The steps 1 through 3 at the workshop "Carry This Message: 12 steps and sponsorship" at The Firing Line Group of Alcoholics Anonymous in Minneapolis, MN

Good evening. I'm Roger. I'm an alcoholic.

The you know, Ed did something he told you my Home group. I've been sober since October 11th, 1978. My home groups bridge to shore and I have a sponsor and I'm sponsored. I used to hear people say that kind of stuff and I was in the back of the room always and I just thought, what is this? Your a a license plate. What you know, what do I care? You know, and, and

I say it when I talk

because I want to convey three things. One,

that continuous sobriety is possible.

Two, when I tell you thank you, when I tell you I've got a Home group, it tells you that I've made a commitment to be somewhere at a specific time and place on a regular basis. And when I tell you I have a sponsor, it tells you that even though I've been sober a long time, I still know enough not to trust my thinking.

And so I have someone I run my stuff by, especially when I'm really enamored with my stuff. And Dust and I were talking before the meeting about that. It's interesting how you do this stuff in your head and it sounds so good. It makes so much sense. And then when you say it out loud to someone, usually your sponsor, but not always, they look at you go, did you hear what you just said? And it's like, oh, it's a different when it comes out. It made a lot more sense when it was inside.

Last week we talked about the fellowship

and

and some of the almost of fellowship and I talked a lot about myths

that the Fellowship is enamored with and I left out too.

One is relapse as a part of recovery.

That's not true.

It's not true. I know some of the places people get that idea, but when you sit with me and you say, oh, I see this all the time, guys coming to me and say I'm coming up in 90 days. I always drink at 90 days. Really.

And what are you going to do? Well, I'll drink and I'll get all messed up and then I'll go back to treatment. Really. Interesting. So you know you're going to drink. How do you know you can get sober again?

And our book talks about this. It says a lot of us did relapse. Some of us did and and they say their phrase is a good case of the jitters is good if you get full knowledge of your condition.

So a lot of the guys I work with are chronic relapsers until they get to the steps

and sometimes it takes a while sometimes it takes a while. I worked with a guy who was a was a chef and when I met him, he was living in his car Diana pancreatitis. I could not stay sober. And we started doing the steps and he get 2-3 months and then he drink and get 2-3 four months and then he drink and he was so getting so discouraged and I and I sat with him. I said listen man, the truth is this year

you've only drank a total of 12 weeks. That's progress.

Let's just keep growing these sober periods until these drunken periods disappear. And that's what was his experience. Eventually he got it, but the deal was when he came back, it was always, OK, let's look at what you did, but let's also look at what you weren't willing to do.

And now let's say, are you willing to change any of that? If the answer is no, then we're done talking because I can't help you if you're not willing to change something that has already proved to be insufficient. But if you're willing to change some of those things, let's try this again. And as long as a person is willing to make the effort and to change, you got a shot. The other one that just drives me nuts is Drug of choice.

Oh, alcohol is my drug of choice. Oh really? God,

if alcohol was my drug of choice I would have chosen not to drink it. Alcohol is my drug of no choice.

That's what alcohol is. It's my drug of no choice. Drug of choice puts the idea in my head that I have some say about it.

I'm no, no,

not here. Do that in your wherever you do that, but don't do that here. That's poison. It's a lie. It's not true. Everything in our text, in our big book says that's our that's not our drug of choice. That's what we're powerless over.

Have no choice. I've lost the ability to predict what's going to happen when I drink, when I'm going to drink,

how long I'm going to drink. I got drunk on two drinks and I blacked out for three days. Then I drank for a whole day and I couldn't get drunk,

so I'm done.

We gotta do some steps

maybe. So the point of this exercise is we've been talking about different messages and

the Doctor's opinion in the first four chapters, which comprises a little over 30% of what we call the instructions. The 1st 164 pages over the 1st 1/3 of it is dedicated to the 1st 2 steps,

and they're not anywhere in the book. They describe a surrender, but nowhere does it say, now you've taken your first step. Oh, and here's your second step. It doesn't say that at all. What it wants me to do is it wants me to conclude from comparing their experience, which they wrote in the book, to my experience. They want me to come to my own conclusion, which is one of the one of the great

aspects of Alcoholics Anonymous. It never tells me what I am. It says this is what we were. Are you like that? Well, then maybe you're one of us.

That's all it does, says here's our experience. Do you have anything that compares to that? Because I'm the one,

I am the one who determines whether I'm alcoholic or not. Not the court, not my wife, not the judge, not my counselor, not my sponsor, nobody but me. And I do that by comparing my insides with their insides, which they put in this book. So we talked a lot about the doctor's opinion,

physical allergy, mental obsession,

phenomena, phenomenon, craving. Then they give us Bill's story. Prototypical drunk. What a beautiful story. Every aspect of being a drunk is in his story.

I mean, he was so messed up, so beautifully messed up. I like enough in the front of his story. That's talking about about how

he had this insatiable drive to succeed, you know, and came out of the war experience and he looked around and said, where is it happening? It looks like it's happening here. I'll go here and I'll prove to the world I'm somebody.

And that whole thing in in the

in the world of psychology, it's called external referral. This whole idea.

I've got this image of Maine. And when I can get it out here and it looks right, the right amount of money, the right woman, the right house, whatever your picture is, when I get that picture, I'll know I'm OK. And Bill demonstrated beautifully. So he goes in. What did he do? I think a law course. Yeah. That's what I mean. Law course, Yeah. And

at the end he talks about being too drunk to write or think, which is fairly drunk for a social drinker and, you know, for a guy just tips him back once a while. But he he came to a conclusion that we have done, I don't know about you. I have done dozens and dozens of times, if not hundreds of times. Remember, he gets to the end of that and he goes, you know, by the time I finish that course, I realize the law was not for me.

Why? Because Bill told himself he was going to feel

complete. He was going to be somebody, he was going to be whole when he had changed that goal.

And the instant he got to the goal, he didn't say, oh, I should inventory this. He didn't say there must be something wrong with me. He said there's something wrong with the picture. Why? Because it didn't fix me. It didn't fix me. And so he was just on this merry go round of trying to fix what we call the God size hall. Every alcohol talks about having this sense of being incomplete, not whole. And we go out here to fill the hole

and it never fills the hole.

And we will do it until we die, unless something happens along the way to change, to change our, our path. So Bill's going along

and, and we see all the progression of his drinking. And then when it's really getting bad, he shows up in the hospital, which is where you meet Silkworth. And Silkworth gives him this idea. I think you're one of those allergic types. What's that about? And he tells them he said that that idea appeals. That explains a lot. I have an allergy. Great. And Bill goes, thanks, I'll take it from here.

And Bill did what all of us do at different times. Self knowledge will be the answer.

Self no. So Bill now has got information, he's got his resolve, which he fails to see is ineffective with his drinking. That's what we call delusion.

Now he's got this resolve. I'll just reassert myself. And now I've got this information. I have an allergy, so I'm done. And then of course, he's not. And he gets drunk and it's worse because it always gets worse. He shows up in the hospital again and he hears silk worth talking to his wife. And he's saying, you know, Bill's one of those guys. I'm sorry, Lois, but Bill's one of those guys that I've come to regard as hopeless. Really. What's that look like? Well that means he's going to either be up in the psych ward in a diaper or he's going to die in withdrawals.

I'm paraphrasing

and well, some of you might not have read the book. You know, I don't want you to think that I'm quoting the book, but I'm quoting in, in essence, the story. Bill hears this and goes holy shit I don't like that future

and so he goes back. Now he's got a two-part program, self Knowledge and fear,

and he goes, that's not going to happen to me, I'll reapply myself. More resolve and new information. I got the information about the allergy and now I got this piece. I'm scared to death. I don't want to end up like that. There was no happy ending at the end of that, so I'm not going there. So that's his formula for staying sober works for a while. And anyone in this room who's done this nose after it works for a while, you start thinking

maybe it wasn't such a big deal.

Perhaps they overreacted. You know, he gets drunk again in this last bout is when he runs into Abby and his buddy shares some new ideas with him. And he has a pretty profound experience while he's drinking talking Debbie, we talked about this last week a little bit. And out of that he goes, damn, you know, every sucked himself onto something that really works. And he ends up in in the booby hatch again. Oh, I mean the hospital

and and he does the instructions that I began from about surrendering to God, acquainting a fellow who is Abby with his defects of character

and turning himself into the restitution and the service phase. And some powerful things happened to him in the hospital.

The thought came to him. Now I, I don't know if you could remember your last detox, but I can. And this was not one of the thoughts that came to me. The thought that came to him while he was in the hospital detoxing was, you know, perhaps there are thousands of men like me out there who would like what I have. That is not what I did coming out of my detox.

Evidence of a huge shift

in his consciousness, in a huge shift in the way he was looking at this. They're doing this for us to identify. Have you ever tried staying sober on fear? There is no consequence in the world if you're a real alcoholic. There is no consequence in the world in front of you that can stop you from drinking. It can interfere with it for a while, but it cannot stop you. It cannot stop you. I had a diagnosis of fatal chronic acute alcoholism. It didn't stop me.

I welcomed it. I've sat in court with guys and the judge says, hey, you're going to the workhouse for a year

or you might want to treat that alcoholism. And he turns around, looks at me, goes, what should I do?

Because why? Because A A says, here's your experiment. If you want to know if you're an alcoholic, try some controlled drinking. Oh, try some controlled sobriety.

Try like not drinking for a year,

right? What's a controlled drinking look like? Could we, could we try some of that first

'cause that's the only way I'm going to get in front of the fact that I don't have control.

The only thing that's going to put me there in front of that idea is my experience, not yours, mine. So they lay it out in the book, right? So the next thing after Bill's story is there is a solution.

Oh, if there is, let's just get at it

and there is a solution. I wrote some things down. It's it's all about your thinking. It's not about drinking after bill stir. We're not talking about drinking. Everything is about your thinking,

all about thinking and then it talks about different types of drinkers and it gives us this conclusion

like on the 23rd bloody page. If you missed the paragraph in the preface. More than 100 men and women who've recovered from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body. We put it in here again and and their conclusion is

their conclusion is that the main problem of mine, the alcoholic centers in my mind rather than my body.

So where am I at with that question?

Where am I at with that question? Do I really think it's in my mind? Do I really not really, No, I don't think so. It's a nice idea, but I don't see how that's going to pay any bills.

The main problems in my mind, we can prove that

if you're an alcoholic and you have the phenomenon, the craving, we can prove that very simply, we got 4 ounces of whiskey here and it's not a problem till it's in here because I can't have the phenomena craving until the alcohol is in my system. So everything that feels like jonesing for a drink is obsession. It's mental obsession because you can't have the phenomena, you can't have a craving until the substance is in my body.

So if the problem lies in the drink

exclusively, I'm not drinking. I should have no problem.

But I have this mind. Bill's story illustrates they're beautifully in every story in this room would do the same thing. I'm just not drinking today. And then by 3:00 I'm shit faced. I changed my mind.

I didn't know my buddy's going to show up with two cases of beer. Hell, you know, it's free. What do you expect? I mean, you know, I just changed my mind. I had no defense against the thought. It doesn't occur to me that I have no defense against the thought because I like the idea 'cause I'm an alcoholic,

of course I'd like a drink. Roland had the same experience. He comes back from a year with Jung and and he's really feeling good. He was really confident. A lot of self knowledge, a lot of insight, workings of the mind. This is beautiful. There's only one problem. Someone asked the wrong question. What was that? Was on the boat going back to New York. Would you like a drink? Yes,

of course. It's been a year. I'm very thirsty now that you bring it up.

And no defense against the idea. Had no defense against the idea

and once I succumb to the idea, I drink. Then the phenomenon of craving kicks in and I go through the stages of spree

and if I live through it, I come out the other end and we always go, I need a break. I'm taking a little hiatus here. I'm not drinking this week. And then by Wednesday I'm feeling better and I think, wow, probably overreacted. I think it's OK to go back in the water again. I know I see the fins too, but I really don't think there'll be a shark attack today. You know, maybe you, but not me. God,

then they go on this, then they go on to say the great fact is we've had deep and effective spiritual experiences

and those experiences have revolutionized the way we see everything. You, my circumstances, the world, the universe, everything. And I'm going you're kidding me,

I have a drinking problem and they're saying no, it looks like a drinking problem, but now you're not drinking, So what's the problem?

I'm miserable,

Silkwood describes. Restless, irritable and discontented.

I am miserable.

I'm in pain here.

This is not a friendly planet. I don't like it. It doesn't feel good being me. I am not comfortable and the only thing that's ever worked for me is that

and until I change, that will be true.

So that's a great fact. And the conclusion is

that I'm hopeless until I have some kind of a conversion experience. You can call it a spiritual experience, you can call it awaken, you could call it a personality change. But it's going to be a radical upheaval in the way I see and respond to the world. Is it going to happen in an instant? No. I know a few guys that it has, but it didn't for me happen slowly over a period of time. Trial and error, Trial and error, Trial and error.

SO

they tell us what we got, what the doctor's opinion. They give us the prototypical alcoholic star with Bill. Then they give us a chapter on the solution. Seems to be the book should be over. They say go find God.

I don't believe in God. Well, that's a problem, isn't it?

I'm a devout atheist

at the beach. That idea is going to have to change,

and the reason it doesn't change is because I don't want it to.

I cling to that old idea even though it is of absolutely no service to me. It is no use to me at all, but I cling to it 'cause it's what is known and it's what I practiced. And you'll find that with all your old ideas when you get through. So then they go, OK,

how about more about alcoholism?

Because they know if you read the book and study it, it's laid out in a way. They give you an idea and then they repeat it two or three times.

Then they call it a new chapter and they give you the idea again and they repeat it two or three times. It's all the same thing. If you don't change, if you don't find a different

authority to reference, you're gonna die. If you have alcoholism the way we see alcoholism, you're gonna die. That's all you can do. You can either die or you can change. And by the way, you're powerless to change. You

have a nice day. See you next week at 7:00. You know Jesus, so

the idea they talk about that someday somehow be able to control my drinking, Great obsession of every alcoholic drinker. Do I have that thinking?

That's what it's asking me. Is this you? They're just saying This Is Us. Is this you? And until I had someone walk me through this, I couldn't identify because I was busy identifying with everything that wasn't me. I wasn't in the Army. I didn't go to war. I don't give a shit about money on the Wall Street. I'm not that guy. No, not at all. But when you compare the emotional landscape,

I'm that guy. I get that. But until someone help me with that, I couldn't. I didn't get it on my own.

So then they go on and say, yeah, here's the deal.

You have to fully concede to your innermost self that this is you,

not out here. That's baloney. Anyone go to a meeting and sound surrendered for an hour?

You know, yeah, I'm an alcoholic. I'm powerless. Oh, yeah, really? And the other 23 hours a day I was trying to convince myself I wasn't powerless because I was being a jerk.

So

that's where the surrender is, that's where the recovery is. It's inside out.

We surrender inside. We do the steps inside. It's an internal job. It's not an external job,

it's not about finding the perfect sponsor or the perfect meeting. It's about doing the steps,

it's about a process. So they give me all these chapters.

This is the chapter they tell us to go try some controlled drinking as a controlled sobriety, you know, drink, stop abruptly. What does that look like? You mean like quit entirely? Stop abruptly. That's a radical idea. Stop abruptly. I do nothing abruptly. Well, I, I start abruptly, but stop abruptly. There's a concept I was working with a guy once that that was going to do some controlled drinking and I said, fine, so let's set up. We got a calendar on the refrigerator.

Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday will be 4 ounces of whiskey. You like 4 oz? Yeah, 4 ounces of no. OK, so we go and he checks off Monday and he goes Wednesday. Thursday he's checking off. He's doing fine for a couple weeks. And pretty soon he gets to Monday and he borrows Wednesdays and then he gets Tuesday. Knee borrows Thursday and Friday and about the third week of the thing that the chart just went off

and there you go. There you go. Now you understand,

you set the experiment up yourself and you couldn't follow through. I think I'll try again. Oh, OK, try again. Try again. If you think you should try again, I'm instructed in Chapter 7 to say yes, try some more.

I'm not instructed to talk you out of your good idea. I think I can smoke dope and do this. You do. Well,

how about it? I'll see you in a week.

How you doing that step work? Well,

I've been so mellow lately, I really haven't had a problem. So I haven't felt the need, you know, it just goes on and on.

Then it gives us this, it gives us this, this gives us this idea. What sort of thinking dominates a person that does that over and over?

What sort of thinking I never thought about my thoughts dominating me? What sort of thinking dominates someone that would do that over and over?

I know better. I can handle it, I can control it. That's the delusion. Because all the evidences to the contrary, all the evidence is to the contrary. And still I will throw all that aside for this idea. It'll be different this time. I didn't always say it in those words, but there was always an extenuating circumstance. Well, it's Wednesday,

you know, I lost my job. I got a job. Someone had a baby, someone died, got married, got divorced,

you know, broke my shoelace, burned the toast. No toilet paper. Car wouldn't start, car started shit, you know, on and on. A Million Reasons 1,000,000 Reasons. So

it never occurred to Bill

and it never occurred to Roger.

It never occurred to any of us that the problem was lack of power.

My alcoholism doesn't let me see the problem. What it lets me see is what it wants me to think is the problem. If I could just get her to act differently, If I could just get him to give me a raise, If I could just get them off my back, If I could just get a new car, you know, if I could just get out of debt. If I could just catch a break, you know? But until I catch a break, I'm going to have a damn drink

because it's the only thing that allows me to get through this crappy thing I call my life.

It's the only thing that allows me to get up, stay up and make it through the day. And until I have

a substitute that works far in excess of that, I'm not going to take it because it's the only thing I know. The only thing I know. Then they did some. Really.

He used to drive me nuts. Jim and Fred, the car salesman and the accountant familiar with the stories. Nod. Yeah. And I would read those. And I was think, what the hell is this? You know, they describe these guys. And, oh, he's successful and everyone likes him and he's got owns a car dealership and he's a war hero. And I'm thinking, what a son of a bitch. You know, he'd be right at the top of my list of people to have an accident,

you know, and Fred's the same way. And I just couldn't get, I'm going. I don't have any of that stuff.

I don't relate. But when I relate it from the story, you know, Jim was just a little irritated, but he blew it off. He blew it off. Had a little row with the boss, but not a big deal. Oh, by the way, I showed up for work on Tuesday. What happened to Monday? Tell us about that, Jim. You know, I called in sick, whatever. So I'm Tuesday. I haven't argument with the boss. No big deal. Just pisses me off a little bit that I work for the place I used to own. Not a big deal, Just blow it off. No, it's really not a I'm fine, I'm fine,

I'm fine. I think I'll go out and sell a car and I think I'll stop at that Roadhouse and I've stopped it many times and I think I'll just see if I can find someone to buy a car while I am. I think I'll have some lunch.

And then that occurs to me. I think I'll have another lunch. This is when it starts getting weird. I had one lunch. That's fine. It's almost like he's waiting. He's almost like he's waiting. And then it comes. The thought struck me. You know, a little whiskey in my mouth. Now there's a hell of an idea,

you know, It took me two lunches, but I got there. I knew I was waiting for something. And their train pulled in and the idea was, you know, little whiskey in the mouth. Not a bad deal. That won't hurt. You hurt me. Jesus, I drink

for the effect and now I've got this idea. Say no, you won't have any effect. This won't bother you. Oh, really?

And so Jim's off the deep end.

Fred, same deal. And he shows up in the hospital, little cases of jitters, not a drinking problem, but he has a quiet little surrendering. He realizes, man, this is humiliating because I know the truth. I'm here because of my drinking. And by God, that's going to stop. And I have evidence in my life to comfort me in the idea that I can stop it because I've been so successful in every other area.

So then these drunks happen to visit me, I think, Oh, interesting.

Nice. But run along. I'm not like you.

I'm not like you. See, Jim and Fred weren't like us. They had other ideas about who they were and what they were. They didn't like our ideas, although some of them made sense. And so Fred goes out, has a perfect day. Now Jim had a lousy day. We all understand drinking when we have a lousy day. Pissed off, I find out. Fine prick. Now Fred had a perfect day. Fred had a perfect damn day,

so he takes himself out to dinner. Doc crossed my mind.

Cocktail with my steak wouldn't be a bad thing, would it? Not at all. So he has a little drink, has his dinner. What does he do? He goes for a walk. I made this part up, the part that's coming.

I imagine Jim, if I'm Jim, I'm taking this walking.

Not a problem, Just had a drink. Not a big deal.

Just had one drink. That's not a big deal, is it? No, it's not a big deal. We agree. Not a big deal. It's fine. We're OK, Right? And we're fine. Let's go back to hotel, OK. And then the thought comes back with a little more authority and says, you know, how about a nightcap? Good idea. Damn. Damn straight. Because we did have a drink with dinner. Nothing happened, Right. So I used to have a nightcap. And the next thing I know, I'm giving all my money, some taxi driver in New York.

God, you know, and I,

it gets some foggy recollection of talking to my wife, who did not meet me at the airport. And I've got some friendly cabbie, which is a guy. I'm your friend until you're out of money, you know, driving me around and I'm on this run. I get done. And then he talks about being back in the hospital when I regained my ability to think.

When I regained my ability to think, I looked back on that and the thought hadn't even crossed my mind

because his whole thing was thanks for the information and I'll put up a good defense against that drink and I'll be fine. Self knowledge and resolve. Very similar to Bill, but these guys were coming from two different perfect day, lousy day, doesn't matter. The thought is what took them both out. So they're trying to get me to see this this thing about my thinking. So then

we get

to my favorite chapter, we agnostics. I mean, you know, in a sense it feels it's hard to do this because we could do a weekend on any one of these things. So I feel I have the sense that I'm just rushing through this, but hopefully we'll make some sense out of it.

The chapter to the agnostic is about the guy like me who felt he had no capacity for anything good.

I had no capacity for love. I had no capacity for worship. I had no capacity for faith. None.

None. And I really do not like the God idea.

So they give us this this stuff and it's in the it's in the second chapter or the second page. They give us a summation. They're always doing this. They give us the setup. And then they say this is what we concluded. What did you conclude? And then they tell you the answer to the question, Did you conclude this resentment, Lee's owner futility? Did you conclude that we did too? Oh, good. Well, move on. You know, if you didn't conclude that, well, maybe we should talk. So they get to this place. This is lack of power. That was our dilemma,

where to find the power by which we could live, and it had to be a power greater than ourselves, obviously, period.

So the question is, is it obvious to me? Is

that idea obvious to me?

Yes or no?

Not kind of yes or no. Then it says where and how are we to find the power? Well, that's exactly what the book is about. Main object is to allow the reader

to find the power and the power will solve this problem.

So that tells me when we get to six and seven, I am no longer my problem solver

because when I solve my problems, I manifest more problems. That's my experience with me. Working on me

is more stuff happens, more not fun stuff happens. When I'm helping me,

my life gets worse.

So they put me in front of these questions and they say the main object of the book is to find the power and the power solve my problem. And it's singular.

I never know for you, but for me,

I had a lot of problems. I had more than one problem. You know, I, oh, there was a drinking problem, but obviously I don't have that problem anymore because I haven't drank in several months. So that's not a problem. But I have other problems. I have the IRS, I have lawyers, I have restraining orders. I have ex wives, I have kids I can't see. I have dealers looking for me. I have problems. I have cops looking for me and a half dozen states. I have several $1000 worth of bad checks

pounds and once I get these problems handled maybe I'll consider some of these steps. But right now I got problems

and what this is saying is no, you have one problem.

Any idea that separates you from the solution,

whether your solution is the steps or God or Allah or Jesus Christ

or Mohammed or Big Wali or the Creator, whatever, it's what separates you from doing this. Because the steps of the onramp to find the power, that's the programmer recovery. So they put me in front of that idea. I don't know that. And then they go through and they deconstruct my thinking. Let's talk about

love, worship and faith. Oh really?

Haven't you loved anything? Well, love money,

love sex,

I guess. I love power. Yeah. OK. What about worshipping? I don't worship. That's a church thing. No. What about worshiping? What did you hold above all else?

OB #1 power over

my will. Intimidation. That was a good one. Yeah. That worked. Yeah,

I guess.

Guess I've worshipped a little. I love women. I worship them in a way.

In a way. Oh, what about faith? Now there, I got no faith. Oh really?

No faith at all? None whatsoever.

Did you not have faith in whiskey?

Oh good point,

never thought of it that way. I had complete faith and Ethel alcohol. I knew that if I put enough of her into me, I would be OK.

I would be OK. I did have faith, yeah. I did have some faith, yeah. And I had some of that faith around some of the drugs I did too, but they weren't as reliable as alcohol. For me,

alcohol was predictable to a degree. And so they deconstructed my ideas about faith, love and worship.

And it was not a comfortable exercise for me. And it happened slowly because I was so well defended in my thinking about these ideas. But I had to admit, there's a there's a there's a oh, how about the God of reason?

How about your intellect, your ability to think your way out of all those problems? To talk your way out of getting your face smashed in, you know, to talk your way out of the ticket, to talk your way out of the angry husband chasing you down the alley, you know? Yeah. What about that? OK, I'm with you. So then they talked to me about

my senses.

Sight, smell, taste, hearing, touch, my senses. What about those?

I never considered this, but what they said was you can't trust them.

What do you mean I can't trust him? I'm quite aware of the fact that my armpits are sweating. I can trust that.

I'm quite aware of the fact that I'm hot and I'm thirsty. I can trust that. But what about when that guy walks in the room and you decide what he's thinking based on his face?

It never occurs to you that you're making up a story.

Never occurs to you. You know, my senses are useful in

in, in a sense for my body. My autonomic functions are useful. They tell me

good information, but they're not reliable. Case in point, your senses are telling you right now that this is the entire world. This square little room, this flat surfaces here. It doesn't let you know that you're sitting on a globe that's spinning thousands of miles an hour and hurdling through space thousands of miles an hour in a more or less elliptical path around another object.

Your senses don't tell you that.

So I take my sensory data and I decide

from the appearance of things what they mean, what's going on. And the truth is, if you've got a four step, you'll recognize this, right? The truth is I'm wrong most of the time. I am bloody wrong most of the time. And that's what's killing me, how I see the world. We're back to the thinking.

Trust my senses to a degree, but not as the ultimate. I'll give you an example. Dennis, my sidekick walks in. Let me. Hi, Denny. How are you? Doesn't say anything. I go. Hmm. Our meeting started. I'll talk to him later. So all during the meeting, I'm looking at dancing. And have I done something to Dennis?

Have, I don't know. I don't think I've done anything to do this.

Have I been? Did I not return a call? No, no I didn't. Do Did I offend him? No, I didn't. And then my head says, well, then Dennis must be an asshole.

That's where we go. We don't go there in a leap. But pretty soon it's like, I wonder what's going on. Then my, my, my ego turns away and says, I wonder what's going on with Dennis because obviously nothing's going on with me. I've already looked at that wonder what's going on with Dennis. And then my head says, oh, he's kind of arrogant. Yeah, he's a little arrogant. And and, you know, someone probably ought to not take his inventory, but maybe a loving appraisal, maybe a conversation, little chat to let him know

that his arrogance is getting out of hand again. You know what? Now I haven't heard anything in the meeting because this is what's been going on in my head. Now we leave and I don't go out to coffee because I want to go home and I want to think.

And now I think about this all week long. By the time I get to the end of the week of thinking about this and when I see Dennis, I'm going to enlighten him.

So I come to the meeting the next Monday and I go, Danny, how are you? What I said, how are you? I said this year's deaf. My hearing aids in the shop talking to this year.

Oh, never mind.

But

it's the appearance of things and I make up a story.

I have done this my entire life. I don't have one or two of these stories. I've got 10s of thousands of these stories and just coincidentally, they're all about how I've been wronged. All right, go figure. They're all about what's wrong with you and how it's been hurtful to me.

God, it's a tough place. No wonder we drink. It's not friendly.

So we've got these ideas. We'll powers over alcohol, life's unmanageable. Really. Where you at with that? These whole the doctors opinion? These first four chapters are all about answering these questions. Are you powerless over alcohol? Is your life unmanageable? Do you now believe or are you willing to believe there's a power that could not, would, but could restore you to something useful? That's it, that's it. That's the whole deal.

And that's, you know, that's why they say if you reach this point now we're going to make a decision. We are. What's that?

We're going to decide to turn our willing lives over the care of God, right? Well, if you don't, if you're not there, toss the book or start again because you've obviously missed something or you're not one of us.

So go find out if you're one of us. See you later.

So here's something that's miraculous, I believe. Oh, wait a minute. See if I can find this.

I was blessed.

I was blessed

with this surrender that I had

where I didn't have any question about being powerless over alcohol. None.

It was a great gift because I had problems with everything else,

but I didn't have a problem with that, so I'm good on that. Now, what's this unmanageability? What is that about? Well, the secret underneath that is that you're powerless, overrunning your life, says, and our lives are manageable.

I don't know about that. I imagine pretty well today we're not talking about today. Let's talk about the big picture, the Longview. Since you started drinking till now, let's look at that picture. There's a great set of questions on page 52 that you can take a guy through who doesn't think his life's unmanageable. Here they are