The How to recover from a spiritual malady weekend seminar in Fresno, CA

I'm Bob Darrell. I'm an alcoholic. This brings us to step 4, the bottom page 63. Immediately after taking the 3rd step prayer, it says, next. Next, we launched out on a course of vigorous action, the first step of which is a personal housecleaning, which many of us never attempted.

Though our decision, step 3, was a vital and crucial step. It could have little permanent effect unless at once, followed by a strenuous effort to face and be rid of the things in ourselves, which have been blocking us. At once, next. You know what my experience is? I think we got this dog years thing going on with stuff like that.

It's like next and at once to most people means like next and at once, to us it's like, somewhere down the road. You know, it's like 6 months later, 2 years later. And I think one of the reasons it says next and at once is that I've what I've observed is the longer I wait, the crazier I become. I have a guy that I sponsor. He just I just gave him a cake for 18 years, and when Craig was sober a year and maybe close to a year and a half, he started his 4th step.

He didn't finish it or do his 5th step until he was almost 3 years sober. Took him over a year and a half to do next. And I tell you what happened to him in that time. He started having an affair with a married woman. He started carrying a an Uzi machine gun in his Bronco because they were back.

You know who they are. You don't know who they are in particular, but they're out there. And he started becoming more and more judgmental and full of anxiety. He started suffering from depression. He had frantic bouts of gratification trying to fix himself, and he got crazy.

I wanna read a little passage out of the 12 by 12 where it where bill was describes very explicit description of what it's like to suffer from untreated alcoholism as a result of not really cleaning house. It says in the 12 boy 12, it says some people are unable to stay sober at all. Others will relapse periodically until they really clean house. Even a a old timers sober for years often pay dearly for skimping this step. They will tell how they tried to carry the load alone.

When I when I was new in sobriety I did, about a year sober. I did my first four step and I didn't follow the directions in the book. I did the the 40 page life story of everything I was ashamed of, felt guilty about, and nothing changed. And when I was, 4, little over 4 years sober, 4, 4 and a half, I started to suffer from untreated alcoholism, and it was awful. And I did it right in the middle of of of Alcoholics Anonymous with a good job and a good life, going to 10 meetings a week.

And what I'm gonna read the next couple sentences is exactly where I was at exactly. It says they tell how they tried and I was sober, I wasn't I would have thought myself an old timer sober for years, even though not by today's standard I wasn't, I sober for over 4 years. But how I this thing about how we tried to carry the load alone, it like my life got heavy and I got serious and everything was a big deal. It goes on to say, how much they suffered of irritability. Oh, man.

I was like I was peep I was on a muscle with people. I'd fly off the handle with them. I was very judgmental, very withdrawn because they would irritate me. Suffer from irritability, anxiety. I had a mind I just worry my worrying was back to full speed ahead.

The way my head would spin and the things I would I I lived in a a constant state of of low level apprehension. Remorse. I suffered from remorse. You know, that feeling like it's like a it's like a placeless, faceless type of shame. It's just a tremendous sense of being of of missing the mark, of not being right, of feeling guilty and I don't know exactly specifically what particular thing I feel remorseful or guilty about, it's just a feeling that I suffer from.

As if I'm remorseful for my very life, life itself, or my failure to be something I thought I should have been. Suffered from irritability, anxiety, remorse, and depression. And I once again, I was started having bouts of depression that I hadn't had since I was a newcomer. Since I was I I went through a period of about a year or so after doing my first four step where I didn't, I seem to be free of that to some extent and then it returned again. Returned because I had I'd skimped on this step, I hadn't really followed the process in the book.

And when you don't follow the process of the book, what happens is when you come to step 6 and 7, and 8 and 9, you're lost. I mean, the pieces of the puzzle when it don't fit together. It's almost like putting together a jigsaw puzzle and ignoring one piece, taking a piece of cardboard and cutting it just so pretending it's gonna be the right piece and you put it in place and it fits with the piece because you've cut it to fit in that one piece, but then you go to put the other places pieces in place around it and they don't fit because it's not the right piece. It fit with the pieces that were there just like my 4 steps seemed to fit with the first three according to my view of what was going on, But when it came time to go on with the rest of the program, I I was lost. I was lost.

Suffering from irritability, anxiety, remorse, and depression, I just seem to get my life and my emotions on me. And it's not clinical depression even though a lot of people in Alcoholics Anonymous get misdiagnosed suffering from this type of spiritual depression as being clinically depressed. What I was experiencing in actuality was the depression of this overly self involved. The depression of the guy who plays God and can't really pull it off. I was suffering from the depression of running the show.

I heard a great definition of depression. Depression's when God stops doing my will. When God no. Or depre I even got a better. I just thought of a better one.

Depression is when God will not relinquish my job. Right? The job I've always known I would do better. How I suffered, irritability, anxiety, remorse, and depression, and how this is the this and this put me right over the top. And how unconsciously seeking relief from the way I feel, we would sometimes accuse even our very best friends of the very character defects we ourselves were trying to conceal.

And that's exactly what had happened to me. And not only was I irritable and anxious and prone to depression, but I became very very judgmental. I found myself relentlessly taking people's inventories and I, all of a sudden that consciousness returned to that sick consciousness of separation where you sit in a meeting and you just judge everybody. And you just that consciousness that you can't help it, you just notice what's you don't look at people in a loving kind of good way, you look at them for fault and you just know you get that noticer turned on, you know, the noticer that just notices, listens to the word, listens for the imperfections, listens to you to share in a meeting, and what an idiot that guy is. Jesus.

Oh, listen to this. Oh, sounds like a what a phony. Sounds like a Hallmark card in the recovery bookstore. Am I supposed to buy that crap? Don't doesn't put any money in the basket.

Oh, look at look at him. He's just trying to get laid grandstanding in front of these women. Jesus, what this and I was leaving AA. Didn't even know it, never left the rooms but I was leaving AA. Suffering from alcoholism in a state of separation between me and you.

And I was lucky enough to have been exposed to, my friend, Charlie, Don p, Franklin w, Wesley p, and some guys that had by this time had I'd spent a lot of time with and it showed me how to do this deal and I went back. And by this time I'd already helped other guys that I sponsored to do it, but I'd never done it. And I went back and I did the the process as it's outlined in the big book. And when I did this, I'll tell you something, nothing I have ever done in my life has changed me more except maybe with the possible exception of sponsoring a lot of guys and being and doing a lot of 12 step work. The 2 of those things together changed me more than anything.

They've opened the channel, allowed God's grace into my life. The book says here that we're we're looking to face and be rid of the things in ourselves which had been blocking us. Blocking me from what? From being happy or successful? I think blocking me from the carrying out the decision I just made in step 3, when I said to my maker, God, I offer myself to thee for you to build with me and do with me as you will.

Blocking me from actually carrying that out, to actually making my life none of my business. So in asking him to relieve me of the bondage of self and to take away those difficulties so that victory over them would bear witness to those I'm gonna help, that I would help. I'm blocked from carrying out the decision as we all know. And I I was the guy in early sobriety that would say in meetings where the sub discussion meetings where the subject was the 3rd step, I would say, well, I turn it over and take it back. I turn it over and take it back.

I turn well, I never turn it over. I did it intellectually. I could see the value in turning it over, but I have not I am still blocked by the things in me which I have not uncovered and be rid of that that force a guy like me to desperately defend their judgments, the things they're convinced they're right about, my, judgments of people, all my resentment list. Where it was the my wrongs were how how I was wrong about you, how wrong I was about my mom and dad, how wrong I was about the women in my life, the employers I had, how wrong I was about the police. All self centered judgments based on self that I I had made, how wrong I was in my fears.

I I believed my fears more than I believed the possibility of change. I was one of those, oh, I can't do that guy. I was, all that wouldn't work for me. I believe the fears more than I would take the risk of change, so I was hostage to my own fears. I was blocked not only from carrying out the decision in step 3, but I was also blocked from God.

I I I remembered in my early sobriety, I remember getting to a place where I knew God was in my life and I knew I was sober as a result of him, but I seemed to be cut off. God once again became hypothetical. He became air that I prayed to. There was no more conscious contact. I was aware of no presence in my life.

I was almost as if I was cut off, and the things I would hear in meetings where people talked about the God within, within me there was no God anymore. Within me there was just a pack of crazy people running around. There was chatter all the time. I could not go within for intuitive thought or inspiration. There was no small quiet voice of God within me, or if it was there and I believe it was.

It was so obscured, so blocked off by calamity, and pump, and worship of other things. I was blocked from God and I was also blocked from you. As an alcoholic, I lived in a peculiar sense of loneliness, a state of separation. Where I could sit in the in the middle of a whole group of people that I knew intellectually accepted me and loved me and yet felt separate and disconnected. Blocked in an inability to connect and integrate myself with you the way you seem to so so easily do with each other.

And I didn't know that from you by my own judgments, my own resentments, my own fears, the defense mechanisms that I had put into place because I'm scared and I can't trust God, the defense mechanisms I put into place to protect me, to keep me safe because you're I don't know what you're gonna do in the world and you and some people particular threatening but the walls I put up to protect me from you kept me up kept me a prisoner alone with me and I could not get free. I was blocked. The book says, therefore we started upon a personal inventory. This was step 4, a business which takes no regular inventory usually goes broke. Taking a commercial inventory is a fact finding and a fact facing process.

It is an effort to discover the truth about stock and trade. When When I did my first inventory and I wrote the 40 pages of all the things I felt guilty and ashamed about, I did not find any new facts about me and face any new facts. There was no new information on there. I did not discover any truth. When I shared that with another human with another member of AA and told read that 40 pages of gruel to them, everything on there I knew about.

There was no new information. I was there. The only benefit that I got out of that was, I got 2 benefits out of it, it. For a little while I didn't feel guilty in meetings where the subject was step 4, because I could point to that so I get it. Annoying persistent feeling as time went on that maybe I really didn't do it.

But I don't want to be wrong about not do I don't want to be wrong about saying that But I don't wanna be wrong about not do I don't wanna be wrong about saying that I did it when I when I I don't wanna be the guy who have to has to come and say, well I didn't really do it. I don't like being wrong. And the only the only thing of real value that I got out of, I think, is I shared some secrets with another human being that I'd never shared with anybody else before. And I guess, in a sense, that bought me enough time to eventually stay sober physically long enough to survive my disease to come back and do the thing that we're gonna talk about in this next portion of the book, and nothing has changed me. It was the the change to this day.

I've never been the same as a result of this, and I don't think I'll ever will be the same. I may drink again one day because there are no guarantees if I stop doing it and stop treating this disease of the spirit, I am eligible for that. But I'll on the on the path to that destruction, the one thing that will be different is that I will never ever again really be able to convince myself that I'm the victim that you're doing this to me. Coming out of this step I will I will I would never able to fall back into that again. I always knew the truth and I always will.

So it's an effort to find and face some facts about myself, an effort to discover the truth about stock and trade. One object is to disclose damaged or unsaleable goods to get rid of them promptly and without regret. If the owner of a business is to be successful, he cannot fool himself about values. And I fooled myself a lot about values. I justified a lot of bad behavior and bad attitudes and bad treatment of others because I could point to something they did and feel justified and never had to clear up my side of the street.

I had a lot of screwy double edged values that like if rationalizations why I did something. If you'd have done the same thing to me, it would have made me crazy, but it was okay because I did it because I had a reason. Right? I had crazy values. Crazy, crazy values.

We did exactly the same thing with our lives. We took stock honestly. First, we searched out the flaws in our makeup which caused our failure. Being convinced that self remember the book said selfishness, self centeredness that we think is the root of our trouble. Being convinced itself manifest it in various ways was what had defeated us.

We considered its common manifestations. Resentment is the number one offender. The inventory process is in 3 parts, resentment, fears, sex conduct. And I I didn't know for a long time why they sent resentment as the number one offender. I wouldn't have said resentment.

I would have thought it should be guilt or shame. Because when I got sober, I was plagued with guilt from the things I did. And, I'll tell you what I've discovered about guilt and why guilt is not the number one offender. Matter of fact, guilt, there's not even a section in the inventory about guilt, even though everything I ever felt guilty about would fall into my fear inventory. Because if if there's always a fear of being every guilt I ever had involved a fear of being found out or a fear of facing that person or a fear of consequences.

So they're all the everything that would have been, if I could have made a guilt list, would have actually ended up on my fear list. But the reason that guilt's not the number one offender, there are things that I did when I was 12, 13, 14, 15 years old, that at the time I did them and for a period of time afterwards I was wracked with guilt. Felt awful. Tremendous fear of getting caught. Shame.

Wondered who who found out. Anybody see me? All kinds of stuff like that. But I tell you a funny thing about guilt, as I get away from the incident that I the actions I took that caused the guilt, one of 2 things happens. Either the discomfort drives me to take action to put the guilt at rest, or I will suffer the pangs of apartness from the guilt long enough to get into the zone where I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there's no chance ever of any consequences for this.

It's really I'm out of the woods and then I'm no longer guilty. I got crap from when I was a little kid. I I I probably didn't even get on my 8 step list because it was so much stuff I couldn't remember everything that I am sure that when I did it, I felt guilty. It's been so long ago I've forgotten completely about it. I'm no longer guilty.

Sometimes some of that stuff pops up. I've had stuff pop up at 15 20 years sober that I thought I didn't remember. Just I'll see somebody else do something and I'll go, oh my god. I did that when I was a kid. Jesus.

I never cleaned that up. But I don't feel guilty. It was out of sight out of mind. But resentments, now that's a whole another breed of cat. I got sober.

I had case files on teachers from the 1st and second grade. I knew the 1st guy I ever got in a fight with, the 1st girl ever rejected me, the first I I resentments are forever. I never forget that. Matter of fact, don't even not only don't I forget them, every as the years go by, I add to the file. Right?

I build the case bigger. They never go away. They never go away. And even the ones where I think they're gone away, if I see that guy. Right there.

God. So glad I saw him. I almost forgot how much I hated him. Right. It's titaneous.

It's titaneous. Resentment is the number one offender. It The book says it destroys more alcoholics than anything else. I think it destroys more alcoholics than alcohol. Tell you, I've watched people die in sobriety from their own hand, and it started with resentments that eventually they judge themselves right into a corner and they had nowhere to go.

I didn't know what resentment was. I thought that resentment was anger and it it's not really anger. Even though, sometimes it looks a little bit like anger, but there's a really big difference between anger and resentment. I'll give you an example. If I'm out in the garage and I'm I'm building let's say I'm building a birdhouse for the backyard.

I can't eat another one. I'm building a birdhouse for the backyard, and I'm hammering nails into wood, and I slip and I hit my thumb with the hammer. I am gonna get angry. I'm gonna cuss that hammer in my and and throw that hammer across the garage. That's anger.

Very normal. It's a defensive explosive reaction to being threatened or hurt. Now resentment, which comes from a Latin word, resentire, meaning to resensitize, refill, is that 5 weeks later, I'm still trying to figure out how I'm gonna get even with that goddamn hammer. You know? And I'm replaying the incident and what that hammer did to me, and I'm gonna get even.

And the problem with this resensitizing, this refilling, this replaying wouldn't be so bad if I did it with the mind of a normal person. But I do it with the mind of a chronic alcoholic, a fear based perception that is overly judgmental and overly defensive. So what happens is as I play replay the incident just like in a football game, Where in a football game they have the instant replay, they pay play back the play, except I play it back with an alcoholic mind that kind of shades out anything I might have kinda done that might have been out of line, and I zoom that camera in on what you did and and then I got a little commentator in it. I got a little Howard Cosell voice that starts talking about the awful things that they did. And and then I play it again, and I make it a little more off one.

Zoom in a little closer on what you did. By this time, my part doesn't even it's not even on the screen anymore. It's not even it's insignificant because look what you did here. Something against you, I I I diminished that and I kind of put it right next to what they did. And it's like, yeah.

But see, this made me do this. I wouldn't I wouldn't have done that. I wouldn't I wouldn't have gossiped about you. I wouldn't hurt you. I wouldn't have done that if you hadn't.

You made me do that. You if you wouldn't have done that, you deserve that. And I feel completely justified in my behavior. And I lived with a lot of that. No wonder I couldn't hear God.

No wonder I was locked up inside myself and disconnected and alone. You got 10 or 20 things going on like that, You're you're a prisoner right in here of the tapes that you play continually. You're a prisoner as I was. The book says from it, stem all forms of spiritual disease for we had not only been mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick. And if you've ever had a deep preceded resentment, you get you feel sick of spirit.

You don't feel vital and alive and connected. You're withdrawn and locked up and sick inside. You may feel justified in the hope of being right, but it don't feel good. Don't feel good. I was with a guy not too long ago, a guy that's sponsoring, he started up.

Started his 4 step and he comes to me, he says, you know, I don't have I can't think of anybody I'm resentful for at. I don't have any resentments. I said, really? You don't have anybody that's pissed you off? Not really.

I'm I'm kind of an easygoing guy. I said, really? He said, yeah. Just nobody really bugs me too much. I said, okay.

In your case, let's look at it a little different. Let's make a list of people you feel smugly superior to. And he gets this look on his face and he goes, oh, that's a long list. Oh, yeah. That's a long list.

The people that you play it over and over again or how out of line they are and how better you are and how I'd never have done that, and how you pump yourself up, and you blow yourself up into pride in a prideful balloon with the with the illusion that you're better than them. Every resentment I ever had had a sick secret feeling of superiority attached to it. I I always felt somewhere smugly superior to the people I resented. That's pathetic but it's true. It's true.

So we have not only been physically ill, we have been spiritually sick when the spiritual malady is overcome And this is the promise. When the spiritual is overcome, when I can clear the stuff that blocks me from doing the the deal in step 3, that blocks me from you. When I can re again integrate myself and attain the unity that I've always yearned for, and also integrate myself once again with God when I am spiritually no longer sick and separate. Because spiritual sickness is really a state of separation. That's why spiritually sick people feel overly lonely.

Spiritually sick people are prone to 2 symptoms, anxiety and depression. So when I when the spiritual malady is overcome, cause and effect when I'm not driven in here by a state of separation, and I have nothing to defend, and the amends are made, and everything's clean, and it's a clear and clean channel. I'm not I have nothing that forces me up here to churn on, to replay, to do nothing, I'm clean. Then mentally I'm not a I'm not a whack job anymore. And as an art result of not being a whack job, that that thing my ulcer will go away.

The migraine headaches go away. The spastic colitis. I don't have a tendency to to I'm not building a tumor anymore around the people I I get better physically and mentally. I get better physically and mentally because I am into I am at 1 once again as I was born to be. In dealing with resentments, we set them on paper.

We listed, so I'm making a list. I'm going back through my life and I'm listing everyone I've ever felt smugly superior to, everyone that's ever annoyed me, or pissed me off, or not done it right, or hurt my feelings, or stole from me, or cheated. What what I'm really listing, if you were to if you were to ask me as I was making the list, nobody ever asked me or I would have thrown would have thrown me into a tailspin. But if you would have asked me, I might have told you that what I you know, what I'm really listing here is that this is kind of a list of all the people that if they ever got a program would really owe me in amends. Right?

Isn't it? Right? All the people that really would owe me in amends, really. And I was told at this point, because I don't wanna look bad and I don't wanna look childish and I don't wanna look infantile and stupid that to not to allow my natural inclination to minimize the resentments, to indulge my childish pettiness, and really bring it all out. All the pathetic little judgments of it, and I don't even want anybody to know that I could be that infantile.

Put them all down, Indulge it. Put them all down. The people that didn't invite me to the potluck, you know, every little bit, you know, put the guy that the chairman of the meeting that didn't call on me, and I had the real definitive stuff too, you know. The girl that I was probably would have married, she went with that crap head instead. Put her down.

Put them all down. Everybody that ever hurt me. Put her down. Put them all down. Everybody that ever hurt me.

And then it said, we listed the people, institutions, or principles with whom we were angry. Most of it, for me was people. There was a couple institutions, couple principles, common institution people have on their lists IRS. A principal. Oh, I had a one guy that had the the 50 well, back in the days when it was federal laws, 55 miles an hour on federal highways, he resented that.

The principle that he somebody has to tell him. Any there's something about the alcoholic that we don't wanna admit that certain principles bug us, but there's a part of us that always suspects we're above the law. You know, those handicap parking lot signs should be enforced for people who are inconsiderate. But I'm only gonna be a minute and I am in a hurry. The speed limit is very, very good, and you people really should stick to it.

It's for can't you see it's for your own good? It's for the good of everybody else, But I'm in a hurry. It's okay. As if I'm above the law. Right?

As if that only as if I have such an over exaggerated sense of myself that that I as if I'm a special case. You know, as if each applies to everybody else but not me. It's my case is different. I I need to drive 70. See, your life is pathetic and unimportant.

I'm in a hurry here. Right? It's awful. Isn't that awful to think that I've had those thoughts though. I've I've been that guy in traffic that that acts as if he thinks he's he's so special.

Right? That I don't have to drive the speed limit. And I got a traffic record to prove it. It's awful. I'm telling you.

I'm I'm getting a lot better over the years. I've we we thank God it's progress, not perfection. Oh my god. We ask ourselves why we were angry, column number 2. So if you're looking on page 65, there's 3 columns.

Column number 1, people, institutions, principles. Who are we angry at? Who do I feel smugly superior to? Who has pissed me off? Who has hurt me?

Column number 1. Column number 2, you got who, column number 2 is why. Who, why, why am I angry? What did they do to me? What did that what what what's the deal here?

And if you'll notice on page 65, the answers in column number 2 are very, distinct, short to the point. And I suspect that it's that way because it's supposed to be. I think that there's an inclination in me to build these wordy, verbal, verbose cases against people that are just meaningless fluff, and it's all peripheral crap just to justify the fact that I hate them, and that they're wrong. But what's the truth? What was really hurt?

What did they really do? What really got the ball rolling? Had a second grade teacher. If you if I could have indulged myself I would have put her down, I would have I could have spent, I could have wrote pages on why I resented her. What she did to Johnny, and what she did to my friend Billy and Tommy, and and how she was just a she was just a self righteous, old bride and it's just a vow of celibacy.

It made her fluids back up and she hated men and she was crazy and and she her habit was too tight, and and you know, oh, I would have gave you this big case but it was all crap. It It was all crap. It was all the stuff I frantically needed to to justify my hating her. You know what the truth was? She got me up in front of the class and embarrassed me in front of everybody because I hadn't done my homework.

And from that moment on I had a case built and I, she could not do anything right from that moment on. I built that case and I looked at her in such a perception that every time she'd talk, she'd talk, she'd punish another kid. I just go, yeah, look at her that bitch. Right? But what really happened is she embarrassed me in front the class for not doing my homework.

Column number 3, in most cases, it was found that our self esteem, our pocketbook, our ambitions, our personal relationships including sex were hurt or threatened. So I'm looking for the things that were hurt or threatened in column number 3. So we were sore, we were burned up. On our grudge list, we set opposite each name our injuries. So, in where it says in column 3 affects my I'm looking for the things that might have been affected, might have been hurt, threatened, injured.

Was it our self esteem, our security? And Bill in the 12 by 12 breaks security into 2 forms. He he talks about emotional security, we all know what that is, our comfort zone that we if you screw with it I get I get crazy, or my material security, we all know what that is. My ambitions, which ambitions is just another fancy way of saying my little plans and designs. It's me you when you interfere with my ambition, you're interfering with me getting my own way.

It's really. Our personal or sex relations which had been interfered with, we are usually as definite as these examples and it gives the list. And then, down at the very bottom of the 3rd column, the first thing under the wife say and it's very important, it says pride. Pride's a big deal. Pride cometh before a fall, they say.

I have a friend that, talks about the the 7 deadly sins. He says, there's pride, lust, and, 5 others. Those those are the 2, and pride's a big deal. When my pride's threatened, I'll go crazy. I death before embarrassment.

I mean, pride is such an such a a powerful force in human nature that there are cultures where suicide is socially acceptable if you lose face. Harry Carey. How many times do people go and they'll stand on a ledge or they'll take their own life because or they'll go they'll take an how many times the alcoholics drink themselves to death to blow their brains out, overdose on pills, put a plastic bag as my friend Frank did around his head with a rubber band and take their own life because there's something they can't face that they're too embarrassed to ever anybody ever found out about, whether they cheated on their wife or they've been stealing from their company or maybe they've been screwing around with pills and they can't change their sobriety date, and they would rather die than be embarrassed. Pride's a powerful thing. And I'll tell you something, if you have the disposition where you would rather sacrifice your life than your pride, there is something out of balance in you.

That is not a good sign. There's something wrong with your spirit. Your your self esteem and ego are out of balance. You have a lot of ego, you'll die rather than look bad, and obviously, no core, no self esteem. If it's that important to you.

Bottom of page 65, we went back through our lives. Nothing counted but thoroughness and honesty. When we were finished, we considered it carefully. The first three columns of the 4th step is not really the thrust of the 4th step. It is a necessary indulgence into victimization that is absolutely necessary to do the real magic and the real healing work of the next 2 pages, page 6667.

If you only and I've met people that do this, they do their 4 step and they do the first three columns and that's it. And I'll tell you something, if you do that, you will get sicker because you've just victimized yourself at depth. What you've done is you've pulled out every case file and your whole resentment you've had in your whole life and put it on paper and showed how they screwed with you, they interfered with you, they threatened you, they hurt you. You that's not it. But that's necessary in order to do the healing, the magic that we're gonna talk about on the next two pages, the thing that really changes us, that gives us that 180 degree turn that gets me free.

So we considered it carefully, looking at these 3, how much I've been a victim, the first three columns. The first thing apparent was that this world and its people were often quite wrong. Very apparent to me. Nobody ever really understood or treated me right. You know, it's no wonder by the time some of us get here, we we victimized ourselves so much by our resentments.

You get a lot of us get here, we get that feeling like no one's ever done so much for so many, so often, for so little. You know, we feel like that we get the holes in your hands from the cross, you know. But the book says to conclude that others were wrong was as far as most of us ever got and the usual outcome was that people continued to wrong us and we stayed sore. Even if I change towns and I did, I got away from you. You know what funny thing would happen?

Some idiot would show up and be just like you somewhere else. And what happened is I stayed I could I could I could get away from you, but I couldn't get away from the the center of judgment in me. I couldn't get away from the guy that kept putting me in that place of conflict. I couldn't get away from me, and I stayed sore. I was locked in a pissed off position all my life, always on edge, always a little bit uptight, always anxious, always defensive, always afraid of being wrong.

Pathetically afraid of being wrong. The usual outcome was that people continue to wrong us, we stayed sore. Sometimes it was remorse and then we were sore at ourselves. And the reason that that that happens is, you see, when I unleash the dogs of judgment, they don't just bite you, they always come back and bite the master. So just as I've gone through life being hard on you and putting you down for being imperfect, then I get alone with myself and you know I can't shut that off, I do the same thing to me.

And that's why I feel inadequate and I feel like worthless and I feel ashamed of myself and I'm full of remorse and I ain't perfect either and I can't stand it because I can't allow you not to be perfect and I can't allow me not to be either. I am a tough just as I'm a tough task master master with you, I end up doing the same thing with me. That's why in the the, we'll get to this in the 9th step, but in in step 9, I there's nowhere in step 9 where it talks about making amends to yourself. Nowhere. That's crap that is bleeding in here from well meaning counselors and treatment centers.

What happens in step 4 through 9 is that I will come as we're gonna get into this, I will come to take you, understand you, and forgive you, and accept you as is really, and take you off the hook. And the funniest thing happens is I as I reduce the level of judgment in my own life and take all the other people off the hook and start to have understanding and compassion for them and see how I could've done that stuff and I ain't perfect, they're not perfect, we're on the same page here. As I do that to him them, what happens is I go home at night and I put my head on the pillow and my head doesn't have to work me over no more. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. I have to reel in the dogs of judgment and when I get them to stop biting you, you know what happens, they don't bite me either.

That's why there's there's nowhere in Alcoholics Anonymous where I make amends to myself. I make amends to you and what happens I end up feeling different about myself. Cause and effect. Next paragraph. It is playing the life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness.

When I'm resentful, I'm I am not happy and it's futile. You know what's so futile about it? Do you ever sit for hours and plot revenge and you never do anything? It's pathetic. You go through your head, I'm gonna blow their house up, I'm gonna kill their kids, I'm gonna burn them alive, I'm gonna run them over, I'm gonna poison their dog, I'm gonna, and you never do anything.

And it just if you're like me, it's it's you get to the choice where I either have to do all of that and risk prison for the rest of my life, or now I feel even more pathetic because I'm a blowhard in my own mind. Right? It's like it's pathetic. It's futile and unhappy. Resentful people are not happy people and they live a futile existence.

To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours which might have been worthwhile, but worse With the alcoholic whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings, we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again, and with us to drink is to die. If we are to live, we had to be free of anger.

The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for the alcoholic, these things are poison. You know, I don't think they're being dramatic there. You know, where it talks about the infinitely grave, they're fatal, they'll kill us, the insanity of alcohol will be shut off from the sunlight of the spirit, they're poisoned, the insanity of alcohol return, they'll drink, or just to drink again is to die. They're saying this is fatal.

I don't think they're being over dramatic. I'll tell you about me, you get me locked up inside my own head grinding away at something that I can't let go of. And I am completely shut off from any sunlight in my life at all. If God if God as he does in my life talks to me through people, when I got a deep resentment I could be in a meeting, God could try to be talking to me and I ain't hearing nothing because I'm in my head thinking about getting even. I can't pray.

There's no conscious contact in my life when I got a deep resentment. I get down on my knees, I say, god please help me to stay sober and I'd sure like to kill that son of a bitch. It just bleeds into everything. It bleeds into everything. I am absolutely shut off and I'll tell you what happens.

See, with a bottle of wine, I can sit for hours and and plot revenge and feel good about it. But sober, it's brutal because there's a comes a point where I'm like the rat, I don't want any more cheese. I just want out of the trap. There comes a point with deep seated resentments where I start to hunger for I gotta get out of here. I gotta get out.