The Mark Houston Recovery center in Manor, TX

All right. I talked a little bit about the spiritual experience yesterday. We did a four step workshop. We talked about steps 123 and four a little bit. Just briefly step one,

if you're an alcoholic or an addict, you are going to be subject to a mental obsession. That's the inability to

accurately appraise the the the the size of the mistake you're going to make by putting something back in your body. You don't have access to sound reasoning and sane reasoning. Once, once a substance is in your body of little or no control over the amount you take, you're on your your in it for the ride

and it's going to drag you around as long as it needs to drag you around until you, you know, get separated somehow one more time. But then there's a dash that our lives have become unmanageable on a good day, restless, irritable and discontent. This is without any substances in you. This is in your brief period of sobriety, restless, variable and discontent. Pray to misery, depression, resentment, anxiety, shame, guilt, remorse, all that self-centered

here that just that just binds you to self. That's a normal day. A bad day is terror, frustration, bewilderment and despair. You know, pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. Who who wants to live like that? That's that's after the dash. Our lives have become a unmanageable,

emotionally imaginable, spiritually unmanageable, mentally unmanageable. We're a mess. We're a mess.

That's step one.

Some really, really wise people have made the comment that the alcoholic is someone desperately seeking connection to the divine, desperately seeking a connection to to God. We, we, it's been described to me like this is a God shaped hole that that only God will fill. We try to fill it with drugs, we try to fill it with alcohol,

try to fill it with sex, We try to fill it with toys, we try, we try to fill it with food. You know, we're, we're, we just want to feel better. We want to feel like, right. We want to feel connection, that connection to the divine that we that seems to be absent in the alcoholic or the drug addict. We're desperately seeking a connection to the world

and we're using Subs, we're using things outside of ourselves to try to fill that.

The problem is, it's an inside job. It's an inside job. Spirituality is an inside job. We need to,

we need to participate in the recovery process and we need to let God fill that hole. The whole, the whole thing about recovery is being able to place ourselves in the sunlight of the Spirit. We can do that through participation in the recovery process. Asking God, please give me the strength and direction to participate in this recovery process. We can do that work and that translates into placing ourselves in the spiritual climate where God can come in and relieve us of our obsession to drink and

help us with the unmanageability in life. In step two, we come to believe that there's a power. There's a power because we see it in the in the rooms, we see it in other recovered Alcoholics and addicts. We know there's a power. We believe that there's a there's a power and we come to believe that maybe, maybe we can access that power too. It's certainly worth

the effort, the time and the effort. Step 3 is OK, I'm in. You know, I believe that there's AI, believe that there's a power that I can access. I believe that there's a way to recover from alcoholism or drug addiction. I'm in, I'm in. Tell me what to do. And you need to do that unreservedly, unreservedly. Please do not let your thinking mind try to figure out the spiritual exercise before you take it. OK, Well, if I do this,

this will happen. And I don't know if I really need that, you know, because that's what we'll do. The ego is at war with the spirit. This is a conflict that goes back in time. I mean, I used to see it on the cartoons when I was a kid. There'd be the little devil on this shoulder and the little Angel on this shoulder, and they'd be, they'd be trying to talk the guy in to do it. So, you know, you ought to go do this selfish thing. No, you ought to be really nice. I mean, there's, there's a conflict within us

just just because we're human, it's, it's a human nature

and we need to try to rightly relate ourselves to, to the spiritual rather than than the selfish. And so in step three, we make a decision to do that. Just what do we do? What do we do with that? OK, I've made a decision. What do I do? We talked yesterday about inventory. We need to, we need to look at the things in our lives that have been blocking us off from effective relationships with God, our, our fellow man and ourselves. We need to look at what's going on.

And Bill was great. He picked, he picked three things, resentments, fears and the harms that we caused. That's a great, great place to start looking at what is going wrong in our lives. How do, why do you know, why do we keep shooting ourselves in the foot? How does that work? What does that look like? And we start to end inventory. And really, I think it's for me, it was the first time I ever tried to look at my own problems. You know what? Where was I at fault?

I wasn't running around trying to figure out where I was at fault.

It was you. You know you were at fault. If it was my fault, that would be inconvenient. You know what I mean? I I might have to take responsibility for it. If it's my fault, I don't want it to be my fault.

So this exercise is basically an exercise that looking at how we're showing up in life and

the things that we're doing wrong. You know, how we relate ourselves to the universe, to ourselves and to our fellow man. We need to look at that Now we put that whole thing together. We list out all the people were resentful at, you know, good four column inventory. You learn it here. I know that fear inventory harms to others. Emphasis on sex. You, you learn, you learn how to do that discipline here. Do you know what's crazy?

This is, it's really, really rare to find

a treatment or recovery center that teaches you how to do it. Yeah, they kind of leave it to you. You know, you should do a four step. Okay. I mean, they leave it to so, so you have a sick alcoholic mind and you're, you're going into this exercise with your sick alcoholic mind.

Let somebody, let somebody show you how, how to do this. And this is the right place for it. Now you, you have this, this pile of papers. It's the, it's the whole pathetic, you know,

conglomeration of everything you've ever done wrong. And, you know, it's like the whole Megillah and you're carrying around

carrying a rally is plutonium. I, I kept mine like underneath a spare tire in the trunk of my car just in case. I didn't want anybody thinking I was small. You know, I think I was so pathetic. And, you know, my sponsor said, well, you know, I was worried about somebody finding out. I'm, I'm in recovery. I'm trying to get better,

my sponsor one time said. Because I, you know, I was worried about that. I knew somebody at a meeting from outside. He goes, Chrissy, he's just going to have to figure out why you don't park on his lawn anymore, you know? You know what I mean?

Don't worry about him seeing you in here. Anyway. The first step is you take this whole treatise on your your dysfunction and you share it with somebody. You get an opportunity to do that more than once here. I have personal experience with multiple fist steps.

The last multiple fist step I did, I did it with a peer, one of his, one of his prospects and one of my prospects. And it was beautiful because here's what it did. The ego that I talked about being at war with the spirit. This was this just crushed my ego because, you know, I had to read that, you know, here I am, you know, spiritual Chris, as you know, and I'm,

you know what I mean? And I'm reading one pathetic thing after the other and I've got, you know, I'm going like this. My ego's just going like this. And when I got done with that,

I had an accurate self appraisal of myself. You know, my ego wants me to think I'm such hot crap, you know? You know what humility is defined best as an accurate self appraisal? Exactly where you fit into the universe.

You know, that's, that's true, that's true humility. And the 5th step is really, really geared toward getting us right size. Some of the things that happened to me, some of my, my personal experiences over the years with with the steps are like that. But my earlier experience with the 5th step was I always thought I was an incredible scumbag. OK, I mean, listen, I did some really bad things out there. You know, when you put as much alcohol in your body as I did, you're, you're going to do,

you know, you're going to take advantage of people, you're going to use people for sex. You're going to do all of these things that are going to contribute to a lack of self esteem. The shame, the guilt, remorse, all this, this, you know, you're afraid to walk down certain streets. And what what the fist step did was the fist step shifted my my perspective from really thinking I was a scumbag,

a special scumbag. By the way, I was no run-of-the-mill scumbag.

You know how the ego is,

but it was a shift from being a scumbag to maybe being a human being. When I got done with my first fist step, my, my sponsor stopped me and he said, Chris, you know, that wasn't so bad. And I was thinking that wasn't so bad, you know, and I, and I was, I started to think, you know what, that wasn't so bad. And then he said, listen,

I believe that you were an alcoholic before you put alcohol into your body. And truly I'm in that camp today. I believe that alcoholism is, is much deeper and that bottles are only a symbol. I think we, we grasp for bottles because of our alcoholism, you know, so we're trying to solve something deep inside ourselves that we just, we, we just can't solve. Because I believe that you were powerless over alcohol long before you put alcohol in your body. And you were like, Chris,

you were like a campfire that we had burning, you know, had had coals that were just red with heat. And when you took your first drink, it was like throwing gas on that campfire. All of a sudden, it flamed up and it burned everybody, you included, around. He goes, he goes. Today you've recognized that problem and you're making significant efforts to become a better person.

Lighten up on yourself a little bit, you know,

because he could, he could tell that, you know, I was all yeah, you know how we are. You can't look anybody in the eye. It's it's funny. Some, some places you guys are looking me in the eye. I know there's something happening here. I, I speak in places where I, I'll look at you and you know,

he can't even, can't even look at, you know, it's, I'm, I'm speaking around. I gotta, I got an opportunity to, I was the commencement speaker at the New Jersey Drug Court graduation and I got to tell you, looking around, nobody was looking at me in the eye. I might figure him out. You know, you get to a point where you don't care if somebody figures you out. And that's, that's a, that's a very, very healthy thing. Anyway,

anyway, the the 5th step is an exercise in,

in, in beginning to move from separation from everybody to incorporation with everybody. In other words, I'm, I'm starting to feel like I'm a member of the human race. All of the spiritual masters, all of the great spiritual masters believe that our our perceptions of being separate from our illusions.

They believe that we're, we're all part

of a Godhead or were all part of something bigger than our specific personality or, or or individual unit ourselves. And and that's a, that's a healthy, that's a healthy view to have. The first step was my beginning of getting away from separation into incorporation with other people. And I started, I had AI had a spiritual experience because of that step.

Now, because there was really no, no hardcore experienced recovery individuals that were working with me during my first time, I took some time off to to fix my character defects, you know, to work out to work on my character today.

Anybody have experience working on your character defense? That's a lot of fun, isn't it? You know, I'm not going to be selfish anymore. Give me that. I mean it'll last like 2 seconds.

So I banged my head against the wall for several months working on my character defect.

My experience today is and I learned, I learned a little bit of this from God Bless and Bill W in the the 12:00 and 12:00.

He gave me a consideration and what the consideration was is how about going to God with the same sense of desperation and surrender

with my character defects that I went to God with with my alcoholism? How about looking at powerlessness over character defects and needing to engage in a recovery process to participate in a recovery process and have God ultimately be responsible for the removal of those character defects, I need to participate. It says in the 12 and 12 that God, God will not render us white as snow without our cooperation.

So if that's true, how then shall I cooperate?

I need to cooperate by following spiritual principles, engaging in the spiritual life, working the rest of these steps.

So,

so step 6, become willing to have God remove these defects of character, not work. It doesn't say begin to work on your own character defects, you know, so that you can get more money and toys.

The step says become willing to have God remove these defects of character. Then the original reading of step 7 is humbly on our knees, ask God to remove these, these shortcomings, holding nothing back.

That's an act of surrender. That's an act of humility. Humbly on our knees, ask God to remove these shortcomings, holding nothing back. You know, if we're not willing to let go of some things, we need to pray for the willingness to let go of some of them. A lot of us think, a lot of us think when we head into step 6 and step seven that we're absolutely, yes, take everything absolutely.

Well, how about lust? Well, hold on a minute there. You know, if if God removes my lust, I may never get laid again. You know,

I better hang on to that. How about work? How about work? I can't let God run my work. I'm in sales. I've got to be a shark out there,

you know, So some of the, some of us, it's human nature, some of us are going to hold on to, whether consciously or unconsciously hold on to some control over these character defects. And the ones that we hold on to, those are, those are the ones that there's not going to be a lot of progress with. I think it's an evolution. You know, it was in my case, I, you know, today, today I can sit here and I can say I am willing to have God remove all of my character defects. You know, because I've got, I've got some experience with these steps.

I know today that living a spiritual life is going to offer me a lot more than anything I can design myself from from myself.

So I can say that, but it was an evolution from for me. I had to go through the steps a number of times before I really got got clear on on some of these things. Now

going to God in an attitude of surrender and an attitude of desperation with our character defects holding nothing back is a great place to be at. Now what about the removal of these character defects? How does that work?

I believe that the best possible spiritual atmosphere you can be in for the removal of your character defects is to become willing to make amends to the institutions of people where The Who, who those character defects of harm. Our character defects cause harm to others when we become willing to make direct amends to them and we actually go out and make direct amends to those we have harmed,

except when to do so would injure them or others

when we place ourselves within that discipline. That's the best possible spiritual climate for the removal of character defects. I want to share real quick a story and this is a good example of that shift, that removal of character defects through making amends. I, I sponsored this guy for about 10 years. Great, great individual he was, you know, he was a, he was a city Italian tough guy, you know,

mobbed up guy, you know,

just really, really tough and he stole. I mean, this guy stole. He couldn't go into a 711 without grabbing a pack of cigarettes, a pack of gum, you know, and I saw him do that one time. And you know, this is like this is like five years into working with the guy. I'm like, what are you doing? You, you stole a pack of dumb,

he goes. They got budgets for that.

They write that off. What are you talking about? I'm like, you're not supposed to do that. You're, you're stealing. Let's just come. No, you're stealing, okay, you're stealing. I don't care if they've got a budget. I don't care if it's an insurance write off your, it's not your gum. So you know, we, we, we did an inventory on it And, and this individual was, was willing to change his perspective. He was willing to follow direction.

I had them list out every single 711, every single store that he ever stole gum or cigarettes. So he wasn't real happy about this, but he was willing. And he started going around and he, you know, he came up with some amount of money and he started paying back the seven Elevens and the stores that he bought. He'd get the manager, you know,

Let me ask you a question. You think he still steals gum?

You're damn right he doesn't. You know, it's, it's not, it's not part of his operational methodology anymore. There's been a shift, there's been an awakening, there's been a recovery. I like, I like to tell the people I work with to put actually in front of every step because I got to tell you we there's a lot of 12 step meetings that you go to and the steps are on the wall and you go to the step meetings and, but no one is really sharing their personal experience with these things.

They're sharing philosophically. Well, philosophically, you shouldn't steal. No, really you shouldn't steal. And if you have skull, you need to pay the money back. You know that that may be inconvenient, it may be unfortunate, but that's what the recovery program, that's the disciplines of the recovery program. You know what I mean? So, so in step nine, we need, we need to, we need to actually go, actually

go out and make direct amends to the, to the people and the institutions that we've caused harm to. I've got some personal experience with this and you know what I was like, I,

to my knowledge, I was the first person in my immediate AA area to really go out and, and in a disciplined way, really list everybody out and start knocking them off and, and, and go and make direct amends to these people. And I got, you know,

I got criticized in meetings when I was sharing about this, you know, you don't need to do that. You know, that's pretty extreme. You know, paying the money back. You just need to keep coming. No, I didn't just need to keep coming. I, I was a real alcoholic and and I had, I had a spiritual malady that was inside me. And if that gets unaddressed, that spiritual condition called alcoholism. If that goes

unaddressed, the time and the place is going to come

and I will put alcohol back in my body. And listen, I don't want to do that. Knowing what I know about life today, enjoying life the way I do, I'll tell you, making, making the most scary amends in the world is like nothing compared to putting alcohol back in my body. So another thing that I ask, ask the people to do who are balking on amends that I work with and some of them do, is you need to be very, very clear about these events.

A, make the amends. B Put alcohol back in your body.

You're living in sea somewhere. There's no sea. There's no sea. What is C anyway? You got some idea? Some C There ain't. There ain't no door number C

Make the amends.

Put alcohol back in your body. It's as simple as that. And if you keep it that simple, you're going to get to a state known as recovery, which I can't even tell you the blessings of that state. All right? We've done our best with we've done our best with the immense process. You know, we've knocked on a lot of doors

when we couldn't knock on doors. We've written the letters, you know, because there's people that have passed on or you can't find. There's ways to get the money back out into the universe.

There's ways to set right the wrongs of the past. Find an experienced guide, a sponsor, a spiritual advisor with experience. You know, don't, don't pick the first guy at a meeting.

My guess, my guess is if you lined up every meeting in in the United States and you lined up everybody that goes to those meetings in the United States, maybe 5% of the people have true experience with the steps, actual experience with the steps. It's your responsibility to find those people. Don't, don't shortchange yourself. Find the find the people with experience

because there's a lot of people out there who you're going to come, you're going to come to some of these steps and they'll tell you you don't need to do them because they didn't do them.

And they're still sober. And they might be suffering spiritually and emotionally and not even know they're still suffering from alcoholism. They're in that period of tentative sobriety. How free do you want to be? How good do you want to feel it? It's all contingent on how well you address these spiritual exercises. OK, Make all the the, the shift in perception from having unfinished immense to having no amends

unaddressed that you can think of that are you're conscious of. That's a that's a difference between night and day. It's a difference between black and white. And for many of us, it's a difference between life and death. It just is. So be very, very disciplined about it. And now sitting in here, you're going to be thinking, well, that means I've got to go make amends to Wally. Oh my God, I can never do that. Let me just tell you that right now, right now you don't have the power to go make that a mess.

You get the you get the spiritual fortitude to make that amends by doing steps one through 8 and then starting, starting on the starting on immense and starting to feel the spiritual power comes in. Then you will have power to do those events. So don't ever say no, never. I never will make those events

because you will have the power to make those amends. If you get busy about this recovery process, you will. You will be able to knock. You will be able to knock on Wally's door. You know, you'll hear that sound.

So the disciplines of 10 and 11, unbelievable, unbelievable. I, I take, I take step 10 like this.

It's a reactive step. It's a walking around during the day step. It's a right now in this moment step. How do I react to, to to, to the environment? How do I react within personal relationships? How do I react?

And because it's a reactive step, we need to, we need to use every single discipline of the steps that we've been taught and be able to apply them on a moments notice

every day. Every day we're going to fall short in Word fought. Indeed, we are going to fall short. We're human beings. I'm glad that we fall short every day because I don't like perfect people. You know what I mean?

Perfect, perfect people annoy me. And every once in a while there will be a perfect person and and society will nail them to a cross or something anyway. So, you know, I, you know, as a human being,

I'm kind of glad that I'm not perfect. So when I act imperfectly, I can use the disciplines of the four step. I can inventory. OK, I got a resentment of fear. I've harmed someone. Let's inventory it. Let's talk about it with somebody. Let's ask God that wants to remove the the character defect that caused that. Let's make direct amends. Let's seek through prayer and meditation

to better and more rightly relate ourselves to our Creator. Let's go help somebody.

And these are all disciplines that we can use in Step 10 in a reactive way. We need to become practiced at the spiritual life. We need to become practiced at it. And how do you learn something? You learn by doing

Step 11. I like to look at it in three distinct parts. Upon awakening, as we move through the day and the evening review, you know, this is another place where you're becoming disciplined at these things. The spiritual life does require certain disciplines because we're undisciplined. We're undisciplined, we're immature.

You know, there's a number of things. If you, if you're alcoholic, you're undisciplined,

you're immature, you're overly sensitive, you know, welcome. You know, I mean, welcome.

So, so discipline is important. Discipline is important. It's very, very important. Any spiritual practice has with it. Discipline. Now I've had, I've had the, the opportunity to experience some wonderful spiritual teachers and they're, they start you off with disciplines, you know, and you think, well, you know, why do I need to mop the floor? You know, I'm, I'm pretty spiritually advanced.

So you need to mop the floor because you have no discipline. You know, intellectually you may be spiritually advanced, but look at your life.

You know, look at, look at the product of your life. So we need to become disciplined.

When I wake up in the morning, there's a period of prayer and meditation that I use. I always ask God to give me the strength and the direction to move through the day seeking His will. I There's a number of of spiritual and religious books that I've been involved with. I have read mountains of books. Again, what really helps me is when I actually practice what those books tell me to practice.

But irregardless, you know, I like to feed my soul with,

with, with knowledge and experience from people who are more advanced than me spiritually. You know, that, that hole that I talked about earlier, that God shaped hole that I'm using drugs and booze and sex and, you know, running around and power and all that stuff.

I, I need to constantly fill that hole with spiritual sustenance. I find it, I find it in a lot of books now. I'm very, very comfortable in the Christian disciplines,

but I'm also, I've also exposed myself a lot to the Eastern disciplines, you know, Native American studies.

There's so there's a wealth of wonderful information that you can actually transmit that information into an experience. There's so much of it out there. It's, it's unbelievable. And what I tell the people I work with is follow your heart with this stuff.

I, I hesitate to tell someone they need to specify

be involved in the Christian tradition. What I what I like to do is sometimes I, you know, I'll recommend books, but sometimes I like to tell them, look, just go to the religion philosophy sections of a big bookstore. Meditate a little bit and look at the covers. Pull them out, read the dust jackets. Find out where you're pulled. Find out where you're pulled because we have to have a serious buy in with

with with the spiritual disciplines as we move forward, the spiritual information and and understanding,

we need to have a personal buy into it. So a lot of times, a lot of times we can trust that inner guidance. It says that we'll be, we'll be rocketed into a fourth dimension. It says that it talks about a sixth sense. I like to look at that sometimes as being the realm of intuition, the realm of deeply knowing, truly knowing deep down inside. And if we can shove ego aside, if we can shove that sense of self inside, a lot of times we know

and start to listen and trust that inner guidance, trust that intuitive part of ourself.

And, and we can do that as we move forward. I love the 11th step because it opens the doors to spirituality so wide. You know, I believe that I need to as a foundation. This needs to be my foundation. I cannot move away from this. But what I can do is I can add unto this with other spiritual practices. So never, never be the type of person that gets so spiritual they disappear from the recovery process.

I know a lot of people who've become so heavenly, they're no earthly good anymore. They can't call them up on a 12 step call. I'm not really going to those AAA meetings anymore. You know, I don't really like the people there. You are the people there, you know, now you're going to criticize them all, you know, So, so always, always that found the foundational text, the foundational system of your spirituality really has to be rooted in this. If you're alcoholic or if you're an addict now,

now that's not necessarily so for the rest of the world, you know, they can get they can go any direction they want. We need to stay rooted in this because we have we have an illness called alcoholism or drug addiction that can come back on us. It can come back on us. It's cunning, baffling, powerful and aggressive. So as long as we stay, we use this as our foundation, you know, we're going to be good and then we can stretch our wings and we can really enjoy

some of the stuff that's out there. There's someone, there's some wonder, there's retreats and there's great churches and you know, there's a lot of things out there. There's a lot of things out there that we can enjoy and that will enrich us. Now, having had a spiritual awakening as this course of action,

as the result of the 12 steps, we tried to carry this message to other Alcoholics, other people was the first writing. What are they talking about there? Having had the spiritual awakening as a result of the steps, we're going to carry this message. What is the message? The message is the spiritual awakening. This has gotten so lost. This has gotten so lost in oral tradition, Alcoholics Anonymous,

that that we talk about anything and everything, but that

we need to carry the message of a spiritual awakening. Basically like I've done here today and yesterday with you all. I've basically talked about the processes involved that bring us to a spiritual awakening. Tonight I'll share a little bit about what the spiritual awakening has has done in in my life. But what is the message? The message is the 12 steps. The message is

consistent, meaning attendance. Find a a sponsor of spiritual advisor with experience with the steps, actually

go through those steps, actually go through those steps, always asking God for the power and direction to help help get through that. And then carry that message to the still sick and the still suffering to shift your. I talked about this earlier as an alcoholic. When we end up in places like this, we have a foundation. Our life is built on a foundation of selfishness and self centeredness. That's the foundation of our life. That's the perspective that we come from.

We need to shift from that perspective to a perspective of love and service. That's that's the continuum of recovery. So in an attitude of love and service, what we do is we carry the message to the still sick and still suffering. It says in our book, nothing will nothing will ensure immunity from alcohol like intensive work with other Alcoholics. Intensive work with other Alcoholics is not being the cookie guy at your group.

OK, that's a service commitment. I'm not knocking it,

but if that's all you're doing is you're the cookie guy, you're going to be, you're going to be, you're going to be in it deep pretty soon. You need to, you need to get about the business of carrying the message of recovery. Listen,

addictive illness kills a lot of people. 100,000 people a year die of alcoholism. 100,000 of people a year in America die of alcoholism. They don't need to.

There's even more people dying in a A and dying in NA because they're not addressing the recovery process. They're

nearly hanging on to an almost unbearable sobriety. OK, you're looking for people to work with. Look. Look for it there.

Most of the people I end up working with are people who not drinking and going to meetings is not really working for them. You know, they've still got an incredible slew of problems in their life. Most of them continue to relapse like clockwork. Those are usually the people that I personally work with

and I get them over to my house. We sit down, we open this book and I start to explain how I had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps and how I will be happy to help them do the same thing. I don't know another way. And I'm not going to hit them with a bunch of happy slogans because my, my experience is, is basically that

most of the people I work with are real Alcoholics. And to slogan them

to death and to just not get involved in the recovery process, you know, I might as well be guilty of involuntary manslaughter, you know, withholding information from people.

Now, it doesn't always make me the most popular person at the A A meetings.

When I started really going into this, I knew I was going to lose 90% of my friends and I did because I, because I was in, I was in oral tradition fellowship A a lost 90% of my friends. But the friends that I've, I've developed over the years

are much better than the ones that lost. You know, my life is, is incredible because I paid attention to this stuff. Now practicing these principles in all of our affairs, that's that's difficult at times. We need to ask God for help with that. We need to continually go back and do what Bill Wilson said was an annual or semi annual house cleaning. When I believe a house cleaning is it's it's the steps we need to continually go through these.

There's people who are going to tell you all you need to do, kid, is stay in 1011 and 12. You do the four step one.

Well,

there are probably people who've done such a great job on 1011 and 12 that they've not continued to make any mistakes in their life. Okay, maybe. But the fact of the matter is this. Every single time I've gone through the steps again, it's like peeling another layer of the onion back. I am now. I'm now even clearer in my perspective. I'm even clearer in myself appraisal than I was prior to.

So every single time I go through, it gives me one more shot in the arm and my quality of life increases, my ability to be effective increases. And you know what? Very, very few people who have done multiple fist steps the way I've done them are going to argue with me that they only should have done it once. You know what I mean? So this is a lifetime process. Alcoholism is medically described as a chronic relapsing condition. That's what the doctors call this. It's a chronic

relapsing condition. You know what? You don't have to relapse

stuff, but we are in the minority. We are in the minority. So the doctors continue to call it a chronic relapsing disease. You don't have to relapse. You're lucky to have the disease of alcoholism because to rightly relate yourself to God and your fellow man, you continue to participate in these spiritual practices. You then shift your attention to work and self sacrifice for others.

You are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness, a new attitude and outlook

on life. There is no doubt in my mind.

It has been an absolute pleasure to sit in front of you all and talk a little bit about my experience, strength and hope. Mark, thank you so much for inviting me down here. It's been a great experience. Thank you.