Carry This Message group in West Orange, NJ

I'd like to now introduce our guest speaker. Speaking on his story, steps 1 to 12, Adam from Harrison, New Jersey. That's right. Hi everybody. My name is Adam Mandrake.

I'm a recovered alcoholic. Very interesting week this week. I, I don't know. Last week, I thought I was fine. I thought everything was cool.

You know, everything's going smooth. Work is going good. All my relationships seem to be doing well. And really weird thought came Friday, but it went away. And I went into a meeting and it went away.

I woke up Saturday morning stark raving insane. You know? And I did what I needed to do that day, you know, and I, that afternoon, I went and spoke to some friends I have, and I started to write some inventory on it. And what I had realized that I had been slacking off on my inventory, which I kinda knew. You know?

I knew it because I hadn't written anything, you know, but I didn't realize the the consequences of that, you know, at the time I was doing it. I, somebody actually, J Mo, set a line recently to me and it it sticks with me all the time now. And it's, being powerless over alcohol is not my problem. My problem is my addiction to self will. And, and it just it slammed me right between the eyes, you know, because that's me.

You know? Alcohol had you know, the problem with alcohol has been removed. The 10 step promises have come true in my life. I've ceased fighting everything and everyone, even alcohol. You know, I've been restored to sanity.

I've been I've recovered from a hopeless state of mind and body. But you know what? I ain't well. You know, that area of my life is okay. It's great.

You know, it's not an issue. That's not to say that it couldn't become one someday, you know, tonight, tomorrow, whenever. But, you know, the the everyday problems in my recovery are really not alcohol related. But that's just where I'm at today. You know, I I I find that if I have to speak, get current first, you know, on I'm the oldest of 3 boys.

I'm a byproduct of the sixties. My father is only 20 years older than me. I was born in 1969. I lived in a teepee. I lived on a commune.

I lived in the back of a school bus, you know. I got pictures of me when I was 5 years old with blonde hair down to the middle of my back running around butt naked, you know. My mom seemed fit to show every girlfriend that I've ever brought home, You know? You know, being a small child and my house was awesome. You know, it was a lot of fun, because my parents were kids.

You know? They knew how to relate to kids. You know? It was normal in my household to party. You know?

It was acceptable. You know? It was it was the seventies. You know? You know, living in Northern California, you know, you know, it's probably the only time I'll say this throughout the whole pitch, but, I drank with my father and I smoked pot with my mother.

You know, that's my only drug reference. But that just shows you where I came from, you know. And my mom is in the, she's in the rooms today. My father belongs in some kind of fellowship, you know, probably Alcoholics Anonymous, you know, but I can't really, you know he doesn't think he has a problem, you know. He lives under a bridge somewhere in Alaska, you know, or Hawaii or California wherever he is at this time of year.

I don't know. And he believes he's reliving his childhood and he's having a good time. You know? So whatever. None of this has anything to do with me being an alcoholic.

You know? This stuff may have contributed to my unmanageability, my my inability to function in life, you know, and and have healthy relationships and and get a job and pay bills and, you know, and all this stuff. But it really has nothing to do with my alcoholism, you know. Yeah. They they taught me a lot of things.

But you know what? I'm an alcoholic because when I put booze in my system, I can't guarantee when I'm gonna stop. You know? I, I may be able to go out and have 2 drinks. I've done it.

You know? But then I can go out and say I'm gonna have 2 drinks and drink 30. You know? I don't know what's gonna happen. Damn.

Earlier this evening, I, I thought of a great story from my past related to craving, and it just, like, flew out of my head. You know? But whatever. Oh, here it is. Okay.

It flew back in. Yeah. I was about, I guess 19 years old. And at this point in my life and my drinking career, I thought it more, more efficient to live on the streets. You know, it was much easier to drink the way that I drank and and do the things that I like to do if I didn't have a house to go to, you know, that I didn't have to pay bills and waste my money on, you know, normal society oriented stuff.

So I I go out this one night or this one afternoon actually and start drinking, you know. By that night, I hit the I hit the bar. I bumped into my dad. You know, we have a couple of drinks together. I hit another place that I liked.

I ended up eventually at this keg party. And, I grew up in a college town, so it was normal just to walk into a stranger's house, pay $2, and get a cup. You know? It wasn't that strange. I end up at this keg party.

I I don't know anybody there. And the last thing I really remember, I was sitting at a table doing, playing quarters for tequila. And, I remember briefly wandering into the backyard towards my bicycle. I thought that if I rode a bike, I wouldn't get a DWI. So I I rode a bike.

I never got my license until I was, like, 25. But I got on my bike, and that was the last thing I remember. I wake up at 7 o'clock in the morning in the drunk tank. Okay? And they, you know, they made me blow into the tube to see if they could release me because you gotta be legal limit before they release you.

And I blew a 0.20 at 7 in the morning. They kept me for another couple hours or whatever until that wore down and I got to a 0.10 or whatever the legal legal limit was at the time. And they released me. The first thing that crossed my mind when I hit the sunlight was where's my bottle? That was the first thing that hit my mind.

I stuck my thumb out. I'm 40 miles from my house out at the county jail, stuck my thumb out, I hitchhiked home, and I hit that bottle. First thing, without question, that's the way I drink. You know? When booze is in my system, it it it does to me.

I I don't choose it. I don't decide when I'm gonna drink. It it takes over, you know? The mental obsession, on the other hand, is a little more, wacky for me. You know, living on the streets, I I did a lot of things that you probably shouldn't do.

And one of those things landed me in, in state prison for about 2 years. And the entire time that I was locked up, I, I wrote letters to rehabs, to judges, to lawyers, to my girlfriend, to anybody who would listen. You know, I got a problem with alcohol. I got a problem with drugs here. I need to go to a rehab.

You know, I said it in court. You know, don't send don't send me away. I'm a I'm an alcoholic. I'm not a criminal. You know, I got busted, you know, for my own stuff.

You know, it was my own personal use. It wasn't because I was this, you know, hardened criminal or or whatever. For 19 months, I'm locked up. I'm writing letters constantly. I was released and within 20 minutes, I had a 6 pack.

Within 2 hours, I was exactly where I was when I got locked up. And that night, I slept under a bridge. Now, what does it say, that we can't remember the pain and humiliation of even a week or a month ago? Well, I just got locked up. You know, I just got released 20 minutes ago, and I forgot.

You know? That's the way my brain works. You know, it's not it it says it in the literature, you know, we don't have the same defense from keeping our hand off a hot stove. You know, that's me. That's the way I relate to alcohol.

My favorite one of my favorite speakers, Earl, Earl H, always says that, oh, God. Brain fart again. Oh, jeez. Oh, forget it. It wasn't that important then?

Trying to steal a quote. Well, back to where I was. Okay. I, I picked up my first drink when I was about 13 years old. Well my first conscious drink to go out and party with my friends.

I had many a drink before that. You know, my Dad gave me beer in my bottle and watched me stumble around and everybody thought it was funny. But my first conscious drink was at 13. And, I blacked out that night. We got a gallon of wine and 5 beers.

And, I drank all 5 beers and as much of the wine as I could. You know, nobody wanted to drink the beers. They said it tasted like crap. And I was like, so yeah. I'm not drinking for taste.

I don't drink for taste. I drink for effect. I blacked out that night. I woke up with the most wickedest hangover you could imagine. In a puddle of red wine and Doritos.

And my first thought was, wow, I can't wait till next week. You know? I had to move at that point. My, that that week, Wednesday, I moved. And so I didn't get the opportunity to drink the next week because when I moved to this new town, I didn't know anybody.

I didn't know how to get it. I'm 13 years old. You know? But as soon as I found it, I drank again. By the time I turned 15 or 16 or whatever it was, I had made my way back to California to my old friends and, all the people that I grew up with.

And from that point on, I drank on Friday Saturday nights. And Friday Saturday night in a very short period of time became Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Then Thursday, because Thursday is the beginning of the weekend. You know, so Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Then Then I have to drink on Monday because it's the end of the weekend.

You know, so we got Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday. And Wednesday, that's hump day. You know, the only problem was with this I I don't identify with daily drinkers because it took me another 3 or 4 years to find an excuse for Tuesday. I did. I came to New Jersey and Hartley's in, North Arlington had a 50 cent mug night on Tuesday.

So eventually, I became a daily drinker. Yeah. I became a round the clock drinker. You know? But I also was I also didn't believe myself powerless.

You know? I believe myself an alcoholic, but I didn't understand what that meant. You know? I thought it was some kind of, a reason for the way I drink or or or a badge. You know, it's like I'm an alcoholic.

That's why me and my buddy get a case of beer before we go to a keg party. You know, it's some kind of cool thing or some shit. You know? And I had no idea what it meant. You know?

So for a long time, yeah, I said I was an alcoholic, but I didn't understand what powerless meant. I didn't understand that the booze was dictating it, you know, and that my warped brain was dictating it. You know, I thought I was having fun because I never tried to stop. You know, I was one of these people who never really tried to control it. You know, I just said, you know, why work when you can drink?

You know, it made sense to me. You know, I like waking up in the morning and going down to the park, laying out my blanket, turning on my radio, and proceeding to party. You know, that's the way I lived. You know? So so the whole job and the apartment and none of that stuff really really made any sense to me.

But fortunately, you know, they they say that geographic cures don't work. For me, it did. For me, it did because it didn't work the way it it was planned, but it did work. Because I had to leave California. Because for me, the lifestyle in California, it was too easy for me to do what I was doing.

You know? I'm a local in a college town. I know where to get anything. Anything. I know where to get food.

I know how to drink. I'm fine. I could've stayed there forever, you know, or until I died. You know? I moved to the East Coast and people here did something weird.

They went to work, you know, and they had apartments and they paid bills. And I didn't know how to function in that kind of society. And it it didn't take very long for me to kinda bottom out. I I wasn't able to live the type of lifestyle I was living. Fortunately, I found a girl who had a car accident settlement and a $100,000 to blow.

So that that lasted me a little while. But it didn't last long enough. And on in May of, like, 90 2, I guess, or 93. I was on parole. I had gotten, like, 2, maybe 3 dirty tests.

I had gotten a shoplifting charge and a DWI. And so I'm like, oh, well, I'm in trouble. I go to my parole officer and I say I need help. You know? I gotta go to rehab.

I got a problem. And and deep down inside, I believed this. You know. I knew I had a problem. I just didn't really think it was the alcohol and the drugs, you know.

Or I did, but I didn't, you know. And it was it was all twisted. So I, I ended up eventually making it into the Salvation Army, you know, after a long drawn out thing with the TC program that I wouldn't go into. And, I ended up in the sally. And one of the first things that was said to me, and it saved my life, was, you gotta get god to get sober.

You gotta get a higher power to get sober. And at that point, I'm a raging anti catholic, anti religion. You know, I I hated religion with a passion at that point. You know, I believed from the time I was in the 3rd grade, I was going to hell. You know?

So I, you know, I don't want nothing to do with this. But they it for some reason, it registered. I gotta find god in order to in order to get sober. And so what I did is I'm in the Salvation Army and there's, like, 50 to a 100 guys in there or however many there was. And I walked from bunk to bunk and I seen people that were reading spiritual books, reading literature.

And I asked them what they believed. And I asked them what particular brand of religion they they they were prescribed to and, you know, I asked them what it was about. And what I ended up doing was taking a piece from this one and a piece from that one and a piece from this one. And I put all the principles together and took away the deity. And the principles became my higher power at that point.

And it gave me a starting place, You know? It says that if, you know, if if you're willing to believe and at that point, I was. You know, at that point I was pretty mangled. But, and my mother's boyfriend or husband or whoever he was at the time, started bringing me to meetings. And I started to see that there was other ways to live other than what I knew, you know.

Because prior to coming to New Jersey, I thought it was perfectly normal to get married, have kids, smoke dope, grow old, hang out on the porch with a beer and a bong, and, you know, this is this is what a 70 year old person does. You know, you know, it it was not abnormal. And here, people were doing something different. And I started to see that there was another way. I started my perception started to change a little bit.

And, I went to meetings and everybody said you gotta, you know, you gotta share about these reservations you got. You can't have any reservations. And I did, you know. I'm a stone cold pothead, you know. If everything else disappeared off the planet, I would have been cool smoking weed.

And I never had any external problems as a result of it. And I shared about this. You know, and I shared about this and I shared about this and I shared my way right out the door. Because I constantly kept it fresh in my mind, you know. Nobody ever told me to share about it and get rid of it, you know.

They just said keep sharing about it. Well, I did. But the one thing that was said to me early on was, don't drink and go to meetings. But if you do drink, go to a meeting anyway. You know?

So I never stopped going to meetings. Know, I'd smoked open in the morning and go to a meeting at night. You know? And I'd, find people in the rooms that got high. You know?

And we'd go out the back door and smoke a joint out back and come in for the meeting. You know? I did this for a good year and a half. And I'd share. You know?

I I've been around. I know the solutions. I know the answer. I know all the slogans and the catch phrases and all this shit. You know?

What happened? My mind was so twisted at that point that I truly, honestly, give me a stack of bibles, I'll swear to it. I didn't believe I relapsed because I have a desire not to drink. And pot is not a drug. It's a natural herb.

God gave it to us. I'm gonna be a Rastafarian, and I'm gonna be spiritual. Okay? I'm gonna go that route, and I'm gonna it'll work for me, you know? And I truly believe this at this point, you know?

The guilt got me. You know? Because I guess I must have heard it somewhere that you're not supposed to smoke weed and go to meetings and share and, you know, and try and 12 step people. You know? But, again, this this perception on, on, on not relapsing was there.

So I needed to go out and drink so that I can come back to the rooms and say I'm coming back. You know? Because I never relapsed. I never went out. You know?

I kept going to meetings and I didn't pick up alcohol. I picked up booze and I couldn't put it down. I picked it up thinking I'll go back tomorrow. I'll drink tonight and I'll come back and I'll say I relapsed. I'm back.

You know what? I couldn't get back. I could not put it down. For about 2 years, I went to meetings every single day and I couldn't put together more than a week. Most of the time, it was about 2 days, you know.

And the only way I can describe it is I felt like a hollowed out egg. If you touched me, I'd shatter. I just crumbled to a 1000000 pieces, you know. That that unmanageability was so it was it was vivid. It was vivid.

I even tried writing an inventory at that point, you know, and maybe this will fix it, you know, because I didn't know anything about it. Nobody had ever told me to work the steps. They said, just keep coming back. Make 90 and 90. Get a home group.

Get a bunch of phone numbers. Get a sponsor. Call your sponsor. Call your network. And I did all this stuff.

I made probably, 180, 200 and something meetings in 90 days. I was making a minimum of 3 meetings a day, sometimes 4, and still drinking, you know. Yeah. Yuck. And they're telling me you don't want it bad enough, you know.

Yeah. What do I gotta do here? You know? So for 2 years, I was in and out and in and out, and I got to the point where I just stopped raising my hand. I just couldn't do it anymore.

I couldn't raise my hand and say I'm coming back. Even the last time that I got sober, I didn't raise my hand. I didn't I damn near didn't celebrate my 90 days because I wasn't sure. You know? It was an old guy.

Guy named Bill Adams. He's died a few years back. Actually, died about 9 years ago. And he used to, he used to bring people up from Bayonne to the Kearny Candlelight Saturday night meeting. And, and he used to share about, reading the big book to newcomers and dragging him off the street, putting him on his couch, reading the book to them.

And I had no idea what he was talking about because all the big book meetings I had ever been to and anything that was ever referred to the big book was a bunch of stories. You know, nobody ever pointed out that it was a text. Nobody ever said there was instructions. It was all about stories. And, you know, you read the book and you identify with the feelings and you identify with the jaywalker and, you know, that kind of stuff.

And Bill used to say this and and it must have stuck with me, you know, because the last time that I came back, I picked that book up and I opened it up and I and I started to read it and it clicked. Something made sense for the first time in two and a half years. Something made sense. There was some kind of hope in there. And and to be honest, I don't know what it was.

It was just something. It was a moment of clarity. It was a moment of of seeing the truth. And, at that particular point, I had no guidance. I told my sponsor I I needed to write a 4 step.

And he goes he goes, no, you're not ready for a 4 step. You'll drink if you write a 4 step. And I said, I've been coming here for 2 years drinking every day. What the fuck does it matter? You know, what what could it hurt me?

What could it hurt me? You know? And I proceeded to break out a little memo notebook and carried it in my pocket for, like, two and a half weeks oozing and and wanted to kill everybody in sight. And I had, like, a 150, a 180 resentments, you know, because I for 2 weeks, I'd write down names. And that's all I do is write down.

I hate this one. I hate that one. And I'm, you know and and what I what I would do at night is I was actually taking care of I was house sitting, for this guy, Mark. He was in rehab. And I offered to clean his house while he was in rehab.

And I could crash there as a result of it till he got out. You know, I had to get rid of all the needles and all the stuff and everything and I could crash at his house. And what I would do is I would, I would review my day every night. And I'd look at where I screwed up. And I'd ask myself, am I willing to have god remove this?

And I'd say, yeah. This one? Yeah. Yeah. This one?

No. But this one? Yeah. Okay. God, please remove this.

You know? So I was doing a 10 step. I was doing 11 step. I was doing 6 and 7. I was doing it all ass backwards, but I was doing it, you know.

In the middle of writing this this really shabby inventory, and I bring this 3 column inventory because I've seen the book and I looked at the picture and I seen a 3 column inventory. So I wrote a 3 column inventory, and I brought this to my sponsor and I start sharing it with him, and he's pointing stuff out to me. You know. And and for the first time in my life, I wasn't the biggest piece of shit on the planet, and I wasn't a nice guy who drank too much, You know, I was somewhere in the middle. You know, I found some balance for the first time.

I moved again. I've moved, like, 6 times since I've been sober. But, I moved. It was my 1st year recovery. Oh, wait.

No. Let me back up though. I was about my first two months my first two months back, I wanted to drink all day, every day, 20 fourseven, constantly. And I'm running to meetings and I'm grabbing this new guy. And and, you know, my first sponsor did save my life.

And the first what he said to me is I called him about some stuff that's going on in my life. I can't even remember what it was now, you know. And he's like, Adam, you know what to do. You've been around long enough. Grab a drunk.

And I was like, but I only got 2 months. He goes, Saul? He goes, grab somebody with a month. You know, grab somebody with a day. Doesn't matter.

At that moment, my house became AA Central. And some people can attest to this, it still is today. You know, it's never changed. From that moment well, it has changed. It's gotten a little healthier.

But in that 1st year, we had an amp set up in the living room. We had live music. You know, we we we we were part of the alchathon for Christmas in Kearney. We basically go to the meeting, grab the wet ones, and the guys who were stinking and hungry and everything, bring them back to the house, give them a shower, feed them, bring them back to the meeting. You know, it was it was AA central.

You know? And the only requirement for membership was a desire to stop drinking. Anybody was allowed in our house. You know? Since my children have been born, we've kinda modified that rule a little bit.

But back then, that's the way it was. I didn't care if you were wet. As long as you wanted to get sober, you were allowed in my house, you know? And I've had some bad shit happen in my house, but you know what? It's alright.

Because it kept me alive, you know. But somewhere in the about my 1st year or so, I got offered a job with the board of education in New York. And, I didn't want to do it, you know. I'm, I I do wood floors and I love my job. And at that point, I was doing that.

And I was learning the trade and I was really digging it. And people are telling me, oh, you're crazy. You know, this is a union job. You gotta take it. Blah blah blah, You know, benefits and the whole deal.

And I was like, alright. Whatever. You know, I'll give it a shot. And, this honesty thing that we're supposed to do here in this program, kinda bit me in the ass because I'm a convicted felon. And I was honest.

And I made it to my 89 days of trial with the board of education and then they fired me. And I'm trapped in Staten Island. It's funny because for the for the 3 months or almost 3 months, I'm living in New Jersey but staying in Staten Island at a friend's house during the week coming home. And we finally find an apartment. We get the U Haul, and the night before we're supposed to leave, I get the call and say I'm fired.

So I moved to Staten Island with no job, barely know anybody. And, you know what? It was okay. It was okay because I knew something was going down. I didn't know what it was gonna be.

I didn't know I was gonna get fired, but I, you know, I they ran my prints and they did my thing and and all. I knew this was coming down and I was praying on a daily basis. God, please help me to accept whatever happens. Not what I want, you know. Because what I wanted that particular moment was to keep my job, you know.

But in reality, I was I was in a much better place by losing it. Because I ended up working with a guy in recovery over there. I got hooked up into the meetings over there. And, I found a job doing floors. Taught me a whole new angle of the trade, you know.

So when I did eventually come back to New Jersey, I was ahead of the game, you know. But, I met some people over there that were doing, doing house meetings. And they were doing big book studies out of their house. And, I proceeded to go through the book with somebody. And we made it to about the 3rd step and he drank.

So but you know what? That doesn't matter because what I did, what happened with that experience was I learned how to read this book. I learned how to transmit this information. You know, because prior to that I was doing it all whichever way, you know. I didn't know how this book was intended to be done.

I I didn't know how the work was intended to be done. And, and I was doing the best I could, but I could have been more effective. And I learned that from this guy. And ultimately, when I came back to New Jersey, I was pretty much ostracized from my home group because they didn't wanna hear about this sick hippie, you know, no shoe wearing, you know, tie dye wearing, you know, freak walking into the meetings talking about god, you know. When, you know, just a year or 2 ago, I was, you know, in and out and in and out and in and out.

And they couldn't help me. You know, I found a solution somewhere else. And it was right there in the meeting, but they didn't have it. And I walk in there and plus I was also a rabid thumper. And which didn't help at all.

But I was pretty much ostracized from this meeting. Nobody wanted to hear anything from me, you know. People were pushing newcomers away from me because they were saying, stay away from him. He's a fanatic. You know?

So what I what what I had to do and I couldn't find I I I didn't have anybody, no network of people to bounce my stuff off of Cause every every time I go with a problem, they say, oh, just keep coming back. It's like I need a solution. I'm here to get a solution, not to hear keep coming back. You know? So what I did is I grabbed the sickest drunk in the room, and I brought him back to my house.

And that's where it started. And I just went from meeting to meeting to meeting, finding the chronic relapsers, finding the people who could not get it. And I kept bringing them back to my house. And you know what? I don't think any of them are sober today, but I am.

You know? And to be honest, I I don't like that whole selfish angle of it. I really don't think that's a good thing. But you know what? It's true.

It worked. You know? I wish they would have gotten sober, you know. I really wanted them to and it was I wasn't doing it with that in mind to keep me sober. But, I became involved in a clubhouse over in Clifton.

And, that's where I met Mike. Well, actually right around that time. And, we were trying to bring a message of recovery to this place. And, I I I don't know. I think clubhouses have a tendency to be breeding grounds for really, really, really bad therapy, you know.

Not all of them. But, you know, the ones that I've been to, can be really harsh. And this this was one of them. You know? This was one of them.

Nobody wanted to hear a solution. You know? We'd have we'd have these we'd try and set up these workshops and, like, 3 people would come. You know? It was it was horrible.

So we set up the dances. You know, because that's you got 300 coming to a dance. 3 people come to a recovery workshop, 300 come to a dance. What are we gonna do? But at this at this dance, yeah, at this dance, I had I had the set aside prayer posted to the wall.

And, just because it was a meeting house and it's girl Meg, some of you know her, seen it. And she's like, I know that. And I was like, my ears jumped right up because that's the big book thumper secret handshake. It really is. You know?

And I was like, wow. You know? Somebody else who knows this. You know? And I was like, where did you hear that?

Where did you hear that? And she's like, oh, you gotta go to this meeting. It's on Tuesday night. It's up in Bernersville. And I was like, yeah.

Give me directions. Following Tuesday, I was there. You know? Because I've been running around the rooms of AA for 4 years, not having a fellowship, not having a home group, not having anybody that I could really truly bounce shit off of. You know, I had a couple guys here and there, you know, spread around, but nobody that I could go to, you know, constantly.

And, I walk into this meeting and, I believe Cass was speaking. And and I met who the guy who became my sponsor at that point. And it was the first person I ever met that had any considerable because even the guys in Staten Island, none of them had more than 2 years. You know? And they were all the same as me.

You know, we're all pretty much brand new at this doing this deal. And I walk into this meeting. This guy is celebrating at the end of the month or something, 22 years or something. Wow. Cool.

You know, somebody with life experience and the steps. You know, this is great. So I asked him to be my sponsor. And over the next couple years, you know, he helped me along this path. Fair warning to anybody new to the steps because I made a really, really, really bad mistake.

What this guy said to me was, he says, throw out everything you think you know, and we're gonna start with something new. You know? And so I did. You know? Guy's got 22 years, and he's doing the steps and okay.

Cool. You know, so I become this blank slate, you know, and it's like feed me, you know. But what happened was is I threw away all the good shit that I knew, and all the good stuff that was working for me for almost 5 years. You know, all the stuff that worked got thrown out along with the stuff that didn't. And what I was supposed to do was learn the new stuff and then incorporate the old stuff with the new stuff and find a balance.

And find out who I was instead of being a clone. You know? And and it took me a lot of pain to realize that because, you know, I went through a new process of the inventory and I did another 5th step and, you know, I did I did some sort of I don't remember which exercise it was at the time of 6 and 7 step. It was, I had unbelievable experience with the 6, 6 and 7 step that year or that one of those years in there. And, I made amends for all that current stuff.

And now I'm I'm trying to live this deal, but I'm not feeling it. You know? I'm listening to everybody up at the podium, and they're all sounding great. And they life is wonderful. Life is beautiful.

And I feel like crap. You know? What's wrong with me? You know? What's wrong?

And and it was 2 things. 1, I was judging everybody's, you know, judging my insides by everybody's outsides, you know, because people want to sound good up here, you know. And over the past couple of years, I've made it clear that I am not well. Yeah. You know, just for that new guy who who who hears this perfect freaking message from the podium.

We're human. You know, we have our bad days. We have our good days. We have our great days. We have our horrible days.

Saturday was a freaking horrible day for me, you know. We're human. But, I started looking at I started judging my recovery based on this. Plus, on the other side of it, I had thrown thrown away a lot of good stuff, you know. A lot of stuff that was really beneficial to me.

And what had happened is somewhere between here and here, it didn't connect. The I'm doing prayer meditation on a daily basis. I'm going down the list. I got all the 12 questions and I'm checking everything off and I'm I'm doing this shit by the numbers and it ain't working. Something's wrong, you know.

And what I came to realize was that I was relying on the process. I was dependent upon the steps. I was dependent upon the book. I was dependent upon, you know, I wasn't dependent upon god. Everything but god.

And, and it damn near killed me. About 3 3 years ago, I guess it was. Was it about 3 years ago? Yeah. It was, the end of August the end of August and I am sitting in front of my computer and my wife walks in and she says, I want a divorce.

And I was like, what? Where did this come from? I had no idea. I was totally clueless. I really was.

I knew we were fighting, but I was clueless that it was like this. And I was like, holy shit. What just happened? And, I proceeded to do a nightly review, and my sponsor came up. My wife came up and something else.

I don't remember what it was, but there was 44 names on this resentment inventory. I, so I figured out I might as well go through the process here and I went through another round through the steps. But it also at the time, you know, that open AA or that that AA central house, that evolved into a book study pretty much once a week, for the past 8 years. And I was doing one at that time. And we were just starting it and that 1st week I break out my book with all its highlighter notes and all the little dates on it.

And, you know, after going to one of Bill's workshops with all the history, it's gotta be exact and I gotta transmit the perfect message. You know what I said? Put that book aside and I grabbed a brand new book. No marks in it whatsoever. I'm gonna use this.

You know? And I read this book and I read it to the people that were in my house and I talked about my week and I talked about how this book works in my life this week. With all this shit going on in my life, with my life collapsing, You know, everything that I thought was important to me was just getting stripped away and how this works. And, it was the most powerful experience I've ever had in my life, you know, because it was new. It was alive.

It was, you know, yeah, it's a textbook, but it's also more, you know. It's got a life of its own. You can read it one day and see one thing and read it another day, and it's something totally different. You know? And it's just it was it was I just can't it's hard to describe, you know.

But by throwing away those highlighter notes and going with the blank pages and I was able to be more honest. I was able to be more truthful and more in the sense of experience. Not in, how is it, abstinence as opposed to experience. It was more about it wasn't about the method anymore. It wasn't about the stuff.

It was about the experience. And I went through the, I went through the process. I had 4 resentments. I had, like, 28 fears, you know, based off 4 resentments. Yeah.

And I thought I was okay just a couple weeks before. You know, I I I did my 5th step. I proceeded to make some amends, and something happened. I don't know. I got to this place where I went home one night.

I was crashing at a friend of mine's house in Summit. And, because me and my me and my wife had separated at that point. And I was really pissed off at AA and I didn't wanna go back. And, you know, because it it was it was tough because me and her, our our lives were so intertwined, you know. It's like there was that's how I met Chris Raymer.

It's because I called Chris to deal with this stuff because there was nobody here that wasn't connected. You know, it was scary. And, but I I hated AA. I went home and I I got quiet and I wanted to get out of this place and all of a sudden this prayer came to mind. And, it was, god, please help me to be unattached to that which I think I am.

You know, I'm not attached to being a father. I'm not attached to being a husband. I'm not attached to being a sponsor. I'm not attached to being a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. These are just roles I play on any given day.

What I really am is a child of god. I have no idea where it came from. I know where it came. It came from god. But it didn't come, you know, it came off my pen.