm not gonna glamorize my views and the end wasn't pretty and the end I was breathing in a gas station mop. I was tore up from the floor up. I was dirt, finished, waxing powers. Oh, wow.

I thought I looked good. I remember I had a particularly long run. I I made it to, because you know, I used to be in any world. You ate when you could eat. You'd look up before you were so deep into the world with yourself.

The world of self hatred. The war of low self esteem. The war of low self worth. Now some say self hatred is is is is is a bad term, but think what you must have felt about yourself to put you through what you put yourself through. Very few people when they were in school and the teacher said, what do you wanna be when you grow up, Barry?

I said, me? Well, teacher, I I thoroughly expect to grow up and be, buried back and forth. That's me, teacher. I just wanna run back and forth goddamn night, teacher. What about you, Joe?

Well, for me, teacher, I just wanna be Joe Pincushion. Just the best little pincushion I can be sticking myself all day and night. And Wanda, what about you? Well, for me teacher, I'd like to become Wanda Holstron. That's my goal.

None of us said that. So for long stretches of time, I wouldn't even eat. A meal for me was a little pack of Little Debbie's. I don't know if they got them down here. A little 25¢ full of juice.

A bag of potato chips. It was a holiday barbecue chips. It was a meal. I remember showing up one day at my aunt's house. I said, that's right.

My aunt lived right around the corner. I knocked on the door and my aunt came to the door and, she looked out the window. She said, wait. Wait. Wait.

Wait. She said, look like Annie's boy. And my uncle came to the window and he said, Jesus, Joseph, Mary and the mule, what happened to you? That's the mental stuff and everything. You you what you need to do is open the door and and invite a brother in and ask him if he'd like to join you for dinner or something.

They said, we cooked tonight. Nah. We ain't cooked tonight, did we baby? No. We ain't cooked tonight.

I said, listen. They don't have to be matching food. You ain't even gotta heat it up. You don't even have to nuke it. Just throw some shit on a plate.

That's how hungry I am, you know. I mean, in the end, it was really, really bad for me. So I was so glad to get to the rules in our county synonymous. I thank God much for HNI. I say that all the time.

I'm an HNI kinda guy. I'm grateful to that. It just brought the life saving message of recovery to me. You know? I'm real grateful.

You know? The only thing I wanna say about treatment is they steered me to narcotics anonymous. They said, listen. When you get out of here, run like hell to a NA meeting. Don't pass don't don't stop and collect $200 to run like hell to a NA meeting.

And I did that, and I sat on a intensive care row right up front. And I was open to suggestions, you know, and, and I was whining and talking about what I thought and how I felt and they said, listen. We ain't interested in how you feel. Put your thinking in your ceiling on the shelf because if you still in here based on how you feel, you're wasting some valuable get high time. That's the horse you rode up in here on, ain't it?

Trying to feel good 247. News flash. You ain't always gonna feel good. News flash. You'll think it ain't the best, So don't be so impressed with yourself.

Make 90 meetings in 90 days. Learn to listen and listen to learn. Get a sponsor and use them. A sponsor somebody reading from a later page who can better help you understand what you're confronted with at your stage. Get committed.

I said, what's that? They said, well, it's like the old Farmer Gray story. Farmer Gray's son asked him at breakfast. Dad, what's commitment? Farmer Gray said, son, you see this breakfast consists of ham and eggs.

That means 2 of our farm animals participated, the pig and the chicken. The chicken was involved, but the pig was committed because his ass was on the line. They said, get serious about this process. And they got me involved with step work right away. I'm gonna say that again.

They got me involved with step work right away. Ain't nobody going no cliche run on my ass. Well, it's a pace not a race. No. No.

No. Don't be peeing in newcomers ears like that. Work the steps with them. The steps are our survival kit. They are to fix against a deadly disease.

So we got involved with some step work right away because you gotta get busy if you're gonna get into this new spirit to way of life. When I came here, they told me the solution was spiritual in nature. That's a deep piece for somebody who all of his answers were material in nature by now. If I couldn't see it, feel it, fuck it, take it, shoot it, wear it, drive it, eat it, fuck it. All my solutions were material in nature.

So they said, you need to work some steps. You need to work some steps so that can get in touch with what you're up against, the disease of addiction. You are blessed to be a narcotics anonymous. You're blessed to cause narcotics anonymous has a first step second enough. It allows for one stop shopping.

You don't have to go to 2012 Step Fellowships. You could come right here and whatever rocks your hope, you can get your needs met because we deal with the disease of addiction and addiction is a pathological or a sick relationship to any mind or mood altering experience with life damage and consequences. You need to know when you use it. You don't even know when you use it, Usman. I said, well, how would I know when I'm using it?

Well, the first thing you'll see is you'll lose your consequential thinking ability. Whenever you lose the ability to consider the consequences of your action, you'll use it. I said, well, how am I supposed to get this consequential thinking ability? They said, keep coming back. It's a process.

Keep coming back. It's a process to be restored to sanity. Things we talk about in here, sanity, recovery, these are fluid concepts. You don't just get them, have them, and get recovered up with an ED on the end and no longer fit the literature and all of a sudden you are power greater than yourself. It's like breathing.

I can't breathe enough yesterday to hold me over today and no matter how much I breathe today, it suggested I take a few drops of air in the car if I wanna be here. I gotta come to believe and coming to believe is a process. It's a process. Sometimes you gotta rock for the process. Sometimes you you you wanna get better, but you just don't know if you can.

You need to get better, but you just don't know if if you will. It's just like if you see, you know, if you see, little girls jumping double dutch, first, they gotta come to the rope, and then they gotta rock with it. Right? They gotta come, then they gotta come to, and then when they come to believe, they jump in. It's the same process with us.

We gotta come to believe that we can get with the most obvious symptoms of our disease. Right? And then when our belief is grown, when you are really ready to put down all of these little spiritual water shots Thinking a man is your higher power. The woman is your higher power. Money, property, prestige is your higher power.

Social acceptability is your higher power. Your clean time is your higher power. There's a reason why they say none of these things equal recovery because nothing equals recovery. Recovery is a process. That's why they say when your belief has grown, you'll tire of all of these material solutions to your spiritual dilemma.

You'll tire of all of these outside answers to your inside questions. You'll start to grow up and understand that God, almighty God is the answer to every question. You'll begin to know where your greatest source of strength and courage is and then you'll be ready to make a decision. That's why in the 3rd step, it says for the first time since that first hour, we're ready to make a decision. Not because the mate said so, the therapist, the judge, the probation department, but because you got a God in your life, you can make a decision.

Because if you don't have God in your life, trust and believe you cannot make a decision. You might think you're making a decision, but the reality is your decision will really be based on something else, an illusion. Because the only way you can make a decision, a decision that implies the ability to say yes and the ability to say no. And if you don't have God in your life, you can't say no. You can walk around sharing like Shakespeare, giving lip service to the idea that you spiritual, Jew, religious, and this, that, and the other, but the proof is in the way we live.

We know how spiritual you are, spiritual you are when you you make leaves. We'll see how spirit you are you are when you buckle, when your man leaves. We'll know how spiritual you are when we see how you handle the fact that you're fired. Downsizing. We'll know whether you're from the not really tribe.

God, your will be done, but not really. We'll know about whether you put a question mark where God put a period when people die. So the 3rd step says, yeah. If you made this decision, if you're really sincere, then you are ready for your first time and self appraisal. Some people get to the 3rd step and say, yeah.

I did this. I turned it over. I flipped it like a flapjack, you know. My will is my this and my life is my that. You ain't even done your first and honest self appraisal.

Usman, you need to do a honest self appraisal. I needed to be introduced to me. That was a big part of my problem. I could never see me coming. It's hard to get better when you can't see yourself coming, when you're running around talking stupid shit like, when you gonna stop that?

Oh, I don't know. You think you're gonna have to get better? I don't know. You're gonna use again? I don't know.

I just don't know because I could never see myself coming. I would show up unexpected. And the next thing you know, you're sitting on the side of the bed dusted, busted thoroughly disgusted. Talking crazy shit like I don't know what happened. I remember getting paid then was like abracadabra drugs.

I don't know where they came from. I I just I I got in the car and the car drove itself. I don't I didn't I meant to come, really. But you can't see yourself coming. Gotta get introduced to your patterns, your drive, your instinctive behavior, your routine compulsive acts.

Gotta sort through the confusion and contradiction in your life. And just because we're talking about a fearless and searching moral inventory doesn't mean that I gotta give a morally deficient inventory. I got a disease. That's my diagnosis. Doesn't mean that I'm a morally deficient person.

That's why this is the only step that tells you what the purpose is and is and what the purpose is not. It says not about a long litany of a binge of emotional sorrow about what a bad person I am. That's dangerous. I'm just trying to the purpose is for me to sort through the confusion and contradiction in my life. So my sponsor says, I don't wanna hear a whole bunch about you when you didn't even have morals.

I want you to start through for real the contradiction and confusion in your life. Like, for example, I don't wanna know about every woman you ever been with. All I wanna know is how did you consistently mistake women for God? Women, how did you man after man after man after man after man after man, mistake man for God? How did you mistake money, property, prestige for God, Usman?

How did you mistake social sensitivity for God? Let's give you the ability to see yourself coming. And through that 4th and 5th step process, I came away with the proper order of my relationship. God, me, and everything else is pretty much conversation. I came away with a sense of priorities.

I remember my mother used to always say, you need to get your priorities in order. My priorities in order. Just give me $20. I'll show you some of my priorities in order. That's my priority.

Give me $20. And if you wanna get entirely ready to get better, get down to the exact nature of what's going on with you, which is your self centered fear. And understand that that fear is the father of all of your defensive character. They're all traceable back to fear. And understand that fear comes from separation from God.

And when you understand that, it's a natural solution to want to humbly ask god to remove that fear and everything that comes with it. And once you do that, you'll be confronted with the paradox. The paradox. I wrote down what what a paradox means because I suffer from CRS. I mean, can't remember shit.