Workshop on practicing the 12 steps and traditions in relationships

Who is going to be doing, the first session on the 12 steps and how they use that 12 steps in their relationships. I've heard them share on the 12 traditions, and I have never heard them do the 12 steps. So this is really gonna be a treat for me. So without further ado, I would like to introduce Sue and Keith, and I don't know if you're gonna both stand at the at the microphone together or you're gonna that okay. Great.

Thank you. Thank you. I love you. Thank you. Hello, everybody.

I'm an alcoholic. My name is Keith. I'm Keith. And I'm a grateful member of the Al Anon Family Group, and I'm Sue. I'm Sue.

My sobriety date is May 11, 1976, and for that I'm especially grateful. I'm glad to be able to do this, and it's always a special privilege to be able to share, the steps and traditions and what we've done and how we've used them in our life. They're they're part of our life, a way of life. And, it's always good to do this. I I read something in my, meditation the other day that was quite, it just kinda stepped out to me.

And it's Mike, it said something to this effect that, you know, my experiences are mine, and I can't give them to you, for you to use unless you know I care. And, and I do care. I wouldn't share, how these steps have affected our life if I didn't care for you. If I was so selfish that I I could work the steps and the traditions and confine them to my life, I wouldn't need to do what we're doing here today. We we've experienced something as a result of these steps and the literature that we've, you know, taken from the program of Alcoholics Anonymous and Al Anon and applied in our life and it's worked.

And I I I say that in a sense of we've been together for 35 years, we've been married for 33 years, and our life is totally absolute and totally different for the last nineteen and a half years than it was for the 13, 14 years or what have you prior to that. We went together for 2 years regularly, steadily, and then we got married and we've been married for 33 years. So these steps in this way of life has totally changed everything about our relationship with each other and our outlook on life and our attitude about life. So it works. We we have a family.

We had one daughter during the active disease, and that daughter has been in, in Alatin and Al Anon for 19 years. And she's applied the steps in her life, in the books, in the literature, in this way of life, in her life. And not only has she become a complete and totally different person, and had a good successful life and a happy life and lives a happy life, productive life today, but her relationship with her mother and father has completely changed and and, from a terrible, terrible, violent, verbal abuse, sexual abuse, everything you can imagine, to absolute and total forgiveness, acceptance, and has been able to take as a result of these steps into her life and get married and live without all the carryover of the confusion, the trash of the active disease. So if there's anything that these steps have done, it's taken people that could have very easily said we were victims and moved us out into the mainstream of life and allowed us to function as a human beings, a healthy human beings in relationships as a family, relationships in work, relationship with our, our groups, you know, and our neighbors, our community, everything about our life.

And, you know, it's a change, change. The steps and what is outlined in the literature here has been the primary guidelines to change. Now, we we were in Oklahoma last weekend and and, we had an opportunity to go back there for an Al Anon Convention. There was a lot of old timers there, long timers, old timers, people in Now and on and AA. And, we had an opportunity to talk to people who've been here 30 40 years and seen things go over and over and over and change over and over and all those kind of things.

And one of the most important things is that I got last weekend, we had a little book study with some people who are very knowledgeable with the book. And I've been here 19 and a half years and I know all this, but the reason I like to do this is because there's things, affirmations, that I've filed away and heard it when I was 1 year sober, 2 years sober, 3 years sober. And then I I kinda, I guess, rest on my laurels, and then things come up and I reach back and I get the important things and pull them out you know, put it to use again. And many times due to surrenders, you know. And, one of the most important things that jumped out at me by being with people that have been here a long, long time last weekend is that particularly in talking about Alcoholics Anonymous and Al Anon is a big book thumper.

And if you want to know anything about disease of alcoholism, why you go to the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. That's where it describes it. That's the textbook for the disease of alcoholism. And one of the important things that was really hammered into us and really jumped out to those of us who've got to go through the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous somewhat last weekend was is the very first now I'm not a historian on Alcoholics Anonymous or anything. I don't memorize a lot of things, but the very first Alcoholics Anonymous ever and Al Anon is only 44 years old and AA is what 55, 60s.

And so the very first Alcoholics Anonymous, the very first Alcoholics Anonymous was a big book Alcoholics Anonymous. That was the very before fellowship, there was 2 drunks, and they they documented this. They needed something to, work from, a textbook. They were not stupid people. They were educated people, businessmen, bankers, what have you.

And, and they put together the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, the text. And and, and the guy explained it to them, he was really not sure what had happened, but some guy come out of a knot warden wandered in a room where they were trying to name this thing and they had all these various names. They were going to sign the book and, ultimately they couldn't come up with something that didn't conflict and this nut walked in and said, you know, I've been looking for you guys for a week. You're really anonymous and, I'm an alcoholic. And they said, why don't we call it anonymous alcoholic?

And then they said, no, why don't we call it Alcoholics Anonymous? And that's so the story goes. The historians seem to think that there's a possibility that's the way they got it. So that was the very first Alcoholics Anonymous ever. And from that, they started Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Point is, the very first Alcoholics Anonymous was the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. So there are 2 Alcoholics Anonymises, just like there's 2 alanons. The first Alcoholics Anonymous is the book. The second Alcoholics Anonymous is the fellowship. So if you're trying to stay sober or sane on the fellowship, you're doing it the hard way.

The easy way is to use the book and the steps, because that gives you a prescribed definition of how to bake the cake. And they even explained this very simply as they said, in this book, when they wrote this book years years years ago, they gave a percentage. Of course, there was fewer and fewer, but they gave a percentage and I take this in this room, this percentage, this small room. In this book, follow the prescription of this book. It says that a 100 percent a 100 percent of people who come here, of that 100%, 50% will stay and recover, following the directions of this book.

25% of the other 50% will drink and come back, and 25% will go and die. And I guarantee you that our programs are watered down today to the point that it is nothing like 75%. You're lucky if you get 1 2%. And that's what jumped out at me last weekend, listening to people with 30 40 years put this into application and bring it back. And so that's why I care.

I think we've done something. There's been something missing. There's something that we've made it a social thing, whatever we've done, probably because there was an influx of people and whatever, we got those percentages way down, and, and I care about those percentages. And so I share what we've learned in this book and what we've come to understand from these steps. The one thing I'll share real quickly on step 1 and then Sue can go.

And I don't the big book came first and the 12 and 12 came second, the traditions came third. I do not study the 1212 without following it along in the big book. I do not study the big book without following it along with the 1212. If you listen to people who are very knowledgeable about the big book, the stories and stuff, this is divided up in certain steps. When I read the 12 and 12, I have to go back to the big book.

So, I study them both. In our home group, we have Monday night, we have a 12 and 12. We have a 12 step meeting, on Wednesday night we have a book meeting. And when I go to the 12 and 12 meeting, I take my big book and I follow it and I go in reference points to the stories in the big book. Whenever I study the big book, I take my 12 and 12 and I go through it because it's a whole package.

And they found as they did the book, then they found they needed the steps, and they found they needed the tradition. So I followed this. It's very important to me to share with you that one of the things that I recognize about a period of 4 years that I drank in and out of Alcoholics Anonymous, I tried to take the second half of the first step without taking the first half of the first step. And in my relationship, for me to come into this relationship of you as a fellowship, this book, as a text, and my family, and try to fix the unmanageability of my life without admitting that I'm powerless, I could not stay sober. Ironically, we were talking just a few minutes before we started this meeting.

And, Jim and I outside, and we were talking about it. He's telling me about a guy that got up and talked, and he was 10 years sober. And after he got through talking, he ran all this stuff out. And, the guy's sponsor got up and said, you're gonna drink again, and I can tell you when. And the guy said, what do you mean?

He said, you're gonna drink again. And when you're gonna drink again is you're gonna run up against the surrender which you will not surrender to. That's when you're going to drink. And what you're going to say right before you drink is this, screw it, nobody cares, and even me. So that is the point of step 1.

I had to become powerless. That is the most important reference point to my entire program, to my sobriety, to my relationship or anything else, had to become powerless. And if you look on Bill's story on page 5 in the big book, it says, Nevertheless, I still thought I could control the situation and there were periods of sobriety which renewed my wife's hope. That is the great lie. That is the true and false.

Until I could do that in my relationship, do that in me, do it with my men, friends, sponsors, whatever, that powerlessness was I'd try to work the second half of the first step. As soon as I get my life in order, boom, boom, boom, we'll be fine. And I stayed drunk over and over and over and over again. Once I rendered it powerless, it's a reference point for everything in my life. I am powerless over my relationship with my wife.

I am powerless over anybody else on the face of the earth. The ABC says that. Once I accepted that I am powerless and I surrendered, then I have a power greater than me. And the primary purpose of this is to help me find a power greater than myself. And once I could do that, God worked on the relationship and then we could go into the second half of the first step.

Hi, Sue. Hi, Sue. I wondered when I got here, why they had the same first step as an Alcoholics Anonymous because our steps are the same. Alcoholics Anonymous gave them to Al Anon and I wondered why because we don't have a problem with alcohol. And what Keith was sharing earlier about us being an Oklahoma and the power that was at that conference was unreal with all of the long timers that were there.

And what I have to realize about these steps and the teachings that I got is a foundation that I have to stand on the rest of my life. So what I learned in the beginning, and if there's any newcomers in here, it's the effort and the willingness that you put into these steps in the beginning of our lives that we will stand on for the rest of our lives. And I have 19 years in this program. My sane date is May sometime, which tells you how sane I was, of 1976. And, and I have to realize that when I came in here, I was crazier than a loony bug.

And the reason I feel so strong about these kind of things in this program is because, like Keith was sharing with the AA, big book being AA and the fellowship being another AA, it's happening in Al Anon too. It's a popularity contest in Al Anon. It's PTA in Al Anon, and that's not why I'm here. I need this program as much today, 19 years later, as I did when I walked in the doors of Al Anon. And that's why it is so important to me today that I am so grateful that I had the strong sponsorship in the very beginning that gave me the basics, that gave me the steps, gave me the principles because I stand on them today.

And so if you're sponsoring someone, it is so important to get them into the steps and the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous in my opinion because that's where we came from. And I love this program so much. I don't want to water down. There's gonna be a few of us around here that will try to keep Al Anon exactly the way it is. And there's a a lot that are gonna go on the other side of the street, and they're gonna have fun and yuck it up over there.

And you're gonna feel lonely over here because you're doing the foundation. But the secret of longevity in this program is that the path gets narrower and the crowd gets smaller. That's why you do not have a lot of long timers in this program because people come around here to get their life better. And I'm happy, and I'm joyous, and I'm free, and now I gotta have fun. Fun is a byproduct of applying these principles to our lives.

It will automatically come. The happiness, the joy, the freedom will automatically come if we have a strong foundation. And when I got here, it's because I wanted the secret. And that's the first thing it says in the first step in the L9 12 and 12. I wanted the secret for sobriety.

I'd run out of all all my answers. All my old ideas were not working. I had no answers, and that's why I feel that I became powerless. I was powerless over alcohol because I didn't know what was gonna happen to my husband when he drank alcohol. And I did not have the power to make him do anything anymore.

I'd lost that power because he didn't listen to me anymore. He did not mind. It says our schemes and threats had succeeded only in our being physically and emotionally exhausted. We were powerless. We were asked to admit that and believe that if we wanted to make progress and improve the quality of our lives, we had to admit that we were powerless.

And that's why I love, the ABCs in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous because it says in there, no human power can relieve their alcoholism. And I believe that that is one specific place in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous that is talking about Al Anon's. No human power can relieve their alcoholism. I had to realize that I did not have the power to relieve his alcoholism and that my life was unmanageable because every time I focused on him or whatever it was that I got obsessed with, my life became unmanageable. That I gave him more time than I gave my own self.

I thought of him first before I ever thought of me. Therefore, my life was going to hell. No wonder I felt bad about myself. And so I had had to admit that I was powerless. Number 1, I can't get an alcoholic sober.

I can't keep an alcoholic sober. An alcoholic sobriety is not my answer because when he got sober, I remained nuts. And he wasn't doing stuff and I went crazy the 1st 6 weeks of this program. And then I made a commitment to myself that I can't make it on one meeting a week. And I have to go to 2 and 3 and more Al Anon meetings every week, or I start losing it.

And I don't wanna do that. That scares the hell out of me. I don't fit in this world without these steps. And my life will start becoming unmanageable. In in step 1, and this is a very important thing with a relationship, because a relationship is an obsession.

An obsession is an idea that overpowers all other ideas. And I had a relationship with alcohol. I also was trying to have a relationship with a wife, and so I could, you know, I could be obsessed with my wife, but I would drink and become obsessed with the alcohol. And so then they would become confusing. And, that's why for the alcoholic and why it says in step 1, he had hit bottom as truly as any of us.

John Bartekorn himself had become our best advocate. That's at a point where alcohol became my obsession over all other things. I could promise her anything and then alcohol would take over and my obsession was alcohol. Why all this insistence that every AA must hit bottom first? The answer is that a few people will sincerely try to practice the AA program.

Maybe I should read that again. The answer is that few people will few, few is not very many, will sincerely try to practice the AA program unless they have hit bottom. Now, isn't that strange? The answer is that few people will sincerely try to practice this program in a relationship unless they have hit a bottom. For practicing AA's remaining 11 steps means the adoption of attitudes and actions that almost no alcoholic who is still thinking can dream of taking.

So if you put that in a relationship, as long as I think I can control this relationship, I'm not gonna work the next 11 steps. And and I I changed the words in a step, and I changed that simply because if you go to the bottom of that paragraph, we stand ready to do anything which will lift the merciless obsession from us. And so you have to do what's required in the next 11th steps. Step 2, based in the big book of Alcoholics Knowledge and Bill's story, very simply on page 9, they had told of a simple religious idea and a practical program of action. So surrender is a simple religious idea and then it outlines a program of action.

And step 2 is came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore us to sanity. To be restored to sanity is humility. I cannot have a relationship with anyone, much less my wife, unless there's humility in it. I am powerless over that. I have to allow her to be her self.

I have to allow you to be yourself. And that in itself induces humility. See? That induces humility. If you haven't taken the first step, you get in and you try to control.

You get in and you try to control, and so it doesn't work. And, Al Anon, I had to believe, you know, I had to look at myself and see what I was doing that was causing me the insanity and the thinking in my life, which is talking about the obsession. And my obsession was the alcoholic. You had to let him go. How do you let him go?

You know? And in reading in the AA, the Al Anon 12 and 12 in the AA big book, one of the things that I got out of that in the second step is that in both Alcoholics Anonymous and Al Anon literature, it talks about how intelligence is not our answer but can be our enemy. And so it's talking about surrender. And I believe that that Al Anon's have to hit that surrender just like every alcoholic does. When you get to the bottom and you just give up because the last drunk in our home is like that was my bottom.

And I looked at Keith and said, I don't hate you anymore, but I don't love you either. And you gotta do what you gotta do. I didn't care. I didn't stand there and fight over who gets the house, who gets the car, who gets the kid, who gets the checkbook. I didn't care.

I just had to get out because I couldn't live that way anymore. And that's a bottom. And so I had to learn that a power greater than myself could restore me to the sanity. Once we admitted that, it says in our book that we begin to grow. Once we admit the powerlessness, once we admit the unmanageability, then we begin to grow.

That's ready to say, okay, I've got an answer. There's something that's going to help restore me to sanity and accepting that. We needed more than the human experience and intelligence to solve the problems of living, especially living with an alcoholic, whether drinking or not. It doesn't matter. It's all up to me.

And so I have to believe that there is a power that's not the alcoholic, but there is a power that cares about me enough that's gonna help me start this walk down this path, that is gonna lead me to some kind of sanity. And it talks about humility. So it's at this point that some humility started coming in my life because when I first got a just a smidgen, I mean, humility in my life, it's when I said help me. That's a part in the second step where sponsorship comes in. For us, we could not work the second step without getting a sponsor.

How can I ask a power greater than me to restore me to sanity if I don't have guidance? I went to churches. I had all these simple religious ideas about this thing, but I had no direction. I had nobody explain it to. Will you guys open those windows?

Everybody's sleeping. I may want to. And so without doing anything with this sponsorship, I can't do this second step. And there's an amazing thing. I always type page 68 in a big book of Alcoholics Anonymous in with the second step, because on page 68 there's something that I missed for I mean, I I guess you don't miss it, but you just there's things that happen and you wonder why and blah blah blah.

And I I kept saying, you know, god's will, when the second step's first time we talk about a power, God, power, power God, higher power, all that kind of stuff. And so what I was doing in here was, I was looking for God's will. Okay, God, show me your will. And that is not what this thing's talking about. If you look on page 68 in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, what it says in here, we ask him to remove our fear and direct our attention to what he would have us be.

And for a period of time, I'm trying to say, okay, God show me your will so I can do it, and then I'll be what I'm supposed to be. And that's that philosophy that I could make decisions in my relationship to say, well, God wants me to do this. Yeah. Right. Nothing sicker than a newcomer than a newcomer's higher power.

And what God wants us to do, I heard it said this weekend that responsibility is having the attitude to respond to God's will. See? And so that's a change of attitude. Step 2 is a change of attitude. And one of the things that we talk about in here, true humility, is only, I mean, when you get to step 3, in the big book talks about getting on your knees with another human being and doing step 3.

That brings another human being in for you to use as a witness that you got on your knees or got in a position, got up here, you down here, and you let somebody else see you do this. And I did this in church all the time, but I was doing the congregation thing, so I was hurting. But to get with somebody else and get personal, and and the same way with step 5, and the same way with some of these other steps, and same way with my relationship. True humility in my relationship was for me to let my family see that I, the king, was asking for help. And the word, the buzzword for that was sponsor.

And they told me I needed a sponsor so that an idiot wouldn't be running my life. An idiot had been running my life for 36 years. And so that was the thing that showed my family that I'm willing to do it a different way. They were so used to me doing things and and failing. The the sponsor was a new word.

It was a new direction. And it was pointed out and we all got sponsors and we followed direction. We didn't argue with that. We come to believe that a power greater than us could restore us to sanity. The faith and the strength that was coming from that was that we're taking somebody else's ideas and putting them in here and trying to do it like them.

See? And the insanity of an alanine, as you hear it so many times, you can't tell me what to do. Now why do we feel so strong about that after we come to this program and we ask for help? And now we're looking for a power greater than ourselves to restore us to sanity when we gave all that power before we got here to an alcoholic, and the disease of alcoholism drove us nuts. And we came here, and we said help me.

And then we say, no, you can't tell me what to do. And it totally contradicts everything we come here for. And if you're sponsoring somebody like that, say, wait a minute, and take them right back to the first step. Take them right back to the first step and say, I thought you were powerless because I didn't have a god in my life when I got here. So a power greater than myself was sponsored.

And that's going to lead me on a road to the 3rd step. Once I get this sponsor, that sponsor is gonna start me on a path that's gonna introduce me to a higher power that is a power greater than any human being. But power. In the very beginning in this program, my sponsor was my higher power, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that if you have chosen strong sponsorship in your life. One thing Sue and I were talking about just recently, because there's something in the area of relationships that's coming up.

People are having trouble with relationships because they have conflicting sponsor direction, and you can do that. I mean I was so sick that I picked sponsor in the very beginning that was sick like me. Sick attracts sick, just like relationship. You come in here and guy and gal can get together and if they're sick, they attract sick. You come in here and if you're sick, you can find somebody in AA that's sick or Al Anon that's sick that'll cosign your sick, and you can ask them to be your sponsor.

So 2 sickos are going down trying to sponsor. I mean, I've had some very sick sponsors. And I look back on it, and I think, my God, it's amazing I stayed sober, you know, which in itself lets me know that God was in that thing, or I wouldn't have because some of my sponsors are drunk. I had a sponsor that blew his head off. I had a sponsor that got drunk, and he was directing me.

See? And, and I thought he was done. So there's a very important thing that comes in step 3. Step 3 made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him. In the very beginning, when I turned my will and my And this And this is the first place that we see God.

This is the first place in our program that it talks about God. On on step 3, page 35, once we have placed the key of willingness in the lock and have the door ever so slightly open, we find that we can always open it more. The door of the sick mind opens from the inside. There is no keyhole on the outside. If it were, why churches and psychiatrists and all kinds of well meaning people, families and loved ones, could open that door and put the answer in and you'd be fine.

The door to the sick mind opens from the inside. And so sponsors and people who try to help us have to trick us to get us to open that door just a little bit. See? So that's what sponsors for. They're to me, my sponsor in the very beginning was in my life to make me feel bad, and I'd tell her that.

You make me feel bad. You hurt my feelings. And she'd say, good, because we're here to save your life. You know how to handle the bad feelings. We're here to save your life.

We were listening to this tape of my sponsor. My sponsor is Jack Sullivan in Louisville, Kentucky, and Jack's over 33 years now, something like that, a little more. And Jack said, you know, if you don't wanna help me, me to help you, I can't help you. Jack told me the other day, he said, here's the role of a sponsor. Get this straight, and tell it exactly like I told you to the people you sponsored.

I talk, you listen. When you quit listening, I quit talking and we're done. If you ask me to be your sponsor, then I share with you because I care for you. When you don't wanna listen to me anymore, we're through talking. It's over.

I can't sponsor you anymore. See? And then what I what that did in a relationship is we were trying to sponsor each other. Let me talk and you listen. And that's what got her sick.

Nobody was listening. And so nobody was listening. See? And we go to AA speaker meetings together when we was new. That's the only place we could get along.

And on the way home, I'd tell him what the AA speaker meant so he'd get it. And I know you guys have done that too. It wasn't what I heard at all. So we'd argue about that. But at least we were arguing about something new, something positive.

We were having an argument about something positive. This is what they meant. And it wasn't like you did this. You did that. You're not gonna drink.

You're not gonna screw around. You're not gonna do this. We was arguing about program stuff. And so something was getting in because we was trying to prove to each other that this works if you'll only hear it right. So we were both convinced was both been surrendered.

And it says to learn is to recognize, reach out, accept, and act. And that's the 3rd step. That's humbly made a decision to reach out, recognize, accept, and to act. On what? On this way of life.

On this way of life. It says it's a spiritual gift. And it is the beginning of turning it over, letting go, and letting God, and all those kind of things. It's our motivation to work the rest of the steps. And it gives us hope because it says, if we do this, it is ours alone.

Nobody can ever take it away from us. One of the things that's really important to establish the first three steps is the powerlessness and that somebody greater than you is going to help you. And God talks through people. And the important thing is that we found through that third step, I was told you know, I tried to do the 3rd step in my car going down the road and drive and talk to God and, you know, all those things. And I still do that, but my proper position with God is me on my knees and him in the right position.

And I, you know, I got 24 hours in a day to live. If I can't get God, the proper concentration in that, at least 10 or 15 minutes, you know, in 24 hours, well then I don't care about God. I I can tell you, I can want people I sponsor, I watch them, and and they'll you know, I'm a great great, Hasso and I both advocate of of meditation. And I can watch people and they get sober after a period of while, and they quit doing their morning meditation, they quit doing that. I can watch and they start getting crazy, you know.

And I'll tell you what, I've watched guys that are sober 10, 11 years and somewhere between 3 and 4 and 5 they quit doing their morning meditation. By the 10th time they're 10 years sober, they're absolutely nuts. They're crazier than they were when they were new. I mean it's unbelievable because they ease it out and the self will comes in. And in the in the meditation of the first three steps, the thing that has held our relationship together, we both have morning meditation individually.

Exactly. We have got on our knees and did our prayers. You know, we got in the proper position to bring God. We brought God into that bedroom. We brought God into the kitchen.

We brought God into the bathroom. We brought God into every area of our life. The thing that I used to love about a man called Gene Duffy in Alcoholics Anonymous, he talked about the must. And if you go through your alan on 12 and 12, there are must in the alan on 12 and 12. It says we must change.

We don't suggest you change. You must change. And 3rd step, it says 3rd step suggest. I teach myself from this moment on to be receptive, to open myself to help others with the help of my higher power and to help and to the help which may come in many forms often through other people. The people in this program in the very beginning and and on any given day are still my god that just has skin on it.

My god works through people. The, 4th step is, made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves, and it's an amazing thing. We were listening to sponsorship tape coming up here, and my sponsor was talking about, fear, you know, and living on fear. And fear was in every area of my life. And, I the first thing, made us searching and fearless moral inventory.

In our relationship, everything about me, in my relationship with myself, with my God, with my wife, with my daughter, with my fellow man was motivated by fear. And, one of the little things that happened to me is that to help me overcome fear, was having hope. And what you gave me is a vision beyond my present circumstances. When I came here, I had nothing going for me. And so I had present circumstances.

We live this one day at a time right now. And here I got this relationship and it's crazy and these are present circumstances. I'll be glad to quit drinking as soon as I get the circumstances. That's where I come back and try to work the second half of the first step. I have to have a vision beyond my present circumstances.

And you stop and think about it. How do you get a vision? If you're sick in the mind and you've got an obsession, how do you get a vision beyond your present circumstances when they tell you to live right now? And by doing this 4th step, gave me a vision beyond my present circumstances. When I did my 4th step, it allowed me to step out of that fear and see that it's possible for me to have something better beyond my present circumstances.

I didn't have answers to my present circumstances, but you said if I do this 4 step it'll show me the patterns that create the insanity of my present circumstances. And maybe if you can help me change that, then I can have something better. And so my excitement was not about running in there and doing this 4 step My excitement was the fact that you gave me some bait They used to have them dog races where I grew up and they always had a rabbit or a carrot simulated in front of the greyhound and they'd have these dog races and this mechanical rabbit would chase, would run ahead of the dogs, and the dogs would chase that. And so the 4th step was the first bait that you gave me that I could have something beyond my present circumstances. So at that point in time, I put my relationship on hold of my present circumstance.

I put my relationship with my family, with my God, everything on hold. And I said, okay. I'm gonna get in here and work on this 4th step. And that is gonna help me see that there's something better down the road. I didn't come to Alcoholics Anonymous because I wanted to stay the same.

I came to Alcoholics Anonymous because I wanted to be different. One of the things the old timers tells us is that there's all kinds of people out in that world who don't have a conscience, but an alcoholic has got a conscience. A real alcoholic has a conscience. And I knew that alcohol had changed me to something I didn't like. I knew had it made me something.

I fell in love with this lady, and it had made me hate her. See? I fell in love with people. I always love people and alcohol it made me hate you. I heard it the other night.

1 of the guys in my home group. I've said it for years. I came in and out of AA, in and out, and I said, you know, a belly full of booze and a head full AA is terrible. I'll tell you something that's worse, a head full AA and a belly full of resentment. Yeah.

And I came in here with a head full of AA and a belly full of resentment. And this 4th step took care of that. The 4th step is the laxative for resentment. Always will be. Always is.

Even in the 10th step, go back to this. Always will be. Always is. When you're battle locked with resentments, the 4th step is the laxity for the resentment. Isn't that neat?

What an analogy, but it's so true. It's something we all understand that people out there don't know how to explain it to us. The Al Anon 4 Step, the blueprint for progress was introduced to me as a way to do the inventory. And I can remember reading a question in there and it's a question and answer session. I said, yes, no, maybe sometimes.

And, I remember thinking it had a question. How long has it been since you've been to the dentist? What has that got to do with my drunk husband and my the violence in my home? What has that got to do with me being crazy other than I didn't know how to take care of myself? The 4th step is the tool that shines the light on the true source of the problem.

What's the problem? And they used to say, every time you look in the mirror, you see the problem. And I couldn't get it that way. So my sponsor, bless her heart, got me into the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous in the 4 column inventory. And that's the way I did my inventory, and that's the way I give this step away to people I sponsor because it has the 4 columns.

The first column is the resentment. The second column was the cause. The third column is how it made me feel. And the 4th column was what part did I play. And I wanted to feel better.

I did not. Up to this point, Keith had always been the problem. And on any given day, I was the victim. And I wanted to grow and I did not wanna be the victim anymore because everybody's always saying, you know, this program is full of did you So what was there about me that caused all these problems in this marriage? Because you're saying it's me.

So I wrote Keith's name down. The second column was the violence. The third column is it made me feel like nobody, like I didn't count and all that kind of stuff. And then I couldn't think of the 4th column. And my sponsor told me to get on my knees and ask God to put the words in the pencil that I needed to see because I didn't wanna be a victim anymore.

And I did that. And I'll never forget. When I got up, it was like watching a video. I could hear it. I could see it.

And I'd say, blah blah blah blah blah. I'd shake my finger in his face, and he'd say, get out of my face. And I'd take one step closer. And he'd say, Sue, if you don't get out of my face, I'm gonna hit you. And I would take one step closer, and he'd hit me.

And I thought, my god, it was me. I caused the violence in that home. If I just walked away and kept my mouth shut, none of that violence would have happened. He told me he told me to quit, and I couldn't quit. I was no different than the alcoholic can't quit drinking.

I couldn't quit getting in his face. And that's how important that step is to me. It pointed out every one of my character defects that was causing my husband and I to go opposite directions. Once I saw that 4th column and my character defects and all the things that I Without provocation. But we invariably find that at some time in the past, we have made decisions based on self, which later places us in a position to be hurt.