The Fellowship of The Spirit West conference in Big Bear, CA

Good evening, family. My name is Mark Houston. I'm an alcoholic. Good morning. And, I'm a recovered alcoholic.

As described in the big book. I'm from Texas, and I have learned over the years, if I'm unwilling to submit to way other than my own, I'm probably in trouble. And in Texas, they have a a way that of introducing themselves, which I thought was somewhat funny when I first got down there, but since I am from Texas, I will introduce my self in that fashion. It kinda goes like this, is, my name is Mark Houston. I'm an alcoholic.

My sobriety date is October 19, 1982 because of a loving God and a fellowship and steps and and, probably a host of other reasons I'm not sure of. So, it is good to be with you all this evening. I I have been on a sabbatical from noise talking. It began in June of 2003. I will talk with you about how that came about.

When I was asked to come and spend some time with you, I spent some time in prayer because I you know, god god really is funny. I I got moved to to do that and and stop speaking in workshops and all that, and and then, all of a sudden, all of these your narcissism, if you're an alcoholic, really gets tested. All of a sudden, I get calls start getting calls. You know, I used to get calls from, like, Taos, New Mexico, and and I get I start getting these calls. Iceland, no.

I can't. Denmark, no. I can't. Just, no, I can't. You know, just from incredible places.

You know? And, and I, but I was very committed to what I, vow that I'd taken for for a while, and I felt there was a lot of reasons for that. But that was always kinda interesting, but I I really felt convicted to come out and spend some time with you all. And I wasn't sure why. I was okay with a 1 hour pitch or whatever terminology you use here.

It's different depending on what part of the country you're in. But, some places, it's a lead. I I some of those terms are funny, aren't they? But, you know, I I went up to Fellowship of the Spirit. I had not planned on that through a series of events, and I I felt I really felt the need to connect with my AA family, the family within the family.

And when I went up there, we were sitting in a house and I, was with Mike and Joe and Jaime, and then we we had a meeting 11 o'clock at night and a whole bunch of people that I've just known for years were there. And I really realized I I I started crying when, you know, when I was sitting there, and one of the reasons is I just realized how much I missed my AA family. You know? I have created a fellowship around me everywhere that I have been sent to. I don't go to nor do I.

My head, once in a while, gives me some reason why I'm going here and but I it's about carrying the message. It's period, end of statement. That's the thing. It's always been that way for me, and I'm fairly clear on that. But, you know, that that the connection with I'll call it my birth AA family because I got sober in Denver.

And, I really realized how much I missed it in, so it's not a coincidence. I can see now I decided to come out with here and spend some time with you. I I hope that I god uses me to help some of you in some way, but I assure you that you all have fed me, and I have needed to have been fed from my family with within this thing. You know? You know, to feel that love, that connection you have if you share a common a common thing.

You know? I, gosh. I I was reflecting. I've known quite a few of you now for quite a few years, and it's, it's really great connecting with you again, watching what's happened in your lives and with this power and as you continue to grow and and, work with this, design for living. So it's, really a pleasure to be here.

I wanna thank the committee. I wanna thank everyone who does all the grunt work so we can show up and have fun. You know, we don't think about that. I don't think those people in Smile God Loves You tapes, and they get in their car and they make a long drive, and they do all that setup, so that, you know, when I'm driving down a long dusty road in in, Texas and I'm feeling a little little lonely, I can pop in a tape and listen to some to some people and feel that, you know, connection again. So, I just I just wanna thank all of you who've been involved in in putting this, putting this thing on.

I'm gonna talk just very briefly with you all about what it was like. I think I wanna share with you a lot of the changes perhaps that have come about for me over the almost 22 years. I think mostly what I feel I need to share with you is really what's happened to me in the last couple years, in the sense that I think, perhaps, it may be of benefit to, you know, to some of you because there's a lot to be said where you, you know, you're either growing or dying, and I certainly have a lot of experience with with that. Some of you, through tapes and other things, know my my story somewhat, but, born and raised in Iowa and 1 of 4 boys, and I picked up a drink when I was 16 and, I found God. The sense of separation that I felt, the fear, the the myriad of things, you know, in ways in which I experienced myself all dissipated behind that liquid as it went down into my body, and I wasn't about to give that up.

I drank alcohol for, for 20 years, moved around into several different states, finished high school, and then into college and drafted and sent to Vietnam and came back from there and got married and and rode off to San Francisco. And, boy, that that stuff that we have going on inside that that whiskey has to treat. The older I got, the more it grew. Call it a beast. I don't know what you call it, but fear beyond belief, this sense of I'm a fake, you know, all those kinds of things, those voices that talk to us, having some success with your life, but you can't measure up inside with what's starting to manifest out there.

And that gap is too strong and is too powerful. But you're acting like everything is is okay. Alcoholism, I walked out of that marriage. I am not a man of regrets. Regrets means that I had choices.

I don't know about you, but I got free of this delusion, drunk and sober, that I'm going through life making choices in some areas of my life. I do understand the word driven. There's a huge difference between the 2, and I'll I'll talk a little bit more about that. But, I didn't choose to to get out of that. I was driven out of that marriage and left there, went up Seattle, Washington, and a a little white powder called cocaine came into my life, and that escalated my drinking to a to a stratosphere that I had never experienced before.

And, booze was at the heart and soul of my deal. But anything that would allow me to continue to do that for days on end, I I kinda liked. I couldn't stand sloppy drunks, and so if anything I could do to still give me a little bit of an edge like I had it together, I was willing to participate in. I wasn't one who went for anything that was gonna take an edge off. So, you know but, so I moved up to Seattle, Washington, and from there, I went up to Anchorage, Alaska, and it was a year up there.

And, boy, things got real crazy. And, that's really when the business career began to fold, Wound up, ultimately in, back in Colorado and and then got involved in in, the entrepreneurship I had a couple of brothers doing and and, carrying guns and violence and drinking and and, just insanity. Just and it was all about alcoholism. Me running me running for me and me trying to treat me and not you know, the the phrase asleep, dream, and you're awake just describes so much of that. Do not misunderstand me.

I had a lot of great years behind vodka. I had a lot of great years. Oh my god. I love alcohol today more than most people drinking it. It was my god.

And I and I to this day, I I'm so grateful for it. I I was so sober several years before, chapter 5, how it works, the line about we we have grave emotional mental disorders before I realized that applied to me. I am so selfish, the word we applies to you. And and then I then I then I get sober and and, you know, you start doing step work and stuff and but you got some areas of your life you're not getting better in and, you know, and you're starting to say, well, is there a possibility I could be talking about me, that I might have some grave emotional mental disorders? Is that a possibility?

And yeah. It was a big time possibility. One of the nice things about going back to Denver is I have very little recall, and this is the truth, of my first three years with of sobriety. So they're able to fill in some blanks that I no longer pretend that I know I was doing then. And yet the insanity is if you'd asked me in those 1st 3 years how I was doing, I would have said, oh, I'm doing okay because I'm getting up and I'm sober and I'm going to meetings and I have a job and but it literally in in hindsight, it literally was a almost a blackout.

When I went to make amends in Anchorage, Alaska, I was I was off a year in terms of when I thought I lived there. I mean, I I mean, the point that I'm trying to make is is that that I I was a daily drinker. I I mean, I got out there. It's a wonder I ever came back, and I mean that. I that's where alcohol that place it took me to, and and I also know that deep down inside me at a cellular level, there's a part of me in a subconscious level that if I get uncomfortable for too long, it that part of me will say to me in that soft sweet voice, I know what'll make that go away.

And the and the sad news about that voice is that voice has no memory of any consequences I suffer about when I pick up a drink because, you know, my attempts at sobriety were very, very limited. I'm not a guy who came in and out and blah blah blah, what few attempts I had. I think the longest one lasted 2 weeks, and and that little voice that rises from my subconscious that I have no say over, it has no memory of any consequences. It only has a memory of the effect produced, which is why I am beyond human aid. No human aid can tap into that place, you know, which is why really when I when I look back and I look a lot of the paths and the work that I have done, it is about doing the things necessary so that that little voice is not activated, So that there's a power between me and that voice saying, Mark, I understand you're in pain, and and Mark, I can guarantee you I know what'll make that go away, which is some of that vodka.

And, knowing full well that that can rise up. You know, I was sharing a little bit today, and and this is the way it still is for me in in this day. If I have some things going on within me that are creating disease, It might be it might be in the area of a relationship, or it might be finances, or it might be physical health, or it might be mental health, or it might be career. What I ultimately know about all of that is if that something does not change within the context of that, I will drink. I know that.

So it always starts with, well, maybe, you know, maybe it's about money or maybe it's about this, but I get clear fairly quickly where it's really gonna go if I can't get at ease and ease and peace in this area of my life. You know, you have that connection between your selfishness, the spirituality, the creation of disease, that internal condition, that subconscious mind, call it mental obsession, kicking in and take a drink, and no recall No recall of the length, the time, or the quality of my life. Just the idea that I have got to do something to get out of this pain that I am in. And by the way, I don't necessarily have to have a conscious awareness perhaps of that pain. So I leave Alaska.

I I could told you, went down to Colorado. And, I remember going vaguely remember going to a few meetings of AA, vaguely because I was drunk. What really a a turning point for me is, I met a gal in a bar. I didn't have a place to live. She did, so I married her in God's honest truth.

I was 3 years sober, woke up and looked and said to myself, I don't even like this person. What am I doing here? And, but, she thought I had a drinking problem. And, boy, I I tell you, my last year, year and a half, you know, my last drunk last a year a year and a half. And, you know, I vaguely remember I got 12 step by evangelical layman.

I stole his Bible. I still have it. Made amends to him for that. He said I can keep it. I still have it.

Of course, see, he he got me because I asked him what I could do to make it right, and he said, I want you to continue to read and reread that over and over again till you really understand it, and and I told him I would do that. And, and and god's honest truth, it's sitting on me. I'm telling you, it's more worn than a big book. You know? Because I told him what I was gonna do.

And, I finally, though, had to work the steps to understand the words I was reading in that book and many other books, but, because I used to just read them and go, what? You gotta listen to a minister. What he say? Where the world like a loose garment? What?

Do I buy a shawl? I mean, you you know, just seek ye the kingdom, the rest will be added. You know? What? You know, just crazy.

You know? 7 times 77, let him beat you up. You know? Then I'd do the steps, and I'd go read, and I'd go, wow, that's what that meant. But it all came to me via the steps in the big book.

You get that? See, I had to I had to have that simplistic 5 year old language and experiences really get taken to the place where over over time, I have devoured books, way too many, as a friend of mine would say. But, so anyhow, just through a series of events, finally sitting across from a therapist who listened to me I went in there drunk. She listened to me for 5, 10 minutes and just looked me dead in the eye and said, I can't be of any help to you. You have been drinking for so long, and you are so damaged that I don't think just going to a is gonna work.

Here's 3 treatment centers. Get get out of my office. And I was offended at that, so I went to the bar. You know, and I I tell you something, the morning of October 19, 82, I, I mean, the hand of god's all over this. You know, I was working as an orderly in a nursing home cleaning up human feces, and that's just the truth.

There were I'd take a fit the vodka in with me, and there were 8 old men. And, I weighed about 250, 260 then, and I took care of these men. I changed Pampers. That's really really an interesting thing I was doing at that time I got sober, isn't it? And, because those old men didn't care if I drank, and, you know, and I had a comfort zone with them.

And, anyhow, I I just through through a series of of going into there, one morning, I woke up. I I, my bellybutton birthday is 14th, and I left my place somewhere on 13th, and I came back in the morning of 19th. I'm not to this day, I don't have a clue what I did, and and, literally the next thing I knew, I was in a detox at about 5:30 in the evening. And it when I look back on it, it it it almost feels like this to me. It's like God had a bunch of stuff that God wanted to manifest through me and things he wanted me to do.

He had given me I don't know how many signs, all of which I completely ignored because I am so consumed with myself. And it's like he said, I am so tired of waiting for any of this to work. Boom. You know? And because the obsession to drink was removed from me on that morning and has never once came back upon me, and I had nothing to do with that.

Now the having the obsession to drink removed is far different than than the idea that you're not gonna have thoughts about drinking. Right? And, so I went in that place and I was in there, I can't remember, 30, 35 days, somewhere in there. You know, there are some realities to some of that. I do remember back then in treatment, if you were in detox, they made you wear blue pajamas and little funny shoes.

And you slept in this bed that was made for a 5 year old that was rubber because they didn't know if you were gonna defecate and urinate. And but I did do remember and they told you what time to get up and where to go to eat. And I do I do remember having this thought, Mark, you're 36 years old. That's a little bit old to be told what to do from the time you get up till the time you go to bed, and maybe you're not quite as smart as you think you are. You know, you see, that's that's in a major epiphany for a guy like me, as I saw this connection.

You know? 36 year olds normally aren't doing this. There's something going on here. I perhaps should listen. Right?

Now here's the deal, I was so disconnected from myself I didn't even know the obsession to drink had been removed. I didn't even realize that till I 3 or 4 months sober sitting in a meeting one day, and I haven't drank for 4 months. Wow. How'd that happen? And, you know, it was that kind of thing.

My first two, three years were pure were pure cheech and Chong stuff because I didn't do anything that didn't have alcohol. So what that meant is there were a lot of things I'd stop doing, like grocery shopping, movies. And, you know, when I go to the grocery store and I'd be going down the aisles and, wow, look at that. You know what I'd be? He'd say, Mark, it's been in the store for 10 years, you know.

You know, and I didn't have a car, and I'd be riding the bus, and I'd hear the bird. I'd hear a bird. I'd go, woah. You know, and you or you you take a bite off of a sandwich, you go, woah. You know, and it's baloney or something something, you know.

I'm telling you, it was it was like that, you know. And then, you know, I still remember I got my first car, you know. I just, I mean, I got done and I kissed the car, you know. It's just and I get to drive, you know. It's just, you know, and they're they're they're gonna afflict me electricity, You know, they're gonna you understand that?

See, I don't take this stuff for granted. You know, to this day, Texas Electrical Company, when I when I moved to Dallas, I called them up, and they said, tell you what we'll do. We're gonna float you electricity for 30 days because we think you're responsible enough that you're gonna pay us for what we're gonna float you. That's a big deal to me. Right?

I don't take any of that stuff for granted. When you come from where I come from, let me tell you what. I I love paying bills. I'm I'm I'm excited about the fact that I get to pay bills, that that I get to work enough for money to come in. I get to write these checks.

You know? I mean, I recently went out and bought a a nice new car. I decided I wanted to drive again, and, I'm gonna talk to you a little about an area I call financial sanity, which I am finally experiencing. Thank God. And, I have a budget that tells me what I can and cannot do.

What a concept. Can you imagine? People say, would you like to go do this? And I say, I don't know. I need to look at my budget.

You're what? I didn't. You know, it sounded like, But that was one of the things that only happened in the last 2, 3 years. So my budget said you can get a new car and so, you know, I went out and I had a ball buying a new car, and I I cut I cut the best deal, man. I nice Lincoln LS and, You know, black, the sunroof.

Air con the seats are air conditioned, man. You know? And audio sound system, you know, a 180 watts, 12 speakers, you know, just cranking it. You know, everything from M and M to Creedence, Colorado, Rhode Island. You know, and and it's a marked car, man.

It's black and it's hot. You know, 0 to, you know, turbo and see, I I love it. I I just love getting in that thing. Here's the difference. I own the car.

The car don't own me. You get that? See? You know, god likes driving nice cars, man. See, what a but but I know I don't take that for granted.

You know? I once a week, that that goes in and gets detailed. You know? Thank you, god. You know?

Thank you, god. I get to drive a car like that. I get to experience that, the pleasure of that. You know? What a deal.

So, you know, I to this day, I still don't take those things for granted. You know? But along that journey then, of course, I ran across Don Peay, who a lot of you have been influenced by as I have, and I primarily got interested in him because, you know, I saw my pal Joe getting better and he was real sick. So I I'm not I'm not kidding. I I'm the only one in this room that's known him virtually since the day he got sober, and if you think he's sick now, you should've seen him in.

Right? He and I don't kid ourselves about getting well, so but I had I I saw a tremendous change in him and, funny how that works. You know? I I didn't like Joe when I met Joe. I mean, I didn't like him because unbeknownst to me at that time, of course, like a lot of us, you know, he's really afraid.

So how do we compensate for that? Right? We're defensive. We're arrogant. We know it.

You follow me? But inside, we're just scared because people who are at peace with themselves that can experience an authentic self never project any of that stuff. Right? And then, of course, you know, we've developed and and just really become, you know, the best of best of friends over the years. And, what a what a wonderful deal that was.

So I I had approached Don, and he and I made that journey, you know, through the steps, and, I did. I had a I had a revolutionary spiritual experience. It was absolutely incredible. And, but I look back and and, boy, there's a lot of things when I look back in hindsight though that I didn't do. I got a little bit too caught up in, career and working long hours, and, I had several opportunities.

I I had done sex inventories in terms of relationships, those kinds of things. It had been put in front of my path that that, you know, you might need some outside help in that area. You know, but I had fallen prey. Here's the paradox of this, by the way. I wanna mention this.

The big book is very clear to you and I that at some point in time, if we're smart, we probably wanna seek outside help for our body and all kinds of things. Right? But you know how it is with our steppers. Somehow we our books, the that's not in there. The steps, that's it.

You know? Well so I ignore all that. So I'm I'm needs to say, having trouble in personal relationships. You know, I've been married and divorced four times, 2 of those in sobriety, and, so I got a lot of that stuff going on. I in in hindsight, I don't recall I did doing anything with meditation, then you get to live with a chat over a 1000 monkeys from the time you get up till the time you go to bed.

It is not fun, and if your voices are like mine, they are not kind, gentle, and loving at all. Horrible. Just unbeknownst to me. And, now I have another element, and this ties into something I wanna talk about in the last, couple years is, I suffer and have suffered, at times very extreme from, PTSD, and that came from trauma, and that trauma is connected to Vietnam and and a lot of other things. And I did not know that.

I did not know that I suffered from that and that began to manifest itself. And I wound up, I think it was in my 9th year, in a psychiatric hospital down in Houston, Texas. And, I've been in Texas ever since. I, not because I like being in the Nuthouse, I'll tell you, but I did need to be there. I, I almost, took myself right on out of here.

I was in so much pain and did not know why. And it was many things in hindsight. It just was not the PTSD thing. It was when I look back, it had to do with a lot of unwritten inventory. It had a lot to do with dependencies.

It had a lot to do with a lot of things. It had a lot to do with still some unfinished amends. It had a lot to do with I hadn't made peace with my past in some areas, and all those things together. And I literally begin to die from the inside out, literally right down to my bones. When I tell you that every cell of my body hurt, I mean it hurt, and, and I didn't drink.

And and literally, I I came to tell you how far gone I was in that thing, I had probably been living in Texas 8, 9 months. I lived in Houston for 6 months, and then I moved up to the hill country up to Kerrville. And I remember going out to have a smoke, sitting on a on a picnic bench, and I literally felt like I was coming out of a vortex and I remember waking up and I look around, I don't even know where I'm at, and then all of a sudden I heard myself say, what am I doing in Kerrville, Texas? That's how deep I got into that thing. Right?

I came out of that and went to Kerrville, Texas, and there wasn't anyone there that we know that that does the thing like we do, and and so I began to create the fellowship I crave. I did a lot of work, over the next 2, 3 years with, 1 through 9, particularly 4, particularly 9, and really begin I tell you what what when I look back, I tell you what I did is I took a hard look at the book and I asked I got real honest with myself what I about what I had not been willing to do on a daily basis. And I said, you know what? I'm gonna do it. I'm going to do this.

What do I have to lose? And I began to explore meditations and other disciplines and books and, got to study with a Native American, person for a couple years, reconnected with mother earth, and I'd lost that completely. There's nothing worse than walking the earth not realizing it's a living, breathing organism. So a lot of incredible things, happened in in that, you know, in that time period. And then wound up getting moved down to Austin, Texas.

Now here was another thing I had going on with me that I didn't, somebody just wave at me when I'm at my time limit or something. You'll wave or holler or do whatever, because it just flows through me, you know. But only news to me is is about every 5 years, what was going on with me is this, I don't know how I'll just call it what it is, this this this trauma, this PTSD stuff would get real active. Now I was asleep to this, and so here's what I did about every 5 years, is I literally would move and or start a relationship, quit a job, begin to isolate, begin to pull back, begin to experience immense amounts of fear, burn and turn all my money. Had no idea any of this was going on.

I moved up to Dallas, and and I went through a period of that in in Austin. Thank God. I I was working with a lot of people. Thank God I was. Got through that.

Didn't find it necessary to get married again. By the way, there's 3 birthdays I celebrate. October 14th is my belly button birthday. October 19th is the day I got sober, and October 25th was the last time I got divorced. So this program does work.

Yeah. I there was a stage character, me called the husband. I I I went out one day, and I literally dug a grave, and I had to bury him. You know, he'd he'd been around for 4 times. That's about enough.

Don't you think? You know what I'm saying? And I symbolically, I did. You know? You no longer exist.

Okay? You know, because that part of me always had to have a wife. So I get divorced on Friday, get remarried on Monday, and couldn't figure out why I'm doing it, but I'm choosing to. Right? Jeez.

Driven. Driven. Driven. There's nothing worse than being sober thinking you're making choices in all these areas of your life. Right?

When I awoke to the fact that perhaps I was being driven, you know. So I get up to Dallas, and, once again, I'm gonna now the good news is over the years, I've worked with a bunch of people up there. Some of you know I've done a thing called steel and steel for years, and I begin to do that again. There's a wonderful woman named, Joanne. She's 38, 39 years sober, 78 years old, and, my sponsor, Joanne, she's a one wonderful woman.

I do steal and steal with her and a woman she sponsors 19 years, and then there's another man with 29 years, a man with 16. I do steal and steal with them because I don't wanna get trapped by my blind spots anymore and by self delusion. And so those people, help me with all those kinds of things. But about, I hit Dallas, Texas, and I'm gonna I'm gonna talk about several different things here. I'm gonna talk about what I call financial sanity.

I wanna talk about what I call physical sobriety, emotional sobriety, mental sobriety. In my experience over the last couple of years and what happened to me is, you know, I I resubmit to the process of the steps, when I have a strong sense I need to do that. And about 2 years ago, I started to feel that blackness moving over me again. And you've had the kind of experience with that shadow that I have. And my life was great.

I was working at a job that I loved. I was earning more money than I'd ever earned. I had some people around me that I liked and enjoyed. I like where I live, you know. And, the fear behind that began to manifest itself.

So I, read out a prayer, just another set aside prayer, and began to work with that prayer and began to take a look at the, the first step. And I and I add one component to looking at unmanageability this time, and, I wanna read it so that I don't misquote. But it's really out of page 27, where doctor Carl Jung is talking to us about what happens to us in this incredible experience. And he talks about the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes, which were once the guiding force of my lives, are suddenly cast to one side, and I said to myself, self, what ideas, emotions, and attitudes do you have going on as you look at your first step that might be contributing to what is going on?

And I started looking at things. I started looking at finances. I started looking at my physical body. I started at some of that. And, basically, what happened, and it happened very quickly, is in the first area, it really showed up had to do with finances, which is I've always earned good money, but I have you you know, first of all, I never thought I'd live this long.

So, you know, 2 years ago, I'm I'm 55 years old, and, you know, say what you want, but there's this thing called retirement that's starting to loom. And I had done a horrible job on planning for any of that, not because I chose to, because I had some belief systems and attitudes in place. Although I had more on philosophic convictions, we've known this since 5th grade. Save 10%, blah blah blah blah blah. You know, and we go around the room and get a show of hands.

How many of you pulled that one off? Right? But I begin to see a connection between my irresponsibility and lack of power in that area and the tremendous fear that financial insecurity will breed in you, and it'll bleed into every area of your life. Every relationship you have, every phase of your life, It's been my experience with it. And I said, enough.

I know this is contributing. What are you willing to submit to? Well, I did an inventory. My inventory showed me there were 2 major belief systems I had going on that were contributing to this. Here's the first.

I'm gonna win the lotto. You're laughing because you relate. The second was I'm a financial planner. I'm not. Having finally seen that truth, having seen it's not about choice, having seen I need power, I went to a financial planner and said, although I appear as though I am somewhat intelligent, I am not.

Here is my financial life. I will submit to anything you tell me, And he happens to be in the program, and he said, good. We're gonna separate the men from the boys. And I said, what do you mean? Because he said, you ain't gonna like what I tell you.

Right? He said, you are going to lead a simple life from here on out, and this thing called the budget is gonna tell you what to do. I really somewhat started this process 4 years ago, ago, but I really kicked it into high gear 2 years ago, and I I'll fast forward. I I wanna tell you what's really happened to me over 4 years in this area. I reduced debt by almost $45,000.

I socked away $15 into an IRA account. I have a cash reserve that has somewhere between $215,000, and I don't have any debt. And I wanna tell you something. I walk a freer man because of that. But I want I'm trying to make a point here, what I call financial sanity.

At some point in time, all of my spiritual insights and wisdoms weren't doing anything in this area of my life, and it was impacting me. And I got tired of it, and I said, this is not this is not a demonstration of financial sanity. Right? I think one of the reasons to also I I decided it became necessary for me to take a couple years off from nonspeaking is I had too many areas of my life that I felt I was not sober in. One of them was that area I just talked about.

Now let's talk about some other areas, physically. I got a pal of mine I've sponsored for years, a wonderful man named Floyd. By the way, he he's the one that has been key in my financial sanity, and there's nothing worse than getting someone you've sponsored who you've been real hard on because you needed to be and going to them for counsel. Boy, did he get even. But this is the power of amends.

He made amends to a woman that he almost married in college that he hadn't seen in 31 years that he finally found and, made that amends, and and and this is a woman he deeply loved. And and to the amazement of both of them, they discovered that they still loved each other. There was one little problem. She was a master level therapist and is a very healthy woman, and she observed right away that he was probably one of the most obsessive, compulsive human beings she had ever met. I used to send this guy an email and ask him a question, I get 9 pages back.

You know, just it was unbelievable. So she suggested to him, she said, I work with a woman. She's in her late seventies. She's been doing a holistic, physical health thing, for years years years. She does all this off of hair analysis.

She basically said, if you won't submit to this, and we can test, we can see where you're at with all this, your physical body, and and if you won't submit to this, I can't go out with you. I can't your OCD stuff is just too crazy, man. And so once he got over being offended, he said, sure. I'll do that. So he called me, and he went over these 2 pages of test results and and, started taking these holistic natural supplements.

Well, within about 3 weeks, I noticed this guy. I would call him, and first of all, I didn't even recognize his voice was slow. There was one thought at a time. When I get an email, I'd ask him a question, he'd send back and go, yes or no. And I said, you know, I mean, I'm a Norwegian alcoholic.

I'm not an idiot. When I when I see that big of a shift going on so, I started talking to him about that, so I so I said, I'm gonna submit to that. See, you go back to these steps, you're gonna get open minded. That means you better let go of what it's gonna look like in terms of where your help's coming from. Right?

So my help is starting to come outside the rooms, isn't it? You get this? You see? Thank god. And so anyhow, I said, sure.

I'll I'll I'll do this bizarre thing again. See, I didn't under I didn't know that my hair was the history of my life since birth. I didn't know that. So I send in this hair, and then I get back my 2 pages. And, physically, a lot of it was okay, but I had some major areas that were somewhat problematic.

But then most of all is this woman also has a a means of looking at grave emotional mental disorders. So I get this back, and I I told you about this PTSD thing, and you're looking for a number of 10. Right? PTSD, 27. Right?

You're looking for 10. Depression, 22. We got trouble, I think, here. And I I called her, and I saw him talking to her because we set up a three way with this doctor. Doctor used to be a doctor of conventional medicine who saw that didn't do much and decided they would start addressing the problem instead of the symptom.

So I'm doing this three way call, and and she said to me, she said, how are you functioning? I said, what are you talking about? She said, I've never known anyone with those numbers that's not hospitalized somewhere. And I said, well, ain't a grand the wind stopped blowing out, you know. See, when you when this is normal, you know how drinking and puking was normal?

Well, this was normal. Right? She said, oh, Mark. God bless you. We can help you.

We can help you. Right? So I started taking natural supplements, and, I I I can't even begin to tell you what a difference it made. I can tell you today that well, there's another piece about the about the, speaking issue. I've been on these things about 6 months and again, they're just natural supplements based on the needs of my body and I sent in my hair again and this PTSD was, like, still at 25.

So I went down and and the woman in Louisiana said she wanted to meet me, the older woman who had done all this. And this woman, like I said, was in her late seventies. I met her. She looks like she's about 50, and these eyes are just incredible woman. So she started asking me what I was doing while I'm talking then about, you know, I do workshops, and I do this, and then so we get done, and she's shaking my head.

She said she said, if you ever want this to get better, you must stop. You must stop. She said she's been working with us, just so you know, for a long time, and she said, most of you have had extreme trauma, and you're going around and you're doing all these things, and it's triggering yours. It will never get better. Now, I said the set aside prayer, didn't I?

You know? Because I hadn't fully made a commitment then at that time, and then she said something else which made me angry. She said, it also feeds your narcissism, which is very high, by the way. And I said, okay, Joan. You got it.

And, she was right. She was absolutely right on on all counts, and I was willing to submit to that process. So that began a a journey there, and then she said, look, here's here's another deal. And, I said, what's that? And she said, if you you know, there's a woman that I know in New Orleans who who is a specialist in this, and she said, the easiest way I can explain it to you, because she talked her language and I talked the language we talk, is, she said you have some stuff in you at a cellular level this woman can help you get that will help you get out of.