NUACNA III in Ogden, UT

One of the last things I like to do before I get up to speak, and this is only the second time I've ever spoken at a convention, although I have spoken in meetings, is get on my knees and pray. And that's one of the things that I did before I got up here and I just asked God to do the talking and I'll just move my lips. So hopefully sometime soon he'll start talking and you'll get a good message.

No, one of the things I was listening to and when this meeting first started is 27 years. Unbelievable. You know, 18 years. That's that's great. Couple people with 13 years. It's that's like Narcotics Anonymous is growing. You know, it proves to me that that Narcotics Anonymous is what it is and, and it's supposed to be the way it is, you know, and people stopped going elsewhere when they got some time and they stayed here. And that's why Narcotics Anonymous is growing like it is. And

yeah,

but more than 28 years and 18 years and 13 years was one day and two days and four days and seven days.

And that's the miracle of Narcotics Anonymous. That really is the miracle of a Mechanics Anonymous.

I haven't been nervous till now. And that's the truth.

I think about like my using and I could tell you stories. I could tell you war stories, Boyd, the Rygar war stories. But you don't need to hear war stories. You lived it. Otherwise you wouldn't be in this room tonight. And I can tell you some of the good times. And I think there was one or two when I first started,

but you don't need to know about them also because otherwise you wouldn't be in this room either. But what I do like to do when I speak is talk about what's happened to me since about a week before I found Narcotics Anonymous to what's going on with me today. And for me, that's the steps, the 12 steps of Narcotics Anonymous. And that's what I'd like to share a little bit about.

By the week before I got clean, I was in one of those states. And I don't have to really explain it deeply because I'm sure once again, if you weren't there, you wouldn't be here tonight. Where I was hopeless and helpless, penniless and jobless. And I had nothing left. Nowhere to turn to, no one to turn to, nowhere to go.

And I worked out this deal

and it was going to make me back all of that money.

And I ended up with no dope and no money

a week later.

And I try to kill myself. And it was in New York at the time. And I ran out in front of it was the middle of the winter and it was ice on the ground. And I ran out into the middle of the street in Jackson Heights, where where I was living, and

I jumped out in front of a mineral water truck. And I closed my eyes and turned around and prayed that he would hit me. And I heard a crash, a screech and a crash, but I didn't feel any pain. And I said, wow, this dying thing really isn't so bad.

And I started to, like, check myself. And then I opened my eyes and yet skidded on a patch of ice and hit a parked car on the other side of the street. And he got out of the truck and started screaming and yelling at me.

And again the miracle started working from that point on because there was like I couldn't live and I couldn't die. Something had to change in this addicts life

and for some reason my sister happened to be in that neighborhood and she picked me up and took me out to my parents house. They had moved to Long Island and my brother told me about this program that he had been to for a couple of months, called Narcotics Anonymous and he put me on a plane and sent me back to where I was. I just moved to in Miami and I got down to Miami and he told me to call Narcotics Anonymous. And you know, I had thought and I don't

see, I don't know what the hell I was thinking,

but when I got there, I thought that if I called up the operator and said can I have the number to Narcotics Anonymous to be cops at my door. So I looked through the phone book and I saw a number for a Narcotics Anonymous. And I called up and a lady answered the phone and she said somebody will call me right back if I give them my name and my number.

So I made-up a name and I gave them my number. And sure enough, a guy called me back a couple of minutes later and I'll never forget what he said to me.

You said I'm an addict. My name is Cliff and you're in luck.

There's a meeting right down the block from you in an hour, and I can meet you there.

And he did and I went and by the grace of God, I've been clean since that day.

That was like the first time I felt that like I really wasn't luck, that like things had started to change. This guy called me back just like this lady said. He met me at the meeting. And I can't tell you a whole lot about that first meeting. I really can't. I have no idea what went on for like the first three weeks except that I shook and I sweated and I puked 3 weeks straight.

But I do remember people saying work. Their steps are dying motherfucker.

And I do remember people saying keep coming back.

Those are the two things I remember well. I wrote up to that the first meeting on my motorcycle and I was wearing my leather jacket and had my boots on and my jeans and a black T-shirt.

My T-shirts clean today though

and and for Lisa, I want her to know that my hair is down. So if you guys would say, you know, yes or no, my hair is down.

Come on. Come on, come on. So when she hears this tape, she'll go, OK, Thank you.

And

and I went to that meeting and I got off the motorcycle and I walked in and I saw this blonde sitting in the back of the room and she had a cup of coffee in her hand and there was a seat next to her. And I walked in and I sat down and I took off my jacket and I put it next to her and I asked her if I could sit there and she said yes.

And then this guy came in and he said you must be Bam bam. And I said, how did you know?

Now, just because everyone else in the room was smiling and talking and laughing and I was sitting in the back shaking and sweating and puking, my eyes were sunk back in my head. I weighed about 170 lbs and today I weigh about 2:10, so it'll give you a little bit of idea what I looked like.

And, and he came right over to me and he said I'm Cliff. And

again, I don't remember much, but I remember that the blonde said here's a meeting list and tomorrow I'll be at this meeting.

And I went

and when I got there, she said. And tomorrow I'll be at this meeting

and I went

bring the body in. The mind will follow,

and that's basically how my first three weeks of Narcotics Anonymous wins. But the funny part about it was I stayed clean for three weeks. I had never in my life since I picked up my first drug done that.

But all the time that this was going on, I kept hearing work their steps or die, motherfucker,

and keep coming back. And I remember looking up and there were two posters on the wall. One had the 12 traditions of Narcotics Anonymous. Now they never said what the traditions or die. So I said the hell with them

and the other side of the 12 steps of Narcotics Anonymous. And I looked at them and there was only 12 of them. And I figured, well what the hell, I'll do 1A day for the next two weeks, take Saturdays off and I'll be done.

And I looked at the first step and it said don't do drugs no more. I thought.

I said I'm there, I can move on to two

and then it said something about God so I could skip that.

And the third one said something about God so I could skip that.

And the 4th one said I got to do an inventory and I said the hell would choose

and if it said share it with somebody and I knew you were crazy.

Six and seven talked about character defects and shortcomings and I knew they had the wrong guy there.

And then I saw the eight step where it said apologize to everybody you hurt,

I thought. So I called up my ex's mother.

He said it's me. I got three weeks clean and everything is going to be OK now.

And she said you're an asshole, you always wear an asshole, you always will be an asshole. And she hung up on me.

I didn't exactly get the response I was looking for.

And the 9th looked like it said the same thing. And the 10 said something about, you know, we were talking to get once again and 11 was God again. And the 12th said something like,

now I didn't bother with spiritual awakening and I didn't bother with principles and all your affairs. All I saw was help another addict. And I was living in Miami and I was walking down Galloway Road and I saw this guy walking past this convenience store while I was walking the opposite way. And he had, he was smoking this drug

walking down the street. And I went over to him and I grabbed the drug out of his mouth and I told them all about this great program that could help him the way.

And I didn't exactly get the response I was looking for from you neither.

I went back to another meeting the next day and I heard somebody say get a sponsor. So I went up to this guy and I said, would you be my sponsor? And he said sure. I said Narcotics Anonymous steps don't work,

So what do you mean it at work? I told him about my experience with the 12 steps of Narcotics Anonymous

and he said the steps are in order for a reason. And I said, well, what reason is that? He said. Because when you walk him in the way you welcome, they don't work.

I fired him

and I asked another guy to sponsor me

and I told him the same story and he told me the same answer.

So I decided well maybe they have something. So this guy told me he wanted me to start working his steps

and he gave me some assignments to work on the steps. And he told me what the first step was all about and that they're in order. We're going to work one at a time, one through 12, and we're going to work the steps. And he gave me some assignments and he told me what to do. And at the same time I started hearing people say you have to change.

You have to change if you want to stay clean. You got to change everything. So I cut my hair, started wearing button down Oxford shirts and Ferrucci pants and Italian level loafers and and I was a miserable son of a bitch.

My sponsor how you start to work the steps at the same time. And I was miserable the whole time.

One of the things he told me is that the first step is in two parts.

The first part is the only thing I had to do every single day

and I could stay clean.

The second-half started me on changing and that the 11 1/2 stepped up. The 11 1/2 steps that followed that first half was what was going to keep was going to change me and keep me clean. But in order to stay clean, just not pick up, all I have to do is the first half of the first step. That's all I have to do. And he told me the best way not to use is don't pick up. What a concept

and all I have to do is not pick up and I wouldn't use

admitted that I was powerless of addiction and he told me what addiction was was not just the drugs. The first time I read it, I thought it said drugs.

He told me that my addiction was more than the drugs. My addiction was a lot of things that encompassed what made-up this addict. Today I can see a lot of those things more clearly. Back then all I knew was the drugs. But he told me that if I stopped using the drugs, the rest of the stuff would fall into place. And I didn't understand it then. But today I can look back and see what he was talking about.

And ever since I stopped doing the drugs, I saw how the addiction manifested itself in my life

and how I can do the things to change the addicts behavior. That's all I have to do.

We talked about change in the second-half of the first step.

He told me that my lives became unmanageable. I didn't stop doing drugs and then all of a sudden life got great.

The second-half of the first step doesn't say stop doing drugs or Mitt you're an addict or become powerless over the addiction and your life gets great. Life became unmanageable. And I learned my first lesson about life becoming unmanageable about that time. I had woken up late, The alarm clock didn't go off. And of course, the guy who invented the alarm clock was an asshole that morning.

And I ran outside and I jumped on my sled and I tried to kick start it and it wouldn't kick start. So everybody in Milwaukee was an asshole. And then when I got on the highway on the way to work, everybody that cut me off was an asshole because I got to work late. My boss was an asshole and he told me to go home.

When I got home my old lady was being an asshole. So I called it my sponsor and I said you know, everybody is being an asshole.

And he told me if I changed my attitude to be 1 less asshole.

Yeah.

And that's where change started for me.

I remember finishing up with him with the first step and going on to the second step. I remember when we started talking about the second step, I said, I don't think I can do this. And he said, why not? I said, because it says God. And he says, where does it say God? I said, whoa, it's sort of implied. And he said, where is it implied? And I said, well, power greater than ourselves. He says, well, if you don't believe in God, what do you believe in? I said science, prove it to me.

He says, OK, let's try that. He says, you believe in science for a reaction is an equal and opposite reaction, right? And I said, yeah, absolutely,

He said. Something knocked you off your feet and brought you to your knees, right? I said uh-huh, he said in Something

has brought you off of your knees and you're not using drugs anymore. What is that?

I don't know,

he said. How about a power greater than yourself?

Ah, how about that? And that's when I started writing some of the assignments that he had given me for the second step. He also told me about sanity and how sanity is repeating the same mistakes over and over again and respecting different results. And it says in a second set that we could be restored. Restored us from signing. Restored us to sanity.

It doesn't say that we would necessarily insane, but we could be restored to a place that we were possibly before we picked up and that was not doing the same things over and over again and expecting different results. That was doing something new, something different, changing.

I think about the same time he asked me how come I was so miserable all the time. And I told him that, you know, I didn't like this change thing. And he says, well, you know, what do you mean by you don't like this change thing? And I said, well, look at me, you know, I don't feel comfortable. You know, I'm driving in a car. I got short hair. I'm wearing like these button down shirts. He said, well, why are you doing that? I said, well, because I'm changing.

You told me a change comes from the inside.

What do you mean?

He says. When you change the outside, nothing changes but the way you look

when you change the inside then things start to change. So I'm back to wearing T-shirts and jeans,

riding my motorcycle and I was started letting my hair grow out.

No, I also got arrested about this same time.

Now it wasn't. Funny thing I did in recovery,

it seems that the DEA had been doing this three-year long investigation now for the first period of time. My name had been mentioned over and over again by all these different people. For a second little bit of time

I disappeared. But because I was mentioned so many times in this first period of time, they picked me up

and they arrested me in Miami and brought me up to Maryland to face federal charges, a federal grand jury. And, and about the same time

we were talking about

things changing in my life

and my lawyers told me I needed to cut my hair and shave my mustache and put on like some nice clothes and go to court.

And it seemed like that was like going on in my life. Every couple of years I was cutting my hair and shaving my mustache, putting on clean clothes and going before the judge.

Not necessarily that this is one of the the best things that has happened to me is one of the best things that has happened to me in recovery, but since I've been clean, I've not had to go to court this long.

I

It's amazing what staying clean can do.

And all the people that was there with me when I faced this grand jury also had to do time. And for some reason I got probation. I got a federal probation, but it was still probation. I didn't have to do a single night in jail after I went before the grand jury and everyone else did.

And I know that's got to be another result of work in the program. And I don't know why and I don't know how. And, and you know, I started working on the third stuff about that same time I started and, and this power greater than myself thing was okay, but I had this problem with God. I really had this problem with God because I was brought up in a Jewish Home.

And my parents there weren't really religious, but they liked me to know about the Jewish religion.

And so I started getting religious on my own because when I start something, I like go full blast at it. I don't not that anybody here can relate to something like that, but I like that full hearted into doing whatever is I'm doing. And it's like, you know, another thing about me is though, than if I can't do it really good, then I don't do it all. You know, like I can't play tennis, so I won't even pick up a racket.

But like there are other things that I can do really well. So that's what I focus on. Somebody you want play tennis now do that. I don't do that. That's not what I do. But there are the things I like to do. And this is one of those things that like, I got really Jewish

trying to make my mom change over the whole house to like, you know, the two sets of dishes. And, you know, I I started wearing the Yamago all the time and wearing the the sites for anybody who know it. I mean, it is Utah and

we're amazing by the talking about. I don't know.

One of the things Lisa told me is that Lisa wanted to come with me here and that's my girl. And and she said something about, you know, while you're there, you know, I don't want you messing with any of the Mormon women. And I said, well, why would I want to mess with a Mormon woman? He says because you can do 2 at the same time.

40

So, so I'm not doing 2 Mormon women while I'm here.

1st so you guys don't need to hear about the Judaism though. But it was a part of my life, you know, so I started getting like full, full blast into this stuff, you know, and that's like, so, So what happened was like, I got turned off by the Jewish part of it too, because like God always seemed to be like this, this,

this firing brimstone kind of God, the God that always like hurt you and punished you. And the God who like, like is to me is like a gotcha God. You know, you do something wrong and your mom says you do this again and God's going to get you and you do it again. You fall down a flight of stairs and she says see God. Gotcha.

So I didn't want to have anything to do with this God thing. So when I got turned off to the Jewish religion, I also got like turned off to God period. So when my sponsor started telling me that about the third step, we started working it. It's like God was like really a tough thing for me to like really get into it. Just like I just didn't it. I didn't want to do it, You know, I was like one of those things like tennis. I just didn't want to do it.

And then he asked me to read it, and I read it, and he asked me to read it again, and I read it again, and he asked me to read it again, and I read it again. And then I saw something that I hadn't seen before that, and I see it all of the time now. There were 4 words at the end of the third step. They also repeated one other time in the steps, and those four words are written differently than any other words in any of the steps. Both times they're written. If all the steps are written in bold print, those whole words are always written in italics, and if all the other words are written in italics, these 4 words are always written

bold. Print As we understood him,

to me that meant because they were different, they have to be a little bit more important. And so I took a look at those four words and tried to figure out what they meant as we understood him. But what to me it started to mean was that it didn't have to be the God of my misunderstanding. It didn't have to be that gotcha God. It didn't have to be the God of my upbringing. It didn't have to be the God of my rabbi or anybody else who wanted to flow God down my throat.

Hi Utah.

It was a God as we understood him. So I was living with this girl at the time, the girl who sat in the back of the rooms with the blonde hair.

And I said to her, what's the difference between God's will and my will? And she said, anything that you want to do without consulting somebody else first is your will. Anything I want you to do is God's will.

But she also told me that if my God hadn't been working that I could try using hers. So I said explain what your God is and she said loving, caring and greater than yourself.

And that's what I've been using ever since.

And the only thing I do now is I add some other things, like a sense of humor and some other things that get me over those pitfalls. And, you know, I don't even think of them as like hurdles anymore. It's like, you know, God doesn't throw roadblocks in my path. It gives me things to workout,

and it always seems that the thing she gives me to workout, he's got a real good sense of humor about. Now, I don't always think it's funny at the time, but he's got a sense of humor. So loving, caring and greater than myself is the only things that I do use on a regular basis. And that's one of the only things that I took out of that relationship that was worth its weight. But I've been using it ever since and then

what a concept I found. It was written in the basic text

as we understood and became real important. I took a little bit of what you believed in, a little bit of what you believed in, a little bit of what you believed in. I put it all together

and as we understood, it meant that there was number religious affiliation with God.

When I walk into a room of Narcotics Anonymous, it doesn't matter what religion. All that matters is that we all understand that there's a power greater than ourselves. And today most of us call them God. I call them regularly,

but most of us call them God.

And then I started learning about the 4th step. We started working a fourth step. Now, if other addicts are like me, I think that when you start working your 4th step for the first time, you should be locked up in a closet until you're done. Because what I did the first time I worked, my 4th step, was not fearless, searching or moral.

What I did when I first started working my 4th, 1st, 4th step was think about everything I ever did wrong to, anybody ever did wrong to. And instead of writing it, I kept it inside of me. And I walked around with all that anger all of the time. And somebody told me all you have to do is write it.

When you're doing a fourth step, you don't think it, you don't read it, you don't say it, you write it. That's how you get a fourth step done.

But I feel like writing at the time,

they're just like nothing was coming out. I was angry and I didn't feel like writing. And they said all you got to do is pray that it goes from here to here to here and then onto the paper. And once it gets on the paper, it doesn't come back.

So I tried that and I started writing and I wrote and I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. And I don't know exactly how long it took or how many days or, or how many pages in my notebook it took. But I started to write and my sponsor started giving me some suggestions on how to do it. And the things that he told me to do is he told me to leave his space after each incident, blah, blah, blah. Ask your sponsors how to do a fourth step. I'm not going to tell you

ask your sponsors. That's what they're for. Sponsors, a guide through the 12 steps of Narcotics Anonymous. If you don't have one, get one. And when you get a sponsor, say to them, do you work to 12 steps of Narcotics Anonymous? And if he says yes, saying do you do it with a sponsor? What's the 12 steps of Narcotics Anonymous?

And then you can say, would you be my sponsor? And I did that. And I asked him how he worked his steps. And he showed me and he told me how to do my 4th step. And he told me to leave a line between each one. And he told me when I got done writing it, to go back through it and write whether I thought it was a sin of virtue or the instinctive behavior of an addict in addiction.

And I went back through it and I wrote whether I thought it was a sin, which most of them were,

a virtue, which sometimes I thought they were, but I couldn't understand the instinctive behavior of an addict in addiction. But when I got done writing, it felt like there was a weight lifter off of my shoulders. I just felt so much better about me. And I made an appointment to speak to my sponsor and do a fifth step with him. But at the same time that I got clean, this other guy in the program, Jeff, got clean. And Jeff and me got clean. He got clean a little bit before me, but Jeff was like one of those sick mothers like I was.

He was like wild and off the wall and he did all those same crazy things. And you know, I always had this little thing with Jeff because he had also asked RT to be his sponsor also. So we both had the same sponsor, both clean about the same time. We're both working the things, you know, the steps about the same time. And I'm starting to feel a little bit insecure about this guy Jeff being around all the time.

So when I go to my sponsor, I said, did you already make an appointment for Fifth Step? And he said, yeah, we did it already yesterday. And I said, man,

so I want to speak to my sponsor. I did my fixed up with my sponsor while we were there. I said after I finished my fixed up, I said, but I got, I got a question. I got I got a question for you. I said I got to know is Jeff better than me or worse than me?

And he said the only difference between you and Jeff is he deal with a goat and you did it with a sheep.

Now I'm chilling

the sheet backed up into me. I swear

a good sheep will do that.

Nah, but what he was telling me was that we're all the same in here. That's what he's trying to tell me, that there's not any differences, That what's the difference between the Golden Machine? What's the difference between how many different ways I can prostitute myself when I'm using

that? Most of the things in my fifth step, most of the things that I've written down on my footstep was the instinctive behavior of an addict in addiction. That there's nobody in here that's worse or better. That we are all the same, We're all the same. Nobody's better, nobody's worse. So it doesn't matter what your religious background is. It doesn't matter what your sexual orientation is. It doesn't matter who you did, what you did, when you did it.

We're all the same when we come into the rooms of Narcotics Anonymous. And that was like a great,

great education for me at that time. It was just unbelievable what you can learn and just like doing a fifth step. And all of a sudden I was no longer angry all of the time. I said angry once in a while. There's no longer angry all of the time. I was no longer walking around like screaming in people's faces all of the time. I was no longer pushing people out of my way to get a couple of coffee at a meeting. Things had changed a little bit for me on once in a while. I pushed them out. I just pushed them in the grocery stores.

Well, we did. I was I was talking to Kim about this yesterday. We talked about the different ways that people do six and seven steps, fifth steps, fourth steps. One of the things that my sponsor did and she said she had never heard of somebody told her this, this almost the same way a couple of days earlier than that. And one of the ways that my sponsor, what what my sponsor did was he had this like list of

character defects and shortcomings. And when I was doing my fit step, he was like checking off

where I sit.

And our kid and I will talk about that because she had said that she never heard somebody writing down your character defects. When when you know that you don't know if you fixed up with them so they could tell you here, this is what you need to work on. You know, these are these are your character defects. When my sponsor had this list and he started to check things, but before I even got halfway through with it, he like crumbled it up and tossed it. It's like, yeah, you already covered them. Now we're going on to something else. But he gave me assignments for my 6th and seven steps, and some of the things that he had me doing

were things that I had no idea what they meant at the time, things that I had no idea how they could help me. Once again, I had no idea how that could benefit me. He told me to be honestly nice to somebody that I honestly disliked.

And there's this one guy that used to come to meetings all the time. You used to say I'm definitely an addict and I'm definitely Dave

and and I honestly dislike this guy.

But one day he came in with this really nice pair of sunglasses. I said you had a nice pair of sunglasses and he said thank you. And I walked away and my sponsor told me to say something honestly nice to somebody that I honestly disliked every day for a week. So for seven straight days, I saw this guy in meetings with the same pair of sunglasses. After seven straight days, I went up to him and said you have a really nice pair of sunglasses. He said thank you and I walked away at the end of the sun. At the end of the seven days, I stopped saying it. I have no idea what he was thinking after that,

but I went back to my sponsor and I said I'm done. And he said what did you learn? So that David got a really nice pair of sunglasses.

OK, where did I run? I learned that you can find something that you honestly like about everybody, no matter how much you honestly dislike them. Because when I come into rooms of Narcotics Anonymous, sometimes I hear these same whiny people whining about the same whiny stuff over and over again. Every single time I hear them in a meeting. And sometimes I just want to go shut the hell up,

and sometimes I want to go leave the room and come back when they're done. And sometimes I don't even want to go to that meeting anymore because I know that person is going to be there, but nobody is going to keep me out of a room of Narcotics Anonymous.

If you don't know it by now, you rule by the time I'm done. But I earned my CG year. I belong right here, and nobody's going to keep me from these rooms. But I also learned that I don't have to listen to the message or the messenger all of the time, that I can listen to the message that that messenger has that there are. If I honestly look hard enough, I can honestly find something that I honestly like no matter how much I honestly dislike this person.

And if I close my eyes, I could be in Ogden, UT, or I could be in Miami, FL, or I can be in Jackson Heights, NY. If I close my eyes, it's always the same people that are in these rooms. And these people are sharing recovery. It might be what they almost went out over, or it might be what they learned by staying clean.

But I don't have to look at the messenger.

There's always a message, no matter how much I hate their whining.

And I can do that today when I go into meetings and I never get up and leave anymore just because I don't like the person who happens to be sharing. And that's one of the hardest things I ever have to learn. And I didn't do it right after my first six steps. Don't get me wrong there. It took me a little long time, but it took me that lesson to start getting into that thing. One of the other things he had me do in Miami, I was living in Miami and they have toll roads in Miami. I don't know if you got them here. They don't have them in North Carolina. They got toll roads. You go down like 8:30,

you got to throw 1/4 in a basket. You go down like the Turnpike, you got to throw like $2.00 in a basket. Well, I rode a motorcycle. You don't actually need to

dough by the basket. So for a lot of years I never put anything into the toll machines. And as long as you don't get that little piece of metal that's sitting in front of you, they're never going to catch you. I did this for a lot of years

when my sponsor told me from now on, do something nice for somebody else without letting them know why you're doing it. So instead of skipping the barrier, I would pull up and I'd say to the lady, this is for me and this is for the car behind me.

And then I'd go without leaving any reason or explanation. But then when I started to do is, I started looking for cars that had girls driving with guys sitting next to them. And I

I would pull the scooter up in front of them and I'd say this is for me and this is for the car behind me. And I pull away slowly so I could watch the girl say here and the lady say no, he paid for you and watch the boyfriend go. Where the hell do you know him from?

I thought I was having fun,

but because of that, I also learned something about when I started doing my age step And another thing I started doing, he started telling me like I should start doing volunteer work. And I didn't understand why. So I went to the hospital and I started doing like some volunteer work and he told me like I should like go by people's houses. And when like you saw the old lady, like, and she's got like leaves and branches and stuff in front of her house, move it,

you know, doesn't take anything from me and it makes things a lot nicer for her. And like if I walk down the street and there's a meter and the guy's time is expired or a dime in it, what does it cost me? You know, all those times that I beat the department of the, you know, the transportation and I beat the, you know, motor vehicles and I beat the insurance companies and, you know, all these other things I did, but I didn't know. It was like, you know, but I said, well, though I had dime, it's quarter, who cares? You know, like what you know, who cares? I'm clean now. You know, I'm clean like this is

amazing. Amazing.

So I started doing things like that and then when I started working on my 8th step,

I thought again I said well you know what is I already tried this. It's like not not really too cool, you know it really No, you know, and he says well has nothing to do with saying you're sorry. First of all, the 8th step says doesn't do amends. This says to make a list. He wants me to make 4 lists. He wanted me make first the list of the people that I are harmed physically.

Then he went to me to make a list of the people that are harmed emotionally. Then he wanted me to make a list of the people that I had harmed financially. And then he wanted me to make a list of all the people that I had thought harmed me. 4th one was fun.

Well I made this list of people that harmed me emotionally and we went over it together and he told me that most of the people that I had written down ex wives and ex girlfriends. The best thing I could do for them is never talk to them again.

Don't open up the old wounds. That's for me. Your sponsor might tell you something entirely different. My sponsor told me don't go there

for my parents. The best thing I could do is not use. No need to try to say I'm sorry because they don't want to hear that shit no more. How many times did I say I'm sorry? I'll never do it again and do it again.

And say I'm sorry, I'll never do it again and do it again. And say I'm sorry I'll never do it again and do it again. Finally they said, finally they said the hell with you. We know you're not going to do it again because we ain't going to give it to you this time.

So they don't want to hear. I'm sorry, I didn't know that. I'm sorry has nothing to do with my 8th step. But he told me that the best thing I could do is stay clean. If I stayed clean, it would show them that I'll never do it again. And the only thing that he could tell me about that is that time takes time.