Steps 4 through 7 at the CPH12 v8 convention in Copenhagen, Denmark

So in this, guys like me start to get free of this stuff. And for the first time in my life, I take the responsibility. And my friend had to look at what kind of a son he was, not in the light of all the terrible things he his dad did, but on its own. Just on your own, what kind of a son were you? You know what he said?

He says, I was a lousy son. I used everything my dad did that was sick to justify hurting him, never paying him back the money because he's an. He said, I I justified a terrible, terrible years of my life with all the sickness that drove him. And he went to make amends to his father. He called me from right outside the trailer park.

He was scared to death. I said, what are you afraid of? He said, the monster. He never could he he was afraid the monster was still there. We talked a little bit and he got he got enough courage and centered enough in God to go knock on that door.

And the monster didn't open the door. A little old man opened the door. A little old man who was neurotic and depressed and alone and was suffering from untreated alcoholism. And he looked in his father's eyes, and he saw himself. And he and and in that moment, he said, I started to feel like I really love this guy.

And he took care of his dad until his dad died. And he'll tell you to this day that the the greatest thing Alcoholics Anonymous ever gave him next to his sobriety is that he got his daddy back. You see, all the things he hated in his father, he hated in himself. There is no difference. And I'm gonna talk a little bit briefly on fears, and then we'll take a quick about 5 minutes, and then we'll take a quick break and we'll come back and and, Carrie will finish up the 4th step and go into 56.

Fear is a big deal. I think it's the motivating factor behind everything that we do. And it says in our book, we're driven by a 100 forms of it. We really are. And yet, I don't know it.

I I was sitting in it. I'd finished my resentment list, and I'm sitting at the kitchen table with a tablet. And I wrote fears across the top of the page, and I'm stuck. I I'm 4 years sober. I can't think of anything I'm afraid of.

And I thought to myself, well, I pray every day. Maybe maybe AA works. Maybe I don't have any fears. I don't know. And I I went to a meeting and there was a speaker there from out of town and he was Sharon.

I went up to this guy after the meeting. He's he's an old timer. And I told him, I said, I'm I'm doing a 4 step. And I I got to my fear inventory, and I don't think there's anything I'm afraid of. And he started laughing.

He says, really? I said, yeah. I can't come up with anything. He says, well, would you mind if I ask you some questions? I said, no.

Go ahead. He said, okay. Are you afraid of large angry barking dogs? Well, yeah. But everybody's afraid of them.

He says we're not talking about everybody. We're talking about you. Are you afraid of large angry bar well, yeah. Are you afraid of rattlesnakes? Well, but everybody's we're not talking about everywhere.

We're talking about you. Yes, I am. You said, are you afraid of what people think of you? Yeah. Are you afraid of being alone?

Yeah. Are you afraid of being with people? Yeah. Are you afraid of getting sick and not being able to take care of yourself? Yeah.

Are you afraid that no one will ever really love you? Yeah. Are you afraid of are you afraid of rejection? Yeah. Are you afraid of success and what people will expect of you?

Yeah. Are you afraid of failure? Yeah. Are you afraid of stuff from your past catching up with you? Yeah.

Are you afraid of some of your debtors finding you? Yeah. He went on and on. He finally said, so is there anything you're not afraid of? I thought, I'm like spinning.

I thought, how did he do that? Because I was convinced I didn't have any fears. And what it says in the book is really true. It says it says it's an evil and corroding thread. The fabric of our existence was shot through with it.

And I'm looking for fears like a fish looking for water. It is an of me. It is the driving force in my life. I I was in a meeting one time, and Chuck Chamberlain just looked out over the audience. And he he just would look at everybody and he'd say, what controls you?

Chills because I didn't I didn't know what was controlling me, but something was because I was out of control. My emotions were so erratic. They owned me, and I didn't know that it was fear. It was self centered fear. Kind of answers the question in a vague way.

It says, wasn't it become a It kinda answers the question in a vague way. It says, wasn't it because self reliance failed us? And that's true. That's true in every single case. But I asked the guys I sponsor to be a little more specific.

Because sometimes it's it's we we in in we over analyze the obvious and miss the point. Like, in in the United States, the common fear is people are afraid of the IRS, and they don't know why. Well, it's usually because they're not paying their taxes. I mean, it's it doesn't and yet the alcoholic wants it, this must be something from my childhood. No.

You're not paying your taxes. I had a guy one time come up to me at a halfway house and he says to me, he says, I'm doing my fear inventory and I got some fears. I don't understand why I have them. I said, well, let's talk about it. And he reaches in his pocket.

He pulls out a cigarette. He puts it in his mouth. He likes it. Takes a hit off of it. And he says, well, one of the fears is I'm afraid of of getting cancer, and I don't understand why.

And I'm doing like you're I'm laughing at him. And he's saying, I don't understand why. And I'm wondering but he doesn't connect the dots. He's asleep. He wants it to be some, you know, maybe he was abused as a child or something.

Right? Because the alcoholic, we're always looking to to eat have our cake and eat it too. Right? I'm the guy. I know I have I know I have alcoholism, but isn't there some way that I can drink and not have hangovers?

I mean, you know, I want I wanna get this I wanna get the good stuff and do away with the bad. And there is nothing. It's all cause and effect. And later on today, we'll talk a little bit about amends, which is really the actualization of this whole cleaning house. You can change your attitude about someone, but it doesn't stay until you mend the separation.

And that's where the big changes happen. We'll take a break. Let's take a 7 minute and 33 second break. We'll come back and carry I just wanna give the word to Carrie now. So Hi.

I'm Carrie, and I'm an alcoholic. I'd like to take a moment to just get quiet and have a moment of silence. I think it, works out well before we start. Okay. 4, 5, 6, and 7.

Let's see what I can do. I will try to talk as slowly as possible. But like a typical alcoholic, I try to cram a whole lot of information very quickly into a short period of time. So I'm going to try to, be as concise and as accurate and as slow as, as I can. You know what is funny is that when when I, like, when I talk about, you know, 4, 5, 6, and 7, I love you know, we we we talk a lot about the resentment inventories, and we talk a little bit about the fears.

But a lot of times, I'll go to a big book meeting or, you know, whatever. And we often gloss over the sex inventory. And I love to make people uncomfortable and talk about it because nobody likes to talk about it in a yay. You know, the big book says we all have sex problems, but then, like, we don't talk about them. Except for Arna.

He had none none. Iceland's fine. But, you know, the thing is is this, is that, alcoholic or not, we're all human. We all have human feelings, human failings. We all do dumb things sometimes, myself included.

And a lot of times, for some reason, especially with alcoholics, we we often gloss over this one aspect. It's that one area that, I tell you what, I have a hard time truly letting God into, truly surrendering. You know, I surrender in a lot of areas in my life. You know, I'll surrender my alcoholism. I'll surrender when I'm afraid.

I'll surrender when, you know, I'm in financial insecurity. I'll surrender when someone doesn't like me. But in this one area, it's it was a it took me a long time and it took a lot of truth in order for me to truly let God into my sex relationships. You know, and most of it was motivated by fear. You know, I I spoke about it a little bit last night and I touch on it.

And the reason why I don't like to talk about it too much is not because it makes me uncomfortable because it sometimes it makes other people uncomfortable. I grew up in a, you know, in a very chaotic, violent, alcoholic household, and a lot of terrible things happened to me in my life. Some pretty bad stuff, you know. Took some beatings, you know. I I've been molested and raped, and when you're an alcoholic and you're a woman and you're young, terrible things happen to you when you're unconscious.

It's one of those things. And it's the experience of a lot of women in Alcoholics Anonymous that we come in here and we've been damaged in this area tremendously. It's this one area that we're incredibly vulnerable because of the type of disease that we have. And this was my experience, so I came to Alcoholics Anonymous extraordinarily broken. Broken, you know, you know, from alcoholism and broken from the experiences at and the consequences of my alcoholism, plus, you know, just some stuff that happened in my life.

You know? And when I talk about my inventories and when I talk about my fist step, there is an incredible amount of healing that happened in that process, you know, an incredible amount of healing that happened. You know, Bob did a really good job talking about the resentment inventory. And as far as that goes, I all I have to say is ditto, ditto, ditto. When I think about fear and what I like to do is when I like to talk about the 4th step, I like to talk about it in the 5th 4th, 5th step, kind of back and forth because I tell you what, writing inventory was great, but it didn't actualize until I 5th stepped it.

It was one thing writing it down and admitting it to myself. It's a whole another thing reading that aloud, admitting it to myself and and my sponsor and my higher power, which we invited into the room when I read my fist up. I'm one of these people and I'm not gonna argue with you as to whether how many inventories you should write or anything like that, so please, I'm one of these people who writes an inventory about an inventory a year. Doesn't mean I go back to, like, you know, the girl who pulled my hair in 1st grade, but it means that I sit back once a year and I say, how am I doing? Do I have any resentments?

What are what are fears that just just don't seem to go away? You know, that's the wonderful thing about writing out, and we'll talk about this later, nightly review. See, I write out a nightly review so I have a record of how screwed up I truly can be. And so then I go back through those records and I say, how many times was I resentful at my husband in the past year? Oh, quite a bit.

Maybe I should write some real inventory, you know, on top of the usual inventory, like when I call out my sponsor and she says, hey, Carrie. Why don't you write some inventory on that? So I'm one of these people. I do visit the 4th and 5th step at least once a year. And, of course, 4th and 5th, 6, 7, 8, 9 because you really can't do them without the rest.

So I I'm somebody who believes or submits to the process on a regular basis because I really do believe that I get real jammed up and I don't know it. And sometimes I need to sit down with God and someone else in order to see the truth about this situation. You know? So what I didn't know or what I found out in writing inventory and have doing a fist step and you know, especially when it came to fears. I didn't realize, you know I knew that I was fearful.

I'm terrified all the time. You know, the only time I'm not terrified is either, you know, is when I can actually get out of my own way and get connected with a higher power. If I'm not, like, connected with God, I'm connected with fear. Like I have 2, you know, 2 little valves that I hook up to. I either hook up to God or fear.

And if I hook up to God, I do alright and I behave well and, you know, and and I go through my life and I sit down at the end of the day and I think to myself, how's my review doing? Oh, you know what? I don't have anything on it. How How beautiful is that? And when I hook up to fear, you know, I pull my hair out and I call my sponsor crying, screaming and everything else and nobody likes me.

You know, and on any given day I can hook up to either one of those and I can switch that at any given point. You know? It depends on really whether or not I'm gonna stay close to God and perform his, his, you know, his work well. So I didn't I knew that fear drove me. I I drew drove me.

Listen to me. I knew that I was driven by fear. I absolutely knew it. The question was was I didn't realize that my fear was delusional. See, I thought my fears were true.

I thought that what I thought about myself and the world and everything else was accurate. I didn't realize that I had a mind that was completely insane, that took circumstances, instants, things that were ex you know, just episodic and turned them into an absolute concrete fact and that it will happen every time. So I'll give a perfect example. I was like one of those kids that was, like, really awkward in school and got teased a lot. Like, people used to pull my hair and call me names.

And I was, like, one of those kids, like, I was the geek. I was the geek in school. And so, I took that fear that, okay, no one's gonna like me. I have to make people like me because, you know, I'm just not good enough. And I took that fear because a few people didn't like me when I was 5.

And I created a reality based on that fear, on that belief system that people won't like me. I need to earn their like. Lie, manipulate, do anything I can do in order to get them to like me because they won't like me because of me, because they didn't like me when I was 5 and not much has changed. So I spent my life trying to orchestrate myself, my environment, my everything in my my relationships based on that false idea that people won't like me if I be me. So I need to be somebody really cool.

So, you know, it was, like, you know, I should be somebody on TV because, you know, the TV and you know, that that, you know, the cool people on TV, movie stars, these things, you know, like, they're liked and loved respected and loved. So, you know, I'll pretend to be one of those people. You know? So I went through my life pretending like I was in a soap opera all the time. You know?

Exactly. I was in General Hospital. You know? You know, I was always in a soap opera. Beverly Hills 90210, except for I was Shannen Doherty.

So I didn't get along very well. But the thing is is that I became and acted as if I was this person because of this fear that I had because I believed in delusion. You know? So when I sat down and I wrote out my inventory, like, and especially I love it the way that my sponsor had me do it and the way that I have my sponsors do it, you know. I I I list my fear.

I list why I had it. And then I ask myself, how did self reliance fail me? How does self reliance fail me with fear? Well, let's take fear of not being liked. Nobody likes me.

Nobody loves me. I'm gonna go eat worms. You know? So let's take my fear of not being liked. So I I have a fear that people don't like me.

Why do I have that fear? Well, because when I was 5, you know, little Joey pulled my hair and told me that I was stupid and ugly. Okay. So then how do I set the ball rolling because of my fear that nobody likes me? Or how how does self reliance fail me?

Well, I'm trying to control how other people see me. I'm placing what they think about me. I'm putting it more important than how I see me or more importantly, how god sees me. Because we're all children of god, and we're all equal in god's eyes. Evaluating myself not on God's slide rule, not by God's terms, but on my own.

Right? So I love that when my sponsor had me write my inventory that way, and then she had me say, well, what's a better way? So what's a better way than acting as if or trying to make people like me, going around like I'm in a soap opera and, you know, pretending to be something that I'm not. Well, the better way is maybe trusting and relying on a higher power, finding out who I am because I tell you what, I spent so many times pretend so many years pretending to be somebody else. I had no idea who I was.

I didn't know what I liked. I didn't know what I didn't because I was whatever you wanted me to be. If you wanted a hippie chick and you wanted me to be all, like, Grateful Dead ish, then I'd do that. If you wanted a punk chick, then I, you know, I had, you know, green spikes coming out of my hair. If you wanted a, you know, a geek, then I was a geek.

And if you wanted, you know whatever you wanted me to be, I was that in order to make you love me. So at a certain point, I had no idea who I was as a human being. I knew that I was a compilation of everybody around me. I had no thoughts or feelings except for that which I thought you wanted me to feel. And I built all of that based on one delusion, that you wouldn't like me if I was me.

So when my when I sat down and I did I had done a resentment, a fear inventory, and I wrote this out and I sat down with my sponsor. And she was like, what's a better way, Carrie? And I said, well, I guess finding out who I am. Right? What what does Carrie really think if she's not afraid of what other people will think about what she thinks?

How does Carrie really feel if she's not afraid about how other people feel about how she feels? You know, these were questions I had to start asking myself. They sound really silly, but if you're as spiritually sick as I am, you know, they're hard questions to ask. Do I like, you know, how do I feel about something? You know, what is my opinion on global warming?

I didn't know. I had an opinion based on what you thought. You know? And so there you know, when I did that fist step with my sponsor and we did we looked at my fear inventory and we talked about it, there was so much about me that I began to understand. I used to think like, you know, when people would ask me a question, how are you, Carrie?

I'd get that fear like, well, how do you want me to be? You know, who should I be today? Who do you want? You know. And so for me, like, when I did my fear inventory and I realized how much I lived my life being somebody else and how I had to learn and start over and learn how to be me.

I didn't know how, you know. I you know, I was so afraid of so many things, afraid of being hurt. My fear of being hurt caused me to punch you in the nose before you even came within 2 feet of me because you were gonna hurt me and I knew it. So if I put you on fair notice that I was dangerous and not somebody to be met reckoned with, then you would be scared of me and I wouldn't have to be scared of you. You know, it's that whole thing, like, you know you know, wild animals are more scared of you than you are of them.

Well, it was sort of, you know, I'm more scared of you than you are of me, so I will I will terrorize you so so you won't come anywhere near me. You know, that's the type of person that I was. You know, that's how I am when I'm driven by fear. You know. And I drove a lot of people away from me because of that.

You know, I caused a lot of harm in my life. And I thought that, you know, part of what the wonderful thing about doing really good fear and a very good sex inventory and doing a very good fist step with fear and sex is really understanding that you know, in in resentment inventory, we talked about it. We said, you know, that I placed myself in a position to be hurt. When I look at my fear inventory, I begin to understand how, why, you know, why I placed myself in the position to be hurt, what I believed about myself, the world, my environment, you, my relationships that placed me in the position to be hurt in the first place. And when I sat down with my sponsor and I shared all these fears because I would never admit to you that I was afraid.

I was a tough, tough girl and I was, you know, I was not going to show, you know, one ounce of fear. I'd never let you see me sweat. And when I sat down with my sponsor and we talked about this and I shared this with her, you know, I began to feel so much freer. My fear began to lift then. When I when I wrote my sex inventory, the same things that I did or that I saw in the 4th column of my resentment inventory also happened in my sex inventory, of my sex relationships, that I was I never was emotionally available to those around me because I was terrified and I was so trapped in trying to protect myself from you.

I could never stop for one second and say, how are you today? And ask myself, how can I be of service to you? That's not something that I would ask in those relationships because you were there to be of service to me. And my relationships, especially in my sex relationships, was what can I get out of you? How can this benefit me?

How could this make me feel better about myself? You know, I would use men to make me feel better about myself. If I had a bad day, let's go out and flirt with somebody so I could feel special. You know, you ever do that? You know, you put on you go to a meeting, you put on your best dress and you go in there.

It's like, well, I'm gonna go in here and be really cute and flirt so I can feel better about myself. And meanwhile, I leave and I feel a 1000 times worse because I totally did something that I shouldn't have done. Because I made I made other people's opinions of me more important than my spiritual growth. I used other people to get a sense of self. I didn't understand that I had done though that in those relationships, and I knew that I was you know, I had I had some responsibility, you know.

I knew that, you know, I yelled and I was mean and sometimes I threw things and I wasn't very nice and I got that I was pretty selfish. But it wasn't until I sat down and I did a very thorough sex inventory that I began to see just how selfish manipulative I was. You know, I've been married for almost, almost 13 years. My husband and I drank together, and we got sober together. We got sober in the same day.

We have been together for, obviously, our entire sobriety. You know, that's sometimes very easy and sometimes very hard. You know, getting sober together is not easy. You know, we work together as a unit, and we work together as a team because that's exactly what we are. And one of the things that has been extremely beneficial that I don't hear a lot of people talk about is something called sex ideal.

Have you guys ever heard of that? Nah. I love the sex ideal. The sex ideal is after I've written a sex inventory and I fist stepped it. I usually have my women do this after they do the fist step so we can talk through all the delusions that they have.

We sit down, we take into meditation and we say, God, how am I supposed to be in my sex relationships? You know, the big book tells me that I'm to take these relationships into meditation. I'm supposed to ask God what I'm supposed to be in those relationships. How often do I ask God what I'm supposed to be in those relationships? Up until this point, I never did because it was, what what am I gonna get out of it?

Not how am I supposed to behave, how you're supposed to behave so I could be so I could be safe. Because I went through my entire life feeling like I wasn't safe. So I had to make you behave in a certain way so that I could be okay so that I wouldn't be mean to you. And when I sat down and I did a sex ideal and I realized that I had to be willing to bring to the table in any relationship what I wanted to get out of it. So if I wanted you to be kind and loving, I had to be willing to bring it.

If I wanted you to be unselfish, I had to be willing to be unselfish myself. If I wanted you to be honest, I had to be willing to be honest. So what I found out is what I get in a relationship is often what I give. And the other thing that I learned was that when I bring love, compassion, tolerance, honesty, when I bring these spiritual principles to a relationship and I do it unconditionally, It doesn't matter how you react to that. I've worked with people over the years.

I mean, I've sponsored hundreds of women. I'm extremely lucky. There's not a well, it's not that I'm I'm lucky because I live in an area where there's not a a lot of women who do the steps the way that I do. It's not that I'm all that popular. It's just that they don't have a lot of options.

You know, so what happens is I sponsor a lot of women in my area. And what I found and I don't know if you guys go through this. You ever, like, stay with a sponsee for, you know, couple years and you hang in there? And, you know, they come to you with all their drama and you hang in there with them and you help them and you listen to their inventories and you help them through their amends and they start living on a spiritual basis and then they stop calling you. And then, like, 6 months later, you hear that you're not their sponsor anymore And they got this other sponsor who's way better than you, you know, because, you know, they're prettier, thinner, smarter, whatever, and they do the steps better than you.

When the first time that happened to me because I was still pretty spiritually sick, I was like, I got dumped. Not only did I got dumped, she upgraded. I felt like I had been dumped by a boyfriend because I had put in so much time and effort and love into this relationship. I didn't realize I was kinda doing it for myself. My sponsor pointed that out later, after writing inventory and doing a fist step.

She was like, oh, yeah. Who are you sponsoring, Carrie, and why? Were you doing God's work or your own? But beyond that so the first time that happened, I felt so dumped, so rejected, so like yesterday's news and just not good enough. And I remember talking to my sponsor and she asked me, she said, you know, how's that sex ideal coming?

And I was like, well, you know, I did it. She was like, well, how are you applying that? And I was like, well, apparently not very good. Because the thing is is this, is that my sex relationships are a microcosm of all my other relationships. And often in the closest relationships in my life, the same things that I do there, I usually do other places.

And the things that I do in other relationships, I usually do in my sex relationships. So asking your partner, how am I doing in this relationship? Am I stepping on your toes? Where am I inconsiderate? What could I do better?

It's probably the smartest thing I've ever learned to do. Because what I'm used doing to my husband, I'm probably doing other places and I'm probably doing it more to him because he's not gonna leave. But on the other hand he's trapped. But on the other hand, I'm probably doing it at other places. So when I did my when I did my sex inventory, I did definitely get to see what I was doing in other relationships, you know.

Because in reality, when we talk when we do our sex inventory, what we're really doing is a very thorough resent relationship inventory. I've even included people because I call it sex and harms. So it's not just people I've, been romantically involved with, but also people that I've stepped on their toes without being resentful to them. You know, and I took those inventories with my resentment inventory and my fear inventory and I fist stepped them with my sponsor. I've done all different kinds of fist steps.

I'm definitely a connoisseur of of step work. Like, if you got a method, I'll try it out. I mean, I drank everything and anything. You know? I you know, if you handed me something, I put it in my body.

So I kind of feel like I need to have the same kind of open mind when it comes to step work. You know. So I'm definitely like, like one of those, like, you know, I like to call it extreme step people. Like, if you got an inventory, I'll ride it. If you got a fist step, like a different kind of do way of doing it, I'll do it.

Like I you know, one of the things that I did and it was a great experience is I've done a multiple fist step, like where you sat down with 3 or 4 people at once and you read your inventory to them. But I did it with a twist, which was really cool. I did it with 3 women who had less than a year sober while I was 8 years sober. And 2 of them were my sponsees. They'd all finished their step work because I'm pretty quick with my step work.

Like, most of the people that I sponsor finish their amends within 3 to 6 months of working with me. You know, I'm pretty quick with that. You know, I don't have a specific time frame, but, you know, I'm kind of a no I don't fool around. I don't really have time for it. But, so, like, these 3 women, all of them had less than a year sober, but all had completed their immense.

I sat down with my inventory and I wrote it real well. You know, I was detailed. I dotted my I I dotted my i's. I crossed my t's. You know, I wrote a good inventory that I could be proud of.

So I sat down and I read this inventory to them, And they tore me apart. Oh my god. I felt I got up from the table and I felt like I had just taken a boot up my butt, You know? And I sat there and, you know, I'm doing my I'm reading my resentment I'm reading my inventories and I realized, you know, you you can't argue with the person that you're doing a fist step with. It's not like you can say, well, no.

That's not true. You know, I kinda have I have to do a fist step and I have to listen to their feedback and listen to the what they have to say and take it into meditation and say, well, is that true? Like, I can't defend myself. So I sat there and it's, like, 2 of my sponsies who I just kicked their butts up and down the street doing inventory and amends got to give it back to me. Can you can you imagine if you get to, like, give it back to your sponsor what you would do?

Oh my god. And I sat there on my hands and I remember, like, I literally sat on my hands and I thought, don't argue. And I had to pray the whole time and say, listen. And all I wanted to say is, guys, I know you just had a spiritual experience, but when you're 8 years sober, you're gonna be as screwed up as me too. You know.

And I couldn't do it. And you know what? I came home from that experience and I it was 3 o'clock in the morning. I did it at a diner too. Like I'm one of these people.

Like I my first fist step was all sacred and quiet with candles and sage and everything. And it was a beautiful experience because my sponsor did that to make me feel comfortable. At this point, I'll do a fist step in a bathroom. I don't give a crap. It's truth and it's gotta get out one way or another.

You know, so I'm definitely one of these people, like, I don't believe in and I will do it for my sponsors, but I don't need at this point, anybody can hear my inventory because the fact is is you know who I am. All you're doing is having hearing me admit it because you see me coming a mile away. You guys see my selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. All I'm doing is putting a name on it. So, you know, one of the great things of doing the inventory process and the FISTAP process and doing what I do is that I'm very comfortable with sharing my inventory with others.

They don't have that fear of, they're gonna know how sick I am. You know, so we're in a diner and we're reading this inventory. We were there all night. You know, we left a really good tip and was a good night. And I drove home.

It was an hour ride home. And I'm driving home, but, of course, you know, we have that quiet hour that we take after doing a 5th step, you know, where we sit quietly, we look over the first 5 steps, we look over our 4th step, we look over what we did, and, you know, we take it into meditation. And we say, did I miss anything? Is there any truth there? If you if you get feed feedback during the fist step, you have to I a lot of times, I take notes and I write it down on my inventory.

You know? So, like, if my sponsor said, is it possible that if the women number woman or anybody who heard my fist step said, you know, is it possible that this is true, or is it possible that you don't see it this way, or possible that? I get a lot of is it possibles. I hate those words and love them at the same time. When my sponsor starts out, is it possible that I know that I have to, like, oh, I'm gonna get something good.

I'm gonna get you know, because usually it's some truth. And I don't like truth, but I need it. So when, you know, when I sat down to do this quiet hour and I looked over, you know, the notes I had made, the questions I had been asked, the things I had taken to meditation, and I sat down quietly for an hour and looked over my inventory, I had what I would consider a white light spiritual experience. You know, Bill Wilson talks about it in his, in his in his story. And I didn't necessarily feel that clean wind blowing through and through.

More like I had been sucker punched and, like, done a couple rounds with Mike Tyson, and I was sitting there and I felt completely devastated, beaten, and knew that I could that at 8 years sober I was as sick as I was at 5 minutes sober and that I needed God desperately. And it had absolutely nothing to do with picking up a drink. It had everything to do with of my own power, of my own will. I was nothing, and I knew it from the core of my being. I knew it.

And it was such a complete surrender and such a beautiful experience that it carried me for quite a few years until I had to go back and have another one of those experiences. I go back, you know, God graces me with a good, nice, experience like that every couple years. I mean, I really do. When we talk about spiritual experience, we talk about the, educational variety. And one of my heroes in AA talks about it, and he says that it lets people off the hook.

Because when we talk about the educational variety of spiritual experience, people think that it takes, like, 2 years to get it, 10 years to get it. You know, the educational variety of spiritual experience is a collection of the spiritual experiences that we call the promises that happen after each set of the steps. There's promises after the 3rd step. I read them earlier. There's promises after the 5th step.

There's promises after the 9th step. There's 10 step promises. There are 11 step promises, and there's 12 step promises. That's called an educational variety spiritual experience, and all it takes is the span of steps 1 through 12. You can do that in 2 weeks, 5 minutes.

Well, you probably could do it in 5 minutes, but you can do it in 2 weeks. You could do it in 3 weeks. However long it takes, that's what that means. And then we have the white light spiritual experience where you're shaken from the core of your being and you absolutely cannot deny the presence of God in your life. I've had both.

I've been very lucky. God has graced me with many, many ways in which he has made it readily apparent that he is everywhere and a part of everything that I do. So I came home from that 5th step and I had that white light spiritual experience and that brought me to the 6th and 7th step because I have was inspired. I opened up my big book. And this is now it's like 4:30 in the morning.

And I opened up my big book and I remember like I'm thinking about 6 and 7. I'm like, well, if I am if I'm powerless over my spiritual condition, if I'm powerless I haven't had a drink in 8 years. If I if I, on my own will, cannot manifest sanity in any way, shape, or form, you know, and I'm a neurotic, psychotic, fearful mess, What the hell do I do? I did all the steps. I wrote fantastic inventories.

I have great sponsors. I go to really good meetings. I mean, as far as AA goes, I'm a lucky woman. I got a great husband. At that time, I had 2 kids.

My beautiful children, I had a wonderful life and I am sick as a dog mentally and spiritually. I'm a mess. And it's like, what do I do? And I remember I was I looked at the big book and I went to We Agnostics and I went to the first page and, the first page of the chapter and it talks about it says that, you know and I hate reading from the podium because I speed read and I don't wanna do that to you guys because I know you guys are translating it into Danish. And so I'm going to try to read slowly, but not take up too much time.

Says that if a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life are sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us no matter how hard we tried. We could wish to be moral. We could wish to be philosophically comforted. We could will these things with all our might, but the needed power wasn't there.

Our human resources, as marshaled by the will, were not sufficient. They failed utterly. Lack of power was my dilemma. I have to find a power by which I can live and how to be a power greater than myself. I opened up to this page and the absolute stark truth of my life and everything that I had done done up until that point became very clear to me.

It meant that I could follow all the rules in Alcoholics Anonymous, but if I think that following the rules is the answer, I'm going to stay as sick as I was before I started to follow those rules. I'll just look good and stay sick in my head. I'll say and do everything that looks right and you'll think I'm really nice. And meanwhile, in my head is a sewer. Because I'm so trapped in self that I don't realize that behaving unselfishly while thinking selfishly is looking for a mere code of morals to overcome my alcoholism, that I'm going to a human power rather than a higher power.