Steps 10 and 11 at the CPH12 v9 convention in Copenhagen, Denmark

Alright. Good morning, everybody. Welcome. I'm Eric. I'm an alcoholic.

Hey, Eric. I am just introducing this morning session session with Doug and Chris. Yeah. And, basically, they're gonna talk about 10, 11, and 12 steps today, as you may know. And, we're gonna take a break at 10:55, and then we're gonna come back and they're gonna talk about step 12.

So basically, 2 hours on 10 and 11 and then 1 hour on step 12. And don't forget there's a sign up sheet on the bookshop table where you can put your email, and then Tyler will send you Doug's 12 step worksheets. Are we ready to roll? We're ready. Sure.

Okay. Good morning, everybody. Good morning. Welcome back. I have so thoroughly enjoyed my visit here, by the way.

I'm I know I'm becoming redundant saying this, but what a wonderful town. After, after we were dropped off last night, we decided to wander around the city a little bit, and it is an active, active place. There were a lot of people out there having fun, I gotta tell you. Walked past this one place, I guess it's a club, and the line getting in the club was probably 200 people long. I don't know how anybody would ever be able to wait in a line like that and actually get in, but, it's been, it's been an experience.

It's very, very very young city. You know? This is, like, a lot of people out there having a good time, and I've thoroughly enjoyed myself. Now, today we're gonna speak on, the last three steps in the 12 step recovery process, 10, 11, and 12. I wanna speak briefly on some of the reasons why it's important to pay attention to these steps.

And then Doug, nobody does steps 1011 better than Doug. So Doug is gonna be, gonna be moving us through the mechanics and, some of the actual practices and some of the, some of the results that you're gonna get through these practices. So, I I recommend to anybody to pay attention to that. Now, as alcoholics, we don't normally like to admit this, but we're doing it wrong. There's a lot of things in life that we're doing wrong, and there's a lot of things that we know and we absolute know with certainty, and we're really wrong on them.

There's there's a lot of, a lot of techniques we use to living life, that don't really produce beneficial results. They're based on a self centered world view and, based on, kind of an erroneous philosophy that we we develop while we're, while we're partaking of our alcohol. And then all of a sudden we get sober, and we still have a lot of these bad tools, a lot of these bad practices in our life, and we're sober now. And we're wondering why things aren't getting better for us. And we're wondering why, you know, things haven't really picked up.

It's very rare that you'll find an alcoholic who doesn't think they should be better than you know, further on than they are, you know, after all these years sober. Well, one of the things that a lot of us fall short on is continuing to practice these principles in all of our affairs. You know, we might get exposed to the steps, somebody might take us to the steps, and that's that's that gives us a spiritual awakening, certainly a big shot in the arm, but that doesn't give us the answer to every single question there is in life. It doesn't offer us, a a true blueprint, for everyday life. So, you know, when Bill was, was going through the steps, going through the things that worked in the Oxford Group and putting them into steps, Step 10 is kind kind of an add in, you know, continue to practice these these principles.

When we're wrong, admit it. When something's bothering us, inventory it. You know, so that he was emphasizing to us that, yes, we've learned, we've gone through the steps and we've learned some spiritual principles, but for them to really benefit us in our life, we have to continue to practice those principles, continue to to experience the benefits that you get from practicing these principles, and to make it a discipline. One of the things that alcoholics don't like to hear a lot is the word discipline because, you know, we kinda wanna do what we kinda wanna do. That's really one of the reasons why we're in as much trouble as we're in because we don't want anybody to tell us what to do.

We wanna do what we wanna do. Yeah. I'll tell you what I do. You know? I do a lot of, work in, in in rehabs and things like that.

Now I'll tell you, I'll be giving a talk like I am right now in the steps, and somebody will raise their hand and they'll say, you know, let me tell you what I think, or let me tell you what I do. And if I'm not in a real fit spiritual condition, I'll say, who the hell cares what you think? You've got plastic on your wrist. You've got a you've got a you've got a loony bin wrist tag. I'm gonna I'm gonna I wanna know what you're doing.

You know? We're we're we're like that. You know? We're we're in the mental hospital, but we want people to follow us. You know?

You know what I mean? Follow me. You know? I mean, you're in a mental hospital. So so we have to become kind of open minded as far as as learning from other people.

There's something that, the Zen Buddhists call beginner's mind. And what beginner's mind is is it's just being open to consideration, to new possibilities. One of the guys that I learned from, taught me a few things. And one of the things he taught me was he said, Chris, there's 3 type of people in AA. One of them is the bigot.

That's the person who's he already knows the answers, He's not open to any more information. If any of the information that you have goes in conflict with his information, you're wrong automatically. He's got it down. Okay? That's the bigot.

Then there's the pious individual, and the pious individual is open to anything new. You know? Whatever whatever the the the spiritual practice du jour is that day, or, you know, the latest book on the bestseller list, you know, the the the power of tomorrow or or, you know, the the joy of resentment or, you know, whatever whatever the next bestseller is, you know, I found the answer. Well, didn't you find the answer last week? You know, with with with, you know, you know, with with with Bert's, spiritual practice and bible or whatever.

You know? So it's always something new, and and they're always looking for a new teacher. And, you know, when they find a new teacher, the old teacher was crap. And, you know, they're just they're they're pious. They're they're they're just way too way too willing to believe what they hear.

He goes, Chris, what I want you to be is I want you to be a man of consideration. I want you to consider information that comes in. Look at it as it, reflects on your life experience. Ask yourself if it's true. Before you make a value judgment on it, why don't you give it a shot?

Another thing that happens in AA a lot is, I'll get I'll give you this for for an example. I've had experience with multiple fist steps. And what I mean by that is I've actually sat down with 3 other guys and read my fist step to more than one person, because it says in the big book, person or persons. So I believe it gives me that latitude to do a fist step with more than 1 person in the room at the same time. Now here's what here's my experience with that.

It was an ego deflator like you wouldn't believe because all 3 of these people were competing about, you know, oh, did you really mean that or, you know, is that really true or, you know, didn't you really think you know, and they they came at me. And, you know, I was my ego was just, like, chopped down to nothing. And I got a a very strong experience from that. Now I'll share in a meeting that I've done a multiple fist step, and so you'll show, oh, that's crap. I can't even anybody that would do that is stupid.

Now you you would ask him later, well, have you ever done a multiple fist step? No. Well, aren't you, you know, aren't you giving me an opinion based on an experience you've never had If you're telling me it's no good and you've never done it, how do you how do you know you've never done it? You know, what we base things on in Alcoholics Anonymous is experience. Now if he would have said, yeah.

I do multiple fist ups all the time. I'd you know, it's much better doing it with just one person. I'm gonna listen to him because he's talking from experience. But if he's just making a value judgment on something, then then it's not really worth anything. We we learn in AA from people's experience.

We not really their opinions. Another example of that is you'll be in a 9 step meeting, and somebody will raise their hand and say, I haven't done this step formally, but and then they take the meeting hostage for 7 minutes explaining what their opinion on the 9th step would be if they ever did take it. Now that's totally totally not even worth listening to, something like that. I I've developed the capacity to filter, you know, and that's that's a nice way of saying I daydream while somebody's sharing their opinion on something. Now if somebody raises their hand and says, you know, I just got back from California where I completed 6 amends.

You know, I perk up. I wanna hear about somebody's experience. I'm not interested at all in someone's opinion. So, so one of the things that's really beneficial is to get your own experience or to listen to people with experience. When you get to 10, 11, and 12, you know, find, find people who have experience with these steps so that you can learn from them.

And you and you can ask them, hey. What worked for you? What didn't work for you? Because we we can learn from other people's mistakes. We don't necessarily have to go through them ourselves.

But when it comes to 10, 11, and 12, you know, we've had a spiritual awakening as the result of the first 9 steps, but we need to hang on to this spiritual god consciousness. So if we continue to practice these principles, we're gonna continue to hang on to the spiritual condition that we've developed. And in step 11, we've, we've learned through the steps that a relationship with God is vitally important. In step 11, that really that step really is about, maintaining that relationship with god, with ourselves, and with other other people. And it's very, very important for us to get involved in these practices.

I've been, I've been practicing, 10 and 11 on a daily basis for many, many years. And I've gotta tell you, this this year especially, some amazing things have happened. The last 3 or 4 years, some amazing things have happened in my life. And I know it's not because I'm smart or something, because I shoot myself in a given 5 minutes by myself, I'll shoot myself in the foot. I just will.

You know, I'll I'll destroy any hope of any kind of positive outcome by getting involved. And, the thing is is I know that the positive things that have happened in my life are a direct result of practicing the spiritual principles that I've learned in Alcoholics Anonymous. And step 11 has become very, very important to me. You know, I didn't wanna miss the the meditation this morning because, that's just another piece of step 11 for me. I've gotten very, very involved in, reading a lot of spiritual books.

Anybody that knows me knows I have a library of spiritual books. And I read them because they bring me comfort. And I read them because they give me information that I can use to help help other people. And and I get a little bit close to the truth and a little bit closer to God every time I get through one of these things. And and, you know, every single time I pray or I meditate, I believe I get a little closer, to God.

And and the closer I am, the more comfort I feel, the less fear I have, the less chance I'm gonna be resentful or get involved in something that's self destructive. So these are very, very important, important steps to pay attention to and become disciplined at. Become disciplined. You can develop a healthy discipline by forcing yourself to do something repetitively for a certain amount of time. So, you know, look, we all live busy lives.

If you get up and you're you're rushing around to get ready for work, you know what? Set your alarm a half an hour earlier. Okay? Get home a little bit earlier so you can do, do your your your nightly, nightly review. Put a little time into this.

Here's the thing, we all say God is the most important relationship in our lives. How many how many minutes today have you spent with God? You've probably spent more time with people that you're saying aren't as important as God. Relationships take time. Relationships take attention.

You need to take attention. And they and there's give and take, you know, there's there's prayer and then there's meditation with your relationship with God. Spend some time. If God really is the most important relationship in your life, then then show that. Show that through some discipline.

If your house is just too crazy to be able to, to do meditation in, than, than go to a church. Go you know, find find a park. Do you know, do do something. I've even done running meditation because, you know, for the longest time I was a long distance runner. I'd run a lot of marathons, and that was one of my favorite types of meditation because I'd be out there on the road and, you know, I'd be able to concentrate on one one spiritual, piece of the puzzle at a time.

Another thing I used to do is music meditation. I used to turn all the lights out of my room. I had a beautiful set of headphones, real, you know, really, really good headphones and a really good stereo. And I and I put on, ambient music, very melodic, spiritual type of music from, you know, the ECM catalog or the Wyndham Hill catalog or the neurotic catalog or something and just disappear into the music. And then there's just sitting meditation, you know, the the the the forms of, of Buddhist and Zen meditation.

I got involved in, in Christian centering prayer because, I'm Christian from birth. I think I'm more comfortable in the Christian traditions than anything else, And I got involved with, with some of the people like, Keating and, Merton, and some of the people that talk about, some of the Christian mystics. I love mysticism, you know, mysticism from any religion. I I think the alcoholic is mystical. I think we're mystical people.

We need to have that direct face to face confrontation with the divine, and that's what all the mystics were looking for. So I think there's a bit of mystic in each of us. We need our own experience. We can't just be, cattle that move through a religious tradition without it really being meaningful to us. It's gotta be it's gotta really grab us.

So so I study the the mystics, and I get involved in all this stuff, and I pay attention, and I spent I spend time spiritual. And I can just lie down on a bed and and meditate. And I can do sitting meditation, and, I it's it's just valuable to me, these these practices. And if you aren't involved in these things, you're really short changing yourself because, because they offer you so much. The, so much comfort to the human condition, and they certainly promote recovery and abstinence from alcohol.

The closer you get to God in a vital way, the better your chances that you're gonna be you're gonna continue to be safe and protected from the next drink or the next drug. Now I'd like, I'd like to turn it over to my friend here, Doug. Thank you. Hi, everybody. My name is Doug.

I'm an alcoholic. It's great to be here. There's one theme that's been running through this whole, conference that we Chris and I have been doing here. It's experience. Knowledge is great, but even in the big book, it's it talks about how knowledge will not keep you sober.

I have an example. There's, I think I had about 2, 3 I probably had about 3 years sobriety and I was, I was based out of Washington DC flying for the airline. I was a pilot at that time. And, so I I used to have many days off in between. It'd be almost like 4 on, 4 off.

And it was on a, a holiday. I think it was, we have a lot of holidays over over in America. It was one of the, the summer holidays, and I was about ready to go fly to New Jersey to be with my family. And I I get this knock on the door, and I I open it up, and there's this guy with a cigarette, and he's like this. He goes, I I just almost killed myself.

I'm in, I was in Washington. I'm a strike myself to death and someone told me to come see you. I'm a chronic relapser. And, you know, I didn't just look at him and go, well, I got a flight in 2 hours. The first thing I thought is, God, how am I gonna help this person?

That's the first thing I thought of. How am I gonna help this person? So I said, come into my house. And I said, leave the cigarette outside. I don't smoke.

And so he came in he came into my house and he told me this this story. Now, this guy is probably one of the smartest guys I know to date. He, he was an attorney was. Virginia, he got this he got this barred. He lost his license.

And, chronic relapser and knew the big book better than me. He can quote pages, he could do all this quoting stuff as Chris was talking about, but he never really worked the steps. And so I called up my family in New Jersey and I said, listen, I'm not gonna be able to make it. And back then, I didn't know what I know now about how to bring people through the steps quickly and practice these principles in all our affairs within 4 hours. And I used to really take them through the big book, paragraph through paragraph, line item by line item, and we sat there from that Friday to the end of Sunday.

And I cooked for him and he showered up and he stopped shaking after about the 3rd day and he finished up the big book and he went and started practicing these principles, literally made amends. Now he was, he was a we call him a JAG in the military, and you're an attorney in the military, which is a pretty high position there. And I mean, he literally pissed off generals, colonels, but this guy was just like me when it came to the night step. He would go literally to any length. He made appointments in downtown Washington, they say, got on got in his car, it was a piece of garbage car.

And he drive down to Washington and meet with these high ranking people who just didn't even wanna see him anymore. I mean, they they put him in North Korea or South Korea one time just to get rid of him, you know. And even there he got in trouble because he drank and he ended up with the colonel's daughter. I mean, it was it was a mess. That's bad.

Bad. And he went all over the place. Anyway, he, went to go to the bar. It's called the Bar Association for attorneys in in America For Virginia, he says, what do I do? I said, just tell the truth.

Well, he told the truth and, they disparted him and he didn't he came back and he said, you know, they disbarred me. Now what do I do? And so we started doing the work. We just started doing the work together, meaning I was with him holding his hands to to go do these, to go do these amends. And he got a call from this friend of his because he was also licensed in Florida.

And he says, I don't know what to do. This guy called me up. He's got this new law firm. He wants me to come down, and I'm like, is this God giving you a club upside the head? Get in that piece of garbage car you have and get down to Florida and help this guy start.

He goes, you think? Oh my god. Is it is it clear to me? What do you got here besides me? And that's really all he wanted to hold on to, really, was me.

But the thing was that I was just the tool. Of course, I'd like to take credit. I'm human. I'd like to have that ego, but, really, I'm just the tool that came into his life that gave him a little shot in the arm called the steps to get out. He owns one of the largest law firms in the state of Florida.

He's over probably every billboard you can't miss. He drives a Maserati. He has a 10,000 square foot house, and he gives more money to the Salvation Army and time than anybody I know. He won't go to these high class meetings, as we call them in in America, where people drive up in Mercedes. He goes to the homeless.

You know. He is just in the trenches, working the steps constantly. 7 years has not lapsed. It's stuff like that. It's experience like that that gives me such the vigor after 13 years to to to speak with such conviction about these steps.

And the big part about this, besides the night step, is the continuation. You may hear people here in the in the in the room saying, I work the steps daily in my life. That's big in America. So when I was new, I would walk up to them like, you worked the steps daily in your life. How do you do it?

And here we go with all those slogans they would tell me, you know. I let go and let God. I just don't think. I there's so many slogans that we actually hang them up on the wall and I can't even find them in the big book. So, of course, I would learn nothing.

So this one guy who told me before I went out, after 90 days, I was going out to get a drink just I was gonna have a drink because I was picking up my green chip and he grabbed me. He says, listen. I will show you how to work the steps daily in your life. And he showed me the method that was given to him from the first 100 people of Alcoholics Anonymous. And the first thing he showed me was this.

This is that circle and triangle that I was telling you all about. And on the bottom, you'll see the word recovery. To the left, you'll see unity, and to the right, you'll see service. Okay? Recovery, unity, and service.

Recovery means the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I used to just think this was a pretty medallion on people's necks that you all kinda hung around your neck. I thought it was a piece of jewelry. I didn't know that it had meaning to it. Okay?

So you have recovery. To the left, you have unity. To the right, you have service. What does this mean? I'm gonna tell you what this means.

Recovery means the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, and I will show you through this page on how I do that daily. Whenever I say something, I'm gonna show you how I do it, and then I'm gonna tell you my experience with it. So what it does is it just solidifies what I'm talking about. It's not this theory thing that I'm thinking about and making up. I'd like to tell you that I'm the rocket scientist.

I figured all this out, but I did not. Okay? So you have recovery, which is the 12 steps. You have to the left hand side, you have the unity, which is meetings. Now, I try to make 2 meetings a week, plus I sponsor people on Saturday.

On Saturday, I bring people through the big book and through the steps. So that's 3. Three things I do for AA. And then I get the 1,000,000 phone calls during the week from sponsies from all over the country and now hopefully from all over the world. Okay?

And so the next thing you have is AA service. Service work. What do you do? Well, you know, there's some meetings that I do not like where I live now. It's watered down.

It's terrible. So I started my own meeting. Now, this is the first time it didn't succeed. A little bit of an ego blower. It kinda hurt me, I I gotta be honest with you, but it didn't succeed.

It failed miserably. They thought I was healing people with hands. I had this one old timer say to me, he goes, yeah. I know you're a type, this new age stuff. And I looked at him in a meeting and I got up and I looked at him and I said, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Is the original message of Alcoholics Anonymous considered new age now? I said, you're killing more people than smallpox. I I I really didn't need to do that. I didn't need to say the smallpox deal. And I made my amends to him and I made my amends to the group.

But, it's the AA service work too. Okay? I have a home group. I bring people through my steps. So I was told if I do these three things in a week, I will be safe and protected from the universe or God.

The circle. Okay? It's really we stole this from the Buddhists. It's mind, body, and soul, but we took it and trademarked it and, you know, made a corporation out of it. So it's called Recovery, Unity, and Service.

And I wanna show you how I do this on a daily basis. Okay? You all ready? AA is broken up our disease is broken up into a 3 fold disease. Correct?

Have you ever heard of that? Spiritual, mental, and physical. So what did the AA'ers do? They made 12 steps to figure it out, out, to help the spiritual, the mental, and the physical. Steps 1 through 3 are the spiritual part of the of the program of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Now if I had my way and I was director of moving around the lights, I would have put that at the bottom and done the work to get to the spiritual. Because what what this has done in AA is it's made a lot of people say, well, why don't we just stay on step 3 until you find god? Well, I still wouldn't have found god 13 years later because I didn't believe in a god. I hated organized religion. I didn't believe in it.

Didn't make sense to me. So how was I gonna search for something that I totally despised? Okay? Does that make sense? But I found a sponsor that said to me, don't worry about it because in step 12, it says having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps.

So let's keep moving along, young laddie. Let's just keep moving forward and you by step 12, you will get it. And I said to him, what happens if I don't get it? He says, well, you're dead. And I said, what's the other option?

He says, there is no other option. I said, well, that's that's pretty tough. So, anyway, I I did. He knew deep in his hearts. He knew it, and I've seen it, that people who truly work this rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path, and rarely have I seen a person fail who's thoroughly part of the path.

Okay. So steps 1, 2, and 3 are the spiritual. You have the mental steps. You have steps 4 through 7. You're doing a lot of writing.

You're telling all your dirty secrets to a human being. Oh my god. And then you're looking at your character defects? Okay. That's tough stuff.

I don't know about you, but I was exhausted when I was done with those steps. Those are the mental steps. Now you have the actual physical steps, 8 and 9, where you're gonna go out and you're gonna make your amends. You're gonna touch people's lives or else they're gonna close the door on your face or else if anyone heard my story last night, they're gonna drag you all over New Jersey, making amends to everybody in their family, and that was just one amends. I knocked off 4 people in one amends.

Okay? And then this is it. This is the icing that people miss. I don't know why. It it it blows me away.

10, 11, and 12. They're like the hidden steps. You know? People forget about this. Well, I made it through 9.

So I've worked all the steps and I'm completed. That's so far from the truth. That's why I could bring somebody through the steps in 4 hours. Okay? Because they're gonna continue for a lifetime to do 10, 11, and 12.

Does this make sense? This is how you work the steps daily in your life. Now let me show you. It says here on page 84, the 3rd paragraph, this thought brings us to step 10. Alright?

Which suggests I like these suggestions. It suggests that you add flour when you make bread. If you don't add the flour to it or if you don't add the yeast, the bread's not gonna raise. You're gonna have nothing. Okay.

So so let's make this suggestion to you, which suggests we continue to take personal inventory. Personal inventory. What's personal inventory? Step 4? So we got step 4.

And continue to set right any new mistakes. So if you're making new mistakes while you're doing step 10, you're making amends for it. Okay? As we go along, we vigorously meaning not skipping. We vigorously intensity.

We vigorously commence this way of living as we clean up the past. So as I'm doing step 9, I'm taking daily inventory. Okay? I'm just doing what the book says. I did not make this up.

As I'm cleaning up the past, I'm doing daily inventory. Why? I wanna stop the insanity here. I don't wanna keep on making amends. I wanna stop the insanity as I'm cleaning up the past.

Makes sense? You clean up the past, you add more garbage. You clean up the past, you add more garbage. No. You clean up the past, you start doing inventory to stop the garbage.

Alright? So it says, as I clean up the past, I'm doing inventory. We have entered the world of the spirit. Once I started doing this, everything has really changed my life. I really I stopped struggling.

Now I'm doing step 11, prayer and meditation. Okay? So I've entered the world through the spirit. Our next function so this is our next function as we do this, is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. This is not an overnight matter.

It's not an overnight matter. You gotta continue, continue, continue. It says in the big book that we are undisciplined people. That part I may say, well, yeah, that's true. The only discipline we have was trying to get the booze.

That was the only discipline we had. Correct? Otherwise, it really didn't care. Feeding my kids, whatever, you know, as long as I had the booze. That's all that mattered.

Okay? We're undisciplined. It says here we have to it says here this is not an overnight matter. It should continue for a lifetime. What does a lifetime mean?

Lifetime? Not like after I finish the steps, I stop doing the steps. That's crazy. It continues for a lifetime. After 13 years, I still do this daily.

I still do it. I'd like to tell you I do it all the time, but I bet you I do it 99% of the time. I may miss. I missed Friday. I was totally jet lagged out.

I was like, did I do anything? And I woke up. Yeah. So it should continue for lifetime. To kin continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear.

That is the 4th column of the 4th step. It's the 4th column of the 4th step. It says here, when these crop up, we ask God to remove them at once. Remove them at once. Step 6 and 7.

We discuss them with someone immediately, step 5, and make amends quickly, steps 89, if we have harmed anyone. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we could help, step 12. Does that make sense? I just went through the whole steps, all of them. That's how you work the steps daily in your life.

Step 10. No one showed me that. Live and let live. You know, let go and let God. I never understood that.

Let go and let God. I don't even believe in god. How am I gonna let go? And I got a resentment and I wanna hold on to it because it feels good right now. Do you see what I mean?

So this is how you work the steps daily in life. We're gonna go over it again. It says this thought brings us to step 10, which continue to take personal inventory, step 4. Continue to set right any new mistakes, which is step 10, as we go along. We vigorously commence this way of living as we clean up the path.

So as you're doing step 9, you're doing step 10. We have entered the world of the spirit. Step 11. Our next function is to grow in effectiveness. This is not an overnight matter.

It should continue for a lifetime. Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. 4th column of the 4th step. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. Step 6 and 7.

We discuss them with someone immediately, step 5. Make amends quickly, 8 and 9. Resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we could help, step 12. That's how you work the steps daily in your life. Period.

Now when you start doing that, guess what's gonna happen? God is gonna start giving you things back. Step 2 states that we come to believe a power greater than self could restore us to sanity. Restore us to sanity. So apparently, we don't have much sanity in step 2.

And it doesn't mean you're crazy. And if people tell you an a, well, I got an alcoholic mind. Well, okay. But you're not more crazier than my chief financial officer of my company. You just got an alcoholic mind that kind of processes alcohol different.

You're not crazy. You should hear some of the thoughts out of these people's heads in the normal world. You're not different than anybody else. Don't think you are. It's like you can't eat peanuts.

You're allergic to peanuts, you're allergic to alcoholism. Alcoholism just kinda causes a lot more destruction than peanuts. Follow me? So wipe that out of your head that you're crazy. You're not crazy.

The sanity they're talking about is when you go to a 9 month funny farm and you walk across the street and you grab a 5th of vodka. That's insane. When you're losing everything in your life and you have another drink or drug. That's the sanity they're talking about. So you'll be returned to the sanity of drinking and drugging.

Not like you're crazy, although that may be debatable, but you're not. Okay? So it says here, and these are called the 10 Step Promises, page 84, last paragraph, And we have ceased fighting anything and anyone, even alcohol. When I hear a man or a woman with 20 years, 25 years sobriety saying, I have a hard time walking down the beer aisle in a grocery store, I shiver. And I say, you need help.

You absolutely need help. I own the largest nightclub restaurant in Charlottesville, Virginia. Chris was there. It's huge. It's got 1, 2, 3, 4 bars.

I mean, this thing is it's huge. I do not stay there after 10 because I don't like drunks. I love employing a whole bunch of people. I love giving them great work and great money for the work that they do, but I just I I don't I don't like trunks. I'm not afraid of alcohol.

I had a an old timer come up to me as I was building this restaurant. The guy goes, do you know what you're doing? I said, absolutely not. I've never even worked in a restaurant. He says, no.

No. No. You're an alcoholic. And I'm like, I was waiting for the punch line. I thought he was gonna tell me a joke.

And I said, I understand that. He goes, you're building a nightclub bar. Oh, I was like, oh, yeah. So? It it the alcoholism is so far removed from me that I didn't get it.

I I didn't get it. I'm like, so what's what's the deal? What do I care? Do you see what I mean? Because I am safe and protected from my God.

I don't have to worry about alcohol anymore. Alcohol is not a problem. I'm recovered contingent on my spiritual condition and I'll show you what I do to keep that contingency under control. Follow me? So it says here, and we have ceased fighting anything, anyone, even alcohol.

That is my experience. I don't fight alcohol anymore. I don't. You know, every once in a while and and and for you newcomers, in America we have a lot of beer commercials And, you you'll see a guy sweating and he grabs this beer and it's, you know, it's it's dripping with ice. And I'm like, wow.

That looks good. There's two difference between an obsession of the mind and just a fleeting thought. It's a fleeting thought. Okay? And obsession is when, I would have to go 2 days without drinking because I messed up on my flight schedule so I didn't have time in between my drunks and I and so by the second day I'm like shaking and I'm flying the last leg home into Washington and I'm just like, I mean, if those if those throttles could have went any further, I would have kicked them through the glass.

And I'm I'm landing and I'm just like knocking over flight attendants and running through the jet way and I'm My hats are coming off and stripes are coming off and I get to the Exxon gas station which is right on the corner and I'm like if everybody would just leave me alone, I would be just fine. Right? Look at me, drenched in a in a beer. Yeah. I had life by the way.

Anyway, so it says here, for by this time, sanity will have returned. So what they're saying is the sanity now has returned in the 10th step. So it says, and we cease fighting anything and anyone, even alcohol, for by this time, sanity has returned. So your sanity comes back in the 10th step. It says here, we will seldom be interested in liquor.

If tempted, we recoil from it like a hot flame, and that's what Chris was quoting the other day. It says, we react sanely, sanity has returned, so you don't walk across the street after a 9 month mental form rehab and grab a 5th of vodka. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that it has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes with an exclamation point.

That is the miracle of it, and that is my miracle. It says we are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. So I could walk down the beer aisle and not be worried. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality, safe, and protected. We have not even sworn off.

Instead, the problem has been removed. That is a pretty big statement, isn't it? The problem has been removed. I want you to try this. Hi.

My name is Doug. I'm an alcoholic. And the problem has been removed. And they get up and run out of the meeting because all they're gonna do is talk about you and how you're about ready to go out and drink. Right?

The problem has been removed. Listen to me very carefully on this one now. It does not exist for us. I'd love to say this stuff in meetings. I I I won't because pens and and the steering at me and the the death.

You know? The problem's been removed and it doesn't longer exist. We got anything else to talk about? That makes the old timers cranky. Oh my god.

They pulled me aside. I heard about your new way of doing things. I'm reading from page 85. My new way, Healing with Hands by Doug. It says, we are not cocky nor are we afraid, and that is a true statement with me.

That is our experience. That's our experience, not our theory. Oh, I think maybe this stuff might work. That's our experience. And this is it.

Are you ready? That is how we react, contingent, so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. All this stuff happens on your spiritual condition.

Alright? Now let's talk about this. We have recovered and we have cured. Recovered and cured. 2 different animals.

Alright. Recovered. If you recovered, the symptoms are no longer there. The symptoms are gone. Alright.

The disease, disease, is still there. Just add alcohol or drugs. It'll come back with a vengeance. I would rather not prove that to you. That's something I have not experienced.

I believe you when you come back from a relapse and you tell me that it gets worse, never better. Okay? So the disease is still there when you recovered from alcoholism. The disease is still there. Right?

The symptoms are gone. Alright. Cured. Cured means the disease is gone and the symptoms are gone. My mother had cancer.