Steps 4 through 9 at the Road to Recovery convention in Reykjavik, Iceland

Hi, Icelandic people. What a trip. I'm Steve. I'm an alcoholic. Hi, Steve.

Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.

Wow. Continue dining up there. It's fine. And, uh-oh. We've already messed up.

Hector had the lights fixed, so when Hector comes back, I think he went shopping. We're going, I'll turn and look at him. Okay? Because he's never late. And if you were late, he'd tell you.

So we'll look at him. Because I'm a spiritual guy and I don't really like to rub people's faces in anything, you know, and I'm sure here in Iceland you all are spiritual giants too, being that you're all descendants of Vikings. Yeah. I like the Vikings because I think they had the first really recovery program for alcoholism. It was a one step program.

They got drunk and in the morning when they were hungover, they went and killed somebody. You know, that's the way they stopped feeling bad. Let's go kill somebody and burn it down, which I like that idea. So I just wanna thank everybody's been thanked. I'm not gonna thank the same people who have been thanked.

I'm gonna thank all the people who have a and a in their name. Because you know, no none of the English speakers have said a or a name. Have you noticed? Sigi, the dad, it is all like we can do those, but what their names. I, and it was great being introduced because I have idea what she was saying about me.

Here's an idiot from the states. We don't know why he's here. Please be nice. He has no idea what I'm saying. Smile at him.

He'll think we like him. That's great, you know. I have no idea what's going on. I just go where people push me. This has been just terrific.

And, I think you could get more tourists if we just change the name of this place. Vikingland or Viking World or something, you know, then they'd come. Of course, you'd all have to drink because you live, like, in the cold version of Disney World, and that would be bad. So anyway, we're gonna get back to this now. I just wanna I I'm I'm sober 1979.

That was, May 25th 1979 is when I got sober. Jimmy Carter was president. And, and Hector and I got sober in the same same year. He's like 20 days or 18 days in front of me. I'm actually the baby here this weekend.

And, and I like that. I'm one of those people that believes there's no such thing as too much attention. Those of you who go, I don't like to speak. I don't understand you. Why not?

It's up to 45 minutes about me. My favorite subject and you all have to listen or die with a big fat liver out to hear, you know. And and I'll take your attention if you don't want it. Yeah. But what I wanted to say was it and Hector sort of touched on it.

One of the things I believe is you don't have to believe in this stuff. My friend, Marie Stenner, who passed away, said used to say that, I don't know if you get this reference, but that the steps are like XLAQ. XLAC. You know what XLAC is? XLAC is, when you're constipated.

You know constipated, Okay. So you take and it makes you unconstipated. Right? And she would say, it's like, x lax. You don't have to believe x lax is gonna work.

You don't even have to want x lax to work. All you have to do is take x lax and it will work. And the same thing is true about my experiences. The same thing is true we have things like this, workshops, and it's all good. Look, this, in my opinion, is geared to do one thing, which is what AA is.

1 alcoholic talking to another. And if coming to this conference gets your your your blood up and you get you more excited, and or if you learn something that helps you, and I hope you do, you know, then that's great. But it's all geared towards 1 alcohol meetings geared towards 1 alcoholic talking to another, you know. That is, in my opinion, what it's all geared toward. So to a certain extent, I think we all come from this from different places.

And you're gonna put your different spin on meetings. And I I was in California for 2 years. I now live in New York. The program's the same, but the some of the the traditions, not the 12 traditions, but the way meetings are run are a little different. But it's the same program.

And and I would tell you that 99 point 0.9 percent of what Hector said this morning, I absolutely agree with, you know. And and I can focus on that one point that I don't, if I want to. But there's not gonna be anything new. I I I'm not gonna I there's nothing new in this book. Hector talked about it.

There's nothing new here. There's no such thing, in my opinion, as new spiritual truth. Humankind has known spiritual truth since the beginning of the humankind. Don't steal. Everybody's always known that.

Don't steal. Don't mess with other guy's wife. It's not good. Don't lie. We don't lie.

Unless you're telling a story, well then that's okay. Around the campfire, you can tell me how many reindeer you killed. It's 30. It's alright. The ice was up to here last year, you know.

Okay. That's okay. You can exaggerate a little bit in the story, but when you're paying me for my lunch, don't I'm gonna say, this the Bill Wilson, I think his brilliance was that and and he did. I don't know if you've ever read read of religious experience, which was a book that influenced Bill, but I read that when I had 5 years sober, and I had a hard time understanding it. Bill read while he was detoxing and got something out of it.

Okay? And and so my what I think his brilliance was, and if he was divinely inspired and I'm gonna I this book saved my life. Okay? The book the book, the program, the the thing the book started, the thing the book keeps going because this is the sort of the saved my life. But I don't know that this book is divinely inspired.

And I don't know that because the book doesn't claim it. And I don't know that book is divinely inspired, and I don't know that because the book doesn't claim it. Most books that are divinely inspired or think they are, claim it. The Bible. God wrote this book.

If you change it, he'll burn your face off. Now okay. The Quran. You can't even make a movie about the Quran, you know? They'll come get you.

The Bhagavad Avida. God wrote the book. This, but Bill Wilson never claims that God inspired him because but I believe there's divinely inspired material in here because Bill stole it from other people. Everything in here, it's a great Everything in here, it's a great alcoholic book. It's all stolen, which is exactly the way our spirituality should be.

And if you're Buddhist, you recognize this. If you grew up in a Christian, you recognize it. If In fact, in 19 in the Buddhist started coming into the program, Bill was really surprised it worked for them. Because this book is so heavily based on grace, it worked for them. Because this book is so heavily based on grace, and Buddhism is a is a religion without grace.

And yet, it's been able to be tweaked. You know? That's such an American book. It is. The spearhead of God's ever advancing creation.

Ta dum. That is like such an American phrase, you know. He obviously wrote that before Auschwitz. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

So so, Bill was. He was a Connecticut Yankee and a total optimist when he wasn't depressed. You know, he's like, everything's great. Great. I can't get up.

In fact, I live right near Bill's house. I was doing guided tours when I moved to New York before I had to go back to work. And, see Bill had the right idea for not I got sober. And I would start sponsoring guys that they did that for. I said, how did you because I was always taught you pay for everything, you know, the gentleman pays for everything.

How did you do that? Well, you don't eat for a couple days. You get you just look like I'm at a puppy dog. Take care of me. Take me home.

I'll be faithful this time. Anyway. And it is divinely inspired as any good literature is. Martin Luther King's letters from a Birmingham Jail. Divinely inspired inspired.

Because it's good stuff. So wherever you come down with this thing, the bottom line and that's just where I'm you know what? Next week, I could have a different opinion. That's the one I've had for a while. I don't have the same opinion I had at 5 years or 10 years.

Thank God I never wrote anything because somebody come up and go, I really agree with this. And I wrote it like 15 years ago and go, well, I don't anymore. I I gave that up a long time ago. And they're going, well, it saved my life. See, it's all you can't you you I haven't been able to stay in the same place spiritually.

I've I've dumped ideas, gone back to them, and it's just a lot of fun. And And and I've got to tell you, it's a lot of fun because I have to start with 4 step. 4 step is not usually a step most people think of as fun. 4th step. 4th step.

I was thinking about that this morning. 4th step is a little bit like sex before you've had it. You know, you hear a lot about it. You hear an awful lot about it. And it sounds kinda scary, you know.

You do what? With whom? When? You know. And and then after you've had it, you have 1 or 2 reactions.

It's like, boy, I wanna do that more. Or what was all the fuss about? That's more the women. What was all the fuss about? That's only if they had sex with a man.

But what I was saying well, today you never know. It's really changed today. Today, you know, one of the worst things when I was growing up is somebody would say, you throw a ball like a girl. Today, if a girl says you do that like a girl, it's a compliment. But what I was saying, that'll sink in later.

And for those of you who English is not the they'll explain it to you. So anyway, the 4th step, it's really a lot of fun. And after you do it, I promise you'll go, what was the big deal? What was I so scared about? I mean, unless you're really tweaked and sick and and I just wanna say something to the young people here.

You know, if you're really young, like last night Debbie was 18, and when you're 18, you go into meetings and they go, oh, you're so lucky. You're so young. You came in. I wish I'd come in when I was young. You can have so much ahead of you.

You're so young. No. You're not. A you were done. What a wuss.

She was done at 18. I'm not even you know, come on. What kinda alcoholism is that? Didn't go on for 30 or 40 years. Come on.

Did it in 6. What a loser. That's a whole section in AA AA for young people, Losers Anonymous. You know? But I'll tell you what I really believe, there are no young people in AA.

Nobody comes into Alcoholics Anonymous young. You get young here. I've seen 16 year olds come in who are 80, and I've seen 80 year olds become 16 by being here. So you don't come here if you're young. You're still out there doing the deal.

So the 4th step, it's great. Now, remember, if I just go back to the 3rd for a minute, it says right after the 3rd that this is an important step. And I'm not going to quote right from the book, you know, for you following. And I I learned that the Icelandic books pages aren't the same as ours. So, you know, I'm not going to give you any page numbers because it'll just confuse you.

But but it says that the 3rd decision the 3rd step is important, but it's only gonna be important if we follow it immediately, that word immediately, by rigorous action, which means doing the 4th. Now, look, I came in here. I didn't have to write down. And this is just, this is the difference between Hector and I. The other difference between Hector and I is, I'm not wearing any underwear.

And I'm 25 years sober too. And the but the great thing I like about, telling you I'm not wearing any underwear, is you're never gonna know whether it's true or not. Only I know if that's true. So and and that's a lie. See, sometimes you'll hear in AA, they don't ever tell you a lie.

That's a lie. They will lie to you. In my experience, people with time will lie to you if they think it'll keep you sober one day. I lie to people all the time. People say, I I go I watch them.

I go, how much time you got? Like, 60 days. I go, great. 90 days you get a gift. I do?

Yeah. We send it right to your house. Well how do you know my address? We know, because you really wanna mess with their paranoia a little bit, you know. Because, like, newcomers come in here driving a 1972 Hyundai and will go, what do you want from me?

They got a bad attitude and no money and they go, they want something from me. Yeah. We want that car you're driving. It's really cool. So and they'll come up to me after like, you know, 89 days and go, where's my gift?

And I go, oh, it's like a 120 days now. We made that. And I'll play that game until like 6 months ago. I know what the gift is, Steve. I know it's sobriety, isn't it?

And I go, yeah. That's it. That's the gift. Guy will call me 4 o'clock in the morning. Now, she broke his heart 9 PM.

He can't call me at 9 PM. At 9 PM, he's gonna get through it with God, the big book, and himself. 4 PM. And I'll go, read page 27. I don't know what's on 27.

I have no idea what's on 27. Just came to my mind. 10 minutes later, Thank you, Steve. 27 saved my life. So, I gotta read 27 to figure out what I said because I'll probably get some attention from that.

So so the 4th step this 4th step, you know, it's brilliant. Now, look, I I come out of a faith tradition that when it broke away from the Catholic Church, believed that good doctrine would solve all our problems. If you did it the right way, then everybody was gonna be cool. And, you know, the problem is that you gotta have structure, but you also gotta have the experience. This is this is a book about someone's experience.

And so so if I don't have both of those things going now, when I came in here, what I was starting to say is I didn't write I didn't need to write anything about being powerless. I knew I was alcoholic. I don't understand why any of you are here that don't know you're not alcoholic. I don't understand why people come to AA that don't know they're alcoholic, but they do and that's great. I don't care why.

You know, I don't care why you're here today. I'm a person who believes that one day of sobriety is better than no days of sobriety. I believe being here is better than not being here. And here he is now, mister Hector Elias. Everybody, let's give him a hand.

Yes. He's making his entrance. He got the sweater. He got the sweater, and I just wanna when he's a spiritual speaker, I want you to know he was late for my talk, so he could go get a sweater and I knew that's where he was. Every time you wear that sweater, you're gonna think of me alone in here with I owe the ice people, without my American friends.

Okay. So so so so now look. So there's there's a number of ways to take an inventory. We're not the only group that took an inventory. Hector taught you know, religious people take inventories all the time.

I only do the inventory the way it's out of the big book. That's just for me, and I'll tell you why. It's magic, and I don't know how it works, why it works. I'm not sure where this format came from. I'm not even convinced it's the way Bill Wilson did it the first time.

In fact, there's some historical evidence that suggests Bill Wilson didn't take a real inventory until the forties when he made met father Ed. I don't care. All I know is every time I do it, I find out more than I think I'm gonna find out. And it is truly a brilliant inventory. Now, I understand that what you guys call we call big book thumpers, you guys call the Taliban.

And I'm going to steal that, take it back to New York. I'm not giving you any credit for it. I'm not gonna say, in Iceland I found out. I'm just gonna use it, like I thought it up, because I'll get more attention that way. If I give you credit, you'll get some attention which means less for me.

See how that works? Okay. Now, so this brilliant, brilliant thing, it starts They? Those? All of you?

The world? I'm pissed off. And I start realizing how angry I am. I know I'm angry, but I don't start realizing till I write it down. And this is the first thing I ever wrote.

I didn't have to write about being powerless. I didn't have to write about being being, unmanageable. I knew that. I hung out at a couple of meetings. I knew that there was a power greater than myself.

You guys were sober. I wasn't. Had no idea of what a higher power was, but I turned my will in my life over the care of the work, and I found a God of my own understanding. You do not have to believe in anything, but doing the 4th step after you finish the 3rd. If that's all, in my experience, if that's all you turn your will in your life over to the care of, the 4th step, the 5th step, the 6th step, and a sponsor who's and don't worry about newcomers always say, well, I do a bad bad 4 step.

It's not if you do a bad 4 step, it's not your fault. It's your sponsor's fault. You don't know how to do a 4 step, do you? The sponsor is the one who knows. I control the way it's done.

And if I can control that because I know how to do one. Simple. I don't want biography. I brought a guy I brought a biography and was very offended when I said I can't do a 4 step with that. I turned him onto a priest that listened to it.

It's about 4 hours. I don't believe in 4 hour inventories. If you need to do one, that's great. And you'll find but, you know, it says the exact nature, singular of our wrongs, plural. I don't need to hear how many times you slept with your sister-in-law.

It's the same story after I hear it a couple times. Okay. We know what that character defect is. Let's move on. Now Marie used to say, in the sexual part of the inventory, it says, and what could we have done different?

And she says the answer to that is always the same. Read a book. Kept our pants on. You know? It's not rocket science here.

So so who? And I start writing and I am. I'm at because see, I really I like people individually. I don't like you in a group. I don't like you in a group.

A group. I don't like you in a group. I don't like you at the elevator. I really think many times at the elevator you need to die. Because you know the elevator button?

You push the elevator button and it's connected to a circuit. So once you push it, it's set. You don't need to push it anymore. But some of you stand at the elevator and keep doing this. And I think I need to kill you because of that.

I I think you need to die because you're so stupid, we need to get you out of the human gene pool. On air airplanes. You get on airplanes and and and and I don't do this, of course, but you get on airplanes. Your seat is 37 a. Okay?

37 a. You go to the 1st row and you look up. Like it might be 37 a, the first row. Okay. I'm a spiritual giant.

Giant. I'm gonna give you that one because maybe the architect made a plane where 37 a is the first row. Maybe it could happen. I'm gonna give you that one. But no.

You know what? It's 1. That's what it says. It says number 1. What a surprise.

So let's move it, buddy. But you don't move it. You go to the next row and look up again. Think it goes from 1 to 37 a. I need you and your family here so I can kill you all.

Okay? I need to do an inventory. See, what I'm convinced is the difference between us and the regular people. And I don't know if you have this here, but sometimes alcoholics will get on a spiritual hilltop and go, those normies, those earth people, we have to feel sorry for them because they don't have a program. You know why they don't have a program?

They don't need a program. Okay? They don't need to do the steps. Somebody told them when they were little, there's a God that loves you more than anything else. And they went, I'll take it.

We didn't. We went, no. I'm gonna throw up for a while, ruin my life, and then I'll find God. Okay? No.

Thank you. I don't wanna do it the easy way. I wanna spend my money and have some. That's the way I want things to go. See, I want the cake and no calories.

I didn't come to AA to stop drinking. I came to AA to give up the consequences of drinking. See? Now I learned I had to stop drinking to give up the consequences, but that wasn't my original plan. See?

I put my hand on the stove and I go, God, it's hot. This is usually in the relationship area. God, it's hot. Make the pain stop. And God goes, Take your hand off the stove.

And I go, isn't there another way? Because you know what? If you want to be a guru in AA, it is like the simplest thing in the world. This is not the men's club. This is Alcoholics Anonymous.

Here's how you're a guru. Somebody comes up to you and goes, oh, I guess, she breaks my heart and she sleeps with my best friends and then she comes home after she does cocaine and she crashes in my house and spends all my money. What should I do? And you as a sponsor and the spiritual giant you are, say something very deep like, why don't you break up with her and don't see her anymore? And they go, wow.

I can do that? Woah. You're so Zen, man. You know? So it's not tough to be a guru around here.

The bar is not very high. Alcoholics Anonymous. Come on. That's what it is. You know, I I really I I object, you know, who was it?

Kissinger said we're the greatest moment movement in the 20th century. It's like, don't say that. Maybe we are, maybe we aren't. I don't know. You know, World War 2, that was a kind of a movement maybe, but but don't tell us that.

We'll think we're somebody, you know, rather than this little dinky spiritual movement that keeps you from dying from alcoholism, which is a strange thing because there there aren't many diseases like ours. I mean, like, you know, there's people who eat strawberries and they strawberries and they bust out in hives from strawberries. There's no strawberry anonymous. There's no places where people who bust out in hives from strawberries go and go, yeah. I I haven't had a strawberry in 25 years.

And newcomers come up to them and go, you haven't had a strawberry in 25 years? Wow. Do you ever want strawberries? Every goddamn day, I want a strawberry. I want a strawberry battering.

You taste it. How do you not eat it? Grace of God. Grace of God and working with others and the 12 steps in good sponsorship. That's how I keep away from those strawberries one day at a time.

One day at a time and I'm grateful. Damn it. I am grateful. I don't have to eat a strawberry and breath and it's all because of the 12 steps and God, I found in these rooms. They don't know.

They just stopped eating strawberries. You know, it's it's us. It's us. The best, best story I've heard about alcoholism was that, alcoholism is like outside this door, there's a guy and he's £220 of muscle. He's got a baseball bat, and you walk out that door and he beats the hell out of you.

Now, a normal person might walk out that door once, get beaten up and gonna go out the back door. A mentally challenged person might go out that door once or twice, then they're gonna go out the back door. An alcoholic will go out that door day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year and let that guy beat the hell out of them. And then one day, you go out there and he's not there, so you sit down and wait for him. Alcoholism.

Right? And alcoholism doesn't have anything to do with being you know, Alan McGinnis, who was a guy in LA that died before I got sober, I feel like is one of my sponsors, he said one of the things he had to get over before he could get sober was that sobriety is not a virtue. You don't get it because you're good and you didn't get alcoholism because you're bad. Self centered doesn't necessarily mean bad. It just means centered in self rather than centered in where I'm determined, I believe I'm supposed to be God.

It's just the state I was in and I didn't even know I was in it. Now I'm an extreme example, but not a unique one. You know, we alcoholics we we'll take you any attention. Yeah. I'm an extreme example of selfishness and self centeredness.

Yeah. But not a unique one. Not it doesn't even say the most extreme. There was a little German corporal vegetarian who was more extreme self centered than any of us. I mean, you gotta own a country to be really self centered, you know?

So who? I'm listing all these people. Who? Who? And one of the differences, I think, between us and the normal people is that, you know, everybody comes to life with ideas.

A lot of my ideas were based on the television shows I watched as a kid, and I saw this idea of family and love and the way it's supposed to be. And then you run into real life and it doesn't match up with your idea. And I think normal people go, Oh, this is what I thought. This is the way it is. Okay, I'll do this.

Us little pre alcoholics, we go, That's the way I thought it was. This is the way it is. I'm really pissed off. And I'm gonna stay that way for about 30 years, really irritated that life wasn't the way I thought it would be. See?

And and that's why I'm mad. That's on my mad list. I got guys from high school. I got guys from grade school that I'm mad at. And then it goes, what did they do?

What did they do that made me mad? I'm I'm right. It's a great step so far. I don't know why anybody would who them they offer. What they do?

They didn't love me. They didn't do what does it affect? Everything. Everything. And I'm going, this is great too.

My personal relationships, my sexual relationships, my pocketbook, you know. You're going down that list. It's a 4 bagger. It's a 3 bagger. It's all of them.

It's not one of them. And the fact is all of a sudden I start going, wow. Other people really have the ability to affect me, which I didn't like so much because as an alcoholic, I think I am a rock. I am an island. Just me and my bottle and I'm fine.

You have no effect on me. And then I realized people owned me. I was given away a lot of stuff. You know, you could just say, hi and not go, hi. But just Hi, and I was depressed.

Self esteem, personal relationships. So all of a sudden I'm seeing, you guys really affect me and I don't like you, so I don't like that you have that much effect on me. And then we get to, where am I in this? Now this is what I think is really hard for me to get across to some of the guys I sponsor. This isn't what I had to do in the action.

I may never have had anything to do in the action. Sister Mary, a perpetual pain, may have locked me in my room and beat the hell out of me when I was a kid. I don't have any part in that. That's her problem. My part is I'm still pissed off about it 30 years later.

See, it's what is my part in the resentment? Am I keeping the resentment because I'm selfish, dishonest, self seeking, or frightened? Keeping the resentment because I'm selfish, dishonest, self seeking, or frightened? Right? Not.

Now I may have a part. I slept with my sister-in-law. I spent all her money. I killed the chihuahua. I mean, I may have had a part there.

But there may be very many things that I resent that I had. I'm not guilty of anything, except for still resenting them, they, those, years later. In fact, I'll tell you what happened to me. I'm on the Internet. I I feel sorry for you newcomers doing the 9th step now, because now you can get in touch with everybody.

There is no excuse not to make an amend to anybody. The little kid you picked on in 2nd grade or whatever the equivalent here, you gotta call them. You know? You gotta call them. So I'm on my old high school website and the name of the guy that used to kick my butt every day pops up.

And it really irritates me that he is like the the the guy who connects with people and does golf tours, and he's this really good guy now, when he was a racist redneck jerk, that my butt every day in school. And before I know it, now this was a year ago, I have typed off a you racist redneck. I can't believe you're doing this. This is the guy you used to kick. I hope your life sucks.

And I sent it. I didn't call my sponsor. What you know, I didn't you know what? I would have tell you I didn't call my sponsor because I knew what my sponsor would say I didn't want to hear the answer, but I didn't even think that much. I something inside me wrote it before I knew I wrote it, and I sent it.

Here's God working in your life. The next day I read my email, it got sent back. Never non deliverable. Undeliverable. Now it goes on my steps.

See, God doing for me what I couldn't do for myself at that moment. But but, you know, it's like, why have I still got that resentment? And I didn't even know I had it till I saw his name. Yeah. So it goes on the list.

Who, What? What? And what am I being selfish, dishonest, self seeking and frightened? Here I'll tell you where the tally band gets a little off. Because, you know, I'm a big book.

But you know what? And this is one of the things I think is it's human nature. The automobile used to be very simple. Now it's run by computers. Everything goes from simple to more complex.

And the program has gone that way. When I got sober, character defects that are in this book. But I know many big book alcoholics who will do a 4 step workshop and they got a 150 character defects playing God, being dead. And you know what? I have any problem with that.

If that works for you and if that helps you, I'm all for it. Go do it. What I like about 4 character defects is it's simple. And what I need my life out there is complex. And here, I like simple.

Am I being selfish, dishonest, self seeking, or frightened? Selfish. Mine. All mine. I don't know what they are, but you can't have one because they're all mine.

Selfish. Self seeking. Alright. I'm going to give you one, but there will come a day when I will ask a favor of you. See, I'm gonna give you one, but there's a string attached to it.

Usually, the string is, would you like to go somewhere and you go, no. And I go, after all I've done for you. See, I never gave away nothing for free. There was always something in it for me. So self seeking, even when I'm giving, I'm trying to get something back.

Dishonest. I thought that was used to be lying, you know. No. I wasn't there. I know you have videotape of me and her in the bed, but it wasn't me.

I wasn't there. No. No. No. Because we know we can drive people crazy.

If we deny long enough, they believe us. Maybe you weren't there. Maybe I got these herpes in the bathroom. Maybe that's maybe that's true. I mean, we do.

One of the worst things I think we do is screw with people's reality because we're so powerful. When we need to drink and keep our world intact. We will make them think 2 and 2 equals 5, and then the next day it's 7, and the next day it's 4. And they go crazy living with us because they're straight. We're intoxicated trying to make 2 and 2 equals 7.

They're straight trying to believe it, especially the little ones, especially the little ones that don't know. They think you're telling them the truth. What I realized was dishonest is this is what my dishonesty was. You hurt my feelings and I never tell you. I never say, can we go talk about what happened over coffee?

I just cut you off at the knees. You're dead alcoholic walking. I don't care if you put your hand up in my meeting. Oh, I just didn't see you. I'm sorry.

You're not coming to my parties. You're not I'm just gonna freeze you out. You are dead to me. See? And that's dishonest, because I never give you a chance to explain or tell me or work through some problem we had.

And I tell you what, you want to get rid of people in your life? Do that. Just don't give them a chance. Don't let them make mistakes. I told somebody today, never put an alcoholic, I don't care how much time they've got, up on a pedestal because there's no room to dance up there.

See? And we I am a fallible alcoholic. You can come in to a meeting, and tomorrow you know, because I believe the best thing we get out of here is not recovered, but human. The thing I never wanted to be, a human being. Okay?

And so, you know, selfish is frightened. What am I afraid of? I read across because it for me, if I read across who, what they did, how it affected me, what I'll know what I'm afraid of. I read it across there and it's usually afraid of I'm not enough, I'm not allowed. I don't know where I got this idea.

I just know it goes so deep down in the computer that it's been hard to get out completely, and it just keeps coming up. And I'll tell you one thing that's been different about my 4 steps on the resentment list. When I started out, it was all you. You, you, you, you, you. For a couple of years now, there's usually only 2 people on my resentment list, me and God.

Me and God. Because I don't like the way God runs his universe, to tell you the truth. I think he screwed up a lot of things. I mean, if everything is exactly the way it's supposed to be, God's nuts. I don't know about you.

I think we could've got rid of Ebola for that. Why do we need Ebola? You know? Why do I don't understand something that makes all of your internal organs liquefy. What was he thinking on the day he created that?

We didn't create it, so he had to. It's all his football. It's his football. And you know what? I love people.

Well, if God was this way, I couldn't accept them. You know what? If God looks like Stalin, he's still God. Doesn't matter. There's nobody else to choose.

I I gotta accept God the way he is as he reveals myself himself to me, not get him to accept me because I'm having to have a god that says, step over to the bar. Try a little drinking. If it doesn't work, you get to keep your sobriety. That's the kind of god I want. For god so loved the world, he gave Steve Bordner everything he wanted.

You let me create a God. That's the kind of God I'm gonna create. One that is about me. One that looks like me, one that sounds like me and has my same goals. And and that's a problem because what you call character defects were my life goals when I came into AA.

You know? So and then we get into the the fear list and then I get to say about institutions and all of these sorts of things. I get out of it just not resentments. I found out I'm afraid of the government. I'm afraid you know what I found out?

I'm afraid of everything. I'm afraid of living. I'm afraid of dying. I'm afraid I'm too much. I'm afraid I'm not enough.

I depends. Like, it's Icelandic weather. What time is it? That's what I'm afraid of. And then we get into sexual inventory.

Oh. I have sponsored women. I don't sponsor anyone. Now, last one I sponsored was a stripper and it didn't work. It was I thought I was spiritually fit enough and I wasn't, you know.

I had nothing happened, but, you know, it was just like, I'm not sponsoring women. I'm not. But I have sponsors some women, usually gay women, who have been hit on by other women. And but I've never heard a fist step for a woman not going to. Now I told them, I'll sponsor you, but I'm not listening to your fist step.

But I've heard a number men's fist steps. And you know what? I love it. The book lies. The book lies here.

The book lies the book says, we treat sex like any other problem. Then it does 6 pages on it. It doesn't do 6 pages on anything else. It just does 6 pages on sex. That's not treating it like any other problem.

Why? Because it's not like any other problem, is it? We all know that. We all know that. We all know that.

We all know that. We any other problem. Why? Because it's not like any other problem, is it? We all know that.

You know? And and I love it because again, having a spiritual experience, what if I could go back, what would I do differently? How I wouldn't cut them off in the freeway. I wouldn't flip them off. You know, I'd let them go in front of me.

I there's any number of things. And it's a it's a wonderful now this is my experience. And there's a guy who's a much better sponsor than me who says out of 10 4 step inventories he gives out, probably one gets done. I believe that this 4 step is what separates a lot of people in this room. Actually doing it.

Once you finally get to it, you can do the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd a number of ways. You can write some. You cannot write some. Whatever. But when you get here, you've got it right.

And I'm not a person who really wants to find out a lot about themselves, because I'm afraid I'm not very much. So if I I find that out, all my illusions are gone. You know, somebody asked, does can the 12 step bring out mental illness? Hell yes. You stop drinking, you can find out if you're mentally ill.

Stop drinking and get depressed? Yeah. What do you think you were drinking about? Because you're depressed. So you drink a depressant, which makes you more depressed.

So you drink over getting depressed. Of course. Stop drinking. Now you you know, there there are plenty of people that I'm one of those people. I stopped drinking.

I stopped feeling start feeling better. I know people. They stopped drinking. They hear the voices, because they drink not to hear the voices. See?

So it all depends on where you come from. So that's why the doctor doctor talks about there are so many alcoholics. We could write a whole book about them. So many different kinds of alcoholics. So I I I've got this inventory.

My experience is that nobody wants to write it. But once they do, they want it to read it to you the minute they finish. I don't care if it's 3 o'clock in the morning. You have taken a year and a half to get them to write an inventory. 3 o'clock in the morning, I'm done.