Steps 1 & 2 in a workshop called "Catch the buzz with the steps" in New York, NY

To welcome our speaker and my dear friend, Earl h. If anyone's wondering where they left their glasses, here they are. I'm gonna put them on the piano. Hi. My name is Earl.

I'm an alcoholic. Hi. Hi, everybody. Thank you very much for inviting me out here to share with you guys. It is always an honor and a privilege.

I must confess that I am relatively brain dead, this morning. It was a really nasty flight from LA to New York yesterday. Actual pieces of the plane the good news was it was inside the plane. Actual pieces of the plane fell off into the cabin. You know one of those flights where they suspend service and strap everybody in, right?

My idea of a good way to spend the day. Horrifying experience. And, didn't sleep much. I had a couple of hours sleep, but apparently that's all I'm going to need because here we are. Hi.

Thank you. I was mildly intimidated by that. All right. So I'll knock down some Diet Coke and go. So, something about these 12 steps, apparently.

We're gonna discuss those. I, my disclaimer, not that I need one, but, there's a lot of people who have lots of ways into the book, into the steps, into this experience, the purpose and value of it, their own styles, their own ways. Some people really love to get into the minutiae of the book. You know what I mean? You know, like, okay, today we will be reviewing the 9th word in chapter 3.

Is it a German root? You know, I mean, it just I just kind of when that goes on, it's just I mean, I'm an alcoholic. I've never really paid much attention to the facts. It's always been about the feelings for me. And I'm the kind of guy that I've got to feel it.

I gotta feel it. I gotta catch a buzz. I gotta get that excitement going. I gotta feel like there's a way in for me. There has to be I don't wanna understand my life.

I wanna experience it. You know, I wanna be as Joseph Campbell said, I mean, I wanna be, present in the moment. I wanna feel life. I wanna feel love. I wanna feel friendship.

I wanna feel purpose and value. I mean, it's Understanding it's never been that big for me. And it's always it seems that that's always come as a result of action that I have taken. So, for me, I've always had to, in in reading the book, and being in book studies, and in in 12 and 12 groups, and studying this and breaking it down and going and listening. There's so many great, messengers in the program.

There's so many people that have different ways. My thing has always been that I gotta keep my eye on the prize. You know what I mean? And the prize for me is is that I can become a man who's comfortable sober. Right?

That because for me, sobriety this isn't about stopping drinking and using. It's about staying stopped. How do I stay stopped? How do I have the process of recovery, lay that down upon the process of my life? That's what I'm after.

I'm after finding a way to make it possible for me to, live a life that has a code of love and tolerance, as the book suggests to me that ours is a code of love and tolerance. And I think it's interesting that they suggest, that to me I'll speak for me. I think it's interesting that they suggest to me that I should lead a life based on a code of love and tolerance. Out there, they're talking about love. You know?

In here, it's love and tolerance. They throw tolerance right up there because they know me. They saw me coming. You know, I am notoriously intolerant of myself and of others. I am a self centered, frightened human being, alcoholic.

I mean, I mean, I was talking to somebody in there's a book study in my living room on Thursday nights. Ava came in and spent some time with us, a few weeks ago in that very meeting. And I was talking to someone about, and by the way, if occasionally I just stop talking and just standing here looking at you, you know, just you know, and I'll be right back. All right? So, what the hell was I talking about?

Ah, we're in the book study. We were talking about the 4 step. I can't even remember why I was bringing that up. The hell with it. So, I've got to find a way in.

I got to find a way in. The only way I get in is by doing. It's not to me, I don't think it's so much about understanding this. I don't think it is about for me, it is not about breaking down the minutiae. It is not about as my sponsor, the late great Donald Madsen, my original sponsor used to say to me, you know, just it's not about getting into it.

It's about wrestling with it certainly on a certain level and listening to the dialogue. I go and I listen to the guys that get into the minutiae. I I go and I get into I I listen to the guys who really, really, really want to break it down. And that's great, but at some point, I have to live it. At some point, I have to feel this thing.

I have to be able to bring this sense of this sense of what I've come to understand into the action of my daily life. I have got to get to a place where I am comfortable, clean, and sober. I am not going to get that way until I am relieved of the obsession to drink and use. As long as I got the beast whispering in my ear, I'm not a comfortable man sober and I can't live like that because I gotta live life on life's terms. Right?

Whoever's running the show apparently has not read as Earl sees it. You know? Because what's rolling in my head a lot of the time and what's actually happening are 2 completely different events. I have to get in line with with life on life's terms. And when it hits the fan, as it often does, I and I recognize that I'm not in charge of the fan.

Right? I've got to have some tools available to me to minimize the wreckage I will create in the frightened state I'm in when that occurs. Right? I've got to get I've got to get a hold of some kind of balance. The only thing that has ever brought me I got here.

It was very clear that I had lived the life of a maniac. There was absolutely no balance in my life whatsoever. I was in the extremes all the time. I was either a victim or an assassin. I was never in the middle.

You know, it was just, you know, don't hurt me, don't hurt me, don't hurt me. I'm going to kill your family. You know? I was never appropriate in how I was responding to the world, you know? No balance.

When I got sober, I was a sober man with no balance. I became maniacal in sobriety. Right? I mean, I got committed sobriety and they said, well, you know what? We exercise.

I'm like, good. We'll exercise then. We'll exercise. You know, and I exercise until it literally, you know, ripped the muscle from the bone. You know what I mean?

It's just, you know, working out. I'm working out. I'm working out. You know, it's like, something's wrong. I can't you know?

I ran until I had stress fractures in my feet and was hallucinating, you know, sitting in the back of meetings. How far did you run today? 13 miles. Yeah. And I came in with 74 broken bones.

You know what I mean? So me running 13 miles is, you know, strange things are happening all the way, you know, snapping and bopping down the track. Right? Became a workaholic. Just no balance, no balance, no balance.

What I discovered was is that sober, I was running from the beast. I was running from the beast all the time, trying to keep the beast at bay, just that whispering in my ear, you know, that thing that kept reintroducing the insane. Thought to me was based I've got 16 years of experience that says for me to drink is insanity. Yet I would be standing in the back of Ohio Street on a Saturday night when my my sponsor was the secretary, I had the cleanup commitment, surrounded by the guys that we were all sponsored by Donald. Right?

I mean, I'm in close. I'm in. I'm in the action of sweeping up a meeting. And the beast would appear and just, how are you doing, Earl? You know, you're flipping up and you just, You're having a very, very bad day.

I can see that you're very, very stressed out. It's terrible. You're a wonderful human being. You're a lovely guy and people treating you like shit all day long. I don't understand what the hell is.

It's a cruel it's an ugly world, though. It's a cruel and ugly world. And I can see that you're upset by this and then, falling into what I would consider, Earl, a clinical depression. So, oh, oh, oh, your sponsor is he's looking at us. He's looking at us.

Okay. Smile and wave at your sponsor. Go ahead. Very good. Very good.

Alright. Listen. First of all, we have to keep this just between you and me. Here's what we're going to do. We're going to go out and have a couple of drinks.

Don't overreact to that, Earl. Don't overreact. We're just gonna go have a couple of drinks. We're gonna unwind that spring inside you that's wound so terribly tight. We're gonna work through this because I'm here for you.

I've always been here for you, haven't I, Earl? I love you. I've never left. And we're gonna work this out and we're just gonna keep this between you and me and we're gonna zip right back in We're gonna jump right back in the meeting. No harm, no foul.

You'll see, you'll see, you'll see, you'll see. It's wonderful. I love you, I love you, I love you. Now I'm in the middle of I'm sweeping up. I mean, I'm doing it.

I'm in the meeting. Sponsor's right there. 2 guys I love dearly. My 2 original friends in life are standing over there. I'm thinking, well, yeah.

That makes sense? See, I can't have that because that guy is gonna jump up, the beast is gonna jump up and talk to me and deliver to me the option of a drink until the planets line up just right and I'm just beaten down enough by life and I'm just depressed enough and I'm just isolated enough and I've stopped going to meetings just enough and I've stopped calling my sponsor just enough to get me to have a couple of drinks and isolate me from the pack, isolate me from my kind. Now, the minute I have that drink, I activate the physical phenomenon of craving, and I got a whole new brain I'm having a conversation with. I do that, I relinquish the power of choice, the beast is back in charge. And I got a whole different voice in my head now because he's been whispering and being nice because he has to.

I give him a drink. It's a home like a Earl, Thank you. I feel much better now. And listen, get yourself a piece of paper and a pencil. We gotta write a few things.

We got a lot to do today. Alright? So let's just get the list together and get in the car because we're on our way downtown. Okay? Now and and I know, Earl, you seem to need to act as if you're involved in this process in some way.

You seem to feel like you need to be in the decision making process. It makes you feel better. So, okay. All right. You pretty this up any way you need to.

You want to weigh it out. You want to see, should I drink today? Should I not? Should I drink today? Should I not?

You want to do that, go ahead. But we will be drinking today. You know, and it was only in sobriety that I looked back and realized, you know, they are always doing this, you know, should I, you know, every how come I never picked no? Why is it that I never picked no? You would think if I was deciding, every once in a while I would go, well, not today.

Never happened. Always chose to drink. Always. So I got to recognize that for me to be comfortable, there's only one the only way I'm going to stay stopped is if I can get comfortable sober. The only way I can get comfortable sober is if I'm relieved of the obsession of the mind, the greater aspect of the disease.

I've got to be relieved of this obsessive thinking. I've got to get this voice out of my head. When I am dealing with life on life's terms and I am looking at the options that are available to me on a daily basis, drinking and using can't be on that table. As I review my options, that's not something that I'm considering. It's done.

It's done. That's the whole point of working the 12 steps as far as I'm concerned. See, we got this triangle with a circle, right, mind, body, and spirit brought together as a whole human being. Therein lies the balance I've sought my whole life and never had drunk or sober, that the only way a guy like me can experience any kind of balance in my life is if I'm freed from my addiction, if I'm freed from the beast, if I'm freed from that physical phenomenon of craving and the obsession of the mind, that physical allergy. Right?

I've gotta be rid of all this stuff. I gotta get rid of it. The only way to do that is this triangle which AA adopted. Unity is the body. I bring it here.

Right? I couldn't get sober, but we seemed to be able to. Seth Bohn says, We admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives had become unmanageable. I needed to do that with you. I got to do it with you.

I couldn't do it. I couldn't get sober, but we seem to be able to stay that way together. Right? That unity is the body. I bring it here to you.

I got to be with you. The recovery is of the mind, the greater aspect of my disease. How do I get relieved of the obsession of drinking use? Work the steps. That's what they're for.

Right? Having had that awakening, the spiritual awakening is the result of working the steps. That was the whole point, to be restored to sanity, soundness of mind, relieved to the obsession of drink. The third side of the triangle is spiritual. I can practice these principles and carry the message.

I can be of service. How can I help you? But like the book tells me, I can't give away something I don't have. Right? I gotta do the work.

I gotta get in there and I gotta wrestle with these concepts and these ideas. And I gotta try this stuff out. Right? I gotta try to activate this stuff in my life so that there's a feeling associated with it for me. It's like it's it's the Zen way, man.

It's like chop wood and carry water. That's the deal what we do around here, man, is we chop wood and carry water because I get up and I go to a meeting. Head says, don't want to go to a meeting. Thanks for sharing. Off to the meeting we go.

Right? Don't want to work the steps. Why? Well, I am kind of big on that Herbert Spencer thing. You know, I am rather proud of my ability to show a great deal of contempt prior to investigation.

You know, I don't wanna. I don't wanna. Why? Because I don't know anything about it, and I hate being bad at anything. If I can't be good at it immediately, I don't wanna play.

It's the way it is. Right? I don't wanna be the newcomer. Right? Go to the step study, 1st step study.

Hi. What's your name? Earl? Complete idiot. I have no information about this at all.

Oh, good. And what I loved was my sponsor. I remember when I first went to them and asked them to sponsor me. I was, I wasn't even human. I mean and I went to him and I said, you know, To which he replied, what?

I said, will you sponsor me? And he said, yes. And you don't have to like what I tell you and you don't have to think it's a good idea. You just have to do it. And I went, okay.

And then put my head down and started to cry because I had just asked somebody for help. And I you don't realize you haven't asked anybody for help in years until you do it, and then you think, my god. I even and I just started to cry, and he looked over me to his assistant, Jeff, and he said to Jeff with a big smile on his face, oh, wonderful. He's destroyed. I remember that I looked up like, oh my god.

This is the guy I've got I picked. And and I now come to understand, well, of course, he was thrilled and delighted to see that I was destroyed. I had been beaten into a state of reasonableness by alcoholism. He wasn't going to have to convince me of anything. He was just going to tell me what to do and I was going to go do it because my ass had been kicked.

I wasn't going to debate things with him because he he was very clear. You know? My best thinking didn't get me to AA. It almost kept me from ever getting here at all. So I became this kind of there was this willingness on my part that he found delightful, that all my ideas, I tried them all and we'd all been beaten into the ground together, me and my ideas.

And I could come and he could just say, Do this, do this, do this, do this. And as a result of the doing of it, that I could have an experience. All right? So Abe was looking at me like, could we get to 1 here? We got an hour for 1.

And I don't blame you. We know, right, we are it's always funny to watch the people like Eva is one of my dearest friends. I love her dearly. We have a blast every time we get together. She shows me around New York.

We have a great time. Right? She comes to LA. She meets my wife, you know, and comes to our home, and it's very nice. And and she was and she was being she's a perfectly reasonable woman.

You know, it's remarkable. I mean, she's a very reasonable person. She says, you know, okay. Here's the schedule we're gonna do. Know, you got 6 hours, so 2 steps an hour, 50 minutes, 25 minutes a step, a little break for the smokers, you know what I mean, a little body break, and we'll move to the thing.

And I'm listening and I'm thinking, that's a very good plan. That's a very good plan. And I'm just so concerned that I'm the weak link in this plan. Because we never know. I know I I knew who knows no one ever knows what I'm gonna say.

It's such a crapshoot. Who's speaking, Earl? Is he good? We'll see. It's different every time, and it has to be different every time for me.

It has to because gotta get between those, man. Just hit right in there. There's nothing but right now for me. It's gotta be right now. Right now.

That's the thing that working these steps, the per the value of this, the buzz that's available is that, that we can be here together this morning, this place, right here, right now. There's nothing else because this is where our lives are. There is there's we're not having lunch now. Odds are we're gonna. Odds are.

Can't do anything about the fact that many sirens in New York at night. I got 2 hours sleep. Can't do anything about it. Must let this go and be here now and have fun and look into the eyes of my brothers and sisters and know that I'm safe. Right?

We're on the ground. We're not in a plane. We're here now. This is good. This is good.

And that the steps give me back right here, right now. When I was drinking and using, I liked to go down. I like heroin, alcohol, barbiturates. These are a few of my favorite things. These are the things that I like.

My idea of a good night sitting around checking my pulse. But if I can't get those, I'll take a big bag of the cocaine. Let's go up. I'm perfectly happy driving the freeways, decoding license plates, you know. Psychotic.

I'm perfectly happy doing that. Right? Because it's not ultimately, it isn't about up or down, it's about I gotta get out of right here, right now. Cause right here, right now, I'm self centered, I'm afraid. Right here, right now, I'm dealing with feelings, can I can I deal with them?

And I can't even I can't even name them, You know? I just know that this feels terrible. I'm afraid. I'm not I'm comparing your insides your outsides to my insides, and I'm losing every time. I'm not a comfortable human on the planet.

You medicate me effectively, I can go out into the world. Right? I've gotta find so the thing that I'm trying to get away from with drinking and using is right here, right now. My alcoholism robbed me of now. So how can I live life?

How can I be free? How can I know god? How can I be a friend? How can I love you? I can't love you in 20 minutes.

Well, there there are those that would disagree. I'm and sorry. An inappropriate thought floated by. I'll just let that go. You get what I'm saying, don't you?

Right? Life is now. I've gotta be present in this. I can't I can't be of service. I can't have purpose or value later.

Now is the only time I can do that. So that for me is like just to kind of frame up, that's why I work the steps. That's why I involve myself in the steps, to be relieved of the obsession of the mind, to be able to experience some sort of balance and inner peace, and be present in the moment, to be relieved of the obsession to drink and use, relieved of it, which is what I think brings everybody into the the semantic debate of recovered, recovering, recovered, recovering. I'm just I can't even get into that. You know what I mean?

It's like, am I recovering? Yes. I do not suffer from alcoholism in the slightest. I have no obsession to drink or use. It's not even a thought.

It doesn't even occur to me, let alone be obsessed by it. Am I recovering? Well, yes. That this is a process and I move towards unobtainable absolutes in my daily life. Right?

Everything that I do now can be done much better than I'm currently doing it, which is great news for me. Because if I get the buzz from doing this stuff, what that means is there's a bigger buzz ahead, that I'm going to know a greater peace, I'm going to know a greater love, I'm gonna know a greater honor, I'm gonna know greater discipline, and as a result, greater freedom in my life if I continue on this path. This is really good news. Because out there drinking and using, I mean, it just goes bad so quickly. You know?

First little buzz, secret to life. You know? My reaction to the first getting high was, I need to do this as often as I possibly can. And I did. What I didn't know at that moment was, what was gonna happen, is slowly over time, the buzz I was getting out there was gonna get smaller and smaller and smaller, and the price I was gonna pay for it was gonna get greater and greater and greater.

So that in the end, I'm paying a horrific price just to get even, just to get to 0. I'm not getting high anymore. I'm not having a good time. There's no euphoria being experienced by me. I'm just trying to get out of the pain and the madness.

Right? It's turned on me, and it's chewing me to pieces. In here, it's the opposite. The more I do this, the more I chop the wood and carry the water, the bigger the buzz gets, the more in touch I get with a spiritual life, the more connected I become with you. More and more and more, for me, the distance between myself and and others is not what separates us.

More and more and more, the distance between us is what joins us, and I feel more and more connected to my god and to my fellows. The inner self and the outer self of who I am become closer and closer and closer together. I mean, it's almost, you know, in that that eastern way, you know what I mean, that that it's it's it's coming together. You know what I mean? It's coming together.

And that's the peace and the grace and the dignity that a maniac like me can begin to move towards if I'm willing to work the steps. Now, having said all that, step 1. Right? I think we've laid a little groundwork here. Let's move into the steps.

Step 1. Step 1, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol and our lives had become unmanageable. Step 2. Sorry. Sorry.

Everyone. Step 1. All right. Basically basically, what they're asking me is what's the problem? What is the problem here?

If I don't get real, real clear on what the problem is specifically Excellent tool. Solves a lot of problems. If I have a flat tire, this is really not of a lot of value to me. I gotta know what the problem is so I can come up with the proper solution to the problem. The problem for me lack of power is my dilemma.

I may be I may be, and the book talks about it a lot, talks about it in the doctor's opinion, talks about it in the first several chapters, talks about I may be like normal men. It lists 5 different alcoholics. I have a book here, so, 3rd edition. I apologize. I don't have the modem to modem book.

I'm sorry. I apologize for that immediately. I'll come around to the 4th edition. I will. I will come around to it.

But I like 449 being where it is. It comforts me. It lists, like classifications of alcoholics, classifications of alcoholics. And they are the psychotic, the one who is normal in every respect, you know, except when he drinks, except when the question of drink is involved. And, you know, luckily for me, I read them and I go, yeah.

Well, that's me. Then I read the next one, I go, well you know? My hand just keeps going up, you know, as I read through these different I identify with all these guys. Right? I have to thank you.

Saw that happen, didn't you? Yeah. Back girl. Come on. Back.

Step 1, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol. So what's the problem? What's the problem here? Lack of power is my dilemma. I have an obsession of the mind and an allergy to body.

I got a soul sickness that manifests itself in that way and in the mind and in the body. I can kick and be relieved of the physical phenomenon of craving, and the book refers to craving as a physical malady. Right? I can kick, but I haven't dealt with a greater aspect of my disease. I have to be relieved of the accession of the mind, or I'm never gonna be able to get comfortable sober.

Staying stopped is gonna be a remarkably difficult experience for me, and I don't want the struggle, I want the freedom. I'm sick of fighting. I'm sick of fighting. Book tells me I gotta stop doing that anyway. So, I don't wanna live my life battling the beast.

One of the most horrifying things I've ever heard of in my life, there was a guy, who used to come to I used to do a workshop every Tuesday night. I did it for 5 years a month sabbatical right now for 3 months. It's got fried. And, not unlike today. And, this guy kept coming to the workshop, and you could tell when you met him, 30 feet away, you thought, oh, man, troubled fellow.

You know? You could feel the pain on him. And it was very hard. And one day, I walked up, and I introduced myself, and he said, you know, I've been coming to this, and I've got almost 5 years of sobriety, and I'd love it if you'd sponsor me. And I said, of course, I will.

And we started to do the work, and we were talking. And and we were outside in the parking lot. Week after week, we're doing this, and I'm standing there, I'm talking to him, and he was saying that he kept telling me about this friend of his that really didn't want him to be sober. My head, I'm thinking, well, you know, get rid of them. You know, you got somebody who stands between your sobriety or is in opposition to that.

My opinion is immediately that individual's removed from my life. I I'm not interested in somebody who didn't work in opposition to my own well-being. And he would talk to me and then he would stop and he would look away for a second and then he'd come back, and he'd talk to me. And I suddenly realized what was going on. The person that was in, opposition to his sobriety was in him.

He when he got sober, it had been such a a horrifying experience for him. He'd had a psychotic break, and there were 2 people living inside Jeff. And what Jeff did every single day was Jeff would wake up and sober, physically sober, and this individual inside him would begin to tell him how today's a good day to drink. And he would battle this other individual, a separate entity in Jeff's mind, about whether or not to stay sober. During the course of the day, this other individual would get drunk, Not with Jeff, but would get drunk and talk to Jeff as a drunk person and go and then so the next morning when they would wake up, right, this other individual who lived inside him did didn't remember getting drunk, didn't remember the difficulty of being drunk, but Jeff did because he was sober, and he would begin the process again.

So he would do this every day. Talk to this individual and then talk to me, and and I would look at him one day, and he was really in in crisis. And I said, you know, Ana, my goal was to try to get him to some outside help. That was my job with him, was to try to get him to some outside help. And I looked at him, and he said and the guy and I said, you know, he doesn't like you talking to me, does he?

And he said, no. No. And I realized I was in kind of a precarious situation, so we we got Jeff to the right people. But I thought, that's the most remarkable 5 years of sobriety I've ever heard of, that this guy managed to stay sober in the face of that kind of psychosis that was occurring in his life. That was his commitment to sobriety.

It was absolutely a remarkable thing to me. I can't live like that. I have the option and the opportunity to be relieved of that thinking, to get that, be rid of that, and I've got to do it. Step 1 clearly is, is this me? Is this me?

Do I suffer from an obsession of the mind and analogy of the body? I don't have to get off the couch to do step 1. I can read the book, go through this, answer honestly, is this true for me and do I identify with this? The answer is yes. Move on.

Step 1. Yeah. I'm powerless over alcohol. I've tried everything. My whole life is unmanageable as a direct result of this one thing in my life.

I can attribute all the problems of my life to my drinking and using. All of them. They're all exacerbated by, or exacerbated by, my drinking. So, having established my problem, what's my solution to this problem? What can I do to be relieved of this condition?

Step 2. Luckily for me, the very, very next step. This is my problem. What's my solution? Step 2.

Could I come to believe that a power greater than myself, something outside of self, could restore me to sanity, soundness of mind, relieve me the obsession to drink? Could I come to believe that? Again, sitting on the couch. Yep. Tried everything.

Self knowledge has availed me nothing. Understanding that a guy called me an alcoholic when I was 16 and a half years old. Jesus, you're an alcoholic. And I looked at him like, what's your point? Of course I am.

Working for me. Thank you. You, on the other hand, seem quite irascible. Would you like a drink? You seem upset.

Yeah. I knew I was an alcoholic. I did not know what alcoholism was. I didn't know what I was up against. I didn't understand the depths to which I would go.

I didn't see the writing on the wall. I knew I was an alcoholic and I was okay with it. So, step 2, because I come to, the knowledge, the information, my own understanding and awareness never stopped me from drinking. Right? So I came to you basically saying, what does someone like me do?

What do I do? Right? We're gonna talk about it. Am I gonna go to AA meetings and listen to you? And as a result of listening to you, I'm gonna feel better?

Maybe. Temporarily. Or am I or is this ANA thing, me constantly coming to you, sitting with you, getting some momentary relief as a result of a meeting? Maybe, maybe not, depending on how the meeting goes. Right?

And then I leave to do battle once again, that my respite is in my infrequent, companionship with you. I'm screwed. I'm screwed. I gotta find something else. It's gonna be, have to be a power greater than me.

Some people say the group works for them. Cool. Some people say nature. Excellent. Me personally?

God. Me personally. Now I came to AA saying there was no God. No God. I said I laid on a mountain in in Mexico in 1974 and watched my family bleed to death right in front of me.

Swore I'd never love another human being again as long as I live. There's no way I'm ever gonna tell you who I am. There's no way you're gonna love me. I'm out. And any god that would take a kind, gentle, loving creature like my little sister Kimberly and leave a lying, cheating, thieving, dope fiend alcoholic like me on the planet.

Had no use for God of this type, pronounced God. Came into AA, ragin' against God, until my sponsor just got sick of it, Donald. And he loved these moments, by the way. He he would lie in wait for me, wait for me to just say one more stupid thing, so he could take the the 2 by 4 and just bash me right between the eyes with it. Right?

And I was ranting about God, and he just looked over at me and very calmly, with a twinkle in his eye, because he's loving this, and says to me, Earl, you can't be mad at a God you don't believe in. And I just looked at him and went, I have to go now. It just, you know, and there it was. I had a relationship with God. It was just a bad one.

I had a bad relationship with God as a direct result of my point of view, my attitude, my insistence upon things being different than they are. Ridiculous. I didn't see that. I wasn't aware of that. It took someone who'd done the work and gone before me to point this out to me in however mildly loving a way, he chose to do it.

But there it was. There was the truth for me, and that I had to I had to get right with this relationship. What I love about the steps is the steps are about me, God and you. There's nobody else to play with. But that's it.

It addresses me, it addresses God, it addresses you. And I like the order in which they're placed, because it's very clear that I gotta get it together over here. I gotta get it together over here. It's me, God, and you. I gotta admit that I'm powerless.

I gotta seek God as a result of this in step 2. I've gotta be willing to say, yeah, it's gonna take something outside me. Left to my own devices, I'm screwed. I have to surrender this to some force outside of self. The great leap.

It's the great leap. It's the great leap right before I have to pull the trigger. Cause instead of, could I come to believe in this? Yes. Where am I gonna begin this process?

The very next step. Right? I'm gonna pull the trigger. I'm gonna get out on my knees and I'm gonna turn my will and my life over to the care of a God I may or may not understand. Huge.

Particularly when you think about where were a lot of us come from. The pain, the dis ease, the disconnectedness, the isolation, the loneliness, that that, what do they call it? The morass of self pity. Right? The the the the incomprehensible demoralization that we experience that drives me off into what appears to be the abyss.

To relinquish control, to let go for really the first time. That whole, that little slogan, let go and let God. Right? It's a tidy little statement. It's a cute little quip, right, that used to piss me off.

Oh, well, that's lovely. That's lovely. Let go. Go. I'm gonna put that right next to turn it over.

Thank you. Love those. Love those little AA slogans, and I love what we do to newcomers with them. You know? The newcomer comes in.

He's just stepped out of hell into the back of a meeting. Alright? Probably a little edgy. You know? A little concerned to have just stepped into a world completely unknown to him, no understanding of what's going on, nothing, filled with a head full of alcoholism, not gonna be any other way, Steps into the back of an AA meeting looking relatively normal, some of us, some of us not, And sits down and we walk up and, hey, how you doing?

How you doing? You're all alcoholic. Right? Now I remember when Vegas ran up to me smiling and said, hey, Vegas alcoholic. I said, so what?

Ain't exactly the highlight of my life, Vegas. I don't know what you're so thrilled about. Get away from me. And he looked at me and he said, keep coming back. And coupled, you know, AA hotshots over here went, yeah.

Did you see that? I was, hey. Hey. Very good, Vegas. Very good.

Keep coming back. Deep, man. Deep, brother. And I'm sitting there thinking, oh, this is good. Loving AA so far.

Yeah. Thank you, Vegas. I'll keep coming back. I'm sure at 3 AM this morning when I'm ready to either kill myself or several other people, as as I usually am as I as I as I slowly fade into my 1 hour of sleep at night I'm getting so far. Right?

I'm sure that keep coming back is gonna be very helpful. Thank you. And it's also very clear that there's some deep spiritual significance to keep coming back. I can see that because the friends over here with the whole Jeep thing. Right?

I know y'all know what keep coming back does. I don't. You win. I'm the loser. We've all pointed that out at this particular AA meeting.

Loving AA so far. If you're if you're new in here, right, I hope you have more courage than I did. Step up to the plate and ask, excuse me, do you understand what, let go, let God means? Do you understand the deep spiritual significance of this? Because if you do, I'd love to hear about it.

Well, if there are in my neighborhood, if they're honest, about 75% of them would say, you know, I don't know what it means either. They said it to me when I came in, I'm just saying it to you. I, you know. Oh, I love that sign, it's good. It's like a prompter, 5 minutes till what?

Alright. I thought, good news, something big is gonna happen in 5 minutes, guys. So this is what I'm saying. Step 1, what's the problem? Lack of power is my dilemma.

I'm powerless over alcohol. My whole life's unmanageable as a result of that one thing. If that's my problem, lack of power, what's my solution? A power greater than myself that can restore me to sanity, soundness of mind, relieve me the obsession to drink, so I can walk the earth a free man. That's the buzz I'm looking for.

Step 2 tells me this is possible. This is up ahead. This is what encourages me to continue, and that's all I've ever needed out of this book personally. All I've ever needed from any page in this book is not this deep critical minded understanding of the nature and the root of the words and how they were connected. I don't think when they reviewed this book or edited it that they thought, said, you know, we better take the word 'evening' off of page 239 because the other words in that sentence are of a Germanic root and that one is not.

I don't think that's what was going on. Were they conveying a sense of what it is I must seek, what it is I must have? If so, I'm compelled to read the next page. That's what's up for me. There has to be an experience that leads me to the next thing.