Steps 7, 8 & 9 at the Spiritual Awakenings group in Bernardsville, NJ

Okay, so without any further delay, I'll turn the meeting over to Chris.

Thanks, Jim.

Good evening, everybody.

My name's Chris.

I'm an alcoholic.

This really is going to any lengths, I'll tell you.

I remember when we first started this meeting, and we first started coming up, this is the great room or whatever.

They weren't turning the heat on for us in the wintertime, and so you'd see your breath.

So we have had to rough it a little bit here in Bernersville, but we're...

We're still very grateful that they invited us here and allow us to do our thing.

I'm going to be speaking tonight on step 7, 8, and 9.

If you've been at any of the earlier talks that Peter or I gave,

you probably picked up a little bit on how important we feel the recovery process is to an alcoholic.

Okay.

One of the things that took me a long, long time to realize was being an alcoholic,

I had a lot less to do with the decision to pick up a drink than I thought I did.

What I mean by that is the ego wants me to believe that I'm in charge of my actions,

wants me to believe that where alcohol is concerned, I can handle it, I can control it.

And even when I got involved in Alcoholics Anonymous, I was still giving myself the credit for my sobriety.

In other words, I would say things like, well, I'm going all these meetings.

Of course, I'm sober.

You know, you go to a lot of meetings.

Meeting makers just make it.

And, you know, so I'm going to 14 meetings a week, and of course I'm sober.

And I was able to stay sober my last time through.

But I don't think it was because...

I was going to a lot of meetings and I had a desire to stop drinking.

The desire to stop drinking is admission to a chair in Alcoholics Anonymous,

to have a sufficient desire to stop drinking,

will enable you to come in and hang with us.

But if you really are alcoholic, there's going to be a lot more involved in

if you want to have any kind of peace, any kind of serenity involving your sobriety.

I think we've all met people who were just staying sober, God damn it, type of people.

You know what I mean?

Like real cranky, you know.

Back when I first came in, there was a bunch of them, and they'd take it out on the newcomer.

You know, they'd say, shut up and sit down.

Take the cotton out of your ears and stuff it in your mouth.

There was all kinds of nice things that the cranky old-timers would say to me.

What I've learned along the way is that sobriety is just abstinence from alcohol.

And that can be achieved by us in different ways for different amounts of time.

The more alcoholic we are, the shorter the amounts of time.

But it is possible to stay sober a long period of time in AA being meeting dependent and doing a little bit of service and not getting involved in recovery.

And the problem in A today with that is you only understand your experience.

Before I went through the steps, it would have been very difficult for you to explain to me what the steps were going to do for me.

I mean, you know, I read the promises a new attitude, a new outlook on life, you know,

and won't regret the past or shut the door.

You know, I knew a little bit about the promises, but to not have experienced recovery,

you just, you're guessing.

So there's a lot of people in AA who have not engaged in the recovery process

because they don't know what the experience is going to be like.

They've been able to get along not drinking,

for a period of time and they think that's the point of this whole thing.

And certainly separation from alcohol is the point in Alcoholics Anonymous.

But what's offered in AA is a way to stay separated from alcohol

and not only be happy about it,

but to have an incredible quality of life

wrapped around that not drinking thing.

So step one, I make an admission, I make a concession

I surrendered basically to my innermost self that I'm powerless over alcohol.

And again, if you're admitting to powerlessness over alcohol,

you also have to admit that you don't play a big part in the decision to put alcohol in your body.

It's not something that you're involved in as much as you think you are.

If you're powerless over alcohol, how can you prevent a relapse?

How can you do that?

Okay.

Step number two talks about the power that we don't have over alcohol on our own unaided will out there by ourselves, trying to control our drinking.

You ever try to control your drinking? Switch to beer or wine. I switched to schnapps once.

Figure how much schnapps can you drink, for God's saying. I'll tell you, you can drink a hell of a lot of schnapps.

And it gets messy. You know what I mean? That stuff is sticky. So I've tried it all.

You know, I'm serious about this.

I started to use heroin to control my drinking.

It sounded like a good idea at the time.

If I did enough heroin, I wouldn't drink myself into unconsciousness as quick.

But there's a whole other list of problems that come along with heroin use.

And if you're new or just coming back, we're not suggesting...

opiates as a recovery process.

Please don't misunderstand.

You know, I went right from controlling my drinking

into a vomiting pig in about four and a half seconds.

But, so I've tried, I tried working with the alcohol, you know,

trying to arrange it and control it and manipulate it,

and it always got the best to me.

So why walking into alcoholics and items

do I think that coming through the door,

all of a sudden I've got this drinking thing down?

You know, it's the ego.

So in step two, it talks about the power

and that there is a power greater than ourselves

that can restore us to sanity where it concerns alcoholism.

You know, if you're...

If you're a lunatic, the steps may not help that.

But the sanity that they're talking about in the second step, I believe, is that period of insanity that precedes the relapse.

I know almost everybody in this room must have made a real serious attempt to separate from booze.

I mean, you know, told your family that you're quitting, you know, made a big demonstration about I'm quitting

and then found yourself with alcohol in your body, wondering, what the hell happened?

And again, the ego is going to tell you that you changed your mind.

But that's insane. That's completely insane.

For me to leave here and go to a liquor store and put alcohol in my body,

I can't be in a sane state of mind.

It's not a decision that can come from sanity.

It can't.

The last time I got drunk, I wanted to kill my family with a handgun.

Why in the world would I want to pick booze back up again?

You know what I mean?

So that decision can't come from sanity.

So we have to be restored to sanity if we want to survive this thing.

And there's a power greater than ourselves that we can tie into.

Or we can awaken within ourselves.

You know, however you want to look at it.

Step three is after we've made that conclusion, we've come to that conclusion that, yes, there is a power that could restore Sassani.

Maybe.

Step three is a buy-in.

We need to buy into that.

Okay.

When it talks about following the steps or following the path that the first 100 walked,

a path is only a well-worn way.

It's how a number of people have traveled with success.

So the best place to start is not with your program.

I think I'll, you know, develop a program on my own for recovery from alcoholism.

That's really a bad idea.

One of the things we do as sponsors is we get the newcomers and we try to get them to tell us their plan.

You know what I mean? Because it's always a bute.

So if you're a newcomer and you got a plan, please share it with one of us before you actually implement that plan.

We can save you a lot of trouble.

One of my plans was, I'll go buy a gallon of vodka and drink it so I can do AA better.

That was one of my plan. I actually got drunk to improve my sobriety.

Sponsors are good at catching those things. You know what I mean?

Even bad sponsor, I'll catch that one.

So, okay, I'm in.

You know, there's a lot of people sober in AA. There's millions of people sober in AA. I'm in.

What do I need to do?

Information in Step 3 talks a little bit about that process. It's...

developing certain relationship characteristics with a god of your understanding,

and a decision to go through the rest of the steps, you know, to follow the rest of the instructions

in the book, Alcoholics Anonymous, hopefully with an experienced guide.

But when this book was published, they didn't expect that there would be a lot of experienced guides out there.

They made the instructions plain enough that if you were to sit down with this book and just read this book and do what this book tells you to do,

you could recover from alcoholism.

But our experience in this fellowship has shown that it's very, very difficult.

I know the first time I read this book, I read it like it was the Da Vinci Code or something.

I mean, I blew through it.

Oh, that was good, you know.

Read it in about a day and a half.

Did not at all.

capture the importance and the depth and weight of what was in this book.

So, you know, I find it much better to sit down with someone who's got experience with these steps

and go through this book with them so that they can kind of explain a little bit about what Bill was talking about in here

from their own personal experience.

So in step three, I've made a decision I'm in.

Okay.

Now, I've got to inventory some of the things that are wrong with me.

Surprisingly enough, a lot of the information in our literature points to the fact that there's something wrong with us.

That might be a novel concept for some of the pop psychology things that are out there.

You know what I mean?

There's a lot of people making a lot of money on getting you to a conclusion where it was your parents' fault.

Or, you know, you...

You know, you sat on the toilet seat backwards or something when you were two.

The real good thing about Alcoholics Anonymous is it basically lays the blame really right where it should be laid, and that's on you.

You're selfish, you're self-centered, you're immature, you're resentful, you've got self-centered fear, you've got guilt and remorse from the things that you've done.

And all of these things are contributing to really poor performance in your personal relationships.

You know, I don't know about anybody that comes in here right off the street with like a whole line of friends behind them, you know, two blocks long, saying,

he's a great guy.

I don't think so.

So we've had real poor performance in our personal relationships.

And it even says, there's even statements in the 12 and 12 to the fact that those personal

relationships are really the cause of most, if not all of our problems.

So we need to inventory where we've screwed up our personal relationships.

Item number one.

Then when we've inventoried all of those, and we went, you know, both Peter and I in the last

couple of weeks have gone over that in depth.

I don't need to do it again, but...

Once we've inventoried it, once we've done our best to really look at an honest self-appraisal,

you know, as close to an accurate perspective on our stock and trade as human beings as we can,

then we need to share that with somebody.

And that's another one of the spiritual exercises that is very, very beneficial.

I'm not afraid of inventory anymore.

I'm not afraid of fifth steps.

I'm going to point in my life where...

I can do them before my life starts to fall apart.

You know how you go back to the steps when you're like in a basket case?

I guess it's time to go back to the steps now.

I'm a basket case.

I'm actually at a point now where I can do them before I'm a basket case.

I can do them on the way to the store to get the basket.

You know what I mean?

So, and kind of get to it before I have to suffer as much as I need to.

Okay.

But sharing these defects is a great process in beginning to come to terms with what needs to happen for their removal.

I talked a little bit on Step 6 last week, becoming willing to have these defects of character removed.

Right.

Again, I've learned a lot over the years, and each time I go through the steps, I come out of it with a different perspective.

I come out of it with a little bit of a different experience.

My first time through the steps, I thought that steps six and seven were about becoming a good person.

You know, want to be good.

And I know today that I don't know about good.

I don't know if good is really what I need to be.

All the literature, all the, all the prayers, all the directives are basically pointing me toward the fact that I need to become of use to God and my fellow man.

I need to become of use.

I don't need to become good.

I need to become of use.

I need to become of service to people.

I need to be a little less selfish and a little more selfless in some of my actions.

Yes.

And that's really what this whole recovery process is about.

And Bill even alludes to the fact that this is why God is going to remove these defects of characters

so that we will be more useful.

I used to hear wonderful stuff in AA back in the day.

It's a selfish program.

You know, I went home and I told my family, I can't bother with them for the next five or six years.

I'm getting sober.

Or there'd be somebody who went to a meeting every single night.

He hadn't taken his wife to a movie in like 14 years.

A selfish program.

I think they missed the point.

I really think they missed the point.

I think it's not about it being a selfish program.

I think it's about being a selfless program.

Once you get to the point where you're really involved in recovery...

You're worrying much less about yourself and your own little plans and designs and your own problems and, you know, the tawdry little drama, the du jour that you go through like every day.

And, you know, I mean, I used to call my sponsor up with just the most wonderful stuff.

He was a saint.

Just to, either that or he had a, he put me on hold.

I don't know.

But I'd be on the phone with him.

It's, I don't know.

It's really about being of service.

All this recovery, all this change, the personality change sufficient at depth to recover from alcoholism really is, really has so much to do with not being selfish, as selfish anymore.

So am I going to get good?

Is God going to remove the defects of character that will enable me to be good, or maybe

enable me to be economically successful, or whatever I want? You know, I'd like to tailor

the process of my character defects, you know, myself so that I could, I could achieve some of the

things that I want. That's not really what happens. I, in step seven, I've,

I've integrated that for the last 15 or 16 years into my life.

It's a part of my prayer regime.

It's a part of my consciousness when I go through the day.

I really try to stay awake to my character defect removal or process or my participation.

Let me put it that way in my character defect removal because

Just like not having a whole lot to say about putting alcohol in my body,

I don't have a whole lot to say about my character defects.

I don't.

I believe that if I was fully capable of removing my defects of character,

the steps would say something completely different than what they say.

It would say, Chris, you're now ready to remove all your defects of character, grow up.

You know, and the step does not say that.

So in step seven,

There's another great, great quote in the 12 and 12 that alludes to the fact that God is not going to render us white as snow without our cooperation.

So cooperation is key.

The way I cooperate, and you have to understand, I may not be a shining example of character defect removal.

I might not be one of God's shining examples in that.

Dave is shaking his head, no.

He knows me well enough to know that.

But...

But I can tell you about how I participate in that process.

And some of it is prayer.

You know, God, please relieve me of this incessant need to be judgmental and critical and selfish.

You know, I say that as soon as I'm conscious in the morning.

I don't, you know, I don't even, I don't even, I'm not even out of bed before I'm saying that.

And I've been doing that for about 15 years.

Another way to...

be in the spiritual atmosphere for character defect removal is to make a list of those people

and institutions that I have harmed through the manifestations of my character defects.

That goes a long way to participating with God in the character defect department.

It just does.

I've done a lot of A-steps.

There's different ways to do it.

I like to use the index cards.

They're just easier for me.

And I like to see the pile get smaller.

You know, I used to put them all on one piece of paper, two or three pieces of paper,

and cross them off.

It's just something more freeing for being able to burn the card or, you know, toss the card away

and got another one down, you know.

A little bit more of a demonstration.

But what I'll do is I'll write the person or the institution on the front of the card.

Okay.

I'll write down the harm I'm clear on.

Now, this is kind of tricky because so often, again, the ego is involved in these defective relationships.

So a lot of times we don't see the truth in the harm.

A lot of times we'll write down something that the other person won't even, you know,

won't even be able to get with during the amends, or else we'll have completely missed the boat.

We'll say, you know...

You know, real sorry for taking your car out without asking your permission.

They'll go, that's not the, that's the, you crashed it into the police station and, you know, they arrested me.

Sometimes you miss like the whole, the whole boat.

And that's happened to me too, but, but in step eight.

I've got the person or institution.

I've got the harm I'm clear on on the front.

And I've got contact information.

Where are these people?

Is there a phone number?

Is there an address?

If I don't know, I'll put find.

You know, there's some really great people searches out there today.

There's some free ones.

And if you can't get any luck with the free ones, there's some 29-95 ones that you can lock into and –

They can pretty much find anybody.

They really can.

It's a science today.

And if you're not willing to spend $29.95 to get free,

you know, you're not going to make it through the steps anyway.

But on the back of the card, what I like to do is I like to...

Get some guidance, get another perspective at least from a sponsor or a spiritual advisor or someone else who's got experience with these type of amends.

If it's an IRS amends, I'd like to sit down with somebody who's made some amends to the IRS so that I know what's coming.

You know, several people that I've worked with in the past have done some unbelievable amends.

You know, amends for...

for sex harms, I mean, amends for burglaries.

You know, and curl your hair, some of the amends that I know people have made.

Amends to Lone Shark Bone Breakers, right, Tee?

You know, it's just amazing.

But anyway, on the back of the card, what I'll do is I'll write out the appropriate approach

And what I think would be the appropriate amend.

If I owe the guy $300, I'm obviously going to put on the back of the card, pay him $300.

So the part about becoming willing, I'll share you my experience in becoming willing.

I know that there are people out there that want you to sit with all of your amends until you're willing to make every single one of them.

I've worked with people like that.

They want you to every single day until you're willing to make every single amends to sit on them.

What I've found has worked for me.

My personal experience is that in the top right-hand corner of the card, I'll put a plus...

If right now, today, I'm willing to make the immense.

Right now, today I'm willing to make the immense.

I'll put a minus if I feel uncomfortable, if I feel different,

if I don't feel like I've got the spiritual power to make that amends.

I just don't feel comfortable enough.

And what I'll do is I'll put the pluses on the top of the pile,

and I'll start doing the pluses.

And what will happen is the minuses will turn into pluses.

And I'll get to the point where I'll have two or three left.

I'll ask some of my buddies to, hey, keep me accountable.

I've got two or three amends left.

Will you just keep me accountable?

And they'll say, okay, I want to, you know, this time next week, I want you to tell me what those amends were like.

And I find it beneficial to get a little bit of encouragement toward the end of my amends list because...

There's been a couple of times that I did not finish amends, and it's better to be able to finish them than to not.

Making amends puts muscle in your recovery.

Making amends grants you freedom that you just have no idea you're going to experience until you've actually done it.

People who have finished the men's list, people who've got to the other side of amends,

and then started moving into 10, 11, and 12, know exactly what I'm talking about.

You know, they're the promises in the ninth step.

It says before we're halfway through, we'll know a new freedom and a new happiness.

Everyone knows those promises because they get read at every meeting like a preamble.

I don't know how well I agree with that.

For two reasons.

Number one is you're promising somebody something that they really have to work toward.

They have to get up to halfway through the ninth step,

and most people don't get that far.

And the other is there's about 10 million more promises than Alcoholics Anonymous.

You're selling Alcoholics Anonymous short by saying the 12 promises.

It's a hell of a lot more than 12 promises in AA.

Anyway, the spiritual awakening that...

That personality change at depth really, really starts to come as you're moving through the last year of mends.

It's just absolutely unbelievable.

And the difference between having a handful of mends that you haven't done and having finished all your amends

is like the difference between night and day.

Anyone that is experienced finishing a list knows what I'm talking about.

You're free.

There's not a place that you can't go on this planet.

Right.

and not feel good about yourself.

I mean, I used to, I'll give you, for instance, think about it like this.

Let's say I'm just starting out in AA, and like a lot of people, I'm not doing real well financially,

and I've got a lot of people coming down on me for money.

So I go up to Dave, Dave's a nice guy.

I go, Dave, let me a couple hundred bucks.

And, you know, he goes, sure.

And I go, I'll pay you back.

I'm getting a pay.

I got a new job.

I'm getting a paycheck on Thursday.

I'll hook you up then.

And Thursday comes.

And I realize that paying Dave back is not as important as paying something else off.

I got to get my license back, or I need to put gas in the car.

So I do that.

And I got to dodge Dave a little bit, you know, but he's a nice guy.

He's not going to say anything to me.

The next paycheck comes, and it's still more convenient to put the money somewhere else.

Now I got to start going to different meetings than Dave goes to.

Six months goes by.

Now I'm starting to scumbag, Dave.

I'm so I'm saying, that frigging Dave.

You know what I mean?

And all he did was, he's a nice guy and let me money.

Now, that's a small example.

But we don't come into AA with one of those.

We come into AA with 200 of those.

We're carrying this stuff around like a sack of rocks behind us.

And every single amends we make, every time we go up to somebody like Dave and say, hey, Dave, you know, here's a hundred bucks.

I'll hook you up with a hundred bucks next week and I actually hook them up with a hundred bucks next week.

Now I don't have to worry about Dave.

You know, now I can go back to the meeting.

Now I don't have to scumbag him anymore, you know, unless he deserves it.

So there's freedom with these amends.

And...

This one guy, I do a lot of talking at different places.

And there was this one talk I gave at Rutgers School of Alcohol Studies

where there were actually counselors in training to do substance abuse, therapeutics, somewhere.

And they brought me in to talk about spiritual recovery, the 12 steps, spiritual recovery.

Because that's not in a lot of the textbooks that you train on.

But it's an incredibly valid thing.

If you're going to be counseling alcoholics,

you better understand a little bit about 12-step recovery.

You better not try to keep them away from it at the very least.

So anyway, I do my pitch, and this guy follows me out into the hall when I'm on my way out.

And he goes, I need to talk to you.

And I go, yeah?

He goes, what about shame?

What about guilt?

What about remorse?

And I go, what about it?

And he goes, don't you have to learn how to deal with that for the rest of your life?

And I go, no, I have it.

And he goes, I don't understand.

And I go, let me ask you this question.

I go, have you ever inventoried your character defects in the harms that you've caused other people?

He goes, no.

I go, then you probably have never shared that with God and another person.

He goes, no.

I go, so then you didn't ever become willing to have those defects of character removed.

He goes, no.

And I guess, well, I guess you never asked God to remove those character defects.

And he goes, no.

And I go, then you probably didn't ever make a list of the people and places that you've harmed.

And he goes, no.

And so you never went out there and made direct amends to the people and the institutions you've harmed.

And he goes, no.

I go, then how to hell do you know if you can't get rid of guilt and remorse and shame?

You're giving me an opinion based on an experience you've never had.

I've had the experience of doing the night step.

And I'm not saying I don't feel a little remorse for, a little guilty for some of the things that pop up in my life,

but not the way I used to, you know, sitting there like, oh, you know, trying to drink away my remorse over, you know, a failed marriage.

You know, she left me when I needed her most, you know?

So give me another bottle.

Boy, that's a, I drank like that for about seven years.

Yeah.

Then when I finally did inventory, I realized that she would have been crazy not to leave me.

They would have certified her if she didn't get out of there.

So anyway, there's a great amount of freedom.

You know, some of the amends I've done, I went back to a former employer.

There was an employer that I worked for for the last two years of my drinking,

and man, was I a sight during those days.

I was an electrician.

I was like a bad electrician.

You know what I mean? I mean, bad. I blew things up, and I accidentally let the pliers go through like a picture window about 40 foot by 20.

You know, I just, this one time I hooked this guy's well pump up to 220 and it was a 110 pump.

They go, man, have we got water pressure? The thing melted the next day, you know?

All of a sudden the pump people are pulling up the driveway.

Oh, man, I just...

I was bad. I just blew a lot of stuff up. I didn't pay attention real often, you know.

I know this one time I wired a kitchen into the wrong meter. It was a timer meter.

And the kitchen would come on at 8 o'clock at night and go off at 6 in the morning.

The whole kitchen. And that was unacceptable to them, you know.

Oh, man. And then I wasn't a real friendly electrician either. Every once in a while I...

Every once in all I'd get a helper that I didn't like.

And I'd ask the boss, hey, can you get rid of him?

Oh, man, you know, he's your helper.

So I would electrocute him until he would figure out a different career.

I'd have him work on these wires and I'd, you know, have the tester out.

See, it's off.

I want you to put all the white wires and all the black wires together.

Then I'd go around a corner and I'd flip the breaker on.

He'd go, the guy's like, his hair would be sticking.

Then I'd come around a corner and yell at him for like screwing up.

Did that about 10 times so you find another career.

The reason I kind of did that is he almost killed me.

I had him putting in a light switch, and it was for a light at the peak of this roof,

a floodlight, way at the peak of this.

So I'm up on top of this, like, 40-foot extension ladder, like, stretching.

And, you know, I made sure that I flipped the switch off before I went up there, you know.

And I grabbed the thing, and it starts shocking me, and I almost fall to my death.

Right?

So I come down.

God, get it!

And I look, and he had put the light switch in upside down.

So I drag him over that, I go, look, look what it says.

It says no foe.

It's supposed to say on off.

It says no foe.

That's when I started electrocuting them.

But anyway, so, you know, character defects, personality problems.

Didn't have a lot of friends back then.

Anyway, I had to start, I had to stay making amends for a lot of the stuff.

So I remember one of the first ones I go to, I go up to my ex-boss.

He did not want to see me.

Okay.

He like threw me out twice.

Finally, I cornered him.

He was in a barbershop,

he was like in the back in the chair waiting to get his haircut,

and I like trapped him.

And I was able to get an appointment with him at that point in time.

And he ended up, I ended up getting a job where I was hiring electrical contractors,

and he actually ended up doing work for me.

And he was very, very glad that I was doing well.

I had to make amends to my ex-wife, obviously, and those are fun.

And I talked to her about the harm I was clear on, and you know what, in a lot of amends, a lot of the personal amends,

I think it's important to ask three questions, just so you know you've done your best with this immense.

Understand that an amends is not an apology.

You know, we're, yeah, we're sorry.

Right.

We're real sorry.

That's not really what the amends is about.

After I've gone over the harm that I'm clear on, I like to ask if I've left anything out.

Is there anything else you need to tell me that I harmed you?

I mean, because when I did that with my ex-wife, she said yes.

Yes.

And she told me about these things that I must have done in a blackout,

because, you know, there were very, very hazy recollections.

You know, I was a huge blackout drinker.

And I did some psychotic things, and she updated me on those.

And that's kind of when I realized she was crazy to stay with me as long as she did.

After the person who has a chance to kind of heal a little bit with that,

um,

I keep my mouth shut and I don't discuss their problems.

That's what this book says.

You know, you don't start discussing their problems.

I allow them to vent a little bit.

Yes, you did this, you did this, you did this.

Then I'll ask another question, which is basically,