The Magdaline House for Women in Dallas, TX

Okay. Our guest speaker tonight comes from Primary Purpose. I know her to do a lot of service work, a lot of speaking engagements. This is the first time that she had an available night to come and speak for me, and I was very excited. And it just turned out to be a couple of days after her anniversary date, and I always love that when that happens.

But her name is Joanne. Please welcome her. Hi, everybody. My name is Joanne Carroll. I'm a recovered alcoholic.

And I'm grateful to be alive and sober and well today. My sobriety date is April 20, 2002, and I just celebrated 3 years of sobriety this week. Thank you. Well, you know, this is a god deal. It's not a self help program.

It's a spiritual program, and god can do for me what I can't do for myself. And, when I get into my story, you're gonna hear about how I could not stop drinking. So for me to even have one whole day together is really quite a miracle. I wanna start off by saying that I originally came in the Alcoholics Anonymous back in 1987, and it's odd that my sobriety date is one day different than than it is now. It was April 19th.

And I ended up I'll get to that in a moment. I'll talk to you about that. But, this is my this is my situation. I grew up in New England, and I grew up in a a Catholic family up there. And, you know, it's kinda strict Catholic going on.

But I came from a pretty good middle class home on the shoreline, and everything was pretty good. I had problems with my dad because, I felt at the time that he was being overbearing. But I was very strong headed and pig headed when I look back at it now after having done some inventory work. So, clearly, I can see my part in this whole thing. But as a young 20 something year old person, I was very, very angry at them.

But, see, that working these steps can help me see things in a different way, and then my parents really did the best they could with what they had. My dad, I believe, is an alcoholic. He's never said so, but I've noticed the way he had issues with alcohol that I believe that to be the case with him. And, I started drinking. I don't remember exactly when, but I remember the first time I got drunk, I was 13 years old.

And my god, it allowed me to just laugh and have a good time and just break loose and be everything that I couldn't be. It did for me what I can do for myself in the very beginning. But, you know, as time went on, we're gonna talk about how it didn't work after a while. But but you see, being a young person that just changed schools, didn't know anybody, had low self esteem, walked around shuffling, looking at my feet in the new high school and felt very, you know, self conscious, and then I go to a party and I have some alcohol, well, wow. Suddenly, I could talk to you.

I can dance with you. What I said mattered. I it was magic. It worked for me. And so alcohol was my solution in the very beginning.

It later became a problem then. It was a solution. A solution to what? Well, we're gonna talk about it. I had a spirituality, an emptiness inside of me that I I found in my life trying to seek to try to fill that void.

It was relationships. It was later, you know, Zen meditation. It was this. It was that. But there was something missing on the inside, and I didn't know what it was.

And alcoholics are not exclusive to having these spiritualities. Many people have spiritualities. They may act out on them in different ways. But for me, drinking was really what what filled it up and made everything okay. I experimented with some drugs as a teenager.

I didn't really get hooked into them too deeply. By age 18, I went to my first AA meeting. I had been in college with some friends, and we had a bad night, and everybody kinda flipped out. We went to an AA meeting. I wasn't ready.

And I remember people approaching us and wanting to talk to us and stuff. And I said, I just couldn't fathom life without beer. I mean, it was just too much to to to think about. So I wasn't ready to let that go, but that was 1984. And so by 1987, when I was 21 years old, there were a lot happened in those 3 years to drive me into trying to get to to recovery.

Most of it, I could tell you, the first time I can blame it on my sexuality issues, my sexual identity issues. I had some issues with that in the mid eighties, and I moved to Manhattan. And I was out every night doing nightclub things and trying to figure it all out, not realizing that it came from within, and it wasn't from without. And I ran around an entire year just losing my mind over that matter, and I'm I can tell you I drank over that because I was highly stressed over it. But, truthfully, I just didn't have any other way to cope.

And that was pretty much my story throughout my whole life. I really didn't have any other way to cope with anything. So one night, I had a bad I had a bad run with a couple of extra, outside issues, and I ended up in an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in April of 19 87 at age 21. And you know what? I was able to get sober.

I went in there, and I had this spiritual awareness that came to me because at that time, I did not have any god in my life, and I felt like there was anything but my own self will and self determination to make things happen. And so this gave me a different angle on things. And I'm not saying I never heard anybody talk about the big book, and I'm not saying I never heard anybody mention the steps, but it wasn't presented to me with a sense of urgency, like, you really need to do this stuff if you're a real alcoholic. If you're a real alcoholic and you cannot manage the amount you take or you can't stop when you start, then you're probably beyond human aid. Instead of in how it works, We're beyond, you know, no human power could hardly lead our alcoholism.

So if that was me and I was the real deal, it tells me on page 44 that I'm suffering from an illness which only spiritual experience will conquer. So that means all the, you know, going to the gym, the antidepressants, the Zen meditation, the therapy, all the stuff I tried wasn't working. So what is possibly left if I'm beyond human aid? And so, anyway, I didn't really get that message as urgently as I perhaps could have. I do my best now to sort of relay the information that it has to come from a spiritual experience, which comes from working these steps.

So what I did was I just didn't drink, and I went to meetings. And I went to lots of meetings. And I thought that that was what you had to do because it let's face it. That's what you hear when you go into AA. It says don't drink.

Come to meetings. And then there's a period there. So that it's assumes it's all inclusive. That's all you need to do. And so that's all I did.

And it's, it's amazing, but that's that's I ended up staying sober for about 3 years doing it that way. And I will tell you straight up, I did not have a spiritual awakening, like I have had from working these steps. I had a lot of fear in my life. I had a lot of self centeredness and selfishness. I didn't do an inventory and remove the the stuff and discover the stuff that was blocking me from the sunlight or the spirit.

I didn't do 6 and 7, ask God to remove these things from me. I was basically dry and and go into meetings all the time. And I remember when I had my 90 days, there's 31 days in the month of August. And I remember bragging to my friends that I went to 52 meetings in a 31 day month because I just thought that's what you do. You when you work the program, you know, you just go to a lot of meetings.

And so, you know, I'm not saying my life didn't get better. It did. Because for me to to part with alcohol and drugs was was a big, big deal, and my life improved just for the sake of having not had them in my life. But I was selling myself short if I stopped at that. If I was just gonna not drink and go to meetings, looking back now, I sold myself short on what I could have become or what I could have experienced.

So after about 3 years of of going to AA meetings, I got really sick and tired of hearing people talk about their war stories, and I got real sick and tired of people talking about their day. In the beginning, it was all very fascinating and captivating and highly dramatic, and I loved it. But after 3 years of listening to the same stuff over and over again, I just grew really, really weary of it, and I felt like it was kinda squelching my soul. So I remember telling some people, you know, I I'm just I can't deal with this anymore. And they they would say to me, well, you have to go to meetings to find out what happens to those who don't go to meetings.

So it's kinda like a catch 22 to kinda keep me in there, but, I mean, I I've I've attended so many meetings. If it was gonna happen, whatever it was, it woulda happened. You know? I kept waiting for the miracle. Don't quit before the miracle.

I'm like, when is it gonna be my turn? And so after 3 years, I I said to myself, I get I get what this program's about. It's about getting to God. So now that I know this, because I was not spiritually enlightened to a power greater myself prior to this, now that I understand this, I'm just gonna go on. Thank you very much, AA, for taking me this far, but I'm just gonna go on and carry the god thing out in the rest of my life, and I just won't have to go to meetings anymore because I can't handle it.

So that was my plan. And I don't know much about religion or whatever, but I read the Bible. And I really don't understand the Bible, but I think in the in the chapter of James, there was a few inspirational phrases that I kept reading over and over again. And that was what I tried to live on as far as spiritual, you know, enrichment. And, life changed.

I I went into the military, moved to a different state. Things happened. I remember being very proud. I made it through boot camp without swearing, without drinking, and without smoking, and I felt like I was really on the moral high road now. I pulled it together, and and I'm gonna live a really good life.

Be not because I wanna be, you know, a goody tissues, but because this is finally how I felt like I was supposed to be. Well, all this is being held together with a bunch of self will, and there wasn't any freedom involved in this. And I didn't have a whole lot of happiness going on, and there was a lot of, like, constraints on myself to keep everything in order. And when my military experience expired and I moved back to to New Jersey, my relationship started to crumble. I was in this this wonderful relationship for about 3 years with somebody who was absolutely wonderful, and we started to to drift apart.

And that was more than I think that I could handle because this was the type of relationship that was never supposed to end. I really had heart and soul that this was it for the rest of my life. And so when this started to disintegrate, of course, I threw more self will at trying to fix it, and, I made it worse. And things just got full of tension and full of fear. And and when this started to happen, I thought to myself, you know what?

I'm gonna have to get out of here. But before I actually moved away, it was Christmas time 1992, and I still hadn't had a drink since 1987, but I hadn't been around Alcoholics Anonymous in a few years. I managed to white knuckle it by myself. And I was at this Christmas party, and I didn't have any intention of drinking. And there was they were mixing drinks and such, and somebody offered me a rum and Coke.

And I hate rum and Coke, and I've always hated rum and Coke, but I drank it. And it didn't seem so bad. I took a sip, and I thought, that wasn't so bad. And then I had one drink. I got on my bus.

I went back home. The world didn't crumble, didn't fall apart. The elevator didn't fall out like they said. And I thought to myself, well, maybe I'm just making too much of this drinking thing after all. And that opened the door.

And so within about 8 months or so, that relationship thing really ate my lunch, and I had to leave, and I moved to Texas. And I came down here not knowing anybody. My brother lived in Austin, but I knew no one in Dallas. And, I've been to culinary school. I was a chef.

That was my profession. So I needed a a city with white tablecloth dining so I could make a living. And college town Austin wasn't it, so I was between Dallas and Houston, and I wasn't going to that smog pit. So I'm over here. And so I came down here with, you know, I I basically cleaned out my apartment, had a yard sale, packed my car with my stuff, took my you know, quit my job, took my stuff out out of the bank, and drove away and came down here not knowing anybody and basically started a whole new life.

And I thought to myself, I'm gonna pull it together. I'm not gonna let this broken heart ruin me. I'm gonna pull myself up by my bootstraps, and I'm gonna handle everything. And so I decided, well, you know what? Let's go to the gym.

That that's a good thing to do. So I started going to the gym, and like, you know, the obsessive alcoholic that I am, I mean, I took it all the way to the point of becoming a bodybuilder. I couldn't just go to the gym. So but this kept me sober because, you know, alcohol was a big enemy when you're trying to work out and keep your physique. So that kept me sober for about a year or so.

And I thought, well, you know what? The shrinking thing isn't that bad. I didn't lose oil control, and now I'm gonna go and and I had people's respect. I had a good job for a pretty high profile chef here in Dallas. Things were good.

Had a new life. One day, due to working out incorrectly and excessively, I blew a disc in my lower back, and I had to have back surgery to fix this problem. And I was on my way to this bodybuilding competition, and it totally blew my plans. And that was all that I had, really, to hold myself together. And when that crumbled, I, once again, didn't have anything going on.

I really wanted a God and a spiritual connection. I remember coming back from the gym and stretching at the end of my workouts and putting on this meditation music and and trying to be at peace and trying to reach this power, but it was just a superficial act at the time. I couldn't really get plugged in. And so when this fell apart, once again, everything that I had put all my eggs into just crumbled. And so this was the summer of 94.

By August of 94, I became very depressed. By November of 94, my therapist was telling me, you really need to get on antidepressants. But I was feeling very offended by that because there wasn't anything in my life I couldn't handle up until this time. By December 94, my boss had had enough of my depressive attitude coming into work saying, oh, I just need a day off. Just really down and bummed out and full of self pity and all that, and I got fired.

And then by January of 95, I'm laying in my apartment jobless. It's a mess. I got a clutch plate in the middle of the floor. There's crap everywhere. And this this maintenance guy comes in to put this lock in this door, and I had gotten my prescription filled for antidepressants, but I was still too I didn't wanna take them, and they were on the table.

And when I saw this guy come in and have to leap over shit to get to the other side of the room to get to the lock, I just came through. I said I gotta take this. I mean, I have to take this. I'm just losing my mind, and my place is a mess. And so I took these pills, and within couple of days, the depression seemed to lift and and the doom seemed to lift.

And and the feeling of I can't believe my life is in the toilet seemed to lift. And but by that time, everything had gone to hell. I didn't have a job. Nothing was left. And so I was never able to get back into the gym as diligently as I was before, and this is this wouldn't open the door to my drinking.

This is when it opened. I mean, I drank in 92, but by 95, I just totally needed some relief. I could not hold it together anymore with all of my self will and my arranging my life. It just wasn't working. And so 90 my life.

It just wasn't working. And so 95, I blew through a bunch of jobs, and I started drinking more heavily. And and then this is when really the bottom started to fall out. I started to lose my sense of self. I started to lose who I was.

I started to have some stuff happen that I never thought would happen. And then when I would wake up the next morning, I would feel like I just ratcheted down another another link into the spiraling descent into hell where I have no idea who I've become, and this just kept going on and on and on. And I I I really don't remember too much between 95 and 98. This went on for a couple of years, and, I drank an awful lot. My my tolerance level increased.

And I also began to, you know, feel like the world really crapped on me, and I really need to get back at people. So instead of just turning my other cheek like I had done my whole life when I felt like someone had done me wrong. I felt at this time, I'm gonna have to strike back because that way, I'll feel a sense of relief. Once I have to strike back, it'll be over. It'll be even, and I can get on with things.

And that's the way I thought this would work. So I began to retaliate against people that I felt wronged me, And this led to all kinds of really terrible type behavior where I was actually harassing people and doing things that I can't even begin to tell you where I went with this. So for a couple years, I was in a very dark place, and I didn't know who I was. And I I just did a lot of drinking. And and, you know, I tried to well, okay.

I got this job working 4 AM to noon as a baker because I thought that if I work that shift, there's no way I can lose control drinking. I gotta be at work at 4 o'clock in the morning and see. But all these constraints I started to put on myself to hold it all together, they all eventually crumbled and the bottom fell out always. And so when I finally recognized that I had a problem and I wanted to do something about it, It was probably 1997, and I I mean, I was off the hook. And, I have something that I have written that basically talks about the despair about how addiction is nailing me and how, like, you write in the middle of the night all slanted and just put all your life down there and you're all messed up and you can't figure out how to stop.

I've written many, many of those things. And so in 97, I think my drinking capacity was anywhere between 12 to 15 beers every single day. And although I I couldn't stop, I didn't think that I I mean, I I don't know. I just thought for a while that I would be able to stop. But when I really wanted to and and stuff was going bad.

You know? I'm waking up in the morning. I'm puking up the beer from the night before. I get the sunken in eyes. You know?

I'm trying to go to work as a chef, and my hands are trembling. I'm cutting myself. You know, no self esteem, no friends, no social life. Just me, drink, and work. You know, 8 hours a day, I worked.

10 hours a day, I drank, and that was really what my life had become. During this time, I kinda boxed into some AA meetings here in Dallas because I knew that I had a problem, but I also knew that I thought I thought that I knew all that AA was about. I went in there and I thought, well, I know what this is about. You just sit here, you talk, and you say a prayer at the end, you go on your day, and that's it. And I thought, you know, I just can't.

I don't know about this. But, anyway, I couldn't get it. I still wasn't getting any kind of message that that the steps are what's gonna help me. You know, I didn't really understand that, and it wasn't put forth to me in a manner of which is like, look. If you're the real deal, this is the only way you got out of here.

I needed someone to explain to me what was wrong with me. But before I got that opportunity, my life got really hellish. And about in 1998, things were just I hated myself, and I couldn't stand living that way and drinking every day, and I couldn't stop. And and one day, I said, you know, I gotta something's gotta change. I'd be on my back, my step, and I'd be drunk as hell rubbing my face going, something's gonna change.

Something's gonna change. Yep. Desperate to have this whole thing stop. And, one night, I came home from work around midnight or whatever. I had a different job then.

I was working as a chef, and I drank a 12 pack. And then I decided at 2:30 in the morning that I was gonna go for a motorcycle ride. And it wasn't because I had something to do. It I had no destination. I had no place to go.

It was just because I had to do something different than what I've been doing. And it was May 12, 1998 at 2:30 in the morning. And I go outside, I turn the key, and all the lights come on and then the dash lights. And before the motor starts, I had this this horrible sinking feeling that I should just not be doing this. But you know what?

I didn't care. I just didn't care. I didn't care about my life. I knew things had to change, and I thought that something was gonna change, and I just didn't care. So off I went.

I live in Oak Cliff, made it to I 30, and right in front of Reunion Arena, hit the guardrail at 70 miles an hour and just crashed. And so I'm laying there on the pavement, and, yes, I have some medical concerns. But the first thing that that I felt was a huge sense of relief. And this is a spiritual thing I'm gonna talk about right now. I felt like whatever it was that was compelling me to drink and and just ruining my life was finally over.

I felt like everything was purged out of me. I even remember telling my brother that I felt that when I hit the guardrail, all the evil spirits flew away, however you wanna put it. I felt like a sense of peace. I'm laying there on the pavement mangled, but I have a sense of peace finally. And so I'm thinking, thank you, God.

This is my payback for all the crap I've done, and the slate's clean with God, and I can finally, finally get plugged in again and get on with things. And so, you know, that was how I felt. Well, the ambulance came, put me in the ambulance. I had I had some medical concerns and something to Parkland, and, basically, I ended up in the the trauma ward for about 10 days, and I had I had some I had some injuries that healed. I had this hand broken and then kinda messed up, and and I had my ankle broken very, very severely.

And this one doctor said, we need to take it off, and this other doctor said, no. Let's put it back on. So he put, like, 12 screws and 2 plates in it. And I'm grateful that he did because he gave me my ankle. But it only lasted 2 years, and then I had to have an ankle replacement joint put in because the bones crumbled.

But the worst thing that happened was that the way I hit the pavement that I paralyzed my right arm for the rest of my life, and it's because of the way I hit. And so, basically, in one instance, my whole life has changed forever. I can't be a chef. I can't clap for people. I can't hug people.

There's all kinds of things that I had to learn how to do with one hand. It was an incredibly huge life changing experience. But when they told me this, I didn't I didn't get the full capacity of what they were telling me. You know, when you're in the hospital room and this doctor comes in, says you're not gonna be able to use your arm again. It didn't hit me.

It didn't hit me till they let me go home, and I'm like, wow. They're really gonna let me live this way without doing anything. But, anyway, you know, my blood alcohol was off the chart, and some a people came to my bedside. And you would think being all mangled in the hospital bed, I'd be jumping all over this. But when they came to me, they said, you know, we're from AA, and we wanna know if you wanna get sober.

And I said to them, yes. I wanna get sober. I have to get sober. I've had problem with alcohol my whole life, and now look what I've done. I've completely wrecked things.

But I said, I can't go back to AA. And I had such a preconceived notion from my 3 years of being in the fellowship that that's all that there was, was not drinking and going to meetings. And that's all the relief we're gonna get, and I got this, you know, balling chain that I gotta go make a meeting every day after work for the rest of my life, and that's what's gonna happen. That that's not what this deal is about. So, anyway, I refused these people, and I got on with my physical therapy.

I didn't walk for 5 months. I had to be in a wheelchair because if you have no arm and got one foot out, you know, no crutches can work. So that was the most horrible, humbling, humiliating experience. I didn't work for 16 months. I had to get on food stamps and welfare.

My parents had to send me money. I had to go get a new career. Just all kinds of stuff happened in this whole year that I was rehabbing. So my friends from the restaurant, they took care of me. They took me to Parkland, and they bought me groceries and and this and that.

And then when when Christmas rolled around, we were all together. And, it was a Christmas party, and somebody handed me a glass of wine. And I've been sober 8 months now, but I didn't get plugged into this power. I didn't have a spiritual experience. I didn't have a program.

I didn't have a fellowship. I didn't have defense against the first drink. I didn't have it. So when they gave me this this glass of wine, I was toasting with them because it seemed okay, socially acceptable, Christmastime, camaraderie thing. And I remember lifting it, and I remember saying to myself before I said that, I said, I am not gonna let it ever get this bad again.

And that's what I that's what I said. And I meant it. Now that implies that I have control over this deal, that I have full control. Now why would I ever let it get that bad before? I didn't have control.

So once again, I start the drinking, and, it you know, I wasn't full force. As I said, I didn't have a lot of money. I didn't have a job. Things you know, I had to go to school. I had to learn some new new new skills.

I had stuff to take care of. But when everything seems in place a little later and I got my little help desk job answering questions about Windows 98, That's right. But, you know, suddenly, I'm like, I can handle this. I'll be alright. You know?

It it talks about it in the book. I have to reference this, man. It's just incredible. It says the fact is that most alcoholics, for reasons you have to hear, have lost the power of choice in drink. Our so called willpower becomes practically nonexistent.

We are unable at certain times to bring into our consciousness with sufficient force the memory and suffering and humiliation of even a week or a month ago. We are without defense against the first train. Doesn't say I forgot what happened to me 8 months ago. It tells me I can't bring it into my consciousness with sufficient force to deter me from doing it again, and it tells me my willpower is nothing. It's not about willpower.

It's not about common sense. It's not about having good moral character. It's not about that. It's about being powerless over something once I put it in my body. And I'm so grateful they told me later on when I learned that I have this allergy.

And when I put it in my body, it's gonna trigger this craving. The acetone builds up and makes me crave more and more. And that's the difference between me and a regular drinker. And, see, I didn't know this stuff. Nobody told me this.

Nobody told me this, so I had no reference to this. I had no knowledge, and I had no idea what to do next. You see, when I was mangled all in that hospital bed, I was willing. I was willing. I just didn't have the right information.

Don't drink and go to meetings was not the right information for me because I'm a real alcoholic, and I can't just not drink and go to me. I have to get plugged into this power that can do for me what I can't do for myself, which is not drink. I can't not drink by myself. So, anyway, it's about 1999 and life goes on and I you know, I'll tell you what. You know, in the year 2000, that's when I had to have my ankle replacement joint, which means that I had to be in a wheelchair again for the whole summer.

And that was a bunch of self pity, and I drank. And I drove with one leg and one arm all over the place. And I was, you know, hopping around on the crutch, drunk, wheeling around on the wheelchair, drunk. It was just unreal. I just had to be completely wasted because I needed some relief, and I didn't know how else to get it.

And, really, what I was looking for was a spiritual experience and had no idea that's what I needed. What happened was by the year 2002, believe it or not, I drank 4 more years after that accident. I finally met somebody in my life that was somebody special to me that I hadn't experienced for about 10 years. And so I felt like this could really be something. But, also, my drinking took me to places that I never thought I would be.

Like, back in the early nineties, I I would say, if I ever end up drunk on the job, I'll stop. Well, guess what? I was drunk on the job and burned the hell out of my arm on a deck of him, had no idea what I was doing. You know? And when the other one was, if I ever get into domestic violence situations, that is not me.

I am not trash. I would never do that. Well, guess what? I had this little I had this person that I was really involved with and I loved very much, and I went up to their apartment, drunk 1 night, and started poking her in the chest and saying stuff and, you know, just ratcheting down ratcheting down, circling the drain. You know?

And and for and the next day, I woke up and I I felt, you know what, I I had a clear vision. For for that one moment in time, I had that window of opportunity. I had a clear vision where I was like, I could see my past and how completely tragic everything had been and how completely unmanageable everything is, and I have no power over this whatsoever. And I also could see the future about how this was just gonna continue on and on and on and on. And I had that fear where I'm like, I can't I can't do this.

I just can't do this anymore. So I thought to myself, I'm done, and I need it this time. And so I said to myself, I am I'm done. I'm quitting, and that was April 20, 2002. And I did not I have not had a drink since then.

But I will tell you that what I had to do was not go back to AA right away. I'll tell you what I had to do, and then I'll tell you about how much freedom I didn't have. Okay? I kept extremely busy for almost an entire year working 2 jobs, 6 days a week. I was going to classes at the small business administration, learning how to open up my own business, and keeping very head busy, writing business plans, and and doing all this stuff because I felt like I could just submerge myself in this and and hold it together just like my bodybuilding gig.

I'll be alright. And so I started that, and about 6 months into this little, you know, way of staying sober, I started to feel well, you know, I felt good about myself because I wasn't drinking. It's just the separation from the alcohol led led me to feel my life improved, and it will. But after a time, I started to think that this was what I was doing. I'm doing this.

Look what I pulled together. I I did it. See? I'm not a loser. And about 6 months into this, I got invited to this party.

And, it I was staying sober. People were drinking. It was no problem. I was playing this board game sitting on the ground, and this guy comes out of the kitchen with shots of tequila. And I'm looking this way, he puts it in my face and calls my name, and it's, like, right there.

And I could smell it. It's dripping over the edge. And I knew at that moment that I I just don't have any power over this, And so I don't know what happened. God did for me what I couldn't do for myself, and I politely excused myself from this party. And I left in about 5 minutes.

And on the drive home, I said to myself, that's it. I'm just never gonna have a social life. I just can't I can't go out. I can't do anything. You see?

So there wasn't any freedom involved in having a life because one episode, one recreational moment, and I didn't trust myself. I felt fear. I wasn't free. After about a year of this, I ended up back in, an AA meeting, a discussion meeting, because of other ridiculous circumstances that it was all about I don't know. I can't even describe why I went back there, but just say I went back there.

Okay? And I felt a sense of relief because I knew these people understood. And for the very first time at the end of the meeting, they said, does anybody have a burning desire? And I shared, and I and I basically just rambled. And, you know, like, you're talking so fast.

You're tripping over your tongue, and I basically blurted out that I paralyzed my arm in this accident. That's the first time I ever admitted that. You know? In my life, when anybody ever asked me the details of that wreck, the story was, you know, I had some loose gravel and the front tire slid out. I couldn't tell them I was drunk.

And finally, I was unburdening myself with that and being honest and telling people this, and I got connected. And for the 1st 2 weeks going back to that meeting, all I felt was a huge sense of relief because I felt like I didn't have to do it by myself anymore. And I was anytime anybody asked me to share, I'd say, well, what do you have to say? I'm like, oh, just so glad to be sober. And that was great.

But after about 3 months, once again, the rest of the terrible discontent came in. I didn't get plugged into a power. I didn't know what I'm supposed to do next, And I started to feel like like I did when I left AA back in 1990, and I started to feel like I felt like in 98 when I refused those people at my bedside about my preconception of AA. And I remember I had a sponsor in this group, and I remember going out in the front porch. And I didn't know what I was trying to articulate, but I said, I wanna be around spiritual people.

And what I was really trying to say is, you know, every time somebody talks about God or the big books or the steps, you had my intention. But every time you talked about your speeding ticket and the washing machine breaking down, I was just waiting for the next person to share. It wasn't you're not you're not getting to me here. You're not getting to me. And so that's what I was trying to say, and I didn't know exactly what I was trying to say.

And so one day, I was in this meeting, and this girl came in. And she had a big book, and it was all marked up with highlighters and all tabbed and stuff. And she sat down in this meeting and she opened it up and she just blew me up with the truth. She talked about the allergy and the spiritual malady and and the mental obsession and how we're powerless over this deal and and the whole first step stuff and everything that's in more about alcoholism. It blew me out of the water.

I was dying to hear this stuff. I knew there was something more to this. I just didn't know where it was. So I found out about a group that I now go to called Primary Purpose where all we do is study the book. There's no discussion needed, and what this has given me is an absolute focus on what's gonna save my life.

There's no messing around here. It's about what is in this book, how to do the steps, when to take the steps, who can help you with the steps, what these steps are all about. And this is what has gotten me plugged into a power grid in myself. I attended this meeting in November, and by December, I had that boom spiritual awakening that I had never had before. Never.

Something was different. I woke up one December morning out of my bed, and I just everything had shifted. Root level shift in thinking. Everything was changed, and it was because all I did was follow these directions in this book like they told me to do. That's it.

And I got plugged into this power. And then you know, and this is this is something. I'm gonna use this analogy. Say, picture this big airplane hangar. Right?

You know, where the airplanes park, and in there is a bunch of car parts that are all new car parts, but they're all over the place. And there's people in there, and they're finally trying to put together this car, you know, and they're all sweating and they're going, hey. Give me an axle and, you know, I need a hood, you know, and they're all trying to figure it out, put these cars together. And then in drives this guy in this brand new shiny car that's all put together, and he's driving around the perimeter of this airplane hangar. He's going real slow, and he's shouting out the window.

Read the instruction manual. Read the instruction manual. And then and then, you know, he drives out and he enjoys his sunroof and he has a nice life and everything, and then he comes back and sees these people struggling again, and he said the same thing. And and that's how I was in AA. I was in the middle of that heap of parts trying to figure out through, you know, inner child work and banging the pillow and giving back the shame and and all this stuff.

I was trying to figure out all this stuff that all I had to do was follow directions, and I got what these people were talking about. I finally understood what they're talking about, the happy joys and free stuff. I finally got it. And so now what I do is I get in my little shiny car, and I go out to rehabs and stuff, and I tell people what has saved my life. It's not just a mood change here.

This is a life shifting thing. And let me give you some examples of of some of the good stuff that happens when you do this because it's important that we know what is gonna happen to us, you know. And and let let me read some promises that happened just after the 3rd step. When you make the decision to say, I'm willing to go on with this program. I'm gonna get a sponsor that's worth the steps.