Nipawin Roundup in Nipawin, SK, Canada

This is just not set up for somebody my height and Pat's even taller. So let's see if we can Oh, sure. Yeah. I think you can. That'll hide my face up too.

Earlier. Good evening. My name is Richard Estes. I'm a grateful and enthusiastic member of the Al Anon Family Groups. Have a good day.

I'm just I'm really, really pleased to be here tonight. It it's it's just a gift to me to be asked anywhere to share a message of Al Anon Recovery. This is this is something I've come to enjoy and to love. Just, so bear with me while I get through the nervous part. I really tell you, first of all, my home group is the University Steps to Freedom Al Anon Adult Children Group in Saskatoon.

We meet 4 o'clock Saturday afternoons at the, at Saint Thomas More College room 260. Obviously, I missed that this afternoon because I was here basking in the warmth of your fellowship. My sponsor is Randy w. He came with me. He's missing the same meeting.

We're playing hooky. I'm also a committed member of the new awareness Al Anon adult children group in Saskatoon meets Thursday nights at 8 o'clock at Redeemer Lutheran Church at the corner of Preston and Maine. I'm also a regular attendee at a number of other Al Anon meetings in Saskatoon, both, adult children and non adult children. It's just it's great to be here in Nippon. I tell you, Randy and I have been contributing to the Nippon economy since we got here.

First thing Randy did was go out and buy some winter clothes. I thought he had lots, but I guess I was wrong. Me, I, I hit the drug store, and I hit the jewelry store next to it, I got a battery for my watch, and a new watch band. Now, I tell you that mainly so that I give Diane and Jan an illusion that maybe I'll finish on time. Anyway, I really enjoyed the call up meeting this afternoon.

A couple of things really struck me there. We started with, with William, who I met at Marine Lake. And, I have to tell you I was impressed. William and I spent a lot of time talking at Marine Lake and and you can see just from from Father's Day weekend to now, how how much the program speaking. I mean, to see somebody who's who's been here 45 years and not jaded and not bored and showing the kind of passion that Abe did is just inspiring to me.

And Jim, I found I gotta tell you, as an adult child, I identify with the stuff I hear from from Alan on speakers a lot, but the guys I really identify with are the AA speakers for some reason. I mean, they're they're the ones that are talking my stuff and I really found a lot to identify with when Jim was talking. Jim, I gotta tell you that that idea of, you know, puking and having the shakes and blackouts, that's not limited to drinking. I've been there. The idea of, you know, having, 3 daughters and a wife at home and still not understanding them, I'm there with you, buddy.

And, the theme is we can enjoy sharing. I I I think I have a few things to say about that. So, I'm not much on telling my story. My story is pretty similar to probably most of yours. I was born the son of or or the intersection of 2 alcoholic families.

I grew up learning the things that you learn in those kinds of families, and my life didn't go well. I met you, I worked the steps, things are going a lot better now. Thanks. You know, we got a little time left, so we'll fill in some details. First thing that we need to do when we get up here.

You know, we're asked to share, in a general way, what we were like, what happened, what we're like today. And the first thing that I need to do for you is to identify to establish with you that I am qualified to be an Al Anon member. In Al Anon, we have a tradition that states that the only requirement for membership is that there'd be a problem of alcoholism in a relative or friend. Both of my parents were were children of alcoholics and they both grew up to be alcoholics in their own right. My mother, I'm very happy to report to you and to thank you.

She's been sober in the rooms of the for 14 years. And for that, I know she's very grateful and so am I. My father hasn't found you yet. I haven't given up hope, but that's just the way it is. So I am qualified to be an Al Anon member because I am the son of 2 alcoholics.

I am also qualified to be an Al Anon member because I am the grandson of alcoholics. I'm also qualified to be an Al Anon member because I am the nephew of alcoholics, and the cousin of alcoholics, I may be the brother of alcoholics, And, over And, over the years I've had a great many great many friends who drank alcoholically. So, I explained all of this a while back at a at a treatment center in Saskatoon and, some guy at the back of the room was, oh, man, you're overqualified. So I am qualified to be an Al Anon member but I need to tell you too that that's not why I'm an Al Anon member. That's not the reason I come to Al Anon.

See, one of the first things that you taught me is that if I'm coming to Al Anon because of somebody else's drinking problem, I am screwed. I don't have a hope. The 3 c's. I didn't cause it, I can't control it, and I can't cure it. And if the only way for me to get better is for somebody else to stop drinking, I'm screwed.

So I don't come to Al Anon because of somebody else's drinking problem. I come to Al Anon because I have a thinking problem. Growing up the way I grew up, I have a problem between my ears. Alcoholism is a disease of perception. The way that manifests in me is that I think I know stuff.

I I firmly believe things that I later find out are not true. A couple of, for instances, my favorite comes to me from my uncle. It's pure hearsay, but I trust the source. My grandfather was a weekend drinker and a blackout drinker. And he would go out for a drink with the boys on Friday night on payday and, come home with the wee out in the wee hours of the morning.

My uncle periodically, as a teenager, would be woke up in his bedroom at like 6 o'clock Saturday morning. Bob, get up. And my uncle, you know, teenager, what do you want dad? It's 6 o'clock in the morning. Come on Bob, get up, get up, come, get up.

Up. Dad, it's 6 o'clock Saturday morning, what do you want? You gotta get get me downtown and help me find my car before your mother gets up. So they would go car hunting. How many car hunters do we have here?

Lots. Okay. It's a time honored sport in AA and Al Anon. And they would go driving around downtown and they would find wherever my grandfather had left his car. And they would go home and my grandfather would make breakfast.

And I have it on the authority of my uncle that my grandfather died firmly believing that my grandmother did not know a thing about this. K? Now I I happen to think that's bullshit. I think that my grandmother would get up Saturday morning, smell bacon cooking, and go, man, I lost the car again last night. But then she would do something very important, and that is that she would say nothing.

From that, like, nobody ever sat me down and said, Richard, this is the way the world works. These are the things that we want you to learn in order to get along in your family and in the world. But somewhere along the line, I picked up a couple of things. One of the things that I picked up is that if I screw up and you don't know about it, I'm okay. The other thing that I picked up is that if I screw up and you know about it, but we don't talk about it, I'm okay.

And I lived my life that way. A couple of other things that I learned growing up in in those families, love is conditional. How much you love me depends entirely on how much I pleased you today. I knew how to live one day at a time long before I got here. I learned that what you want is more important than what I want.

And I became a scorekeeper. I would do what you wanted to do 10 times in a row because that was the deal. We do it your way 10 times. The 11th time is my turn. The only problem with that is that I never told you about the deal.

So we get to time number 11 and you'd wanna do it your way. You break the deal and I get mad about it. But would I talk to you about it? No. I can't do that.

Because I'm a people pleaser. Instead, I'm gonna I'm gonna double out. We're gonna do it your way 20 times, but 21 is my turn. But I still haven't told you about the deal. I'm gonna get to 21, and you broke the damn deal again.

And that's the way I lived. I did what we tend to do, we adult children. We only ever seem to end up with 2 kinds of people. We marry alcoholics or we marry each other. And then we settle down to make each other sicker.

So I grew up, I found myself a woman from another sick family, and we made each other sicker. We also made a couple of kids along the way, but we made each other sicker. Sicker. And when that marriage ended, my then wife was caught up in in her own compulsive behaviors and really wasn't in a position to look after children. So I went to her and I said to her, you know, we're splitting up.

Maybe the kids should be with me. And she readily agreed, and I became a single dad. And I looked pretty good. You know, there's poor noble Richard with these 2 adorable little girls, you know, and you love me. The only problem with that is something I'm really not proud about, and that is that that's why I did it.

I did it it strictly because I knew it would look good to you. It was not the only reason, but that figured hugely. In my decision as to what was gonna happen in the lives of 2 children I loved. And that's the way I lived my my life. A couple years went by and I found, oh, another sick woman settled down with her, had another kid, And we made each other sicker.

And by the time I got to this program, I need to tell you that I was a wreck. That I had I had no relationships left of any value. My marriage was dead, my kids were afraid of me because I was the guy who who disappeared to the office for hours and hours and hours. And they came home and yelled at them. My family, both of my families just had had nothing for me and I had nothing for them.

It was just a series of of feuds and vendettas and long held grudges between me and everybody, everywhere in my family. I had no friends left because I'd used them a lot. You know, when I got here, I couldn't have friends. I had assets. I had people I could count on to do this, to do that, to do this, to do that, until they got tired of me.

And then they were used up. When I got to my first Al Anon meeting, I had been, for about 2 years, undergoing constant tension headaches on a daily basis. I had undergone about a year of of constant indigestion. I had, for the previous 6 months, been experiencing chest pains for which I had I was actually hospitalized and they turned See, when, See, when, I've heard it said that when a new member of Alcoholics Anonymous gets to the program, they have a tendency to work the program very hard as if their life depends on it. And they do that because it does for them to drink is to die.

And I can understand a little bit of that motivation. 2 years before I got to my first down on me, the oldest cousin on my father's side of the family, everybody's favorite, life of the party, walked into his backyard, threw a rope over a hole and hung himself. And a year before I got to my first Al Anon meeting, the youngest cousin on my mother's side wrote a note detailing his personal sense of failure. Stuck a shotgun under his chin and pulled the trigger. 6 months before I got to my first Al Anon meeting, my brother who's in the army was being treated by the army as a suicide risk and not being allowed around live ammunition.

And the day I walked into my first Illinois meeting, I was looking for the best way to check out. I was looking for how I could do that that would send exactly the right message to you about how badly you have treated me. And it had to be just the right way, you know. It had to be something with some dignity and some poignancy and it couldn't hurt. I wanted to die but, but, you know, God forbid I should hurt myself.

And, the message that I have for you is that this disease kills too. The family disease of alcoholism is also fatal. And living. What I was doing before I got here wasn't living. It's kind of a living death.

I experienced I'm sorry. I identified really strongly with with a particular story in the AA big book. It's the story of Roland Hazard. Roland was was the son of a very wealthy family, and and a horrible alcoholic. And his family decided they needed to do something with him.

And they sent him over to Europe to to be treated by doctor Carl Jung, who who was, perhaps the greatest authority at at the time on on behavior modification, dealing with an alcoholic mind. And, Carl Jung eventually, after some trials and tribulations and and and a complete relapsing on Roland's heart, had to say to him, I can't help you. I mean, the only thing that may help you is a vital spiritual experience. Go and seek God. And that's what Roland ended up doing.

Roland ended up ended up being the guy who carried the message to Evie Thatcher, who's the guy who carried the message to Bill Wilson. And that little exchange is part of the reason that we're all here today. In my own case, I went to a therapist in Saskatoon. A man who's well respected in his field and and and highly regarded. He said to me, Richard, I could work with you really intensively for a while and we might see some small improvement in in this stuff in your life.

But all of what happened is that after a while, you you'd stop coming to see me. And you just go back to the way you were. Why don't you try this? And you sent me to you. I walked in that first Al Anon meeting, and I was scared, and I was broken.

And I'm glad I was, because that's what I needed to be. My first meeting was the foundation on adult children here in Saskatoon. And what I found there was something special. See, I sat there and I cried a solid hour through that first meeting, and something special happened. Nobody looked at this 40 year old guy who's crying his guts out on the table and judged him, or criticized him, or made fun of him.

All they did was listen to me, let me do what I had to do. At the end of the meeting, they hugged me and they asked me to come back. Wow. The joy of sharing. That's where I first discovered the joy of sharing.

Some place that I could go and I could vomit out under the table, all that pain that was stuck inside of me, And nobody judged me, nobody criticized me. They just hugged me and told me to come back. I needed that. I think a lot of newcomers to Al Anon need that. I need to be very clear about that because I didn't have anywhere else or anybody else in my life to whom I could give that.

And what I found was an awful lot of pain relief. As I kept coming back, I noticed something in those meetings. I noticed certain people, certain And they were they were people who had a a sense of peace about them and who they were talking about things in their lives that were worse than anything I'd ever experienced and and problems I could only imagine that made my stuff pale in comparison. And they were laughing about it. And they were having a good time, and they were enjoying life.

And I noticed that all of those special people had some things in common. They they tended to be people who went to lots of meetings. They tended to be people who talked about having sponsors, and they tended to be people who talked about the 12 steps of the program that were covered from the point of view of having done them. They didn't talk about what they thought about the step. They didn't say things like, I really don't wanna talk about this step.

I wanna talk about my feelings today. They talked about the steps of this program from the point of view of having done them. Now I'm not stupid. I'm looking at these people thinking, I want what you've got. And you're telling me, if you want what we've got, do what we did.

And so I began to work the 12 steps of this program with a passion. If there's anything that I bring here you know, I'm I'm not a funny guy when I get up here. Every once in a while, I might I might get lucky and throw out a a one liner that you guys appreciate, but most of the time, I'm not funny. What I am is passionate. I'm very passionate about this program.

So I started working steps. Step 1 says that we admitted we are powerless over alcohol, that our lives have become unmanageable. We heard a little earlier today, that can be a little confusing for a member of the Al Anon Family Groups. I'm not the drinker. But you know, I understood that I was powerless over the alcoholics in my life.

I had known that for years. You can't make a drunk do a damn thing. I understood that I was powerless over the effects of alcohol on the alcoholic. But there was something else I needed to understand. I did.

Foundation Group, where I started, at the beginning of every meeting, they read a particular outline pamphlet and I'd like to share with you what they shared with me if you don't mind. The title of the passage is did you grow up as a problem drinker? It says, Alan, it's for families, relatives, and friends whose lives have been affected by someone else's drinking. If someone close to you, such as a family member, friend, coworker, or neighbor has or has had a drinking problem, the following questions may help to to determine if Al Anon is for you. Do you constantly seek approval and affirmation?

Do you fail to recognize your accomplishments? Do you fear criticism? Do you overextend yourself? Have you had problems with your own compulsive behavior? Do you have a need for perfection?

Are you uneasy when your life is going smoothly continually anticipating problems? Do you feel more alive in the midst of a crisis? Do you feel responsible for others as you did for the problem drinker in your life? Do you care for others easily yet find it difficult to care for yourself? Do you isolate yourself from other people?

Do you respond with fear to authority figures and angry people? Do you feel that individuals in society in general are taking advantage of you? Do you have trouble with intimate relationships? Do you confuse pity with love as you did with the problem breaker? Do you attract or seek people who tend to be compulsive or abusive?

Do you cling to relationships because you're afraid of being alone? Do you often mistrust your own feelings and feelings expressed by others? Do you find it difficult to identify and express your emotions. Do you think someone's drinking may have affected you? I need to tell you, when I was 18 years old, I went to work at a place that was wall to wall program.

Both owners were long time members of of Alcoholics Anonymous, Half the management, about a quarter of the rest of the staff were in one program or the other. It was it just wasn't even anonymous there. And on a regular basis, somebody there would try to 12 step me into whichever program they were in. And I had heard those questions at the age of 18. And I knew that I could answer yes to the first 19 questions.

The only one that I ever had a problem with was question number 20. Do you think that someone else's drinking may have affected you? No. It didn't affect me. That's just the way I am.

And I I could look at the literature that talked about these are the behaviors that tend to come out of growing up in an alcoholic family. And I could know that both of my parents were alcoholics. And I could see all of this in myself and still say, no. It didn't affect me. It's just the way I am.

And because of that, I almost died. But that when I walked into the foundation school and they read this to me, I was in enough pain, and I was broken enough that I was willing to entertain a new idea that maybe, just maybe, the way I was had something to do with the way that I was raised. And if that was the case, it was good news. That was the best news I could get because if it was the case, you have a program recovery for someone like me. Because for some inexplicable reason, the same course of treatment that helps the alcoholic in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous seems to also work for the family member in Alabama.

And what I had to accept in the first step for the first time was that not just that I was powerless over alcoholics and alcohol on the alcoholic, but I was powerless over the effects of someone else's alcoholism on me. And once I could accept that, I had a place to start. Step 2 says, we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. Probably the single toughest step for me out of the 12. I was a lifelong agnostic.

I was a bright kid. At the age of 10, I read that Gideon Bible they gave me in school and figured out this didn't make any sense to me. I couldn't find the scientific foundation for it. And so I rejected it at the age of 10 and became what I thought was an atheist. I later found out that what I what I had been all my life was an agnostic.

But that's what I was. I was an agnostic with a knee jerk reaction to the g word. And here, you were throwing these these steps at me that had the g word in them. So I was stuck. I was desperate.

I was in pain. I knew I needed these steps to live. I needed the second step, and I had to find a way to I had to find a way to deal with it. So I did what somebody like me has a tendency to do when they're stuck. I researched.

I got on the Internet and searched out spirituality and agnosticism and relationship with God, and I read everything I could lay my hands on. And eventually, I found an answer. And I found the answer in a very special place. I found it in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. I found it in the chapter 4, the agnostics.

And I found it in an essay on that chapter that challenged me. So we don't care what you believe. We only care that you believe. And this higher power is is to be a con a conception of your own choosing. Don't you don't have to believe in anything.

Just for 2 weeks, it's a proposition. Behave as if you do. Talk to something for 2 weeks as if it were there, and just see what happens. What have you got to lose? So I tried that.

I didn't make it 2 weeks. I didn't make it 2 days when something answered me in a fundamental way that I couldn't deny, and I became a convert. I'm still an agnostic standing before you today, but today I am an agnostic with a higher power. I have no idea what the full nature of that higher power is, but what I can't tell you is that whatever it is that's out there, it's watching me. It seems to love me, care about me, have influence in my life, and it sure as heck seems smarter than I am.

You know? And that leads directly into the 3rd step. Because for someone like me at that point in his life, where my best thinking got me a nervous breakdown in 12 step meetings, and I suddenly discovered that there's this thing, whatever it is. And the 3rd steps have made a decision to turn our will and our lives over the care of God as we understand. I've just discovered that there's something there that I think can help me.

No brainer. Of course, I'm gonna let it run things for a while. I took the 3rd step about about 30 seconds after I took the second. And I need I need to tell you, sometimes I think we should do the closing in Al Anon before before the speakers. Because we've got that that that line in there about, the opinions expressed here strictly those of the person who gave them.

K. Would you like me to the rest? I am I am somebody who has a lot of opinions, and it's important that you understand what's my experience, strength, and hope, and what's my opinion. My opinion is that the 3rd step is the core of this program. It's what it's all about to me.

Turning my will and my life over the care of a loving higher power of my understanding. To me, the first two steps are about getting me to that decision. And the the 4th step onward are all about implementing that decision. But at the third step is where I changed, where I became a different person than I was at what than what walked into the door of my first meeting. I walked into the door of my first meeting painfully dishonest, fearful, frightened, and angry.

I came out of that out of that decision still frightened, fearful, dishonest, and angry, but a different human being. One who was willing to turn his will and his life over the care of a higher power, one who was willing, one day at a time, to commit to trying to live his life according to spiritual principles, and that's a different guy than you met first time. That's all I'm trying to do today, one day at a time, to practice spiritual principles in my life. The more I do that, the better my life gets. I don't understand when people talk about getting stuck in the 3rd step and I turn it over, I take it back.

I turn it over, I take it back. Because the 3rd step's just a decision. The question becomes then, for me, what am I gonna do to affirm that decision? I'm gonna do a 4th step. Actually, being an adult child, compulsive, obsessive, I'm gonna do many 4 steps.

Right off the hop, I hit 3. See, one of the problems that somebody like me has is that you can't do the perfect force step. And and and when you're a perfectionist perfectionist, that's a problem. My first crack at it was, was Al Anon's blueprint for progress book, and I just couldn't make heads or tails of it. My next was the, was the a big book again.

I need to tell you that I I am am an Al Anon who finds himself in the big book of alcoholics anonymous. It's not my recommendation to you. That's just my experience. And I I firmly believe that that's the 4th step that did me the most good because it started with the resentment in the time. And what that did for me was it showed me precisely to what degree my adult life had been driven by resentment.

And it brought me to to an important process, and that was forgiveness. See, I've gone through my adult life keeping score, and you owed me, and I wasn't about to forget that. And what forgiveness is about is forgetting that and getting on with my own life and letting you of yours. That was the point in my life when the people around me started noticing the difference. When the people around me started saying, Richard, you you seem so much calmer these days.

What's up with that? And it's when life started getting good. Anyway, it wasn't perfect by the time I was done it, so I did another one. I did the life story version. That's the version that I took to my sponsor in the 5th step.

And I have to tell you that that, the 5th step was something that I wrestled with. Part of the reason that that someone like me stretches out that 4th step is because if you try to do the perfect 4 step, you don't ever have to do a 5th. In the 5th, we admit it to god, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Well, I had no problem admitting to my higher power. I had no problem looking at myself in the mirror and saying, Richard, you're an asshole.

My problem was going and telling another human being this stuff, and and then letting them walk around. You know? I mean, I figured I was gonna have to have somebody kill me. But you know, I, I attended a meeting of the steps to freedom group one day where a couple of our long time members shared the things I needed to hear that made it okay for me to finish the 4th step and to go to my sponsor and say I'm I'm done. What are we doing now?

And after I danced around hamming hot and and and, you know, wouldn't cooperate with Tom what I wanted to do, he just said, okay. Be at my place 7:35. So being the perfectionist that I was, I reopened and realized that I'd missed a few things, and I was writing up until 8:15 on Friday. But then I went to his place and we spent about, I don't know, about 7 hours going through that stuff. I need to tell you that there's at least one other human being on the face of planet who is in my life on a regular basis, who knows everything there is to know.

And that's important to me. I got a new sponsor a while back, and, and, hard to get acquainted process was I did another 4 step and I did another 5th step with him. That's important to me. If I'm gonna work with somebody who's gonna be helping me with my program, I need them to know everything about me. And as a matter of fact, I I kinda hit a point in my life lately where I felt like it was time to look at that stuff again if we were doing our 5th step on the way here.

6th step says we're entirely ready to have God remove all these defensive character. Entirely ready to have God remove all these defensive character. That's another one where I listen to other people, I don't understand. People talk about becoming entirely ready. They talk about working this step for months months months.

And that that was my experience. I I was trying to do that same thing. I would go to my sponsor and what's this mean? And we're entirely ready as well. We're entirely ready.

A little, like, answering the question with the same question. I thought he was he was getting all zen on me or something and and was just confused. But then I ended up back where I seemed to find my answers. And you know, in the AA Big Book, it tells me that it tells me precisely how to do the 6th step. It says upon conclusion of our 5th step, we went home, we took this book down from the shelf, and we reviewed those first five proposals.

And what the 6th step means to me these days is that if if I have truly admitted my own powerlessness, if I have truly come to believe in a loving higher power, and if I have, with full commitment, turned my will and my life over the care of that same loving higher power, if I have examined my moral character to the best of my ability, and if I have shared that openly and fully with another human being, then I am entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. Nowhere in the step does it say became ready. It says were. It's a check stub for me. 7th steps says, humbly ask God to remove our shortcomings.

10 steps or sorry. 10:10 minutes and a prayer to me. And it's interesting, The joy of sharing. I'm gonna come back to that for a second because somewhere around the time I took the 3rd step, the joy of sharing took a very different meaning from it. The joy of sharing in that time in my life was going to meetings and talking about this program and these steps, and holding those other those ideas out where I could see them and having those connect the dot moments.

And learning as I was speaking. And, you know, that's still going on today. A few months ago, I was speaking and something clicked in front of a 150 people. I don't think they noticed. But something quick for me to to to change my view on this step.

And here's where I'm at today. 7th step for me is 2 parts. It's 10 minutes and the rest of my life. I say the prayer. I ask the loving higher power of my understanding to remove from me all those defects of character that stand in the way of my usefulness to him and my fellows.

The other phase is the rest of my life, life because nowhere in that step does it say that he's gonna remove my defects of character today. And my experience has been that he doesn't even take them all. And I think that comes back to that line of of the ones that stand in my way in the way of my usefulness. Every once in a while, I think it's useful for him for me to have a defective character. I'm a good bad example of something.

On the other hand, it's been my experience that the ones that get in the way, get removed. And this is the way it happens. I'm presented with an opportunity to practice the defective character. So I did. But I'm aware of it.

I noticed at this time. And I'm presented with another opportunity to practice a defective character, and I notice it more. And I do it again. And I feel bad about it. And I'm presented another opportunity.

And maybe this time, I choose something different. And I'm on my on my way to building a new habit. Again and again and again in my life, Those are the way the tough ones get dealt with. A number of my defects of character seem to vanish right around the time I took the 3rd step, right around the time I took the 7th step. But, you know, the ones that have really interfered in my life, they go gradually.

This is for me, it's a progress not perfection step. The best example I can think of on an ongoing basis in my life is, one of my defects of character is the need to be right. You know? Off that list that I read you, we fear criticism. K.

I fear we fear criticism because that we might be wrong. If we're wrong, that's just not safe. Well, for someone like me, the worst place to put him is some place where the rules are on his side. And for me, that's that's the left hand lane on the freeway, you know, 90 kilometers an hour and 90 kilometers up. Because there's invariably somebody coming up behind me who thinks that that 90 on the side side of the road is a minimum speed instead of a maximum speed.

And he's really upset that I'm in his way. But the rules are on my side. So I really at at a certain level, I enjoy sitting there doing exactly 90 kilometers an hour. And looking at him in the rearview mirror and seeing his face get all red and watch him wave at me with one finger. There's a sense of power there, because the rules are on my side.

Spiritual growth says, Richard, play nice. Do you need to be here? Do you need to be causing him this kind of upset? As soon as it's safe, shoulder checks, signal change lanes, get out of this way. And I do.

You know, and somehow I I I seem to heal a little bit every time I do. 8th step, made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. And the 9th step made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except for them to do so, whether you're them or others. I can tell you that that a lot of my amends have been through the process rather than waiting until I got to that stuff. And I think some of that came because my biggest demands were that I needed to make were to my wife, to my kids, to the people I worked with on a daily basis.

And in the midst of my first step in realizing exactly what I had done with and through those people. I just I couldn't face the idea of saying to them, you know, I realize I screwed you over, but I can't really do anything about it yet because I've not done my paperwork. You know? It it just didn't make any sense to me. And so I I I have tended to be very opportunistic about doing amends.

I can also tell you that that the amends that go well are the ones that I talk about with my sponsor. The ones that don't go well are the ones that I just go off and do by myself. So I would recommend the whole sponsor approach myself. 10 steps says continue to take personal inventory when we were wrong. I promptly admitted it.

I love that when. When we were wrong. That's the that's the word in that step that gives me permission to be human. It's a recognition upfront that I'm gonna screw up, and I do on a regular basis. And then it gives me a mechanism for dealing with it.

When we were wrong, promptly admitted it. Go and make amends. One more time, I'm sorry. I said what I said the way that I said it. But you know what?

Being in that habit means that I have much better relationships in my life than I used to have. The 11th step, sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for now, and it's his will for us and the power to carry that out. After the 3rd, this is probably my my favorite step. It's the one that I I work on the most these days. You know?

I'm an agnostic with favorite cars. How ironic is that? One of those I wanna share with you because it speaks directly to the nature of my disease. Remember my disease? I think I know stuff.

I don't know if you're familiar everything I think I know about myself. Help me to set aside everything I think I know about others. And help me to set aside everything I think I know about this program so that I may have a new experience in you, a new experience in myself, a new experience in my fellows, and a new experience in my own recovery. Thanks for listening. That's by the way, that's how I am my person.

I figured I don't know if he's listening or not, but, if he is, I should thank him. And if he's not, it doesn't hurt. Doesn't that prayer speak directly to the nature of the disease of someone like me? You know? Help me to set aside all this stuff that I think I know.

That's why I love it so much. The 11th step is one that I try to share on a daily basis, the woman with whom I share my life. I said before, when when I got to this program, my marriage was dead. My wife had made an offer on another house in order to try to get away from me. And then she had had us second thought and decided to give us one more chance.

And I was in program for a while and she noticed some changes. And she got interested in whatever the heck this was that was changing Richard. Maybe it was something that held something for her, and she got into recovery. And today, on a daily basis, we share this step. We make a point of every morning doing our daily readings together, praying together, and it's it's incredible.

It's it's just a huge part of both our programs. And even when one of us is out of town, this morning I woke up in Melfort, and I phoned her in Saskatoon, and we had morning coffee and dinner morning readings and prayers. And it's a huge part of our life. Today, I I live a very different life than I did when I got here. Not many of my circumstances have changed, but my life is different.

Still married to the same woman, but something something has changed here. You know? If there's a message that I have for you, it's that these steps work. They work whether or not you you believe that they're gonna work. If you do these steps, then you change.

I don't understand the mechanism. All I can tell you is what I've experienced and what I've observed in the rooms. My motive when I first started working those steps so hard was that I wanted to get better, I wanted to get healthier, I wanted to get stronger so that I could take a long hard look at my marriage, and I could be the one who decided whether it should continue or not. At least that's what I told myself. What I I know now through several inventories, what I really had in mind was I wanted to get stronger.